Oolite Bulletins

cim wrote:

Switeck wrote:

Is it my imagination, or does Core Oolite v1.79 trunk/beta seem to sometimes have "welcoming committees" of quite a few pirates at Anarchy systems?

Possibly. Anarchies aren't particularly likely to have pirates hanging around right at the witchpoint, though, unless they've just returned to the system themselves from raiding elsewhere - they tend to hang back a bit along the spacelanes.

Dumping cargo is considerably more reliably in 1.79 than in 1.77 for getting pirates off your back, though, and most pirate ships won't have injectors so unless you made a long jump you should be able to run. (If that doesn't work, are you sure they're pirates?)

Yes, I'm sure they're pirates. I have few OXPs/OXZs installed, as I'm testing my own OXPs/OXZs. They kill me too fast to be anything else. It just means the difficulty for 1.79 (at least in lower gov systems) is MUCH higher than before.

It could be the case of some systems having much shorter Witchspace Beacon to Planet distances causing more pirates to be within spotting distance of new arrivals.

Switeck wrote:

It just means the difficulty for 1.79 (at least in lower gov systems) is MUCH higher than before.

That's intentional (though the safer systems should be safer than before to compensate).

Still, witchpoint ambushes by pirates should be relatively rare even when the spacelane is short. Pirates are populated onto LANE_WP, which specifically excludes the 25km around the witchpoint. You might sometimes see a pirate pack on scanners when you jump in, but they shouldn't be in laser range.

I suspect these might be assassins instead - could you double check them, please. Debug console of their primaryRole is the easiest, but if that's not available, check the comms message they send you when attacking and their legal status.

Is it just me or are the NPCs exceptionally bad at docking? Especially the GalCop Viper Interceptor pilots.

Observed in the Pandora build, based on 1.80:

I was camped outside the docking lane at the main station of Aanteso, keeping an eye out for any ships that could give me a lift to Qucedi. While I waited, I watched two Viper Interceptors come in to dock. The pilot of the first one seemed to be on drugs. It flew back and forth in the docking lane for several minutes causing a massive backlog of ships waiting to dock. (ironically there was another viper pilot further back in the queue making threats over the comms channel and sarcastic comments about letting civilians dock first ) It eventually made an attempt to dock and splashed itself against the docking bay walls. (failed to match rotation I believe)
The second Viper Interceptor flew straight to the docking bay, but also splashed itself against the docking bay walls.

As I continued to watch the now very busy docking lane I witnessed several other ships exploding after entering the docking bay, including yet another Viper Interceptor. I also saw a couple of ships splash themselves against the front of the station trying to scoop cargo that was hovering just in front of it. (Happily for me, as I managed to scoop said cargo and the remains of the ships that did that without myself colliding with the station ) I've never seen so many ships destroyed without a single weapon being fired. (mind you up until now I haven't done the camping thing often so I haven't had much opportunity to do so)

- Neelix

Neelix wrote:

Is it just me or are the NPCs exceptionally bad at docking?

If you do Shift-F, what frame rate are you getting?

Neelix wrote:

Is it just me or are the NPCs exceptionally bad at docking? Especially the GalCop Viper Interceptor pilots.

Observed in the Pandora build, based on 1.80:

I was camped outside the docking lane at the main station of Aanteso, keeping an eye out for any ships that could give me a lift to Qucedi. While I waited, I watched two Viper Interceptors come in to dock. The pilot of the first one seemed to be on drugs. It flew back and forth in the docking lane for several minutes causing a massive backlog of ships waiting to dock. (ironically there was another viper pilot further back in the queue making threats over the comms channel and sarcastic comments about letting civilians dock first ) It eventually made an attempt to dock and splashed itself against the docking bay walls. (failed to match rotation I believe)
The second Viper Interceptor flew straight to the docking bay, but also splashed itself against the docking bay walls.

As I continued to watch the now very busy docking lane I witnessed several other ships exploding after entering the docking bay, including yet another Viper Interceptor. I also saw a couple of ships splash themselves against the front of the station trying to scoop cargo that was hovering just in front of it. (Happily for me, as I managed to scoop said cargo and the remains of the ships that did that without myself colliding with the station ) I've never seen so many ships destroyed without a single weapon being fired. (mind you up until now I haven't done the camping thing often so I haven't had much opportunity to do so)

- Neelix

That is exactly what I was watching, but at Salvage Gang and these were civilian ships not vipers. oolite Version was 1.79.

cim wrote:

Neelix wrote:

Is it just me or are the NPCs exceptionally bad at docking?

If you do Shift-F, what frame rate are you getting?

*watches docking for a while with FPS enabled* It seems to mostly hover around the low-mid 20s... I haven't seen any ships splash themselves this time, but there are a lot fewer ships around currently. I've also seen the frame rate drop to the high teens from time to time, most notably when there are a number of ships that have just left the station setting out.

