Oolite Bulletins

Thanks for the encouragement, another_commander!

another_commander wrote:

The title Shipping News strikes me as somewhat weird

My original name for this was "Station Dock Info", which I thought was logical, but there were some comments further back in the thread that indicated "Shipping news" was more appropriate. I'm no expect in the issue of naval dockyard procedures, so I'm happy to switch to whatever makes more sense. For those who suggested "Shipping News", is this how dockyards refer to this sort of information?

another_commander wrote:

What about being able to display ETAs for the inbound vessels too?

As you say, that really might be tricky! I'll see what I can do.

another_commander wrote:

Number of pages shown: Indeed, too many.

I hear you! What I've now done is what I suggested above, is to limit the default view to three pages. There is an option to show everything if you want it.

another_commander wrote:

- Number of pages shown: Indeed, too many. I believe you can make it look like an airport board. You don't need to show all flights of the day, just the ones that are, say, from now to six hours ahead. This is just an example - I don't know how much in the future you are currently looking at on page 20 or 25, but the idea is: queue everything, display only what's coming up in the near future.

Good idea, definitely. Unless there's a genuine (i.e. mission-related) reason to look, 90-95% of all that data will never get looked at.

another_commander wrote:

- The title Shipping News strikes me as somewhat weird. English is not my native language, but when I see Shipping News on the title I expect more something like a Snoopers article announcing something related to the world of Logistics rather than the arrivals and departures table. I would probably feel more at home with something like "In-System Traffic Status" or "[System Name] Traffic Control Monitoring".

Also a good idea. I hadn't really thought about the possible scale of ship traffic - keeping things to a relatively small time window would keep ship numbers to a less intimidating scale: "Traffic Control", or even just "Arrivals and Departures" would be a good title.

phkb wrote:

I've got plans for an OXP that would require you to search for a ship to see if it was docked at the station.

This sounds really interesting, but even so, detective work shouldn't get too onerous. The online data for New York harbour currently shows 10 ships, and allows for a bit of drilldown: I think requiring players to e.g. search for a named pilot among a dozen ships would be enough work, rather than page through 30+ screens looking for one ship name.

It's an amazing bit of work, though! The amount of extra life it adds to the game - the feeling of a living world carrying on with its own thing, regardless of what the player does - is fantastic.

another_commander wrote:

- The title Shipping News strikes me as somewhat weird. English is not my native language, but when I see Shipping News on the title I expect more something like a Snoopers article announcing something related to the world of Logistics rather than the arrivals and departures table. I would probably feel more at home with something like "In-System Traffic Status" or "[System Name] Traffic Control Monitoring".

The section titled "Shipping News" in the back of my local newspaper has exactly the kind of info that phkb is building into his oxp. Arrivals, departures, cargoes, destinations, and so on.

phkb wrote:

limit the default view to three pages. There is an option to show everything if you want it.

In this case one page is enough and you can replace the "go to next/prev" items to a "next board" and a "show all ship". If there are dedicated boards to all nearby systems then I can see the list of ships going to my destination by pressing the "next board" a few times.

Personally I liked more the previous table with separaded ship type and name.

Norby wrote:

Personally I liked more the previous table with separaded ship type and name.

I liked that first table too, but that was assuming implicitly that RandomShipNames was installed, right? With the second table, if I don't have the OXP installed I will see at least the ship type only and not an empty column.

another_commander wrote:

I liked that first table too, but that was assuming implicitly that RandomShipNames was installed, right?

I think RSN is the only OXP that I'd like to see incorporated into the core game. No chance of that, I know, but...

another_commander wrote:

not an empty column.

Can be filled in this case with Pilot name or Ship ID (ship.entityPersonality).

I've a question: are you making this for 1.80, or does it require 1.81 features?

Wildeblood wrote:

are you making this for 1.80, or does it require 1.81 features?

Working in 1.80 at the moment. I'm not using any 1.81 features (as yet - still early days!).

Disembodied wrote:

"Traffic Control", or even just "Arrivals and Departures" would be a good title.

I'm going to go with "Traffic Control" for the name of the OXP. I think that best describes what's taking place. The Interface screen will have "[station name] Traffic Control", and it will be in a section titled "Station Interfaces" to indicate this service is related to the station, rather than the ship. My apologies to those who preferred the "Shipping News" name!

phkb wrote:

I'm going to go with "Traffic Control" for the name of the OXP. I think that best describes what's taking place. The Interface screen will have "[station name] Traffic Control", and it will be in a section titled "Station Interfaces" to indicate this service is related to the station, rather than the ship. My apologies to those who preferred the "Shipping News" name!

That's why all text strings get loaded from descriptions.plist or missiontext.plist* - so they are easy to over-ride.

* They do, don't they?

P.S. There's already a Traffic Control OXP, by Thargoid?

Wildeblood wrote:

P.S. There's already a Traffic Control OXP, by Thargoid?

Aww, dang it. {Goes away to do more renaming}

Another general question: Do you think the bounty of a ship or pilot should be visible on the list? Maybe if a certain piece of equipment is purchased, maybe?

Edit: Also, should I indicate whether ships are part of a group or escort?
Edit2: Actually, that would probably be information the station would have, so it makes sense to display it.

phkb wrote:

Another general question: Do you think the bounty of a ship or pilot should be visible on the list?

If you drill down, yes - probably not on the general listing though.

Technical question this time: I'm trying to set the ship crew, and get it to match my data. So I'm doing this: But often, when I check the species of the pilot in the ship, it's different to what I specified in my "shipData.pilotSpecies" value. How do I correctly set the species of the pilot?

You can't set directly species for crew at the moment. For compatibility with existing characters.plist entries, species is always generated based on the random seed and the home system.

If you set the random_seed property (a string containing 6 0-255 ints separated by spaces) so that its sixth number does not end '11' when expressed in binary (e.g. 0, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, etc), this will guarantee that the character's species will be the species of their home system.

If you set the random_seed property (a string containing 6 0-255 ints separated by spaces) so that its sixth number does end '11' when expressed in binary (e.g. 3, 7, 11, etc.), this will guarantee that the character's species will be the species of the system whose ID is the fifth number of the random seed. So for example setting the random seed "1 2 3 4 87 11" would return "Black Slimy Lizards" for species if you were in Galaxy 1.