Oolite Bulletins

Redspear wrote: ↑Mon May 23, 2022 5:41 pm

x 0.2 reported distances

x 5 (up to) asteroids
x 10 planets
x 15 space lane
x 30 'suns'

x 60 sun distance

Can you elaborate on this please? Are you saying you have successfully achieved these size/distance variations? And is this able to be made into an oxp?

szaumix wrote: ↑Mon May 23, 2022 10:06 pm

Can you elaborate on this please? Are you saying you have successfully achieved these size/distance variations?

Yep.

szaumix wrote: ↑Mon May 23, 2022 10:06 pm

And is this able to be made into an oxp?

Nope (with the exception of asteroids and sun distances... although I wouln't recommend either without the other changes)

I've been hitting the source, so to speak, and as such these modifications would require either building or downloading another version of oolite.
However, there are very workable instructions of how to do just that on this very site... I just had an idea and a bit of maths when I started this thing and this would (hopefully) be working version number four or something(?) by now.

There's already enough posts here of me wittering on about my latest thoughts and tweaks but this one in particular might be worth spelling out.

Now that i can adjust, planets, 'suns', lanes, traffic, torus speeds, altitudes etc. the most efficient way to make a playable rescale (rather than a truly realistic one) would be to highlight which scale issues are the most distracting.

In other words: which game events are the most glaring examples of the scale being messed up?


My current thinking:

(Rating each issue in severity by multiplying frequency by severity)

Station next to planet (high frequency, high incongruence = 3x3 = 9)
- it's nearly always where the player is headed and can be seen far too early to achieve any sense of a planet that might be anything more than a tiny moon.

Sunskimming (low frequency, high incongruence = 1x3 = 3)
- it doesn't look good when you look back at the planet but then how often does it happen?

Sun distance (high frequency, low incongruence = 3x1 = 3)
- it's off and it's there but it's relatively easy to ignore (at least if you neuter the glare it is)

Station altitude (low frequency, medium incongruence = 1x2 = 2)
- high orbit round a tinty planet yet looks massive (again) from near the planet's surface

Ship Scale (high frequency, medium incongrence = 3x2 = 6)
- has been addressed via oxp

Space lane length (med frequency, high incongruence = 2x3 = 6)
- anything big can be very visible along the entire lane

Reported distances (medium frequency, low incongruence = 2x1 = 2)
- anything close up gives massive readings but it's numbers only

Rock hermits (low frequency, low incongruence = 1x1 = 1)
- hard to imagine where there's any space left in the hollowed out asteroid.


So, a ranking of importance:

• station next to planet
• space lane length
• ship scale
• sun distance
• sun skimming
• reported distances
• station altitude
• rock hermits

Complications
increasing planet size requires increasing many of the others which in turn has further knock on effects.

I mention all of this here because on some level each of these things is now under my control. I've already have a version based on the above but if there's a case to be made for other (esp. core game) issues, or if you think my ratings are off, then here's your chance to state your case.

I'm so close to a fully working, largely oxp friendly, gameplay consistent, rescaled version of oolite.
No need for a rescaled scanner, speed changes or even ship rescaling... and I at least, love it

The default sun distance is the big one for me. It does my head in!



And an unrelated question: are suns still rendered as flat discs?

Cody wrote: ↑Thu May 26, 2022 9:29 pm

The default sun distance is the big one for me. It does my head in!

I'm definitely increasing that but maybe not as much as you'd like.
As you're likely aware, there's a dynamic tension between sun size/sun distance and sun skimming.

On the plus side:
Reducing the glare (rather than removing it altogether) can make it less obvious.
Torus speed can (and by golly will!) be ramped up considerably however and so it's currently at x4 distance in terms of appearance.

Cody wrote: ↑Thu May 26, 2022 9:29 pm

And an unrelated question: are suns still rendered as flat discs?

Yeah, I've not done anything to change that yet and the glare is actually quite useful in that regard.

Larger planets (plus the required adjustments) are quite resource sapping it seems and so another, even bigger, sphere is unlikely to be practical for the moment.

Redspear wrote: ↑Thu May 26, 2022 10:01 pm

... so it's currently at x4 distance in terms of appearance.

I rock with x5 (I'd prefer further, but as you say...), but x4 would make a massive difference!

Redspear wrote: ↑Thu May 26, 2022 10:01 pm

Cody wrote: ↑Thu May 26, 2022 9:29 pm

The default sun distance is the big one for me. It does my head in!

I'm definitely increasing that but maybe not as much as you'd like.
As you're likely aware, there's a dynamic tension between sun size/sun distance and sun skimming.

As a Stranger's World fanatic, I'd like to mention the potential existence of Solar Flux.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Thu May 26, 2022 10:27 pm

As a Stranger's World fanatic, I'd like to mention the potential existence of Solar Flux.

Not sure I've understood that correctly but...

Not core gameplay.
Sunskimming needs risk/skill of some kind or it's just a convenience (which is not too say that it doesn't have its place, e.g. torus drive).

Fuel scooping from a star is actually an experience. Solar flux sound like it might have some strategy or at least opportunism to it but it sounds like it's from a safe distance and likely exists to balance out fuel expenditure within the system (again, not core).

