Oolite Bulletins

madsborking wrote:

And cheers to Redspear for what seems to me to be an excellent idea - lets get the best of all worlds

Hi Mads and thanks

madsborking wrote:

Oh, and one more quick question: Any of you tried the Additional Planets.oxp that this thread is really about?

I've tried it

It's designed to work alongside Povray Planets as Additional Planets doesn't touch the main planets, so there should be no conflict.

I know it works with ZygoCinematicSky&Nebula as I've run the two together.

Although WIP, Additional Planets is currently functional and has had some testing. Where it's currently not so great is if you don't want the system demux textures (as there are so many) then you will see a lot of oolite's native textures instead. The recent update of the Free Bitmaps texture pack does contain an optional planetlist file that addresses that however.

If you've got any questions then please fire away

There should be some updates of the texture packs (expansion of the 'others' pack and splitting of the demux pack into categories e.g. gas giants) within the next day or two.

Thanks for your interest.

Another possible way to comment-out portions of code is to enclose them in an statement. Faster to do, and easier to revert. In this particular case, the code is itself an "if" block, so we could have just inserted an if(false) in front of it or altered the conditional expression like: One may probably use I guess a similar trick for "universal" in planetinfo.plist by just renaming it "no_universal".

This is a bit less efficient since the interpreter still has to parse code (with comments it just has to go to the end of the line), but the difference is probably very small.

another_commander wrote:

madsborking wrote:

And by the way, IT WORKS!!! I'm seing Povray Planets, Deep Horizon moons and extra planets and a Zygo sky - WOW!

Screens please?

"Its like he's talking to me, I just know it" (From Nemo's dad Marlin when he meets the baby turtles... )

But really, "Screens please?" - it must be some moderator code for something...

madsborking wrote:

But really, "Screens please?" - it must be some moderator code for something...

Er... 'Screenshots' perhaps?

Yep.. and just in case you haven't tried taking a screenshot yet, the key for in-game screenshots is <Shift-8>, after which you'll find the screenshots in a folder inside the oolite-saves folder.

(Then use photobucket or similar to host/link to the pic)

Diziet Sma wrote:

... the key for in-game screenshots is <Shift-8>...

Or if you use a joystick with plenty of buttons, it can be assigned to one of them via F2/Game Options/Joystick Configuration.

Updated 'Others' texture pack to 1.1

• Added another 11 textures to the pack
  Fixed one texture that was a .jpg instead of a .png and therefore wasn't appearing

Added some more pics to the first post; including a replacement for the photobucket rejected one of two planets together... A pair of globes? What were you thinking PB? ...

Others texture pack 1.1 available here:
https://app.box.com/s/p73re1av40osurw47giy

Diziet Sma wrote:

madsborking wrote:

IT WORKS!!! I'm seing Povray Planets, Deep Horizon moons and extra planets and a Zygo sky - WOW!

Excellent! Welcome to the wonderful world of OXP tweaking!

Now.. a (hard-earned) suggestion..

[...]

All this will save you much hassle down the track.. (don't ask me how I know!)

Thanks Dizzy, an excellent idea

spara wrote:

Diziet Sma wrote:

madsborking wrote:

IT WORKS!!! I'm seing Povray Planets, Deep Horizon moons and extra planets and a Zygo sky - WOW!

That's brilliant . Since getting these to play nicely together is a bit of a challenge, maybe something should be done about it? Maybe some guidance in wiki or more sensitive versions of some these oxps could help here. If no-one beats me to it, I'll give it a bit thought when I have finished Rescue Stations.

It's probably a newbie idea, and obviously I have no idea how difficult it is to make OXPs compatible with OXPconfig, (there is no doubt something awfully technical and complicated in the way), but my idea would be to make a few general settings from each ambient/system OXP available in OXPconfig...?

Could be: "universals"=true/false; "texture main planet"=true/false; "set number of moons"=true/false (or whatever the relevant lines of code would actually read, and so on - I'm sure you get the idea and is probably about to tell me why it won't work...)

Anyways, just an idea

Thanks Astrobe, certainly for larger trunks of code that will be much easier

And thanks everyone for all the advice on screenshots

I have in fact taken screenshots and set a dedicated key on my multiple-key joystick already, but I don't blame you one bit for treating me like a total newbie

I am. I'll try and get some nice shots from Gal 2 (where I'm at) and see if I can work out how to post/link (to) them - using your instructions once again Dizzy (It's just that I've never actually - believe it or not - linked to or hosted a single picture/photo/file of anything, anywhere, ever!)

