Oolite Bulletins

Cody wrote: ↑Sun May 30, 2021 6:44 pm

hiran wrote: ↑Sun May 30, 2021 6:33 pm

... licence - obviously a type that should be license...

Depends which country you're from/in - I believe both spellings are used.

I do agree we human beings stick to human languages and are quite fault tolerant - which means we still understand the message.

However these manifest files are a standardized way to store metadata about an OXP, and for automated processing it is crucial we agree to specific terminology and meaning. 'licence' is just not covered in http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Manifest.plist

Now you could argue that the license is anyway a field not to be evaluated automatically. So how about 'required_oxp'? You can see these and other findings at http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Index_ ... s#Warnings

My question remains: What are we going to do about them?

hiran wrote: ↑Sun May 30, 2021 7:00 pm

Cody wrote: ↑Sun May 30, 2021 6:44 pm

hiran wrote: ↑Sun May 30, 2021 6:33 pm

... licence - obviously a type that should be license...

Depends which country you're from/in - I believe both spellings are used.

I do agree we human beings stick to human languages and are quite fault tolerant - which means we still understand the message.

There are differences between British and American English, licence / license is one of them.

montana05 wrote: ↑Sun May 30, 2021 11:29 pm

hiran wrote: ↑Sun May 30, 2021 7:00 pm

I do agree we human beings stick to human languages and are quite fault tolerant - which means we still understand the message.

There are differences between British and American English, licence / license is one of them.

I am not arguing that.

My question remains: What are we going to do about them? Do you suggest to extend the Oolite OXP manifest format to allow for regional differences in the language?

hiran wrote: ↑Mon May 31, 2021 6:51 am

I am not arguing that.

My question remains: What are we going to do about them? Do you suggest to extend the Oolite OXP manifest format to allow for regional differences in the language?

Obviously not, we would open a Pandora box with that, I would suggest staying with the good, old British English.

I'd definitely pitch for one definition, rather than catering for local spellings. We already have to deal with similar one-definition-only types whenever referencing "color" in plists or JS. (Of course, in this instance, by nature of international coding standards, we've plumped for the US spelling, but still...)

montana05 wrote: ↑Mon May 31, 2021 7:10 am

hiran wrote: ↑Mon May 31, 2021 6:51 am

I am not arguing that.

My question remains: What are we going to do about them? Do you suggest to extend the Oolite OXP manifest format to allow for regional differences in the language?

Obviously not, we would open a Pandora box with that, I would suggest staying with the good, old British English.

I love the queens english. This became apparent when I saw a delivery van labelled 'UPS' it read like a typo, whereas on another van 'Royal Mail' just sounded so much more professional...

For the manifest.plist I am absolutely neutral. Go with whatever you want, but beware it better is a standardized set across all OXPs otherwise pandora is loose. And mind that the license field is not the only one requiring treatment.

Rooting around the shipsets, trying to make sense of what is out there.

In SimonB's boxes (specifically https://app.box.com/s/kcvfxbsqh6) I found these:
Oolific.oxp - contains what appears to be the Oolite Princess liner
SBNavy.oxp - contains carriers and ancillary ships
SBDestroyer.pre2.oxp - actually Re2dux.Navy - a destroyer

Does anybody know anything about these?

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Sun Jul 25, 2021 10:11 pm

Does anybody know anything about these?

Can't say I ever hear of it, but I will have a look, SimonB designs are usually worth to be published.

montana05 wrote: ↑Sat Jan 23, 2021 12:19 am

Antient Aliens is still under development and never was finished, what I will try is to extract parts of the OXP and design a remake in the spirit of the original.

Just to say:

1) This oxp makes Oolite crash on my AppleMac!
2) Wiki page now up: http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Antient_Aliens

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Tue Aug 03, 2021 3:43 pm

montana05 wrote: ↑Sat Jan 23, 2021 12:19 am

Antient Aliens is still under development and never was finished, what I will try is to extract parts of the OXP and design a remake in the spirit of the original.

Just to say:

1) This oxp makes Oolite crash on my AppleMac!
2) Wiki page now up: http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Antient_Aliens

Thank you for the wiki, I am just not sure if it makes any sense. I doubt that this OXP will be even in Beta any time soon.

montana05 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 04, 2021 9:11 am

Antient Aliens

Thank you for the wiki, I am just not sure if it makes any sense. I doubt that this OXP will be even in Beta any time soon.

