Oolite Bulletins

There's a variety of Rail Guns, as created by Commander McLane

I'll give them a try as soon as I can test the ship. Many Thankx DaddyHoggy.

MiMoriarty wrote:

This is a new ship I'm working on. I need to add more detail and replace the upper gun, which made a bad UV mapping , for a turret. In the meanwhile I'm looking for a proper name.

Any suggestions?

Holy Cow, that's a vicious looking beast. It's shape reminds me of a log splitting wedge, though that Zumwait destroyer does bear a striking resemblance. Really cool ship, MiMoriarty.

The weapon-name idea is a good one ... we've got Sabre fighters and the Shuriken, and perhaps the Trident, but not many others I can think of. How about "Scimitar"? It's a good-sounding name, and (to me, anyway) combines an element of weight with a touch of elegance and a cutting edge. Or for a more piratical sound, with a bit more weight and a bit less elegance, there's always "Cutlass".

Again from its shape, maybe Battleaxe?

Cmdr. Maegil wrote:

Again from its shape, maybe Battleaxe?

And I was just typing in "Tomahawk" when it reported you'd beaten me to a post...

MiMoriarty wrote:

There's a variety of Rail Guns, as created by Commander McLane

I'll give them a try as soon as I can test the ship. Many Thankx DaddyHoggy.

They're additional forward weapons, not a new type of main weapon, and you must buy (ridiculously expensive) ammo... They're quite useful to soften up large ships before using the lasers, though.

Cmdr. Maegil wrote:

MiMoriarty wrote:

There's a variety of Rail Guns, as created by Commander McLane

I'll give them a try as soon as I can test the ship. Many Thankx DaddyHoggy.

They're additional forward weapons, not a new type of main weapon, and you must buy (ridiculously expensive) ammo... They're quite useful to soften up large ships before using the lasers, though.

Perhaps this could be Oolite's first Rail Gun only ship? With an Ammo production facility onboard? (limiting cargo of course)

Maybe after the MNSR, but IIRC, kills done with the railgun don't go into your Elite ranking; besides, I don't know if NPCs can use it (I think not).

Killer Wolf wrote:

can you give some more info about the dock? we can probably get that working too. from your description it sounds like you were maybe using one of the standard dock models. i wrote a bit about docks in the "things i wish i'd known..." thread in this forum, if it's of any help, otherwise post here and we should be able to sort it out.

I could, if I knew how to get the dimensions, like you say in your "what I wish I had known" post. I know how to get the XYZ of the point on the ship where the dock is suppose to be, but how do you figure out the dimensions? It was....um....interesting to read Charlies posts on the matter.

Cmdr. Maegil wrote:

Maybe after the MNSR, but IIRC, kills done with the railgun don't go into your Elite ranking; besides, I don't know if NPCs can use it (I think not).

They do now. But don't use it for the final kill shot of a mission important target.

mandoman wrote:

Killer Wolf wrote:

can you give some more info about the dock? we can probably get that working too. from your description it sounds like you were maybe using one of the standard dock models. i wrote a bit about docks in the "things i wish i'd known..." thread in this forum, if it's of any help, otherwise post here and we should be able to sort it out.

I could, if I knew how to get the dimensions, like you say in your "what I wish I had known" post. I know how to get the XYZ of the point on the ship where the dock is suppose to be, but how do you figure out the dimensions? It was....um....interesting to read Charlies posts on the matter.

firstly, did you do as i thought and use one of the standard docks (ie, dock.dat or dock-flat.dat) as your dock? if you didn, the standard dimensions of those are 192x64x250. Dock.dat has the dock mouth vertical, which may be why it's not aligning correctly in your ship. it's a bit hard to say w/out seeing the model itself or your shipdata.plist.
when you convert to .dat, it usually puts the dimensions of the model at the top of the output file - most/all of the ones that came w/ the game don't have them tho, i'm not sure if someone took them out or the OBJ -> DAT routine was amended afterwards.
how did you go about constructing the dock? did you make the ship big enough and position it correctly in the modeller before you exported it?

Killer Wolf wrote:

firstly, did you do as i thought and use one of the standard docks (ie, dock.dat or dock-flat.dat) as your dock? if you didn, the standard dimensions of those are 192x64x250. Dock.dat has the dock mouth vertical, which may be why it's not aligning correctly in your ship. it's a bit hard to say w/out seeing the model itself or your shipdata.plist.
when you convert to .dat, it usually puts the dimensions of the model at the top of the output file - most/all of the ones that came w/ the game don't have them tho, i'm not sure if someone took them out or the OBJ -> DAT routine was amended afterwards.
how did you go about constructing the dock? did you make the ship big enough and position it correctly in the modeller before you exported it?

