Oolite Bulletins

Ooops! Thanks, Diz. Fixed.

edit: strange that; I got it right on the first list, then copied and pasted!

Instead of this

I would use this

Ooh, yeah. That's nice that is. Not that KZ's isn't nice it's just that Griff's is nicer. Maybe with the Oolite logo as the decal though?

Selezen wrote:

Maybe with the Oolite logo as the decal though?

Yeah!

Aw hells, sorry about the multiple post - now I see what that problem with the forum is that everyone's on about.

There was a similar problem a while ago in this and another forum - it means that there is a problem with the SMTP settings either on the forum or on the server.

The usual reason this issue rears its head is that someone has set the forum to automatically notify them if a topic has been updated, and the error usually happens on the topic that has been set for notification. So if it's happening on this topic then someone (possibly KZ999 given his interest in the topic) has set the forum to automatically tell him that this topic has had a new post.

I love the idea of getting badges in-game, but I think they should be awarded by the Federation of Elite Pilots rather than by the police. The FEP keep track of kills, and indeed refuse to co-operate with the police in helping to identify acts of piracy ...

+1 disembodied

What about when I have 5 sapphire pips? then what happens?

wackyman465 wrote:

What about when I have 5 sapphire pips? then what happens?

Probably YOUR HEAD A SPLODE.

or maybe that's too many horcruxes...

Preamble: the follow is not to be taken as that I am acting sniffy or having a go at others. I’m just spelling out a few facts in the simplest way possible. (I admit that I’m a typical kiwi who will call a spade a spade and not a hand held non-mechanical material moving implement using a scoop function methodology. )

To answer the request that I make the t-shit cobra like Griffs, well I can’t. I will draw it to match the shape. I can mimic the finish to a certain degree, but I will never be able to match it. It because I’m trying to produce a design for printing as a t-shit limits what I can do. It all has to do with file sizes and dpi.

Remember that the graphical part of the design is 180x200mm in size to printed by devices that can producing at least 4800x1200dpi. The only real way I could match the look of this:

is using a ton of filter tricks and exporting the design as a PNG. The resulting file raw of approximately 24Megabytes, and that is set to only 600x600dpi, or a 1/16 of what even the cheapest home inkjet printer can work at. Sure, I’ve got a ton of image compression ticks that I can use, but you still won’t get much change out of 20Mb. Most people would refuse to download a promotional gimmick that is as big as the actual game itself (Then again, there might be a few rabid fans who wouldn’t blink at doing that. (You know who you are.)) The only way to have a bitmap image that is sensible is to reduce the dpi. Unfortunately that result in a truly rubbish print when printed as a A4. Example, a small clip of Griff cobra scale from 96 to 600 dpi or a 625% size increase.

True Story: When I worked in a photolab I always warned people that the size of the source image limits the practical print size. Customers would ignore my warning and then refuse to pay when their 2Mpixel cellphone photo looked like crap as a 15x20 print. Man I took so much abuse from those drop-kicks blaming the machines and us for their actions; even though the machines warned the customer every step of the way it would be a rubbish print. Sorry, unexpected venting there.


To make the t-shirt a practical product, the image file is going to be a pure vector format without any of the filter tricks found in my badges. I can simulate some of the effects, but ultimately it’s going to be a matt design and it will never have the shine that is found in-game.

Anyhow since I’ll have to restart the design from scratch. I think a re-jig is in order. Perhaps the following shape would be more dynamic (totally a first sketch here.)

Again the shirt will have to sit on the back burner for a while, there is other more pressing stuff has to be dealt with

Selezen wrote:

Ooh, yeah. That's nice that is. Not that KZ's isn't nice it's just that Griff's is nicer. Maybe with the Oolite logo as the decal though?

You mean this logo?

Dizzy, feel free to replace the blue starbird on your snapshot compile site with this new version.
(Taken from the final set of submission to the logo contest thread.)

Selezen wrote:

...So if it's happening on this topic then someone (possibly KZ999 given his interest in the topic) has set the forum to automatically tell him that this topic has had a new post.

Isn’t that a given since I started this thread first place?! Or that apart from yourself all the new ‘art’ turning up on it has been mine. Anyway I’ve turn off the auto-notify in case it is the cause.

Disembodied wrote:

I love the idea of getting badges in-game, but I think they should be awarded by the Federation of Elite Pilots rather than by the police. The FEP keep track of kills, and indeed refuse to co-operate with the police in helping to identify acts of piracy ...

Replace the words ‘Guild of Combatants’ with ‘Federation of Elite Pilots’ and you are fine. The messages simply states that the FEP receive a copy of the transmissions. There is no statement of connection between the FEP and GalCoPs. It’s simply a case of one GalCoP department job to distribute the death information to all the relevant government and non-government agencies and it’s another to actively peruse criminals. Don’t’ch love modern government . Anyway I think the GalCoPs would feel insulted to hear that ‘they need help to identify criminal acts.’

wackyman465 wrote:

What about when I have 5 sapphire pips? then what happens?

Simple. You become declared a ‘force of nature’ or ‘darkener of suns’ by the Cooperative Senate and your image is transmitted to every planet. From that point on, each system will go in to a state of civil defence high alert when you arrive, as though preparing for a disaster on the planetary scale. The commander will also notice that there is always a small flotilla of moray ambulance ships tailing him to deal with the carnage ve causes. Seriously if the player clocks up more that 20 million kills, the game will just keep adding more sapphire kill pips. You could actually end the pips colours at gold if you wanted, the there is no real difference in the grand scheme of things. By the by Wackyman, what the zarking heck is a ‘horcruxes’ when it is at home?

