Oolite Bulletins

I will definitely get back with you on this, It fair weekend and I'm one of the Pirates so it will be Monday or Tuesday that I can get with you and Giff.

Well thanks to Griff and Norby I have a working Arcadia oxp/z, but I am having issues skinning it, seems my wacom tablet is down till I get a replacement and I am horrible with a mouse in photoshop. lol
If anyone wants to give it a go I can send you everything you will need including textures.

I remember talk of an even bigger carrier/trader hammerhead >3km
This one is twice as long as the regular one and double amount of engines.



Can't seem to find a good tutorial for making ships textures, here I used plating from the well established P.A. Groove shipyard

Some older ideas

Cargotainer sized fighter


Alien skotel


Cargosled carrier

cbr wrote: ↑Wed Sep 01, 2021 8:50 pm

Can't seem to find a good tutorial for making ships textures, here I used plating from the well established P.A. Groove shipyard

Nice to have the option of this sort of thing in Oolite.

Amen Brick wrote: ↑Tue Jul 15, 2008 2:25 pm

It would be nice to have a matching area to the Scripter's cove to discuss the ins and outs of craft/station/building modelling and to help answer any general or specific queries.

I'd like to know if anyone can tell me what exactly is meant by the words "suppress" and "replace" in terms of ship texture and/or model downloads. I see these words in wiki pages and the in-game download manager and it makes me not download them. Especially Griff's stuff which are my favorites.

Back when I first started I had an Ooniverse stacked with every model texture and goodie download I could find. Willy nilly. That was amazing looking chaos until the last year when I got real serious about Oolite and set about to balance every fricken ship, including fine tuning all flippin' roles of all ships in my ooniverse so the exact file/code/logic meanings of "suppress" and "replace" are really relevant..

So my question is:
Do these words just mean that each individual ship given entity (eg: "oolite_template_cobra3" is one, "oolite_template_cobra3-player" is another) can only have one model and one texture? Am I correct that there is no such thing as a 'texture set' for the same entity -- but that a new entity must be cloned for each new texture and/or model?

I can handle that if that is so. If I understand correctly, it just means I have to fine tune every new shipdata.plist. For example, I just went through and copied over the "roles" lines of all 12 iterations of gsagostinho's Ferdelance set so that they (plus the original oolite-ferdelance) were broken down into 13 fractions of the overall "ferdelance" role weights I want.

But if that is not what is meant by supress and replace... can someone explain it to me better? Like I used to have  Ship Respray OXP that let you pay for paintjobs between textures. I suspect that that oxp was in fact switching between entire entities based on like_ship ... or something similar?

I'm sorry to be wordy and dumb I just want to be absolutely sure I get this

szaumix wrote: ↑Sat Jun 18, 2022 1:07 pm

it just means I have to fine tune every new shipdata.plist. For example, I just went through and copied over the "roles" lines of all 12 iterations of gsagostinho's Ferdelance set so that they (plus the original oolite-ferdelance) were broken down into 13 fractions of the overall "ferdelance" role weights I want.

I believe something like this can be achieved via js. Putting all available ferdelances in an array and apply a new role weight.

This is something I would to see also. ( for every kind of ship A player has installed ). Also because installing a ship oxp with a higher role value will have a higher chance to be selected. ( which can significantly changes appearances in the spacelanes and beyond )

szaumix wrote: ↑Sat Jun 18, 2022 1:07 pm

I'd like to know if anyone can tell me what exactly is meant by the words "suppress" and "replace" in terms of ship texture and/or model downloads. I see these words in wiki pages and the in-game download manager and it makes me not download them. Especially Griff's stuff which are my favorites..
Do these words just mean that each individual ship given entity (eg: "oolite_template_cobra3" is one, "oolite_template_cobra3-player" is another) can only have one model and one texture? Am I correct that there is no such thing as a 'texture set' for the same entity -- but that a new entity must be cloned for each new texture and/or model?

So if I read you correctly, not quite.
You'll find that the in-game ships that are named for instance oolite_template_cobra3 have a parameter is_template set to true, so the other ships in the core shipset (using like_ship ..oolite_template_cobra3 ) can use the same stats with a much smaller entry, adding only what it needs to differ from the template. This however doesn't suppress the initial template entry, or rather the core ship which it supports.

