[UPDATE RELEASE] Xeptatl's Sword OXP

[Cholmondely]

As Spara said this oxp is technically working, you could put it in the oxz manager Cholmondeley

I've not forgotten about this. I've tentatively bamboozled poor old Massively Locked into helping me sort out the mess I made adding the Lib.oxp's extra PAD-pages (for Xeptatl himself and for the home system of the society, Sector6/Estebiin). When that's done - and I know where we stand regarding retextures (ie - if I should wait a bit more), I'll post it.


cbr: what are your views on the retextures?

Is that all-important sentinel station finished? Do you want to post it somewhere so that I can just bung it in to the .oxp? Or do you think that something more camouflaged is needed, so that what is there is currently best?

Would there be point in digging into any of the oxp's with extra asteroids in them? See the "Custom Paintjobs" gallery here.
(ZygoUgo's (2010)-13 has 7 textures for 4 rocks - and needs his resources oxp?;
Asteroid Storm (asteroids from 2011) has 35 including boulders?;
Griff's (2015? earlier?) has 24 excluding splinters and chunks)

Are there any other retextures you would like to add in?


And, generally speaking, does anybody know if there are any oxp's which should be excluded by the manifest.plist?

Telescope? Or Galactic Almanac? Specific über-ships? Specific weapons or equipment?

I can't exclude the cheat-oxp "Long Range Scanner" (no manifest.plist) - and it's not even on the Expansions Manager! But I see it as rather more of a Developer's tool, allowing immediate inspection of everything in the solar system.

[cbr]

Here is my current view for a small station





I wanted something similar like the double pyramid dumbbell stations, it uses pieces/plating from the oxp itself...

[Cholmondely]

Here is my current view for a small station





I wanted something similar like the double pyramid dumbbell stations, it uses pieces/plating from the oxp itself...

It looks good - but then all your stuff looks good....

Do you know enough about what it is supposed to be? I don't. I got the impression from what I read that the small station was supposed to be a camouflaged asteroid, presumably to make it indetectable to the Thargoids. (Hence my wittering on about asteroids in the previous post). But I really don't know, and it may very well not matter anyways.

I've been trying to contact Smivs, and failing dismally (lack of e-mail does not help such matters). He currently runs a Stick-insect company where there is a contact button for those who do have e-mails. Maybe ask him, if you are feeling up to it? (He might even come back to us, who knows?).

[cbr]

Ok, more camouflaged ? !

This small 384mx384mx620m can easily be build and towed, especially if you want several thousand spread amongst the galaxies...

[Cody]

I got the impression from what I read that the small station was supposed to be a camouflaged asteroid, presumably to make it indetectable to the Thargoids.

Something like that, yes (if memory serves - 'twas a long time ago).

[Cholmondely]

Ok, more camouflaged ? !

Umm - browsing has just led me to this:

Jaguar Company base




Edited to add: Having now seen it in game, I think that this is much more the sort of thing Smivs imagined. But is it too big? (1344x1332x1250 m - and it also needs some pruning!)


And, musing, I wonder if we could add HIMSN textures to XS's Thunderchild if the player has HIMSN loaded? Or GN textures if GN were loaded instead? It would give some "contextuality" to things.

GN has no manifest.plist, but maybe the existence of other things in-game could be recognised and reacted to? One of the 20-odd .js scripts, maybe? Or one of the ships?

[Cholmondely]

Alnivel:

thank you for your link to v.3.0.1 of this.

The shipdata.plist didn't load on my AppleMac: I got this:

Code: Select all

06:31:43.610 [plist.parse.failed] OOPropertyListFromData (OOPListParsing.m:72): Failed to parse /Users/accountname/Library/Application Support/Oolite/AddOns/XeptatlsSword_v3.0.1.oxp/Config/shipdata.plist as a property list.

When I dropped it on my AppleMac Terminal (set for plutil) I got this:

Code: Select all

2023-05-22 06:43:45.405 plutil[8345:349038] CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): Old-style plist parser: missing semicolon in dictionary on line 974. Parsing will be abandoned. Break on _CFPropertyListMissingSemicolon to debug.