Cody wrote: ↑Thu May 26, 2022 10:07 pm

Redspear wrote: ↑Thu May 26, 2022 10:01 pm

... so it's currently at x4 distance in terms of appearance.

I rock with x5 (I'd prefer further, but as you say...), but x4 would make a massive difference!

The good news...

One of the keys to reducing travel times (and therefore enabling large distances) is to increase min torus speed rather than max (the latter rarely being achievable in play).

So although sun distance 'only' appears at x4, that's with suns that are now at x5 relative to the planets (x20 'suns' vs x4 planets) which actually requires a sun distance setting of x80 (20 x apparent distance of 4). Despite this, barring time spent in mass-locks, you can reach the sun in just a few minutes.

Try fuel scooping and the planet will almost dissappear but the sun will appear a reasonable (your mileage may vary) size and distance wherever you are likely to be.

I'd never been able to increase suns independently before, so now they can keep all of their planetinfo.plist properties where if you increase sun_distance modifier further it will all still work (for x5 use modifier of 100, for x6 use 120 etc.)

Again, nothing realistic, just less obvious reminders that nothing is realistic.

Planets Vs Stars (...good luck planets!)



Moving closer...



Closer still...



Note how the star appears almost exactly the same size. That's because it's MASSIVE!

Not sure if this is the same planet but check out how small the planet appears after sunskimming from the star...



If you don't notice it immediately then that's kind of my point.

This is certainly new and improved over previous itterations.

Super duper cool, Redspear.

If I read your post correctly, these changes need a forked Oolite. Is there any reason that it would be incompatible with previous save games?

szaumix wrote: ↑Tue May 31, 2022 11:01 pm

Super duper cool, Redspear.

If I read your post correctly, these changes need a forked Oolite.

Thanks.
Yeah, that's right (although I prefer to work away from GitHub, so no fork exists as yet), either that or self editing the source (less than 20 code changes IIRC).

szaumix wrote: ↑Tue May 31, 2022 11:01 pm

Is there any reason that it would be incompatible with previous save games?

Only OXP conflict AFAIK, of which my modest testing has thus far revealed only one: the fairly obvious solarflares.oxp (I briefly thought I'd broken the entire game when I tried that )
Nothing wrong with the oxp itself, it just wasn't designed to work with this scaling... I expect it could be tweaked.

Redspear wrote: ↑Tue May 31, 2022 11:39 pm

the fairly obvious solarflares.oxp

Interesting. In that case, you probably should test the built in "Nova" mission in your rescaled Ooniverse, as much of the code for Solar Flares comes from that mission.

Redspear wrote: ↑Thu May 26, 2022 8:41 pm

In other words: which game events are the most glaring examples of the scale being messed up?


My current thinking:

(Rating each issue in severity by multiplying frequency by severity)

Station next to planet (high frequency, high incongruence = 3x3 = 9)
- it's nearly always where the player is headed and can be seen far too early to achieve any sense of a planet that might be anything more than a tiny moon.

Sunskimming (low frequency, high incongruence = 1x3 = 3)
- it doesn't look good when you look back at the planet but then how often does it happen?

Sun distance (high frequency, low incongruence = 3x1 = 3)
- it's off and it's there but it's relatively easy to ignore (at least if you neuter the glare it is)

Station altitude (low frequency, medium incongruence = 1x2 = 2)
- high orbit round a tiny planet yet looks massive (again) from near the planet's surface

Ship Scale (high frequency, medium incongrence = 3x2 = 6)
- has been addressed via oxp

Space lane length (med frequency, high incongruence = 2x3 = 6)
- anything big can be very visible along the entire lane

Reported distances (medium frequency, low incongruence = 2x1 = 2)
- anything close up gives massive readings but it's numbers only

Rock hermits (low frequency, low incongruence = 1x1 = 1)
- hard to imagine where there's any space left in the hollowed out asteroid.


So, a ranking of importance:

• station next to planet
• space lane length
• ship scale
• sun distance
• sun skimming
• reported distances
  
• station altitude
• rock hermits

Complications
increasing planet size requires increasing many of the others which in turn has further knock on effects.

A thought: our orbital space stations are officially 1km x 1km x 1km. And there is a lot of discussion over the years about how this is incompatible with fitting in thousands of spaceships.

The inside of the station is free-space, and on each inner facet of the station there are berthing and refueling facilities for up to 2000 ships, as well as cities, hospitals, farmlands and leisure-scapes.

One partial solution might be to accept that the stations must be much larger than their officially stated size.

References:
*Coriolis Station (Classic)
*Coriolis Station (Oolite)

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 5:53 am

The inside of the station is free-space, and on each inner facet of the station there are berthing and refueling facilities for up to 2000 ships, as well as cities, hospitals, farmlands and leisure-scapes.

One partial solution might be to accept that the stations are much larger than their officially stated size.

Heresies avast ahoy!
If station sizes get realistic (or if we accept that they are just a glorified swap market for tens rather than hundreds/thousands of ships) then I'll have to go shopping for the kids, because Christmas has come early!