Oolite Bulletins

Hmm... I think I know what's going on there. The pod still exists - it's in your hold - but the reference isn't being changed in the same way as it would be in 1.76. That probably means the beacon never gets removed. I'll have a look and see if there's a way around this. (Well, in 1.77 there will be a better way to implement the ECL, but that's not important right now)

cim wrote:

The pod still exists - it's in your hold - but the reference isn't being changed in the same way as it would be in 1.76. That probably means the beacon never gets removed.

When you track the pod, you must always check its status. As soon it is "STATUS_IN_HOLD" it should be removed, and probably re-installed as soon as the player dumps the pot and it becomes "STATUS_IN_FLIGHT" again.

The problem seems to be that shipTargetLost isn't always firing when it should. I'll try to fix for tonight's nightly.

EDIT: should be fixed in r5591. shipTargetLost should do the same thing as it did in 1.76, now, but this will need some more testing.

Getting warmer. While using trunk 5592 I had an encounter with the destruction of an Osirus Ferry that ejected numerous escape pods. As I scooped pods, some of the beacons were removed correctly and some were not, continuing to be detected on the ACS and failing to give the signal lost message even after they no longer existed. This time though after docking and then launching from the main station all of the ghost beacons were removed and no longer detectable.

Hmm. If there were lots of dots on the scanner, that's quite possible. I'll have another look at it.

I reported a similar issue with Thargoid's Cargo Spotter. Maybe they are a related issue?

Reference Cargo Spotter here...

https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f= ... 90#p191054

Same root cause - essentially it wasn't possible to keep track of a cargo item once it had gone into a hold, and now it is. I think the remaining issues probably need to be fixed in the OXPs - r5593 has an "isInSpace" property added, which should be checked instead of "isValid"

I may have narrowed down the problem some. I am using trunk 5595 and had another encounter with the destruction of an Osiris Ferry. It may have something to do with the GalTech Escape Pods OXP. This time while paying attention to the different escape pods I observed that all of the original core escape pods were having their beacons removed correctly but all the GalTech escape pods were not. I removed the GalTech Escape Pods OXP so that only the core escape pods appear and I have not yet had issues with the ghost escape pod beacons.

Nevermind that. I started having instances of ghost beacons the following day in a new session.

At last I am not alone. I have just updated to 1.77 on Ubuntu, using Escape Pod Locator to apprehend marks if they manage to escape from assassin or pick up a pirate, and am also getting ghost locations. Nothing on scanner, just fly to advanced compass icon as swings from green to red but nothing is present. Happens randomly in space.

I can report the same "ghost beacons" problem for Oolite 1.77.1 for the Mac.

Ghosts that refuse to die, oh my...

I must admit, this has been one quite persistent bug.. it's survived several attempts to eradicate it..

Although, as cim points out, the bugs in core have been fixed.. the rest needs to be sorted in the OXP itself.. it's been about 3 months since Capt. Murphy last checked in here.

cim wrote:

I think the remaining issues probably need to be fixed in the OXPs - r5593 has an "isInSpace" property added, which should be checked instead of "isValid"

cim wrote:

I think the remaining issues probably need to be fixed in the OXPs - r5593 has an "isInSpace" property added, which should be checked instead of "isValid"

I've made the suggested change in ecl_escape_pod_beacon.js and escapePodLocator.js, and put the new versions in a zip file for testing.

To use, download the zip and follow the included instructions. Let me know if the fixes do or don't work for you, please.

Download Link

<sigh> I've had one report already, via the Pandora forum, that the patch isn't working.. still getting ghost beacons.