Oolite Bulletins

@Doc - You've made me a very happy man for creating this OXP - especially when I can show people some screeshots of my handiwork (as you can see yaw2 is installed).

Never saw a single one of my original ones but I'm guessing if it chooses from yaw2 instread yaw I'm very likely to see some of my own work.

There are a few glitches again with both sets running - but it seems to settle down after about 20 mins of game play.

I'm not too worried about it at the mo' - I'm trying to offload some old bloke before he snuffs it - now I know the clues in the mission name but jeeez - it really is a long way round!





I wonder what the mamba pilot's playing while he's waiting for the ship he's escorting to turn up...

Hey. It looks really good. Don't tell me too much about your current mission - it's one of those things I missed during my initial stay in G1

And please remember this OXP wouldn't be anything without all the nice ads you guys make.

I haven't even tested what framerate I get with any expansions (or the basic game), but 60+ fps somehow sounds beyond my current setup.

My machine is isn't so good - Athlon XP2500+ o/c'd to a 2600+

The gfx are a 128MB 8x AGP FX5600

The framerate is quite odd - during normally gameplay it will go 66-62-32-66-62-32... every second or so with no discernable change in gameplay or perceived fps or bare any relation to what's going on on my screen, or if running windowed so I can see the task manager what the processor is doing!

During the 'glitches' the frame rate indicator freezes at 4fps but this clearly isn't true because for about 1-2s NOTHING happens, but like I said eventually it all seems to settle down and the glitches are tiny and random and what they take away is more than made up for in sheer game play bonuses!

I was deliberately vague about the mission - knowing that some of you 'old timers' headed off before such adventures appeared as oxps.

You know sometimes when you're searching through Google looking for one thing and unexpectedly you find something else completely unrelated and yet strangely appropriate.... (A very Dirk Gently moment)

But honestly this creature is for real - if you don't believe me look it up!

And who better to save it than genetic cousins with nothing better to do...

Nice one.

It might be some days before the next update, but don't hold back.

(The Friends of Uscela wouldn't let me adopt anything - they got all uptight about the primus stove and garlic butter I brought to the meeting).

Dr.-SPACE-Nil wrote:

(The Friends of Uscela wouldn't let me adopt anything - they got all uptight about the primus stove and garlic butter I brought to the meeting).

I'll keep them coming as long as inspiration strikes and my wife keeps letting me off while she makes mince pies!

I just feel silly today. Oh, happy Festivus from the land that can spell titanium, but not aluminium.

@Pangloss - It's not that they can't spell it - its just they take a reasonable set of syllabuls and erm, murder them.

A-LOOM-e-NUM

No, I think you'll find that's ALA-MIN-e-UM



I spent 5 months teaching at the U of MD, College Park in 1999 and between the above and EYE-DIE-DAS - "huh? Oh, yes please I'd like to buy that pair of ADD-E-DAS trainers, sorry I mean sneakers please"

Festive Salutations to yourself and all who have been following this thread.

Oh, and I forgot to ask are you a Stevenage man who's ended up in Pennsilvania (sp?) or an American who's ended up in Stevenage, or neither? Don't BAe have plants in Stevenage and Scranton...

DaddyHoggy wrote:

@Pangloss - It's not that they can't spell it - its just they take a reasonable set of syllabuls and erm, murder them.

A-LOOM-e-NUM

No, I think you'll find that's ALA-MIN-e-UM



I spent 5 months teaching at the U of MD, College Park in 1999 and between the above and EYE-DIE-DAS - "huh? Oh, yes please I'd like to buy that pair of ADD-E-DAS trainers, sorry I mean sneakers please"

Festive Salutations to yourself and all who have been following this thread.

Adi-das, as in Adi Dassler, as in Adolf Dassler, the man that started the company.

It's incredible how people shred their own language. There's a weatherman for MSNBC called Sean McLaughlin. Most Irish Name In The World. He pronounces his first name like it rhymes with bean. Sean, bean. Not to be confused with Sean Bean, which is confusing enough as it is.

I love it when people here in PA say they're Irish. "Oh yeah, what do you think about Keano retiring? Remember that barney he had with Mick McCarthy and Bertie Ahern had to get involved a few years back?" and they just look at you like you were speaking Japanese to 'em. Irish my arse, they don't even know who Bertie Ahern is!

I was thinking. Lots of men hauling goods around the galaxies. It'd be nice to have a chain of gentleman-only establishments. Maybe this chain has a deal that they have their place of business on Level 27 of a station they're in. Or maybe Level 27 is just the area nearest the docks, so it's better for business to put the establishment there.