I know, I'm a dinosaur in a brave new world - and I'm only 36

Before you start to worry to much... I do have a facebook profile and a LinkedIn account and stuff... I just never use it for anything, really, actually... Hmm...

Anyways, I'm always ready to learn new stuff - I'm sure I can figure ou how to post a few pictures

Oh, and to redspear - how rude of me to (almost) forget to reply - thanks for the details! I'll definitely give it a try

Don't know that I have anything against System Demux textures, haven't tried them... But even if they are not quite up to standard (vis-á-vis Redux, Deep Horizon and Povray) maybe it's not that important when it comes to moons and extra planets. The general idea to include LOTS of textures to make for a great variety takes precedence in my book anyway

One other thing, BTW (just learned that one - how about it ), I was casting a quick glance at the included texturepacks of both Redux and Deep Horizon yesterday and it appeared to me that there were several identical images?

madsborking wrote:

It's probably a newbie idea, and obviously I have no idea how difficult it is to make OXPs compatible with OXPconfig, (there is no doubt something awfully technical and complicated in the way), but my idea would be to make a few general settings from each ambient/system OXP available in OXPconfig...?

Could be: "universals"=true/false; "texture main planet"=true/false; "set number of moons"=true/false (or whatever the relevant lines of code would actually read, and so on - I'm sure you get the idea and is probably about to tell me why it won't work...)

Anyways, just an idea

Not a bad idea. Would require that someone updates the oxps though. I'm a bit sceptical about that happening though. I'm having high hopes with this oxp. I wish that eventually with this oxp, you could choose which texture set you want to use. So if you want to play with for example SR textures for extra planets, you just grab that pack on top of the base oxp. I'm not convinced yet that mixing them all together is the best of ideas as they differ in style so much. But that's just me of course .

cim wrote:

(Which is to say: to get really detailed planets probably requires a clever approach rather than just throwing ever-bigger textures at them)

Real planets are actually not spherical but slightly ellipsoidal. Maybe mapping the textures on an ellipsoid could yield better results?

madsborking wrote:

Oh, and to redspear - how rude of me to (almost) forget to reply - thanks for the details! I'll definitely give it a try

No worries I hope it's of use.

madsborking wrote:

Don't know that I have anything against System Demux textures, haven't tried them... But even if they are not quite up to standard (vis-á-vis Redux, Deep Horizon and Povray) maybe it's not that important when it comes to moons and extra planets. The general idea to include LOTS of textures to make for a great variety takes precedence in my book anyway

One other thing, BTW (just learned that one - how about it ), I was casting a quick glance at the included texturepacks of both Redux and Deep Horizon yesterday and it appeared to me that there were several identical images?

I like System Demux very much but as some have pointed out, it's of a different style than System Redux... a bit more fantastical and 'technicolour' perhaps. So there's a strong case for them not to be put together but that's less of an issue with some of the cloudier planets and moons perhaps... Anyway, I've started creating System Demux mini-packs to address this.

First one (gas giants) is available here (screenshots and explanation in the first post)
https://app.box.com/s/9lydr1suwhc70plpz89q

Yes, lots of textures is the name of the game here . This oxp currently adds 0-4 planets and 0-2 moons per system. That's an additional 3 textures on average per system. Multiply that up by the number of planets per galaxy, and then by the number of galaxies, and you can see that we'd need... er... lots!... This oxp isn't quite that ambitious but it aims to reduce the feeling of deja-vu on entering a new system. In testing, I've flown everywhere within about 15 light years of Lave and I don't think I've seen a single texture appear more than once. Not bad...

Yes, DHS (as I understand it) added textures to those made available by SR (as well as doing some interesting things via script). I hope that those textures can be made available for this project at some point.

spara wrote:

I'm having high hopes with this oxp. I wish that eventually with this oxp, you could choose which texture set you want to use. So if you want to play with for example SR textures for extra planets, you just grab that pack on top of the base oxp. I'm not convinced yet that mixing them all together is the best of ideas as they differ in style so much. But that's just me of course .

Thank you, I hope I can live up to them...

That should work, as I've already tested it with the Free Bitmaps planets. The latest version of that texture pack contains an optional planetlist file that replaces all occurances of SD textures with FB ones. In future, I hope each texture pack will include a few optional plantlists so that this oxp will be easily customisable.

Once I've got a better idea of how many textures will be available in total (and assuming I persist with the current method of scripting) I'll see if I can start including a few optional planetlists with each pack (e.g. 'this pack only', 'this pack plus pack a', etc.)

More ideas than time I'm afraid, but that one at least seems likely to happen...