Oolite Bulletins

Ark wrote:

I would be more that happy to host in the wiki such an alternative oxp in the youradhere!!! wiki page if you are willing to create replacements for the sidewinder defenters of the constores in the future.

That should not be a problem - how are the sidewinders different from the default? Will reskinned neolite sidewinders work?

And I am sure that Eric would not have an objection to host an alternative behemoth noelite oxp in the wiki behemoth page as long as this oxp:
1.Do not add or remove anything from the original oxp.

The megaships must add and remove from the original, I cannot avoid this since the changed shape dictates different subentity placements.

I have also added another type of behemoth - since there was a natural progression from 0 to 2 rotating sections. But it is nothing which spoils the intent of the original. So, no difference in the scripts, escorts etc.

2.The folder of this oxp has the same name with the original one so the player will be forced to remove the original before installing the neolite version.

I can do that inside the tarball no sweat. The main issue will be for players being able to tell which they have installed.

What does the name mess up? Probably a dependent oxp which looks to see if behemoths is installed? I can fix that when I modify them.

3.Do not change anything else except from the design of the ship.

Oh yes - not my intention to make any changes which are not implied by the design.

Also Eric has not responded to pm. Yet.

Navy ships include star-trek style craft.
I can just leave it and make sure it calls neolite craft where there is an overlap?

Create neolite versions - so they are not so star-trek?

Use pre-existing ships in the roles - behemoths for carriers, etc.

This last is where I am leaning. I'll still need craft for cruisers and such like but that should not be too much of a problem.

However, I'm also looking at how this and behemoth etc fit with the others.

Simon B wrote:

I have also added another type of behemoth - since there was a natural progression from 0 to 2 rotating sections. But it is nothing which spoils the intent of the original. So, no difference in the scripts, escorts etc....

What does the name mess up? Probably a dependent oxp which looks to see if behemoths is installed? I can fix that when I modify them.

The original Behemoth was also designed to show scripters you can change part of the texture for different ships without replacing the whole texture. It happens by only changing a nameplate so all the behemoths have an unique name.

What now goes wrong by oxp like galactic navy is that it tries to stay as close to the original by using a like_ship. Than it only changes the .mod to get its new texture with the changed nameplate. But it inherits the shaders and subentities from your ships. This results in a mixed ship with everything misplaced.

When you had just renamed your ships to an unique name nothing would have gone wrong. And when people preferred your ships over the original they could just leave them out.

And about the scripts: you used old scripts for the behemoth. Yours are legacy while the behemoth has JS. This results that both stay active and both oxp's add behemoth ships when both oxp's are installed.

I only can repeat: the best way to avoid conflicts is using unique names for your ships.

Simon B wrote:

I can do that inside the tarball no sweat. The main issue will be for players being able to tell which they have installed.

The folder name of the oxp is just a extra measure to ensure that the player will not install both of them.
New players tend to download and install everything without reading so a warning: “Please do not install both of them!!” may not be enough.
But maybe i am overreacting o this one Ignore that

Eric Walch wrote:

Simon B wrote:

I have also added another type of behemoth - since there was a natural progression from 0 to 2 rotating sections. But it is nothing which spoils the intent of the original. So, no difference in the scripts, escorts etc....

What does the name mess up? Probably a dependent oxp which looks to see if behemoths is installed? I can fix that when I modify them.

The original Behemoth was also designed to show scripters you can change part of the texture for different ships without replacing the whole texture. It happens by only changing a nameplate so all the behemoths have an unique name.

What now goes wrong by oxp like galactic navy is that it tries to stay as close to the original by using a like_ship. Than it only changes the .mod to get its new texture with the changed nameplate. But it inherits the shaders and subentities from your ships. This results in a mixed ship with everything misplaced.

When you had just renamed your ships to an unique name nothing would have gone wrong. And when people preferred your ships over the original they could just leave them out.

And about the scripts: you used old scripts for the behemoth. Yours are legacy while the behemoth has JS. This results that both stay active and both oxp's add behemoth ships when both oxp's are installed.

I only can repeat: the best way to avoid conflicts is using unique names for your ships.

Q: Could the nameplate thingy now be done via Ahruman/Griff's technique of decal application?

Apologies for muddying the water of this discussion, but I'm curious as I have plans of my own in this area (naming via decal application)

Eric Walch wrote:

Simon B wrote:

What does the name mess up? Probably a dependent oxp which looks to see if behemoths is installed? I can fix that when I modify them.

The original Behemoth was also designed to show scripters you can change part of the texture for different ships without replacing the whole texture. It happens by only changing a nameplate so all the behemoths have an unique name.

That's not actually something that depends on the oxp name though is it?

