Oolite Bulletins

DeathKnyte wrote:

... how I can get my ship (Fer-de-Lance) to look like the one that Viceroy 'Honest Crook' Mitchel uses - please.
I saw it on display, at a Seedy Space Bar, in one of the contracts offered.

Captain names and ships are coupled to each other in a random way, so I have no idea which ship you mean. But, Little Bear has not designed any ship by himself, he used existing ships from other oxps. So, very likely the original oxp is still around and that oxp might offer a player buyable version.

A lot of the graphical better ships come from neolites, so you might take a look there. Or, browses fist through the textures in random hits. The filename of the texture might give a clue about its origin.

The FdL-mark in Random Hits is like_ship'd to the ordinary Fer de Lance. There is no special model for it.

So, it should just look like an ordinary Fer de Lance. If you happen to have a replacement ship set installed, it should look like the Ferdie from that set.

Eric Walch wrote:

DeathKnyte wrote:

... how I can get my ship (Fer-de-Lance) to look like the one that Viceroy 'Honest Crook' Mitchel uses - please.
I saw it on display, at a Seedy Space Bar, in one of the contracts offered.

Captain names and ships are coupled to each other in a random way, so I have no idea which ship you mean. But, Little Bear has not designed any ship by himself, he used existing ships from other oxps. So, very likely the original oxp is still around and that oxp might offer a player buyable version.

A lot of the graphical better ships come from neolites, so you might take a look there. Or, browses fist through the textures in random hits. The filename of the texture might give a clue about its origin.

Well, if it flies anywhere near the way it looks, it will certainly break the game balance of Oolite.
I'd just rather have mine "look" like it, meaning get a paint job that resembles it, if that is the case.

Okay, I'll look through the textures ( you mean that is the file name, right?) in the Oolite game program for something like what I saw.
But listen, when you are viewing contracts offered, there some ships that spin around for each one, so if there is a peculiar file for those, then I should look there.

Commander McLane wrote:

The FdL-mark in Random Hits is like_ship'd to the ordinary Fer de Lance. There is no special model for it.

So, it should just look like an ordinary Fer de Lance. If you happen to have a replacement ship set installed, it should look like the Ferdie from that set.

Oh good, thanks for getting involved too, Commander_McLane.


It certainly looked like a Fer-de-Lance, but it was more like beige color, had some grill work, or perhaps rad "like" exhaust vents installed on the sides. The rest, I can't describe in words, cause my vocabulary is not eloquent enough to do it justice.

I have no ship sets other than what came with the game. So it must be from the random hits oxp.



I think I'm going to start a new thread, for this project, because this will certainly get complicated to do...

Don't give up, on me, guys.


I think I found it.
Oolite > AddOns > RandomHits1.4.13.oxp > Textures
But I can't be sure, because the texture picture is like all scrambled, maybe jumbled is a better word.
But I see some grill (or rad work) that reminded me of what I saw, in the spinning picture displayed, and it has some sort of beige like color throughout.

DeathKnyte wrote:

I think I found it.
Oolite > AddOns > RandomHits1.4.13.oxp > Textures

Well yes, that's the folder where all textures reside. But which one are you referring to? There are 70 individual textures in that folder, and no magic trick shows me which one you're looking at.

Commander McLane wrote:

DeathKnyte wrote:

I think I found it.
Oolite > AddOns > RandomHits1.4.13.oxp > Textures

Well yes, that's the folder where all textures reside. But which one are you referring to? There are 70 individual textures in that folder, and no magic trick shows me which one you're looking at.

Okay, okay.
I was all proud that I found where the pictures were - and that - I now really know for certain that the term "textures" = "picture of ship paint job".
That is a big accomplishment for someone like me, and I figured it all by myself (with some deductions from the posts in this, and other threads on this forum, and the Oolite wiki).
So in my moment of self satisfaction, looks like I forgot to say which one in particular...


So the specific picture (texture) would be the one called: mussurana_auv

You need anything else from me, in order to 'work your magic', just ask.
I'm oblige as best as I can.

Uhmmm....

I think it is closer to the picture on the bottom left, Wildeblood.
Neolite Mussurana - I see some grill work on it.
I'll check to see if the "texture" picture is the same as the one in the Random Hits oxp.
Thanks for the research.

