Oolite Bulletins

Hi Griff,

Griff wrote:

... it's a bit twisted and sad to have human stick figures, maybe it would be funny with octopus aliens or something?

I for one seriously think it's not funny, also the little flowers etc.. It's a game. Outside a game someone shooting down 6400 ships would not be considered ELITE, but a genocidal mass-murderer. The stick figure and little pictures - even if it was a little octopus - is way to much realism for me, concerning that RL/game difference, thank you very much.

I'd just put some technical diagrams and a wanted poster on it or somesuch, and really not make its appearance too personal.

That's my opinion at least.



L

I must agree that such stick figures would be too sad to have around. I'd never shoot at another ship again...

Of course, this might call for a bumper sticker "Children aboard" to drive off any trigger-happy bastards coming for my cargo...

Simon B wrote:

Well... a torpedo is a kind of missile. Albeit, one that travels on or under the water. Vis.

I'm quite familiar with naval weaponry and their definitions. Thus, in space there would by no real difference. But if we want to make a distinction and use the term torpedo in game, then using some of the differences between a missile and a torpedo in real life, (moves slower, search patterns, lingering even, sub-munitions in some cases, long endurance, and so on) makes sense. So a missile with long endurance, hyperspace capable (one jump) but slow could be an idea.

Gimi wrote:

Simon B wrote:

Well... a torpedo is a kind of missile. Albeit, one that travels on or under the water. Vis.

I'm quite familiar with naval weaponry and their definitions. Thus, in space there would by no real difference. But if we want to make a distinction and use the term torpedo in game, then using some of the differences between a missile and a torpedo in real life, (moves slower, search patterns, lingering even, sub-munitions in some cases, long endurance, and so on) makes sense. So a missile with long endurance, hyperspace capable (one jump) but slow could be an idea.

Although given that something like "Storm Shadow" has a search and loiter capability but is classed as a missile then the only real differential (Earth bound) is Missiles (or hitiles) are above surface and torpedos are below surface weapons.

Gimi wrote:

I'm quite familiar with naval weaponry and their definitions. Thus, in space there would by no real difference. But if we want to make a distinction and use the term torpedo in game, then using some of the differences between a missile and a torpedo in real life, (moves slower, search patterns, lingering even, sub-munitions in some cases, long endurance, and so on) makes sense. So a missile with long endurance, hyperspace capable (one jump) but slow could be an idea.

I've seen torpedos in other space games as a term for slower missiles with a very big warhead.

However, torpedoes do not need to be as slow as the US Navy ones. The russian Shkval for example has proven to exceed 200 knots and there's even development on a 300knot version!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shkval

However, the Shkval is sometimes considered an underwater missile, not a torpedo

Screet

I have done a bit of tidying up, and added the latest models.
I've resized all the effects maps and many of the diffuse maps to 256x256. There is no discernable difference and the resulting tarball is smaller than the last one (a mere 20MiB download) as a result.

All shaders et al are included.
All ships are included.
Bugs found so far are fixed. (All new bugs included.)
I'm getting good at figuring out the normalmap tricks.

I am declaring this package "out of beta" - v1.0 woo hoo.
(For those interested, the readme.1st file includes the version number... which is the date I saved it - 90428 - sounds like a zipcode in Hollywood.)

Now, how do I get a wiki page ...

Griff wrote:

:oops: i forgot to put that fridge in the oxp, i think i meant to go back and swap the childs drawing on the front door, it's a bit twisted and sad to have human stick figures, maybe it would be funny with octopus aliens or something?
excellent preview shots above simon, it's looking really really lovely!

Get rid of the family stuff, and put a beer ad or a biohazard on it.

Simon B wrote:

I am declaring this package "out of beta" - v1.0 woo hoo.

Congratulations on a massive job well done! (until the new bugs get found of course..)

Simon B wrote:

Now, how do I get a wiki page ...

I suppose one pesters Winston, the wiki administrator.

Quick Question for you, Simon...

If someone wanted to re-texture one of the crafts, but wanted to do it at a higher resolution, how could I go about doing so? Say 2x or maybe 4x current?

Screet wrote:

However, the Shkval is sometimes considered an underwater missile, not a torpedo

Screet

How to initiate supercavitation in space... does p-brane cavitate in only 3 or more dimensions...

Germans produced one of their own: http://www.diehl-bgt-defence.de/index.php?id=550&L=1

Note the name.

gorans wrote:

Screet wrote:

However, the Shkval is sometimes considered an underwater missile, not a torpedo ;)

Screet

How to initiate supercavitation in space... does p-brane cavitate in only 3 or more dimensions... :D

I suspect that torpedoes are "slow" not by design - more from nessessity. Anyway, "slow" is relative - torpedoes catch ships don't they?

All watercraft seem slow when you are comparing them to aircraft.

Anyway - the SF-space equiv to supercavitation would be a witchdrive hmmm?

Cmd. Cheyd wrote:

Quick Question for you, Simon...

If someone wanted to re-texture one of the crafts, but wanted to do it at a higher resolution, how could I go about doing so? Say 2x or maybe 4x current?

Well <puzzled> ... you open your image editor and make a picture to the size and resolution you want. Er... does this not work?

Note: I want to encourage some sort of experimetation - which is not going to happen if I have three releases in a week ;) so I guess it's time to settle down and have timed releases from now on. I'll not be updating the neolite oxp for a while (6 months?) - there's one update to companion and that gets a rest too.

In that time, I'll accept bugfixes and general tweaks. Post them here so everyone can share. If there is something major enough that everyone complains, then I'll consider a point release.

Meantime - see what can be done:

The Viper skin is probably the easiest to change...

... this brings the skin more in line with the kinds of suggestions I've been getting. (I'm collecting those skins btw. Keep sending em.) Mixes real-life cops with the standard galcop star.

A little stark though - I can see the value in those blue squares a while back - so - a blockier livery for the viper-pursuit?


There is to be a neolite-galcops oxp - suggestions?

plan - include different liveries for different govts (that are likely to have a say) ... so: commies, dictators, commercial ... add a renegade and a vigilante. Add other ships to the patrolcraft ... perhaps dictators will favor the asp instead? Commercial systems plaster their official craft with sponsorship decals.

Or is it better to do this with the govt oxps?

One of the things I figured with YAH was that it should be govt specific... commercial systems will have lots or fancy billboards, anarchy systems have more like graffiti.

Just wanted to make sure it was that simple. I've just done planetary textures to this point, which are all fully rectangular and utilize the whole of the image space. I wasn't sure if the ships used specifically sized regions of the texture, or if it would scale the image accordingly, or how it works....

Cmd. Cheyd wrote:

Just wanted to make sure it was that simple. I've just done planetary textures to this point, which are all fully rectangular and utilize the whole of the image space. I wasn't sure if the ships used specifically sized regions of the texture, or if it would scale the image accordingly, or how it works....

If you open one of the textures you'll see it's quite self-explanatory. The spacecraft gets cut into panels which are laid out like a dress-makers pattern. The map for the viper (above) goes like this:


Anything you want on the ship goes inside the lines.

The result is like this:


... compare with the pic (above) and you'll see that each area is just a face-on cut-out of part of the ship model.

Adding to that - I have not used any fancy mappings (like you get with planets for eg) so everything is pretty wysiwyg. I could have got better textures etc by using the odd cool algorithm for the mapping, but I wanted them to be easy to repaint.