Oolite Bulletins

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Wouldn't it have a brand name on the side though "Acme Pods" or something rather than the word "Cargo"?

I think it's an acronym: "Contains A Random Gift, Or..."

Oooh, thought of another one: Carelessly Abandoned. Rush & Grab for Ownership.

(Now would someone chase me to bed? Please?)

I think we should have plenty of generic names for shipping pods - IntlMOovers - AnglOoPacific - OoverseasShipping - CoscOo - etc...

Hi, all. (specially Griff, the author of this excellent looking OXP).

I am back to playing Oolite; 1.74.2, after a hiatus of a few months, the last version I played was 1.73.(something). I played around a bit with the NormalMapped Ships OXP a little back then, in whatever state it was in at the time.

Please don't misunderstand this to be one of those "whining, annoying, impatient" posts; that is not my intent.

(1) As far as I can tell from research on the Wiki, this forum, and 2 short temporary experiments, the Griffs Normalmapped Ships OXP just needs *2* items to be complete; a Dodo and an Iso station; confirm? That is, ALL objects / ships are represented in the OXP but for the last 2 station types?

(2) (this doesn't need an answer yet, just a comment for now, until the OXP is finished); I downloaded the Griffs Normalmapped Cobra III w/ changeable player decals, looked at the code, couldn't really understand how one is supposed to SET the decal on his own ship?

(3) Sort of along the same lines... the player starts a new game, and he will have the DEFAULT Oolite 1.74.2 Cobra III texture / model (unless another OXP is installed that might affect it...). Would the "most accepted and logical" way of getting a Normalmapped Cobra III be to trade in the old Cob3 for a new Cob3? From a post early in this thread, I guess one could hack his savegame w/ Notepad++ to "change" the player default Cob3 into a Normalmapped Cob3 (is that what most people do?). (And is THAT somehow how you "set" the player decal?)

(4) ("whiny" part) Any idea when this OXP might be considered complete (whine, whine, whine)?

Sorry... just asking. I am satisfied with my current level of "eye-candied-ness" after installing 1.74.2; after experimenting w/ some OXPs, I am using Smivs Ships and Smivs Accessories (very nice looking, simple OXPs to install and use, takes effect immediately... basically works as a *replacement* rather than an *addition*). And System Demux for planets.

Asteroids, we need asteroids too!

Kaks wrote:

Asteroids, we need asteroids too!

I thought the latest version had rocks in it? (maybe I'm mistaken....)

There is a VERY NICE looking Rock Hermit in it.
(thought just occurred... would this interefere w/ "Rock Hermit Locator OXP"? Probably not, I guess it depends...)

Yeah, there are asteroids in the set, but I'm not sure if they're in the all-in-one oxp yet.
The rock hermit is beautiful, and does not interfere with the hermit locator.

Ooops!
Correction: more asteroids, I want more asteroids!

The player decal shouldn't be too hard to set, but it does vary depending on if you play with the all-in-1 shipset or you if you use a selection of individual ship oxps
all-in-1 shipset:Look inside the Texture folder of the griff_shipset_all_in_1.oxp, there's a png file in there called "griff_player_decal.png", just overwrite this file with a png of own decal, make sure you don't change the filename as the player ships in the oxp will only look for a graphic with this filename

Individual ship downloads:
If you're playing oolite with individual oxp version of these ships, you also need to download and add to oolite the "griff_normalmapped_ship_decals.oxp", it's on page 2 of the list of oxps at my box.net site (link in the first post of this thread).
Once you've installed this oxp, look inside it's textures folder and replace the "griff_player_decal.png" with your own decal artwork (keep the same filename).
Decals need to be at a "power of 2" size, so something like 256x256 or 512x512 pixels work best, there's a post somewhere i made where i explain how to use gimp to cut the decal out from the background using an alpha channel, i'll dig it up and post the link here when i find it, i think it's probably earlier on in this thread.
edit: oh, my megalomania knows no bounds, it's got a thread of it's own!https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t= ... multidecal the decal alpha channel guide is on page 2

If all of the above doesn't apply to your problem and you're asking instead how to size and position a decal on a ship, then it does get a bit more complex - decal positioning and scaling is handled in the shipdata.plist of the ship you're interested in, eg here's the relevant lines from the "griff_normalmapped_adder_player" ship in the Decal1_Scale_and_Position line, the first 2 numbers are the U (horizontal) and V (vertical) positions on the UV map for the center point of the decal, you'll need to convert the ships .dat file back to an obj, then load this into wings and switch to the UV map view in order to see the layout of the UV map, this'll give you an idea of where to position the decal, here's an image of the adder UV map overlaid on top of it's texture - i've drawn a red X at roughly 0.39 0.39 on the map where the decal gets placed (I think the UV 0,0 point is the top left corner of the map)


the 3rd number on this line (in this case 8.5) is the scale of the decal, making this number smaller actually makes the decal bigger when drawn onto the ship!

The Decal1_Rotation = { type = "float"; value = 0.0; }; is simpler to understand, it's just the amount of rotation to apply to the decal, the number is in Radians and can be +ve or -ve

All the shaders in the use code from Ahruman's example shaders, here's the post (and another one a bit further down the page) explaining it's workings
https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t= ... c&start=62 if you want to get into the brain melting technical stuff

Griff;

Thank you VERY much for that, it is a perfectly clear, easy to understand explanation.

I screen-captured that entire post, resized it, and saved the image in my folder of Oolite notes, hints, advice, etc.

Very much appreciated.

I will (probably) download & use the OXP when it is completely-complete (is that reduntantly-redundant?); in the meantime I am using another shipset (Smivs v2).

Griff wrote:

Pssst, added the constrictor
top secret looking pic:

Griff, tough ship you designed there. I killed quite a lot over the past few days while testing trunk stuff. It took me some time to find out the best tactic to kill it. The first few times the ship was mainly killing me
The biggest difference is the rear laser. The original didn't have rear weapons, but your version has. Most of my shield damage was caused by his new aft lasers, not his front ones.

And since 1.74 the constrictor is a stronger opponent against deadly players. (I fought him with an elite commander). Normally a player will fight him as a competent player but the rear lasers may still be a pain.

At least one can temporarily remove the oxp when you can't kill the shader version. I am not complaining: I did like the fight.

Eric Walch wrote:

The biggest difference is the rear laser.

Yeah, that rear laser can cause damage. I really like this ship, as it can be tough to catch and kill.

El Viejo wrote:

Eric Walch wrote:

The biggest difference is the rear laser.

Yeah, that rear laser can cause damage. I really like this ship, as it can be tough to catch and kill.

I assume you used trunk. In trunk are two bug fixed that make rear lasers more dangerous than 1.74 or older.

- Flying away from the target had some problems with precision navigation in the past. That being fixed, the ship now flies towards you, passes you and flies exactly away from you when in the possession of rear lasers. That enables your opponent to target the rear laser already very shortly after passing exactly at you. He is than still at a close distance and he can't miss for the first few seconds until you manage to react.

- And there was a bug that when a ship was using rear lasers at close range and you shot him, he forgot to take rear weapons into account when evaluation the next action and started jinking. Now your opponent keeps his lasers active and you are the ship that must jink to avoid his rear fire.

I rarely use trunk, so have only encountered the Constrictor a couple of times there.
Even in 1.74 though, it can be a hard kill. I always smile when it makes one of its rare appearances.

The Constrictor makes more than one appearance?

JD wrote:

The Constrictor makes more than one appearance?

I've modified my copy of Griff's oxp, so that it appears very occasionally as a pirate, sometimes along with ordinary pirates.
It's too good-looking a ship to only see it once.