Yes!

I'm trying to raise the profile of the oxp's I like in the hope that somebody might sort them out before I die of premature senility! Hence the new pages for Recession, CloudCity, HIMSN, etc. There are some fascinatingly superb ideas out there, and some of the work on them has even been done!

I know that they are broken, BUT they are good ideas, and I would dearly love to see them work in the game. Or maybe somebody will be inspired and then produce something related but in a different format. For example, I'm not that inspired by Witchfire whisky, but I am inspired by the idea that Stormrider managed to create a commodity which is regional and is regionally priced. The principle is now there for someone else to lean on, tweak and use.

I find it absolutely wonderful the way that we have the vanilla Oolite game, and it can be totally and utterly transformed by Strangers World in one way, by Galactic Navy in another, by SOTL in yet another, by DGill's feudal fantasies in a further, by Redspear's tweaking with laser combat, missile combat and size ratios in still another, and then all of Phkb's quiet work behind the scenes (Galactic Missions, GalCop Galactic Registry, Home System, Hermitage, Pirate Player, Ship Configuration etc), then add in the effects of Smugglers, Diplomancy and Weapon Laws ...

Goodness Gracious Me! What a magnificent and tremendous outpouring of imagination, diversity and possibility. And it all looks so good on my computer screen!

And... I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am by the possibility of flying around a universe where everything is measured in ancient Venetian Cavezzi - the idea just makes me chortle with glee! Wonderful! Absolutely wonderful!

And then there is all the unused capability lurking under the carpet... Library, BGS, HD Backgrounds, GNN, Cabal Common Library... I'm no programmer, but for someone with the skills and imagination, the possibilities allowed by these seem endless...

I am constantly impressed by just what is lurking in the corners of this bulletin board and our wiki. The ideas... the analyses... the discussions... The humour is good too!

How can anybody not be impressed by all this?

And lucky lucky me... I have the keys to the wiki, and so I can flag things up for others to look at, analyse, enjoy, or even take away and develop something better!

By the way, what is the difference between alpha/beta etc? And how far does it go in a_c_'s alphabet? Epsilon? Upsilon? ...

Edited to add the all crucial Cavezzi!

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:03 pm

How can anybody not be impressed by all this?

I do agree with you, there are a lot of fascinating concepts and idea on bb and the wiki. It is impressive how much actually is possible if you could find a way to work around. This is the major reason that I will not stop to mention that Oolite's most important part are the OXP's. Any game I know of had evolution, not only preservation.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:03 pm

By the way, what is the difference between alpha/beta etc? And how far does it go in a_c_'s alphabet? Epsilon? Upsilon? ...

As much as I know, and please keep in mind that the last time I worked as a professional developer for a company was 1999, Alpha is a first publication, usually with some/quite a lot of bugs. Beta is or should be a nearly finished product, but with probably still some bugs the team wasn't able to find during testing.

montana05 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:32 pm

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:03 pm

How can anybody not be impressed by all this?

I do agree with you, there are a lot of fascinating concepts and idea on bb and the wiki. It is impressive how much actually is possible if you could find a way to work around. This is the major reason that I will not stop to mention that Oolite's most important part are the OXP's. Any game I know of had evolution, not only preservation.

Yes... and... it is many different games that are evolving. And they are so different...

montana05 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:32 pm

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:03 pm

By the way, what is the difference between alpha/beta etc? And how far does it go in a_c_'s alphabet? Epsilon? Upsilon? ...

As much as I know, and please keep in mind that the last time I worked as a professional developer for a company was 1999, Alpha is a first publication, usually with some/quite a lot of bugs. Beta is or should be a nearly finished product, but with probably still some bugs the team wasn't able to find during testing.

Thank you for this!

Alpha→Beta→RC (release candidate).

Cody wrote: ↑Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:47 pm

Alpha→Beta→RC (release candidate).

So this explains all the critiques I was reading some months ago about commercial gaming and down-loadable content. That the big companies no longer finish dotting the "i"s and crossing the "t"s - and produce stuff as finished as Frontier and FFE were back in the nineties, and then work on finishing it after they have sold it and players are playing it.