Oolite Bulletins

of course. my AI is your AI.

ok so, not knowing what decisions the graveyard shift has made during its dimly candlelit meetings, you've mulled over these challenges:

• -monuments of a 1000 religions.. all strange symbolic shapes of the worlds,..one, a great crystalline structure, puff-ball of diamond-bright needles
  -Dodo class space station, home of Cemetery Authorities, ..(with translucent ceiling)
  -the battered, broken ships of the dead (some?) tethered
  -robot guardians (knives?)
  -tour-ship, small, oddly shaped and cumbersome
  -patrolling Kraits

you lot seem to have been very productive, apart for 1000 monuments, it's hard to tell what you haven't done. I'm sure I can have a crack at a couple of monuments, with my close Hindu encounter fresh in mind. maybe an old Norse one? concerning robots, I've played with some droidships (bottom page) lately if they could be useful.

I've seen an unskinned shuttle that was almost too good-looking to be the slow, awkward little craft you'd need to maneuver inside. is the ambition still, to have the station be able to temporarily switch ships, or has it been ruled unfeasible? what dreams are there to customize this station?
I'd think the CemAuthorities would have a look that they'd stamp on all their property. it would maybe be a blend of dignified space mortuary service and greedy business ruthlessly protecting its brand. have you made designs on these guys yet?

are we brainstorming altogether?

That AI might be something that Rxck would be interested in:
He was thinking of launching small suicide probes from the beacons, and have them dock after the alert is over.

damn, I forgot that started out as an edit. when AHs post came, I assumed it would be a reply and started over, deleting the CrimeSnuffer droid AI explanation, its explosive kamikaze behaviour once shot at, etc.

well, it was supposed to go after here.

my AI is your AI.. blah blah..

looking at the monuments in the graveGroup, to get an idea of the monument scales. I'm not too hot in wings yet to get any good information from it. what sizes are you operating with?

Most are about 1km wide, some are smaller, some larger.

-I have a Norse monument in the drawer (Mjolnir), we could use more.
-Working on ancient ships. one tethered to a base, the other the center of a ring of debris. (Never too many extra of these!)
-I have a puff-ball monument, only it's skin is amethyst not diamond clear. ...'ll have to work on that.


The theme I have been following is black with white detail.
(for TGY-Authorities symbol I took the Golden Ouroboros.)

I have yet to begin on the modified dodec-skin. We were thinking about some friezes with symbols on them, maybe the station will have panels inlaid with the same texture as the beacon has.

Ideas not yet worked out: egyptian style crypts, menhirs, the tree-of-life; many religions feature trees.

More derelict ships!


Idea for mission coupled to TOGY:
Chase off a Space Dredger that is on-course for the GY. It's inhabbitants have possibly been slain by Thargoids or just don't care.
A beautifull excuse to model a dredger and use the frangible subunits in v1.52. (Will need lots of help with that one!)

As far as monuments go, I've been working on a different scale.

Scales I had in mind are a little smaller, like the largest being about 200m in approximate diameter - 1km diameter would be clearly and starkly visible from the planet, hence too big.

I'd say it is just as easy to use a standard Dodo station for the gy, and saves taking up additional memory and processing power using a new model and skin. I'd like to orient the station so that the docking port faces the graveyard (bearing in mind that the gy is above the station).

There will be three main defensive/offensive objects in the graveyard: patrolling Kraits, beacons armed with missiles and Arnoud's Lancets for when some nutter attacks anything inside the GY.

I've designed a small shuttle (6 person max) that will be seen flying round inside the GY - this is the 'one man pod' mentioned in The Dark Wheel, but expanded to 6 people size. I think this is the model Murgh mentioned. I'll post a pic of the skinned version when I get a moment...

I used an infinity symbol for the shuttle's skin, but if Arnoud sends me his orouboros symbol I'll use that instead.

I'd love to have it so that you could dock at the GY and procure a pod for use inside the station. I don't know how to start scripting that though... It would have no hyperdrive, no J drive, no weapons, very low speed and couldn't be taken outside the limit of the GY. I have a rough idea of a ruleset for this, but not how to control the availability of the pod to ensure that it is only available for purchase at the GY station, and how do I make sure that the player can get his/her own ship back, complete with fittings and cargo? Answers on a postcard...