The oxps that depend on the behemoth will have to be modified anyway, as the nameplate would end up in the wrong place even if everything else worked properly.

There are also other methods for getting names on ships.

For the interim, you may want to go through the megaships shipdata.plist and change all instances of "behemoth" to "megaship" and then behe to mega. Then it won't replace any ships. Should be doable from a text editor find and replace.

Trouble is - you'll still have to modify the scripts.

If you think that a production oxp should not need such tweaking, you are right. megaships is not a production oxp.

OTOH - you could locate the contrary code in navy and change it - and tell me what you did ;) That is the point of producing the megaships the way I did after all.

And about the scripts: you used old scripts for the behemoth. Yours are legacy while the behemoth has JS. This results that both stay active and both oxp's add behemoth ships when both oxp's are installed.

I used the scripts that came with the behemoth oxp I got off the wiki. If you know an up to date one, point me to it.

To be plain, the neolite editions of ships should not be run with the standard edition. Wierd stuff will happen. The megaships oxp is not obviously a replacement behemoth oxp though - the different name is because these designs are so completely different I did not expect them to be accepted as behemoths at all.

A proper neolite edition behemoth would actually look quite different.

However, they turn out to have been liked so go figure.

I only can repeat: the best way to avoid conflicts is using unique names for your ships.

I was not trying to avoid conflicts - and this way I don't have to be psychic about which oxps it will affect - people will shout about it.

The duplication of names worked for the simper craft so that other oxps did not need to be modified to use the neolite editions. This seems to be proving cumbersome for the more complex craft.

I'll have proper compatible behemoth/navy set soonish. Perhaps I should put "testing" in the oxp name to alert people.

I will be assisted by a list of dependent oxps. At the moment I am analyzing the ship roles and capabilities.

I know about:
behemoth
behemoth spacewar
navy

If there are issues with any oxps or compatabilities - for goodness sakes tell me. Or better yet, fix it, and show me the fix.

I know about lovecats and black monks. Random hits works well, but uses only core neolite ships (for now). I have an unnofficial modification which will use all neolite editions - mostly.

The big issues right now will be the wiki - making sure the two production-level oxps don't mess up too much (neolite and companion), and figuring out how far to go in de-star-trekking the navy.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Q: Could the nameplate thingy now be done via Ahruman/Griff's technique of decal application?

That's what I'm looking at. Don't see why not, it seems ideal.

Since I seem to havwe been mis-identifying oxps - I figured I'd better double-check.

http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Galactic_Navy_OXP
Galactic Navy - is not the oxp I have. I was thinking of "navy starships" ... which is star trek oid. That makes a difference!

I'll add thargorn threat to my list.

I see there is a new edition of Random Hits out.

instead of the 'smiley face' decal shader example code, maybe Ahrumans Distance Mapping shader code would work better, it's designed to make large sharp decals from small original images, the code is at the bottom of this page: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.ph ... &start=240

The only problem i can see is making the distance maps, Ahrumans pre-made app is mac only, the source code is available but i've no idea how you compile that into an exe. i wonder if it's possible to fake a resonable distance map image in photoshop using the outer and inner glow filers?

Griff wrote:

The only problem i can see is making the distance maps, Ahrumans pre-made app is mac only, the source code is available but i've no idea how you compile that into an exe. i wonder if it's possible to fake a resonable distance map image in photoshop using the outer and inner glow filers?

No. Distance maps look like blurred versions of the high-res source, but they’re not, and the difference is important.

One small question
What are the 2 Boa skiff ships inside the neolite basic package?

I have created a wiki page for neolite ships and neolite companion. Not much to see yet but at least a good starting point and a reference for new players to download them.

http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Neolite_Ships

@SimonB
I strongly suggest the use of a version number from now one so i made both of them an initial release (ver 1.0).

I am planing to put more things in this page in the future.
The fact that we can not upload images to the wiki is a serious obstacle for the moment

Ark wrote:

@SimonB
I strongly suggest the use of a version number from now one so i made both of them an initial release (ver 1.0).

And probably also use the requires.plist as I noticed with the behemoth replacement that it sets minimum oolite version at 1.65 while it needs the normal mapping of Oolte 1.73 to work.

Ark wrote:

@SimonB
I strongly suggest the use of a version number from now one so i made both of them an initial release (ver 1.0).

And probably also use the requires.plist as I noticed with the behemoth replacement that it sets minimum oolite version at 1.65 while it needs the normal mapping of Oolte 1.73 to work.

About were to get the latest behemoth.oxp? On the wiki pages. Version 2.5 was already put there at November 2008.

Ark wrote:

One small question
What are the 2 Boa skiff ships inside the neolite basic package?

https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?p=64762#64762
... look at the neoboa poster.