- Neelix

Tried the 1.80 trunk - very nice. One issue came up in log though:

11:47:58.036 [script.javaScript.warning.ooliteDefined]: ----- JavaScript warning (Oolite Police AI 1.80): Unknown expansion key [thargoid-curses] in string.
11:47:58.036 [script.javaScript.warning.ooliteDefined]: Resources/Scripts/oolite-priorityai.js, line 381.
11:47:58.036 [script.javaScript.warning.ooliteDefined]: ----- JavaScript warning (Oolite Police AI 1.80): Unbalanced ] in string.
11:47:58.036 [script.javaScript.warning.ooliteDefined]: Resources/Scripts/oolite-priorityai.js, line 381.
11:47:58.036 [strings.expand.warning.unknownExpansion]: ----- WARNING: Unknown expansion key [thargoid-curses] in string.
11:47:58.036 [strings.expand.warning.unbalancedClosingBracket]: ----- WARNING: Unbalanced ] in string.
12:02:26.208 [exit.context]: Exiting: Exit Game selected on options screen.
12:02:26.225 [gameController.exitApp]: .GNUstepDefaults synchronized.

DGill wrote:

11:47:58.036 [strings.expand.warning.unknownExpansion]: ----- WARNING: Unknown expansion key [thargoid-curses] in string.

Thanks - that's a bug in Comms Pack A: I'll release a fixed version when I get a moment.

Neelix wrote:

*watches docking for a while with FPS enabled* It seems to mostly hover around the low-mid 20s... I haven't seen any ships splash themselves this time, but there are a lot fewer ships around currently. I've also seen the frame rate drop to the high teens from time to time, most notably when there are a number of ships that have just left the station setting out.

On the one hand, that is on the low side. On the other hand, I just carried out the following experiment:
- cap CPU speed at 1GHz (the lowest available on my PC)
- add about 500 asteroids near the station
- add about 15 traders (plus their escorts) near the station and set them all to want to dock
- turn graphics settings up to ridiculous and maximise resolution.
The resulting frame rate ... 5-10 FPS.

Every single ship, from Sidewinders to Anacondas, still docked with perfect roll matching and course. A few of them lost the roll matching during the approach, and all of them correctly recovered it before continuing.

I'm really struggling to find a reason why the docking routines might suddenly start failing badly.

cim wrote:

I suspect these might be assassins instead - could you double check them, please. Debug console of their primaryRole is the easiest, but if that's not available, check the comms message they send you when attacking and their legal status.

They tend to be offenders and fugitives.

According to P(ause) and 0 (entity dump), they're all using nullAI.plist:
16:49:46.000 [universe.objectDump]: Ent: 3 ShipEntity "Python" position: (-213835, -108567, -9860.87) scanClass: CLASS_NEUTRAL status: STATUS_IN_FLIGHT range: 12679.5 (visible: yes) mass 266518 AI: nullAI.plist:GLOBAL

This may be the changeover from AI.plist to scripted (.js?) NPC AI controls...but it's not working very well for some new arrivals -- I see them wander around the witchpoint buoy starting-and-stopping about every 1-5 minutes.

What I've seen is that ships in one of the new roles that spawn in 1.80 (not sure which, just that it's one of the new roles that randomshipnames.OXP doesn't give names to, and spawns ships with a clean legal record) will gravitate toward me and follow me around like lost puppies.. (not doing anything either useful or threatening mind you, just getting in the way if I slow down for things like scooping a bunch of cargo pods, but not scooping themselves as best I could tell) I really don't understand what the point of it is.

- Neelix

To all participants, please discuss potential issues outside of the Progress thread. There is a topic discussing trunk builds in Testing and Bug Reports and that would be a much better place for these discussions. The Progress thread is kind of a special one, and should be used for listing new features. A bit of discussion on an announced feature is OK, but it should be kept short and to the point, the idea being that someone browsing through the thread can quickly find out what new things get into the game. This can become difficult if discussions start deviating.

While we are at it, here is one that went in quite some time prior to the code freeze, but seems to have slipped through the cracks: V-sync is now a user preference for the Win/Linux ports and can be set in the .GNUstepDefaults file using v-sync = YES; or v-sync = NO;. The default v-sync state still remains set to on.

Another round of bug fixes:
- miners should collide with their own rock hermit considerably less frequently
- it should no longer be almost impossible for a new commander to find any parcel/passenger contracts suitable for their rep (though you still can't be very picky...). Implausibly high reputation requirements have also been trimmed a little.
- police in interstellar space won't look for a planet
- scavengers/miners whose home station is destroyed won't cause an AI error
- docking queue should no longer get jammed up if there's an emergency launch
- you can now actually upgrade your OXZs from the "list installed packs" screen, rather than just admiring them.
- debug dumps of ships now include AI information for their JS AI as well as their plist AI

And documentation updates:
- Linux specific documentation updated
- Some additional help text has been added to the OXZ manager to warn about the need to uninstall OXPs manually, and the potential "hang" on Windows for large downloads.

cim wrote:

... it should no longer be almost impossible for a new commander to find any parcel/passenger contracts suitable for their rep...

Time to start a virgin Jameson, methinks. The last Jameson I started (quite a while back), I got a parcel contract at Lave (going somewhere local). Thing was, it was a different colour and an impossible deadline - but I took it anyway, and it paid me a lower fee.

A further round of bugfixes from us
- Music doesn't stop when the game is paused
- Assassins will attack a target they were chasing once it's safe
- Docking queue management code should now actually work: please report any further errors
- Mac build errors fixed