My plotting of the GY layout hit a major hitch...I lost the graph paper that I was drawing it on. I have found this (actually, Anne found it) and will get back to work...

There's more, but I'm supposed to be doing wedding planning, so I'll post...later...

Ouroboros and infinity are actually the same symbols.
Look at the specimen on the skins I sent in and follow that as an example.
It would be no use sending you a cutout of the symbol, it's just too damn small.
I suspect however that your symbol will look suspiciously simillar.

Why not use an alternative skin for the station?
1) with 500 objects in the vacinity one extra skin wouldnt make much difference.
2) the station is the most obvious (first) structure of the GY a traveller sees. A good opportunity to impress.

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

Ouroboros and infinity are actually the same symbols.
Look at the specimen on the skins I sent in and follow that as an example.
It would be no use sending you a cutout of the symbol, it's just too damn small.
I suspect however that your symbol will look suspiciously simillar.

Err, AFAIK, Ourobouros is a snake eating its own tail - one circle. Infinity is an 8 on its side...

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

Why not use an alternative skin for the station?
1) with 500 objects in the vacinity one extra skin wouldnt make much difference.
2) the station is the most obvious (first) structure of the GY a traveller sees. A good opportunity to impress.

The station is a part of the GY that should be least highlighted - the attention should be given to the monuments, IMO.

I just feel that we have a lot of work to do and a lot of stuff to draw and model. Why bother reinventing something that already exists...?

I feel that the standard Dodo is fine... But if others think the GY deserves a spanky unique station, then what the hell!!! I just worry that low end systems are gonna have a problem with the object count and skins...

thanks for the briefing, fellas.

on the issue of size, the epic description in the story is that monuments are "rarely less than a thousand feet across" which sloppily converted is ca. 300m? the Dodo diameter is 1000m, and we'll stay close to this relation?

if the TGYDodo had its own distinctive texture, it wouldn't be the backbreaking object for G3s and such. it could be glorious and still not impose on the grave yard experience.

the Ouroboros theme is a great, appropriate choice. I think maybe more handsome when it's circular, than when in a figure 8..

but help me understand this clearly:
the Tionisla GY Dodo, isn't to be "the one official Dodo", to negate the usual one for Tionisla, but the system's second Dodo, "LaGrange-fixed" and exclusive to the Cemetery Authorities, yes?

Indeed.

Ouroboros is indeed the snake eating its own tail, sometimes circular, sometimes twisted into an infinity. That is how I remember it anyhow. The meanings overlap anyway.

Indeed the objects in the yard are 1000feet across translating to 300ft, however all Oolite objects were translated from feet to meters without such calculation (10feet->10metres), so I stuck with that scale.

The graveyard station is indeed not the station run by GalCoop, no trading is done (except for souvenirs and insurance).
It is not located at the normal orbit, but between the sun and the planet somehow. "Starting from the sun flying to the planet, you encounter the GY, ....below this majestic doublespiral rotates the Graveyard station."

I always imagined there to be more than one station in orbit of some planets, with trafic controll directing you to one with open dockingslots or the least trafic.

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

Indeed the objects in the yard are 1000feet across translating to 300ft, however all Oolite objects were translated from feet to meters without such calculation (10feet->10metres), so I stuck with that scale.

Damn. That's gonna be problematic...

That will mean that we're gonna have monuments over a kilometer across. I'd think that a logical way to go is to say that anything from Dark Wheel be taken as accurate the way it is. Giles has converted values from the manual from feet directly to meters, but the sizes in TDW make sense as they are. I'm also thinking logically about the amount of space in the yard and the fact that having 1KM diameter monuments will make the whole yard visible from Tionisla itself, which contradicts the text in TDW that mentions the yard becoming slowly visible as you approach...

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

I always imagined there to be more than one station in orbit of some planets, with trafic controll directing you to one with open dockingslots or the least trafic.