That happens when an OXPship takes the exact same name as a core shipdata object (simply cobra3, not the template entry which it draws its stats from). So, the reason some OXPs come in both replace and addition versions is that in the replace versions all the entries take identical shaipdata names, and the addition versions are instead given unique, differing names. These can then be added ad nauseam, and depending on the "role fraction" impose themselves in being picked when the system calls for a trader, pirate etc.

I hope that's useful in expanding your understanding of how it works.

Old Murgh wrote: ↑Sat Jun 18, 2022 2:05 pm

parameter is_template set to true, so the other ships in the core shipset (using like_ship ..oolite_template_cobra3 ) can use the same stats with a much smaller entry, adding only what it needs to differ from the template. This however doesn't suppress the initial template entry, or rather the core ship which it supports.

This I knew.

Old Murgh wrote: ↑Sat Jun 18, 2022 2:05 pm

That happens when an OXPship takes the exact same name as a core shipdata object (simply cobra3, not the template entry which it draws its stats from). So, the reason some OXPs come in both replace and addition versions is that in the replace versions all the entries take identical shipdata names, and the addition versions are instead given unique, differing names.

Either we're saying the same thing in different words (which I accept as my fault), or you've lost me.

I would normally assume by "shipdata object" that you mean -- as my example -- the difference between cobra3-template (shipdata object) and cobra3-player (shipdata object) as being separate iterations of the same ship... despite same model/texture. The only other thing I can think you mean by "core shipdata object" would be the actual oolite_cobra3.dat file in /Models? But I see a reference to that in shipdata.plist:

"model" = "cobra3whatever.dat";

But I get the idea. Make sure the names are unique as per my 12 ferdelance textures example. The only question remaining is: by what mechanism does that respray oxp work -- so that I know how not to screw up the process. Actually now that I think of it, it's probably just looking for textures that fit whatever .dat file your current ship is.

cheers

szaumix wrote: ↑Sat Jun 18, 2022 4:55 pm

But I get the idea. Make sure the names are unique as per my 12 ferdelance textures example. The only question remaining is: by what mechanism does that respray oxp work -- so that I know how not to screw up the process. Actually now that I think of it, it's probably just looking for textures that fit whatever .dat file your current ship is.

Sounds like you have the idea, yes. Afraid I can't mansplain decal variations and respray.

Ship respray just swaps the player ship for another ship of the same type. It doesn’t get into the details of each skin, but assumes whatever player version of the skin is available will have all those details sorted out.

vintage aura escorts turned into something else

These popped up in my youtube recomendations the other day, some early 90 VHS video tape tutorials the from the late, great Ron Thornton modelling and texturing a Babylon 5 style spaceship using some early versions of Lightwave3D and Photoshop (a version so early it doesn't look like it supports layers yet).
Video quality is pretty poor, almost impossible to make out a lot of the on-screen interface detail, but the audio is good and Ron explains his workflow and design/texturing philosophy

The Creative Magic of Ron Thornton Spacecraft Model Design
https://youtube.com/watch?v=2tjUMUS-w3E

The Creative Magic of Ron Thornton Spacecraft Surfacing Techniques
https://youtube.com/watch?v=U0iu-b1VBIY

Modo, a pretty decent 3D app has wound down development and it's owners 'The Foundry' have made it available to download with a 10 year off-line licence. Has Windows, Apple Mac and Linux versions. I realise it's probably a waste of time learning a discontinued 3D app but it might be worth a peep if you're not gelling with the mighty Blender.
Modo exports obj files that work well with oolites obj2datscripts

Details here: https://youtu.be/WVhKfDvezqE?si=tP70tjXlSOxpV7GK
I wouldn't recommend the 17.0 series, the devs were working on replacing a lot of the core code and it's left the app pretty unstable, the hope is the final 17.1 release in the next few weeks may cure this but 16.1v8 is considered a solid release.

Home page (being taken down end of the year I believe) :https://www.foundry.com/products/modo

Awesome training course: https://learn.foundry.com/course/3128/v ... essentials