Oolite Bulletins

Yes very well done. I got yours and Griffs work incorporated S9 and testing it. I have a question though. As most of you may know, my computer doesn't support shaders so I don't see the lights or effects, just the diffuse map. However, if I add a materials section in addition to the shaders I do see them.

Is it okay to have both materials and shaders defined or will the materials over-ride the shader code?

I do hope I posed this question correctly.

CaptSolo wrote:

Yes very well done. I got yours and Griffs work incorporated S9 and testing it. I have a question though. As most of you may know, my computer doesn't support shaders so I don't see the lights or effects, just the diffuse map. However, if I add a materials section in addition to the shaders I do see them.

Is it okay to have both materials and shaders defined or will the materials over-ride the shader code?

I do hope I posed this question correctly.

I think it's okay (and actually meant to be done so), because the shaders will override the materials on shader-capable computers.

But as I'm no expert on the matter it's probably best to wait for a reply from somebody who is.

Yes, it's ok to have both, I'm not very clued up on the technical stuff but i think if you have both shaders and materials defined for a ship in the shipdata.plist, shaders get used and materials not used if your computer supports shaders and you have them enabled in the Oolite game options, otherwise shaders get ignored and oolite uses materials instead

edit: ninja'd

My Prototype Warp Ring is now in game using the same shaders from the accipiter.
here are some screenshots:


warpring demo by Staer9, on Flickr

oo that's cool. Were you thinking of coding these to be used between 2 or more high tech stable government systems?

SO would these warp gates guarantee transit between systems? Fuel free? For a fee? Comes with an insurance policy that if a misjump occurs and you are a) damaged by Thargoids your repair bill is covered b) killed - your family gets a lump sum in recompense?

Just some thoughts...

Can a small wormhole form inside the Warp Ring (via a tiny object hyperspacing out) and still leave the Warp Ring behind as though it's holding the wormhole open?

Switeck wrote:

Can a small wormhole form inside the Warp Ring (via a tiny object hyperspacing out) and still leave the Warp Ring behind as though it's holding the wormhole open?

I'd wondered the same thing, though it might be a little Stargate-like. I had the idea when playing around with my drones, but couldn't be bothered to see if it'd work. Too much hassle trying to work out sizes and things... I'd be interested to know if it's possible, though!

It's the sort of thing that could be useful in missions. It could provide a path for the player to follow, or even a way of quarantining systems. For example, a system is being blockaded for some reason, and any incoming ships are hit with some sort of weapon that causes a fuel leak which cannot be repaired until the ship is docked at a main station. Therefore the only way out of the system is to follow through someone else's wormhole, and as there is no other traffic, you can only exit through the gate. Apply this to some select systems in, say, galaxy 5, and you can quite easily divide the galaxy up into a number of regions which can only be entered through such a gate.

I like all the ideas, but I am a clueless programmer. If someone wants to make them happen the oxp at it's current stage can be downloaded here: http://www.box.net/shared/qcbbq5dqb6

It is currently player-only because I have just been testing it to get the shades right.

good luck

Switeck wrote:

Can a small wormhole form inside the Warp Ring (via a tiny object hyperspacing out) and still leave the Warp Ring behind as though it's holding the wormhole open?

That would very much depend on how big the ring is, and how big the entering ships are.

Wormholes are not static. Whenever a ship enters a wormhole, the wormhole becomes bigger (and longer-lasting). You can observe that for instance if an Anaconda jumps out and its escorts follow. So, if a big-enough ship uses the gate and the wormhole becomes big enough to collide with the gate itself, the gate structure will get sucked in.

On the other hand, it should be impossible to open a wormhole in the gate in the first place. Remember, any structure blocks wormholes in a certain radius (like you have to get a small distance between yourself and a station before you jump). I am pretty sure that a distance of ZERO will be below the threshold, regardless of the size of the ring.

Thargoid wrote:

You wouldn't actually need to keep the warp ring static in the same system.

If I were doing it (and it is something I pondered when I did Gates.oxp, but at the time the scripting functions weren't available) then the gate would also jump, but the script would remove it. As you've left the original system behind, the fact that the gate jumped and was removed would not be visibly different to the player from the gate staying behind in the original system (and so removed anyway).

I was more thinking along the lines of you seeing an NPC entering the gate and then taking it with him. But of course you could get around that by not allowing NPCs to use the gates in the first place.

However, the problem of creating a wormhole inside (or very close to) the gate would remain. One possible solution could be like this: a wormhole (or more precisely: an immediately jumping dummy entity which is then immediately removed in the next system) is created in non-blocked distance behind the gate only when the player gets into a certain radius in front of the gate. Then he has to fly through the gate and into the wormhole before it collapses.

Alternatively it could be scripted like a jump-gate: entering into the gate moves your ship to a distant part of system first, and then makes you jump out from there. You probably wouldn't notice the one frame where your position changes.

Next alternative: flying through the wormhole starts a repeating timer which attempts to jump you out until it is successful. It will be successful once you have moved far enough through the gate.

Who needs testing, when you've got a McLane on the boards!? I had no idea that wormholes could get bigger, as I don't tend to hang around outside a station. I launch and then zoom off to wherever it is I'm heading. So I'd never observed that. Shame, since as Thargoid said, it should be fairly easy to code!

Mauiby de Fug wrote:

Who needs testing, when you've got a McLane on the boards!?

To be fair, testing is still a good idea generally.

After all, McLane could also be (and has frequently been) wrong.

I once observed a Generation Ship being sucked into another ship's wormhole. The resulting wormhole was huge! And lasted practically forever.

One of the main problems I have with testing is that I only test what occurs to me, which is how I expect/meant things to be used/work. Which invariably means that someone could quite easily come along and find a mammoth-sized loophole where things go wrong... I'm gradually getting the hang of things though!

Wow! I'm sad to say I've never yet seen a generation ship. At some point I might just spawn one with the console just to have a look!