The way I always imagined it was this:

Worlds with good economies (average or rich) and/or fairly organised governments (democratic or better) have 4 stations in orbit around the equator of the planet. Worlds with poorer situations have only three or even two. The space compass detects the closest station and directs you to that one when you enter its sensor area, as long as it has berthing space available. If no berths are available, then the pilot is directed to the next nearest station (which is why on older (specifically Speccy) Elite versions the station was sometimes over the horizon of the planet).

Some worlds (at least according to my fiction) have other stations that are not part of the berthing / trading grid... For example, Ribilebi has a research station in orbit and Lave has Cowell & MgRath's shipyard in south polar orbit. Sometimes there are lone stations further out in space, such as the TOGY station and (again from my fiction) the separatist base in the Ededleen system (OXP coming soon!!). Someone mentioned on the EBBS that there was something called Longhaul Outpost in Diso space (and I noticed a PNG in Oolite's textures directory with LHO on it), so there's another one...

Incidentally, in case anyone gets confused with my terminology, I have always used GalCop to refer to the Galactic Co-operative. If I am talking about the police, I usually write/say police or Galactic Police. I think this is due to my lack of exposure to ArcElite...

Selezen wrote:

That will mean that we're gonna have monuments over a kilometer across. I'd think that a logical way to go is to say that anything from Dark Wheel be taken as accurate the way it is. Giles has converted values from the manual from feet directly to meters, but the sizes in TDW make sense as they are. I'm also thinking logically about the amount of space in the yard and the fact that having 1KM diameter monuments will make the whole yard visible from Tionisla itself, which contradicts the text in TDW that mentions the yard becoming slowly visible as you approach...

The best bet would be to keep the monuments approximately the same size as ships (say 100m x 100m x 100m), few of which are visible at greater than scanner-range.

The scale of Oolite was determined by the stations, which are quoted as being 1km in diameter. Then, if the ships stayed at the scales in the manual none of them would have to match the station rotation to fit the slot - they could fly straight in. So I took artistic licence in interpreting the 'ft' of the manual as being equivalent to our metres, the ships then were at the right scale for the docking slit. I suggest you take similar licence to determine what will work best for the TOGY.

OK, thanks Giles. In that case I'll assume that the only scales altered were the ship scales, and they were converted from feet directly to metres.

Everything else is the same scale as mentioned in manuals - stations are 1km diameter as represented in game.

Can we agree on this as a programming standard?

As far as monuments go, can we set 300m diameter as the maximum for any single dimension for any single monument object? Bigger monuments can be created by adding multiple entities and maybe even some frangible ones. For example, Arnoud's asteroid monument would be bigger, cos it will have orbiting subentities...

Murgh, are you going to be doing any dev work for the TGY?

Selezen wrote:

having 1KM diameter monuments will make the whole yard visible from Tionisla itself, which contradicts the text in TDW that mentions the yard becoming slowly visible as you approach....

No actually object visabillity is 3 km if I remember correctly, so unless the GY is that close to T., it won't be vissible untill you approach it.
Unless this has changed ofcourse.
Unfortunately this means we won't be able to convey the impression of a spiral. (your plotting may be in vain! )

For the scale of the objects: most objects I inflated as Rxck said they were small. (He compares them to a WP-beacon). I'm fine with any scale that is agreed upon, though I won't go smaller than 30m.

that monument standard seems sound to me.

I wouldn't mind getting my hands dirty, no . I should mention I'm no prodigy in Wings, nor a natural at any facet of programming, although I do manage to get up the odd model and pList..
what is the logistic next step? what dev work would be most appreciated?

I've played with a Hindu monument (no more than a big bright Omm on a black octagonal coin-but low polycount ) and fancied trying to make a EasterIsland Moai for my virgin Wings project, but not sure if I have the guts.

and in case the question got lost in the melee, I'll ask again, could there be any use for a droidship ?

I don't know about the droidships...at the least they should get a new skin: the grins are just too impolite to have around a gy.
What are their uses? Esp. what would their added benefit be in th GY?

Maybe we could have them billboard guys flying between the station and the planet. intercepting players approaching TOGY and sending commercial messages.

However, should they enter the GY they will be put out of service and turned into more debris!