Oolite Bulletins

Thanks for the update! Looking forward to this.

Hey Redspear, This is some cool stuff.

HeadUpDisplay.m - line 1088 - for that full "scoop, scoop, scoop..." experience
Quote:
double factor = ([stellar isSun]) ? 1.4 : 1.0;
There may be better values but these seem to work with suns and planets/moons of various sizes.

And (for the meantime at least) that seems to be the system rescaling done

A few more core changes (including changing some of those values above) will be required for what I have in mind for ship rescaling.

However I cannot find this line in the file.

even when searching for it. I have 1.81

Any help with that ?

Another question also is: are the changes in your last post the only values I should change, or are those extra changes?

dertien wrote:

Hey Redspear, This is some cool stuff.

Thanks, I must get back to it...

dertien wrote:

However I cannot find this line in the file.

even when searching for it. I have 1.81

Any help with that ?

TBH I haven't tried it with 1.81 yet so it may have been moved. It definitely was in HeadUpDisplay.m though (just checked), about a quarter of the way into the file. If it's been moved then maybe try searching in anything planet or sun related in the source files. I'll have to have a look for it myself at some stage.

dertien wrote:

Another question also is: are the changes in your last post the only values I should change, or are those extra changes?

They are in addition to these ones.
Where there is repetition use the values from the latest update.

I have also tweaked sunskimming for NPCs but forgot to post it
I'll see if I can dig that stuff out soon.

Thanks for your interest

Done some more work on this.

It's getting close to make or break time for the whole project.
All of the models have been rescaled and I'm slowly ploughing through the shipdata.

If this all works then relative to the Cobra Mk III...

• Fighters and debris will be 2/3 as big as before
• Traders and stations will be twice as big as before
• Planets and suns will be 6.6 times as big as before
• Space itself will be 13.2 times as big as before
  ...and the torus drive might just knock your socks off

Maybe next week... fingers crossed...

Sounds promising..

Redspear wrote:

Maybe next week... fingers crossed...

Keeping my eyes crossed for it!

Shrunk the ships and combined it with the planet rescaling. Planets now look majestic when up close...

Only had time for a very quick test so far, which didn't show up anything as broken but did highlight a few quirks...

• 1. Scanner lollipops are showing up outside the (now shrunken) scanner, in addition to sometimes having extremely long tails. Might sound broken to some but I don't mind the off scanner stuff so much (it's kind of like a normal range scanner but without as many mass-locks) but the enormous tails are a bit of a turn off.
  I think there's a fix in headUpDisplay.m but I haven't had a chance to experiment with the numbers yet. Anyone know where I should start?
  
  2. Aegis mass-locking seems to be behaving differently in that I'm only getting mass-locked very close to the station. Not a problem as such but certainly a quirk and one that it might be better without.
  
  3. Of course, reducing speeds can make planetfall more tedious without injectors but then planetfall was a way to make more money anyway, so that needn't be a bad thing. I always tweaked my planetfall version to be less fragile, as otherwise I always lost money on it in an Adder, so this works as another way to make it cost.

Does "NoDraw" refer specifically to drawing things on the scanner or to making them visible at all?

Needs more testing but it's still oolite and it seems to work

Redspear wrote:

Does "NoDraw" refer specifically to drawing things on the scanner or to making them visible at all?

CLASS_NO_DRAW will make an object invisible on the scanner, but still visible on the screen - but will also have other side effects: you won't be able to target it, either, for example.

Thanks cim.

OK, I've got a couple of ideas of how to improve the issue, but likely not this weekend...

cim wrote:

Redspear wrote:

Does "NoDraw" refer specifically to drawing things on the scanner or to making them visible at all?

CLASS_NO_DRAW will make an object invisible on the scanner, but still visible on the screen - but will also have other side effects: you won't be able to target it, either, for example.

Is that also true for NO_DRAW_DISTANCE_FACTOR in Entity.h?

Redspear wrote:

Is that also true for NO_DRAW_DISTANCE_FACTOR in Entity.h?

That determines when an entity is too far away to consider drawing it on screen. Increasing it will increase the derived ABSOLUTE_NO_DRAW_DISTANCE2, which you probably do need to do, but you're probably better off increasing the '2500' factor in that constant instead to be definitely larger than your largest non-planet/sun entity.

Thanks cim.

Meanwhile, I think I've fixed the scanner problem.
A very simple solution (or at least it appears to be), by simply adjusting #define SCANNER_SCALE in HeadUpDisplay.h

So, I think that's it. I've just got some testing to do now, and then (hopefully) deal with any issues that (hopefully don't) present themselves

Checking for likely issues from shrinking and near the top of the list was this one...

cim wrote:

Shrinking them, even if you reduce the speed, I think might have slightly odd graphical effects just because of where the 'near plane' of the graphics space is placed, and lots of little bits of the code probably assume something like the current ship scale - e.g. you might find your fuel scoop can grab cargo from implausibly far away

Tried the cargo scoop test in an Adder (shrunk to a third of its normal size) and a freshly jetisoned cargo cannister (similarly shrunk). The result? Textbook cargo scoop even when looking from external view.

Flew alongside a Transporter and a Cobra III, both of which now make the Adder look suitably small.

Docking is super-easy in a third scale Adder

That's all great news!

Redspear wrote:

Flew alongside a Transporter and a Cobra III, both of which now make the Adder look suitably small.

Any chance of some screenshots that show off the new scales?

Redspear wrote:

Docking is super-easy in a third scale Adder

That I can well believe.. heck, it's easy enough in an Adder as it is now..


Starting to REALLY look forward to playing this..

Diziet Sma wrote:

That's all great news!

Redspear wrote:

Flew alongside a Transporter and a Cobra III, both of which now make the Adder look suitably small.

Any chance of some screenshots that show off the new scales?

Thank you

Oh, go on then... see'n as it's you

(Warning: Gratuitous use of in game screenshots coming in next post)

Diziet Sma wrote:

Starting to REALLY look forward to playing this..

Old scanner...




New scanner and welcome to planet pancake...




Previously, I've shown a shot like this one but if you were to see a rear or side view it would look very different.
Not this time...









Not exactly the four views but rather me 'yawing' around to see how the surface changed on a world like Diso. Not much, would appear to be the answer.
Note also that although I've shrunk the Cobra I haven't altered the external views. Personally, I always thought they were a little tight anyway and now when you check an external view you will get some sense of the size of the ship you are flying.

Speaking of which...







OK, so it's the Python in the foreground there, but not by much. The two did actually collide a few moments later... to the Cobra's misfortune

Kudos to Griff that his models stand up so well to close scrutiny at different scales

What's bigger than a Python?...





Apologies for the low light, those things cast a big shadow
Note that it's the Cobra in the forground this time (again, not by that much).

OK, some shots in an Adder next time, if folks are interested?