Oolite Bulletins

A few experimental adjustments to the way hull temperature works:
- NPCs now get hull heating from energy damage, same as the player. Mostly this is cosmetic and just makes them glow red briefly after heavy hits ... but a small ship with lots of energy banks and no heat insulation might get hot enough to take heat damage if you really hit it with concentrated fire
- excess hull heat drains away slower. Mainly this is just to look better (so by the time you get back to external view after exiting hyperspace, your hull is still glowing a little from sunskimming), but be careful getting into fights near stars.
- the hullHeatLevel shader uniform now works the same for NPCs as it does for the player (i.e. it is clamped between 0 and 1). This stops the pure white effect on overheated NPCs.

The parameters probably need a little bit of fine-tuning.

Check out tonight's nightly for kanthoney's excellent new feature: a smooth scrolling short range chart. I know I sound like a poor TV advertisement, but you must see this. It's seriously bad-a** and a great improvement on what we've had till now.

<Dizzy frantically tries to find a way to get the current short-range chart classified as a bug, so this gets backported to 1.80.1>

Seriously though.. sounds great.. can't wait to see it in action!

<Takes a bow!>

Thanks to Thargoid for the idea!

*bouncing on the balls of my feet waiting for the scrolling to make it into the nightly!*

kanthoney wrote:

<Takes a bow!>

Thanks to Thargoid for the idea!

OK, so that's my good idea for this decade. Come back around 2025 for the next chance of one

The idea is little, mostly it's thanks to you for the fine implementation - I just finished building the current trunk and it looks mighty fine

Thargoid wrote:

kanthoney wrote:

<Takes a bow!>

Thanks to Thargoid for the idea!

OK, so that's my good idea for this decade. Come back around 2025 for the next chance of one

The idea is little, mostly it's thanks to you for the fine implementation - I just finished building the current trunk and it looks mighty fine

I look forward to trying it.

Thanks guys!

And to make life easier, holding Ctrl down while scrolling will now double the scroll speed. Makes it faster going long distances over the chart.

Thargoid wrote:

kanthoney wrote:

<Takes a bow!>

Thanks to Thargoid for the idea!

OK, so that's my good idea for this decade. Come back around 2025 for the next chance of one

The idea is little, mostly it's thanks to you for the fine implementation - I just finished building the current trunk and it looks mighty fine

At least you get good ideas every decade, Germany needs two decades for each World Cup win...

Thargoid wrote:

The idea is little

Coming up with the idea is often the hardest part.. just ask anyone who's tried to come up with inspiration for a new 'phone app..

another_commander wrote:

And to make life easier, holding Ctrl down while scrolling will now double the scroll speed. Makes it faster going long distances over the chart.

Good idea! When I tried it last night, though, 2x was still a bit plodding. Maybe try 3x or 4x?

kanthoney wrote:

2x was still a bit plodding. Maybe try 3x or 4x?

Nice feature, I vote to 4x with ctrl and I wish the 2x speed without ctrl.

After a little play around, what works best for me is leaving the short range chart as it is now, and then 2x/4x current for the long range chart. Doubling speeds for the short range chart is a little too quick.

Very nice feature - thanks!