But the line looks all right to me: script_info = {"bgs_tunnel_shape" = 2};

The only thing was, when I compared it to equivalents elsewhere, they read like this:

Anarchies:

Code: Select all

		script_info = {
			bgs_tunnel_texture = "afl_bgs_hacker_tunnel.png";
			bgs_tunnel_shape = 0;
		};

Superhub:

Code: Select all

	script_info = {
		bgs_tunnel_shape = "1.0";
		bgs_tunnel_texture = "superhub_docking_tunnel.png";
	};

But they had their own BGS textures in the OXPs

This seemed to work: script_info = {bgs_tunnel_shape = "2";}; //rejigged this line
but threw up the same problem on line 1200, and a third elsewhere. When I fixed the others I found that as you said, the docking tunnel was too small.

I've got to go now, but will get back to you.

Otherwise, I found Xeptatl's feather on his LibPAD page, thank you!

[phkb]

There's a bug in the "xs-headquarters" definition in shipdata.plist.

In the "subentities" section, there are 6 subentities with the key "xs-hqarm". The last four of these have an orientation value. However, the value currently in the data is missing a component - only 3 elements are defined, whereas an orientation needs 4.
So change this:

Code: Select all

			{
				"subentity_key" = "xs-hqarm";
				position = (320, 175, 0);
				orientation = (1, 0, 0.6);
			},
			{
				"subentity_key" = "xs-hqarm";
				position = (-320, -175, 0);
				orientation = (1, 0, 0.6);
			},
			{
				"subentity_key" = "xs-hqarm";
				position = (-320, 175, 0);
				orientation = (1, 0, -0.6);
			},
			{
				"subentity_key" = "xs-hqarm";
				position = (320, -175, 0);
				orientation = (1, 0, -0.6);
			}

To this:

Code: Select all

			{
				"subentity_key" = "xs-hqarm";
				position = (320, 175, 0);
				orientation = (1, 0, 0, 0.6);
			},
			{
				"subentity_key" = "xs-hqarm";
				position = (-320, -175, 0);
				orientation = (1, 0, 0, 0.6);
			},
			{
				"subentity_key" = "xs-hqarm";
				position = (-320, 175, 0);
				orientation = (1, 0, 0, -0.6);
			},
			{
				"subentity_key" = "xs-hqarm";
				position = (320, -175, 0);
				orientation = (1, 0, 0, -0.6);
			}

Also, there is an issue with "xs-dumbell-station-2". Look into the end where the missing pyramid was, and you can see right through the model.



The end of the central column needs a texture over it (which I'm thinking probably isn't in the model), or a lot more flashers so you can't see past them.

[cbr]

Umm - browsing has just led me to this:

Jaguar Company base




Edited to add: Having now seen it in game, I think that this is much more the sort of thing Smivs imagined. But is it too big? (1344x1332x1250 m - and it also needs some pruning!)


And, musing, I wonder if we could add HIMSN textures to XS's Thunderchild if the player has HIMSN loaded? Or GN textures if GN were loaded instead? It would give some "contextuality" to things.

GN has no manifest.plist, but maybe the existence of other things in-game could be recognised and reacted to? One of the 20-odd .js scripts, maybe? Or one of the ships?

Could a stripped erh be the asteroid your looking for?

[Cholmondely]

Umm - browsing has just led me to this:

Jaguar Company base




Edited to add: Having now seen it in game, I think that this is much more the sort of thing Smivs imagined. But is it too big? (1344x1332x1250 m - and it also needs some pruning!)


And, musing, I wonder if we could add HIMSN textures to XS's Thunderchild if the player has HIMSN loaded? Or GN textures if GN were loaded instead? It would give some "contextuality" to things.

GN has no manifest.plist, but maybe the existence of other things in-game could be recognised and reacted to? One of the 20-odd .js scripts, maybe? Or one of the ships?

Could a stripped erh be the asteroid your looking for?

As I'd been bumbling on ad nauseam, I was looking for something almost "invisible" as a dockable.

To my untutored eye, cbr, that does indeed look a lot better, thank you. Does it work?

And, since thanks to phkb we now have external docking, we might eventually end up with an external dock landing pad which is "invisible" until one "turns on" the landing lights, so to speak.

If it does work and you can add it into the oxp, I'll happily post it and we can then get it out (if I can fathom out the modernised machiavellian method of uploading to the Expansions Manager...).

As I said at the outset, I was after something as inconspicuous as possible. I hope that you don't feel that I gave you the runaround. I wasn't trying to.

And thanks for bearing this one in mind!