Smiv's spoke

Okay, will download and install.
Presently I'm on my way to Riedquat, on a contract hit, but barring anything else, should be able to double back after.
Thank you

No probs, man.
All in a days work, for me.
Let's go to the stations' space bar and get some evil juice.

Eric Walch wrote:

DeathKnyte wrote:

... how I can get my ship (Fer-de-Lance) to look like the one that Viceroy 'Honest Crook' Mitchel uses - please.
I saw it on display, at a Seedy Space Bar, in one of the contracts offered.

Captain names and ships are coupled to each other in a random way, so I have no idea which ship you mean. But, Little Bear has not designed any ship by himself, he used existing ships from other oxps. So, very likely the original oxp is still around and that oxp might offer a player buyable version.

A lot of the graphical better ships come from neolites, so you might take a look there. Or, browses fist through the textures in random hits. The filename of the texture might give a clue about its origin.

All right....

I am certain it is the Neolite Mussurana, from the Noelite Companion 1.1 oxp.
It has the exact same picture ( mussurana_auv ), as the one in the Random Hits oxp.

Now, I have gone back and tried to see how to transfer the picture onto a Fer-de-Lance structure, through the help Smivs (and others) offered in earlier posts in this thread.
I see that this will not be possible, because that picture uses a different (ship) structure than a stock Fer-de-Lance. This makes sense, cause of the grill work and some other details (I suppose)...

So the question of the day: Do you think it would be possible for me to modify the picture so it fits, or do I have to modify the structure (that seems very much more complicated than modifying the picture)?

Neither are really possible.
The problem is this. When a ship is modelled, the end products are a .dat model file (which is the 'structure' of the ship) and one or more Textures (image files) that are derived from the model for the model. The model is the flesh and bones, and the texture/s are the skin. The skin will only ever fit that one ship in other words.
Is there any reason why you can't just install the OXP with the Mussarana and buy a player version?

Yeah.... Well.... I had a sense that it would be difficult, if not impossible....


I have tried it, just to give it a whirl, but it's a very powerful ship.
Has twice the energy banks, more top speed, twice the missile capacity, twice the cargo capacity, and I forget what else.
I could figure a "work around" the cargo problem, by just purchasing passenger berths, and never taking any passengers on board. That would prevent me from using that extra cargo capacity, but as for the rest, I dunno how I could work it.
Possibly just never purchase more than two missiles, but that still leaves the speed, and banks.

Also, that oxp comes with a pile of other ships. I've been able to defeat them all with a stock Fer-de-Lance, but if more than two Iguanas show up, it's toast city. That ship has dual forward firing lasers.

I might have to learn how to program computers in order to make my wish come true...

DeathKnyte wrote:

I might have to learn how to program computers in order to make my wish come true...

Why would you do that?

You want to edit a texture, nothing more.

In order to edit a texture—in other words, an ordinary picture—you only need to use a picture editor, not "program computers". You wouldn't say that typing something in Word is the same as "programing computers", would you? Neither is drawing some lines etc. in Gimp, or whatever photo editor you have, or even MS Paint.

Your other option (and again it hardly constitutes 'programming computers') is to adapt the OXP containing the Mussarana. This is a fairly straightforward process and only requires a text editor.
You will need to open the OXP and go to the Config folder and open that. Firstly open the shipdata.plist and delete all the other ships so just the data for the Mussarana-player remains. You can then change aspects of this to 'make' the ship you want. As you fly a FDL, have a look at the shipdata.plist for the FDL in the core game and just change the relevant parts of Mussarana to be the same as the FDL - speed, roll and pitch, energy etc. Once done the Mussarana will have the same specs and performance as the FDL.
You will still need to buy one, so you must then open the shipyard.plist and do the same - change the specs to be the same as the core FDL, and delete the data for the other unwanted ships.
You could also go to the Textures folder and delete anything not relevant to the Mussarana if you wanted to be tidy-minded, but this is not strictly necessary.
In a sense you will end up with a single-ship OXP (your adapted Mussarana) which behaves and performs the same as the FDL. You should also re-name the new OXP to avoid confusion. Maybe call it DeathKnyte Mussarana.oxp?
When editing the plists, I'd suggest firstly making a copy of them just in case anything goes wrong - you can go back and start again. Any good text editor will be fine for this task, but DO NOT use Notepad, as it adds unwanted characters to files that break Oolite. Notepad++ is fine as are most other text editors.