Now that I’ve finished off the bulk of my ideas for the logo comp’ I’m turning my attention back to the RS. I’m going to give it a major overhaul based on the ideas sparked by the game manual.

The new RS is going to have no bitmaps if I can help it so I’m doing some conversion of the existing image files to pure SVG. First part of which is a minor tidy up of the government and economy icons. Not that I’m saying that’s there’s anything wrong with the current ones, in fact they are damn fine, it’s just that they are of uneven sizes and some don’t scale down too well to a 5x5mm image. My tidying has resulted in this.

The first two rows are easy enough to figure out. The third rows is the commodity type: basic organic (plant), advanced organic (dna), basic technology (hammer and anvil), advanced technology (integrated circuit) and rare (jewellery). The fourth row is for equipment type: lasers, munitions, defensive, other combat systems and commercial equipment. See my game manual to see where they will be used. The two icons in the bottom right, is for an idea I’m still working on.
The white stuff is a overlay so that they can be used on textured or dark backgrounds and is totally removable. For those who are interested, the source SVG file is in my draft folder on the box site.

(Yes, I know that redesigning the Shift-6 icons is pointless but I'm hoping that the lords and masters might actually adopt the new designs to improve the clarity of them in the game. Yes I did test them at various pixel sizes too.)

Now on to to redoing the keyboard table of the RS..........................

KZ9999 wrote:

Dizzy, feel free to replace the blue starbird on your snapshot compile site with this new version.
(Taken from the final set of submission to the logo contest thread.)

Wow.. you even named it after me.. I feel so.. so.. gooey inside.. honoured..

Thanks KZ9999.. uploading it as I type this..

KZ9999 wrote:

advanced technology (integrated circuit)

Ohh.. phew.. I was thinking it meant a Spider Civilisation..

KZ9999 wrote:

Preamble: the follow is not to be taken as that I am acting sniffy or having a go at others. I’m just spelling out a few facts in the simplest way possible. (I admit that I’m a typical kiwi who will call a spade a spade and not a hand held non-mechanical material moving implement using a scoop function methodology. :) )

I should hope so – a spade very definitely is mechanical. :-p

printed by devices that can producing at least 4800x1200dpi. … The resulting file raw of approximately 24Megabytes, and that is set to only 600x600dpi, or a 1/16 of what even the cheapest home inkjet printer can work at.

I’m sorry, but this is just wrong. The DPI of a printer and the PPI of a pixmap are not directly comparable. To come somewhere close to reproducing a full-colour pixel on a printer requires at least 10 × 10 dots per pixel, and 16 × 16 is better. In practical terms, for a photographic or screenshoterific image on a T-shirt, 300 PPI is more than enough. (In case you hadn’t noticed, T-shirts are a bit coarser than paper.) A quick search shows T-shirt printers recommending 300 DPI for line art; practical resolutions for photo-like images are generally lower.

At 300 PPI, the width comes out to 2126 pixels, which is small enough to be achievable if anyone happens to have a 30" monitor. I don’t, but I could recreate the screen shot at at around 1800 px wide (not quite full frame at 1920 × 1200), which would give you about 260 PPI at 180 mm.

KZ9999 wrote:

Remember that the graphical part of the design is 180x200mm in size to printed by devices that can producing at least 4800x1200dpi. The only real way I could match the look of this:


is using a ton of filter tricks and exporting the design as a PNG. The resulting file raw of approximately 24Megabytes, and that is set to only 600x600dpi, or a 1/16 of what even the cheapest home inkjet printer can work at.

Color photos for offset printing presses are prepared at 300dpi. There is no point working in native resolution of printing device (except only for b/w art) because of the CMYK raster lpi (usually around 150 lpi).

Hi-de-hi! <he says ignoring his previous post.*>

Back to the rank badges, in correct scale for the bb...

In order: Harmless, Mostly Harmless,
Poor, Average, Above Average,
Competent, Dangerous, Deadly
Elite,
Clock Tower killer, Spam Assassin, Core Oolite Team, Ultimate People,
Dead, Pirate, Thargoid,
Elite rank for use in the game if wanted

All can be found in this image zip along with the source Inkscape file if you want to have a play. (You will need Inkscape 0.47 or better if you want to edit the source.)

Now for the sad stuff. Due to some things happening in my Real Life, I'm going to have to step away from the universe for a while. I'm not going to have much free time for next few weeks (maybe months) so I won't be here much. If you need to reach me, use the PM or email directly. I'll still work on the: OoliteRS, Oolite Game Manual, Macrocosmic, Your First Flight, the T-Shirt, and any other badges I might be missing. If you see a thread suddenly jump to the top, then you know who to blame.

Hope to be back soon......

* ( Hum - after saying I wasn't going to be sinitty in my last post I end up being just that. Well I guess it proves that you should never talk to anyone after having an argument with idiots, cause you'll end up being an augmentative one yourself. I really should stop feeding trolls. This was all on another board by-the-by. Sorry )

Hi KZ.

The badges do it for me. Great stuff.

Good luck with RL.

See you soon.


Regards