Oolite Bulletins

spara wrote:

Thanks to Tichy, I just could not leave the idea of a more generic market inquirer alone . So here is a test version to try out. It lists the markets of the main station and up to 5 markets of stationary non-rock stations that have at least food for sale closest to the players ship. It feels very handy in game .

Ideas, suggestions and feedback are very welcome. I'll at least add access to it while docked and truncating of station names needs little tweaking. Also the background is very very basic. There could be a call for an artist here, if some ones interested.

It works nicely. I think it should be an equipment item that you buy, rather than get awarded upon launch, and perhaps work through the Interfaces screen when docked. Can the text colours be changed so that the quantity available is a different colour to the price?

Thanks Tichy & JazHaz. An idea is shaping in my mind . It will be a buyable equipment that will give market information when activated with n and system information when activated with b. Information behind b will be Welcome Mat oxp's information and distances to stations as Tichy suggested.

@JazHaz: To my understanding, text color can't be changed, it's always yellow in mission screen.

spara wrote:

@JazHaz: To my understanding, text color can't be changed, it's always yellow in mission screen.

Yes. Choices can be non-yellow (have a look at the various contracts interfaces in 1.77) but there is a more fundamental limitation of the current UI code that all text on a particular line has to be the same colour.

Tichy wrote:

Just like your enhanced advanced compass

What's that then?

@spara: This would be very handy! As for Welcome Mat's informations, I admit that I never buy the equipment that gives me automatically the infos. I like to jump into a system and stop there for a while, interrogating the witchpoint buoy.
I'm tryig now the generic market inquirer. I like it. It seems to work fine. I tought that, if you can't use a different colour, maybe you could display quantities between brackets.
EDIT: Am I wrong or the market inquirer also lists liners, behemots and dockable ships? I just saw a NCC Br.someting on the screen.

@JazHaz: this http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Updating_TSC


EDIT2: I thought about two improvements for the extra stations.
- I noticed that at the moment, the extra stations are always between the sun and the planet. Is it possible to place them in a random place around the planet? So they could appear in different light. If it's not possible to place them randomly, maybe making them point the witchpoint buoy could do the trick.
- Is it possible to add more traffic between the planets and the witchpoint, or between planets?

Tichy wrote:

- Is it possible to add more traffic between the planets and the witchpoint, or between planets?

I second this. Defiantly add traffic between witchpoint and planets. Could the AI of incoming traffic randomly select one of the stations? As for pirates and other ne'er-do-wells, way beyond me

Tichy wrote:

EDIT: Am I wrong or the market inquirer also lists liners, behemots and dockable ships? I just saw a NCC Br.someting on the screen.

It should show only stations with maxSpeed of 0, so there must be something wrong. I'll have to test a bit.

Tichy wrote:

EDIT2: I thought about two improvements for the extra stations.
- I noticed that at the moment, the extra stations are always between the sun and the planet. Is it possible to place them in a random place around the planet? So they could appear in different light. If it's not possible to place them randomly, maybe making them point the witchpoint buoy could do the trick.

Random placement is not a problem, but for practical reasons, I did not want the stations to be behind the planet, so I chose the sunny side. Positioning towards the witchpoint buoy sound like a better solution actually.

Tichy wrote:

- Is it possible to add more traffic between the planets and the witchpoint, or between planets?

Everything is possible . It would require some AI programming. Have not done that yet, maybe it's time to delve into that. I'll try to finish other things first .

About the inquirer in general, the b function will show information about the sun, planets, moons and extra stations. Distances and names in practice, depending on the oxps installed, namely Thargoids Planetary Names and Wildebloods Distant Suns. I'm starting to lean back to a freebie equipment as I see this to be somewhat multi-station/planet equivalent to the core games f7/f8 information.

About the station position, I always missed the possibility to have them behind the planet. Even the main stations. To my taste, I think that it would add a little tiny bit of exploration and variety.

Tichy wrote:

About the station position, I always missed the possibility to have them behind the planet. Even the main stations. To my taste, I think that it would add a little tiny bit of exploration and variety.

I have not looked, but I think that the main station is always in sight, when coming from wp. I'll put in a random placement to the next version, so we'll see how it feels like.

spara wrote:

I have not looked, but I think that the main station is always in sight, when coming from wp. I'll put in a random placement to the next version, so we'll see how it feels like.

Yes. I never found a main station out of sight, when I went there from the witchpoint. Maybe they are placed only on the hemisphere that faces the wp.
Anyway, I found that this oxp is extremely addictive, when used with System Demux planets. They are very nice planets and moons in a "fantasy" unrealistic style, that I found to like very much. Now I use only S.D. for my planets. It works better using the default settings of ambient light (if you are unsing Zygo Nebulas or Realistic stars, you have to modify the "ambient_level" setting in their planetinfo.plist file. S.D. uses 0.8 ).
I made some screenshots here: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.ph ... 48#p203748
The planet in the last sequence, is a secondary planet.

Tichy wrote:

I never found a main station out of sight, when I went there from the witchpoint.

It'd be cool to occasionly find a main station that was around the planet's farside.

Cody wrote:

Tichy wrote:

I never found a main station out of sight, when I went there from the witchpoint.

It'd be cool to occasionly find a main station that was around the planet's farside.

Yes it would. However, it would be a bit of a pain for new players that don't have an Advanced Space Compass. It's a bit like trying to find the slaver's base behind the sun in one of the UPS missions.

Tricky wrote:

... it would be a bit of a pain for new players that don't have an Advanced Space Compass.

Aye, it most probably would. I do have what must be a false memory of a farside station in BBC Elite - long time ago, now.

But you know that the main station is there. That's not the case of the slaver's rock hermit.
Anyway, you can orbit around a planet using the torus drive and wathcing it from a lateral view in less than a minute.

Tichy wrote:

... you can orbit around a planet using the torus drive and wathcing it from a lateral view in less than a minute.

Aye, I'd have no problems finding a farside station, even without the ASC... but as Tricky says, newer players might.