I give you: the Pink Flamingo Lounge. I decided to go 45 degrees; more chance of reading the sign from different angles!



Shame PNGs can't be animated (or we could use GIFs). This would look great animated!

Oh, I was born and raised in Britain. Lived in the Stevenage-Hitchin area for years. Met an American, married, moved to the US in 2001. Became a citizen last year but don't intend renouncing the UK citizenship.

Now that I like a lot!

Please please please can I be a member of "Level 27"?

And yes, 'tis a shame that we can't have animations - well not yet - some clever programmer might do something clever with the graphics engine in the future (afterall the Quake3 engine is OpenGL and there are some beautiful animated textures in that game).

It's amazing how many Americans claim to be of Irish decent - I met two v. nice chaps from Boston sat on the steps of Capitol Hill burning my butt off in 30ºC heat during the 4th of July celebrations in DC in 1999 - they laughed when I started booing the anti-British sentiment in the speeches and joined in claiming they were more Irish than American.

Hang on to that British bit - when Bush declares war on Iran and/or China you might want to come back!

Keep up the good work on the adverts - I think we can give Doc his second set before New Year if we keep this up!

Have a good Christmas (albeit 8hrs (6?) behind us limeys (or "Damnable British" as they called us in 1999))

Re: Animated Adverts

Writing a shader to do this is pretty trivial, so if the shader code's in the current build I'd recommend doing that.

aegidian wrote:

Re: Animated Adverts

Writing a shader to do this is pretty trivial, so if the shader code's in the current build I'd recommend doing that.

Ah yes. But we are still in a limbo (witchspace?) there. No one has even dared approach that sword buried in an asteroid in G1 which the sages of CGC say can only be drawn by The Successor(s). Most are still too awestruck by your creation (which is awesome) to even dare utter that the game could do with continued development. I think the current build is your latest version. There must be Elite loving competent programmers with some spare time out there. But there's a good chance, that they haven't even heard of Oolite. Some more mentions in different media could do the job, and even if it doesn't, it would made the game known to more people out there, going about their business, not knowing that their old favorite game is back with a vengeance in it's 21st century incarnation. It could be a good Sunday type story for some papers - these nuts are still playing and developing this game 20 years on.

I'm sure that animated textures will be implemented eventually, since it can be used for a lot of cool effects, besides bringing ads to life. And if our Master and Commander says it's trivial, it might even persuade some of the local coders to give it a shot

@Admakers: We will have to decide on the precise number of frames that animated ads must have, to keep it a non-chore to put ads into the set (because they share a texture file in pairs). The lower the number, the better, I think. But perhaps it's better to wait until animated textures are actually implemented, so we can get an idea of what effect animations of different sizes have on performance on various setups.

Great new ads Pangloss. But I have to go a bit pc on you here... Nah, forget the specicism speech. If I want birdoid or feline bordello stations I must build them myself.

Perhaps the best way to do this would be to have all the frames in a vertical strip (so if your image is 128 x 32 and runs to 5 frames, all the frames would be in a texture image that's 128 x 160).

Then the shader would simply have to add a fixed amount ( k * floor(time * framerate) , where k would be 0.2 for a five frame animation) to the texture v coordinate each time frame to animate the texture.

aegidian wrote:

Perhaps the best way to do this would be to have all the frames in a vertical strip (so if your image is 128 x 32 and runs to 5 frames, all the frames would be in a texture image that's 128 x 160).

Then the shader would simply have to add a fixed amount ( k * floor(time * framerate) , where k would be 0.2 for a five frame animation) to the texture v coordinate each time frame to animate the texture.

Then the models will of course have to be re-textured. I'll wait for someone to pick up on your useful info for coders here, before I look at a version with new models. Thanks for the info.

Test the second set here

Your Ad Here!!!

Set 2 Credits:

Billboard 01, front: DaddyHoggy - Alien Abduction
Billboard 01, back: DaddyHoggy - Snoopes
Billboard 02, front: DaddyHoggy - Keep safe distance
Billboard 02, back: DaddyHoggy - Thargon Invaders
Billboard 03, front: Griff - Supernova Heights
Billboard 03, back: Pangloss - Lave Fried Trumble
Billboard 04, front: Pangloss - AD-X Ride the Wave
Billboard 04, back: Pangloss - AD-X Broken
Billboard 05, front: DaddyHoggy - The Boosh
Billboard 05, back: DaddyHoggy - Friends of Uscela
Billboard 06, front: Pangloss - GalCop Recruitment
Billboard 06, back: Pangloss - Pink Flamingo Lounge

36 to go!