Oolite Bulletins

Mostly bug fixes recently. A few new/changed features
- keyboard settings can be viewed in game from Game Options
- low-risk contracts no longer attract assassins even a little bit
- manifest screen reorganised to make passenger, parcel and cargo contracts just another type of mission for display. This means that you can do mission.setInstructions("Parcels:","Transport the secret documents to the station") and it will appear with the native parcel missions, instead of in a separate but identically-named section.
- the default docking clearance protocol setting for new games is "On". Existing games are unaffected.

cim wrote:

... the default docking clearance protocol setting for new games is "On".

I was wondering when/if that might be changed - cool!

I've been meaning to do it since it was suggested in the "docking difficulty" discussion as an easy way to stop "novice pilot taking a while to dock gets a launching ship to the face", but it was waiting for last month's change for the "docking without clearance" warning.

Greetings all! Just upgraded trunk tonight to version 1.81, and after the usual couple hiccups, it appears I'm good to go - which is awesome, because I haven't done any Ooliting in an embarrassingly long time. I have to say I'm very impressed with the changes that I've seen so far. I really dig the way the Galactic charts work now, and especially like how the stellar type shows up - very cool . Great work everyone!

Edit: I really dig the lens flare effect - hell all the new effects (if I'm not mistaken, it looks like explosions have been redone, too).

Depending on how long ago you played, but yes, the explosions were upgraded in 1.80 and again in 1.81. (They're OXPable in 1.81 so if anyone can improve them further I'd be happy to consider inclusion of the better graphics in core - much of what's new since 1.80 at the moment is placeholder-ish)

Anyway, new for this week:
- the stationReceivedDockingRequest now fires when it was supposed to; there is a new stationAcceptedDockingRequest for when docking is actually accepted
- ship.subEntityRotation is now a read/write parameter. It does nothing when applied to non-subentities.

Bugfixes:
- setCargo works on CARGO_SCRIPTED_ITEM again, which was broken at some point earlier in 1.81
- zero-distance doubles work properly on the galaxy map
- some more docking clearance bugs have been fixed

SystemInfo.setInterstellarProperty(galaxy,fromsystem,tosystem,layer,property,value[,manifest]) is now available for making JS changes to interstellar space system info. A few bugs related to interstellar system info have also been fixed.

A few more bug fixes and minor improvements (either already in or for tonight's build):
- some bugs related to interstellar space planetinfo fixed
- the bug where errors appear in the log from ships trying to attack wormholes should - again! - be fixed. Maybe. This time.
- the save game now includes the chart highlight type, chart zoom level, and ANA route planning mode, so these won't need resetting if you save and reload.

cim wrote:

... the bug where errors appear in the log from ships trying to attack wormholes should - again! - be fixed. Maybe. This time.

<chuckles>

cim wrote:

... the save game now includes the chart highlight type, chart zoom level, and ANA route planning mode...

Muchas gracias, jefe!

A few more OXP customisation changes recently:
- the playerBoughtNewShip() has a second "price" parameter so you can tell how much it cost (before trade-in). Zero for scripted changes.
- following this discussion there are now some more gui-settings.plist entries that allow a few alternative styles of jump range marking to be OXPed up

A couple of bug fixes:
- fragment chance for asteroids and boulders has been altered when destroyed by impact damage: this now will only automatically cause fragments if the impacting object was a reasonable percentage of the asteroid's mass. Essentially this means that a projectile weapon is no longer automatically a mining weapon. (An old bug, that one)
- an error with AI handling of stations in interstellar space (and other rare cases) is fixed

And a graphics update:
- when you're in "Extra Detail" mode, the resolution of the automatically-generated planet surface texture is increased. Before and After. Screenshots taken from station orbit - as you can see, it makes quite a difference to the quality at that height, though getting too close up is still not advisable.
This change might affect texture loading times a bit - it shouldn't usually be too noticeable on a PC that's powerful enough to run "Extra Detail" anyway, but if you notice excessive pauses exiting hyperspace when you haven't previously viewed the destination on F7, do say.

cim wrote:

- when you're in "Extra Detail" mode, the resolution of the automatically-generated planet surface texture is increased.

Dumb pilot's question: this only applies to the core planet textures, yes? If so, I'll disable Povray temporarily.

Cody wrote:

cim wrote:

- when you're in "Extra Detail" mode, the resolution of the automatically-generated planet surface texture is increased.

Dumb pilot's question: this only applies to the core planet textures, yes? If so, I'll disable Povray temporarily.

Correct, yes.

I've been doing a bit of work on the explosion graphics which should be in the next build. Here's a quick preview of the hull damage graphics.

The explosion textures need work - and more variety - but that's OXPable if someone wants to have a go at putting them together.

Day's work on Field of View customisation will also be in the next build.

Other changes:
- issues with ships entering hyperspace near large stations should be mitigated a bit. More work may be needed.
- the first jump of a new game (and probably the next few as well) can't be a misjump unless an OXP explicitly scripts it. This is done by making random misjumps never occur at service level 100. (It was a low-chance occurrence, but it must have happened to a few hundred people, at least)
- bug fix: checkScanner now works properly
- bug fix: population of couriers and smugglers now correctly sets destination systems
- hyperspace destination can be right-aligned on the HUD
- negative bar sizes can be used on the HUD for a bar which goes the other way
- ship.adjustCargo(commodity,type) can be used to give NPCs very specific cargo hold contents, implement NPC cargo destruction in combat, and other OXPing ideas.
- ship.dumpCargo() now takes a second parameter to give the preferred commodity to dump (if not possible, it will just dump a random one). For implementation reasons this only affects the first item dumped - if you want to dump a stream of a particular commodity you'll need to do your own JS timer.

cim wrote:

Day's work on Field of View customisation will also be in the next build.

Some additional information on this one:

The FOV can be set for now via .GNUstepDefaults using the key "fov-value", followed by the desired FOV in degrees. Currently it's capped from 30 to 75 deg (default is 57.2 deg) but this may change depending on the feedback received. Example for setting it: FOV can be controlled via keyboard and/or joystick for now. Use the "k" and "l" keys to adjust it. Note that the capping mentioned earlier is not taken into account when adjusting with the FOV controls. However, the idea is that these controls will be disabled in near future builds, but the code to re-enable if deemed necessary will not be removed. This is because we would like for you to have a chance to see what this feature does but, at least from my point of view, this is more suitable as a game preference and not (yet) as a gameplay element. Think of something that works like the gamma option currently does. Having said that, player ship field of view modification via JS may be an option in the future and it could be separate from the global FOV setting.

Still to do: Decide on minimum and maximum FOV caps and get it into Game Options. Hopefully Soon(TM). Also, fix a known issue where the targeting boxes don't follow the targeted ship properly when the FOV value is other than the default.

Couldn't FOV changes in theory also be used as a visual speed indicator?

F.ex. when using injector/hyperspace it could go something like this :
(please excuse my kindergarden programming, but I think you will understand )
(and ofcourse the numbers are hypothetical).

Enable hyperspace ->
x = FOV
for x = 57* to 90 step 1 //zoom out, sorta being "pushed back in the seat"
for x = 90 to 70 step 0.2 //"settling"

and when disabled ->
for x = 70* to 40 step 1 //zoom out, sorta being "pushed into the windshield"
for x = 40 to 57 step 0.5 //"settling"

*would be current FOV

Field of view is now a game option. Also, the maximum field of view has been increased to 80 degrees.