Um, good questions. I haven't the knowledge as to just how big it is. It is big enough that within Blender it easily swallows up the grid floor, so I would think that it is big enough, though I don't know that for a fact. I used the dock.dat out of the Oolite core files for the model, and I made a separate reference to it in shipdata.plist, referring to the dock.dat in the Models file, but I don't really have a texture file. I also specified a position, and orientation for it under "sub entities" in shipdata.plist, though after working a bit with the ballturret positions, and orientations, I don't think I had the orientation before I removed it from shipdata.plist. Here is what it looked like in shipdata.plist, except I think I may have the orientation correct now.

"subentities" = (
{
subentity_key = "ballturret";
position = (0.0, 98.487, 193.56);
orientation = (0, 0, 1, 0);
},
{
subentity_key = "ballturret";
position = (0.0, -210.0, 226.3);
orientation = (0, 0, -1, 0);
},
{
subentity_key = "ballturret";
position = (100.25, 76.24, -76.69);
orientation = (0, 1, 0, 0);
},
{
subentity_key = "ballturret";
position = (-100.25, 76.24, -76.69);
orientation = (0, 1, 0, 0);
},
{
subentity_key = "ballturret";
position = (0.0, 150.28, -236.54);
orientation = (0, 0, 1, 0);
},
{
subentity_key = "ballturret";
position = (0.0, -119.76, -121.91);
orientation = (0, 0, -1, 0);
},
{
subentity_key = "dock";
position = (0.0, -76.34, -121.9);
orientation = (1, 0, 0, 0);
}
);
"forward_weapon_type" = "NONE";
"thrust" = 3.5;
};
"dock" =
{
ai_type = "nullAI.plist";
model = "dock.dat";
name = "Docking Slit (Vertical)";
roles = "docking-slit-vertical";
};
"ballturret" =
{
ai_type = "nullAI.plist";
model = "oolite-ball-turret.dat";
smooth = "yes";
materials =
{
"back_metal.png" =
{
shininess = 15;
specular_color = (0.75, 0.75, 0.75, 1.0);
};
"oolite-ball-turret.png" =
{
shininess = 15;
specular_color = (0.75, 0.75, 0.75, 1.0);
};
};
name = "Ball Turret";
roles = "ballturret";
setup_actions = (initialiseTurret);
thrust = 1;
weapon_energy = 25;
};

Two things, you've used the standard (horizontal) dock, but then given it the name and role of docking-slit-vertical which doesn't sound right. The dock needs its own entry in shipdata (as do the ballturets) as well as the positioning details in the main ship's shipdata. The references to 'model' etc shouldn't be here, it should be in the dock's shipdata.
Also, I think you've got some (probably un-necessary) 'Materials' in one of the ballturret entries which I suspect belong to the dock.

Smivs wrote:

Two things, you've used the standard (horizontal) dock, but then given it the name and role of docking-slit-vertical which doesn't sound right. The dock needs its own entry in shipdata (as do the ballturets) as well as the positioning details in the main ship's shipdata. The references to 'model' etc shouldn't be here, it should be in the dock's shipdata.
Also, I think you've got some (probably un-necessary) 'Materials' in one of the ballturret entries which I suspect belong to the dock.

Yeah, oops, that wasn't the dock example I meant to put in there. I meant this one,

"dock" =
{
ai_type = "nullAI.plist";
model = "dock-flat.dat";
name = "Docking Slit (horizontal)";
roles = "docking-slit-horizontal";
};

I have the .png in Textures for those "Materials" entries you mentioned. Shouldn't it be able to use those to emulate an Oolite dock?

mandoman wrote:

I have the .png in Textures for those "Materials" entries you mentioned. Shouldn't it be able to use those to emulate an Oolite dock?

Just looked at the docks from core. The horizontal one is actually dock-flat, so that is probably the one you should be using - I was a bit wrong before, sorry. The dock-flat.dat (and dock.dat) have "dark_metal.png" as their texture defined in the .dat file, so they will use this automatically. You won't need to specify any 'materials' attributes. The 'materials' you are using (when in the right place) will only have a mild affect on the shininess and reflectiveness anyway, which are pointless for docks. If you did want to specify any 'materials' these should be placed in the actual shipdata for the dock, not the sub-entity of the main ship.