Oolite Bulletins

Hello,

I have no knowledge of the writing of OXPs, so please forgive any possible vagueness in the description of what I wanted to achieve.

I am using the latest editions of "Galactic Navy" and "Deep Horizons - Navigation Buoy", and have noticed that while the station and witchpoint buoys are replaced by the very aesthetically pleasing DH buoy, the buoy outside the SecCom is not, and remains the original.

1. Is it possible to edit the two OXPs such that the SecCom buoy would now take the DH appearance?

2. Is it, under the licences of the respective release, legal to do so?

Thank you for any help offered.
~ Sam

FeelGone wrote:

1. Is it possible to edit the two OXPs such that the SecCom buoy would now take the DH appearance?

Shouldn't be too difficult, just search, compare, and fiddle with 'em.

2. Is it, under the licences of the respective release, legal to do so?

You can pretty much edit it to your heart's content, as long as you don't redistribute the edited version.

NB if you're using one of microsoft's dreadful "operating" systems, be careful which editor you use: some of them add in spurious line terminators & such that cause gnustep/oolite to barf.

fronclynne wrote:

NB if you're using one of microsoft's dreadful "operating" systems, be careful which editor you use: some of them add in spurious line terminators & such that cause gnustep/oolite to barf.

To be specific, don't use Notepad. Notepad++ is OK as are most other text editors.

FeelGone wrote:

1. Is it possible to edit the two OXPs such that the SecCom buoy would now take the DH appearance?

In GN there is a file shipdata.plist. Somewhere in the file you will find a 'like_ship" and shortly behind "buoy". Change "buoy" onto "DHI_Nav_Buoy" and it will use a copy of that buoy.

I'm familiar with that problem and when I had Windows I would use Notepad++ or gedit for editing code files, but now have Linux anyway.

Eric Walch wrote:

FeelGone wrote:

1. Is it possible to edit the two OXPs such that the SecCom buoy would now take the DH appearance?

In GN there is a file shipdata.plist. Somewhere in the file you will find a 'like_ship" and shortly behind "buoy". Change "buoy" onto "DHI_Nav_Buoy" and it will use a copy of that buoy.

Thanks, that's what I was looking for.

And it works!

However, I have now realized that the buoys in other OXPs ("Buoy Repair", "Rock Hermit Locator", and, I would imagine, any OXP that generates non-station, non-witchpoint buoys that do not have a custom look) also share this property. I assume I could go through the config folders of each OXP and make the same substitution, but do you know if there is a way of changing the DH file itself i.e. making one change instead of many? I notice a file called shipdata_overrides.plist, but am obviously reluctant to start changing things here and there without a proper understanding of the coding process.

~ Sam

FeelGone-
I'm the author of the Deep Horizon oxps, including Nav Buoy. If you'll send me a list of where all you notice buoys, I will see about incorporating changes where possible to cover them in the next release. I have already done so for Rock Hermit Locator in my local copy. I have been a little busy lately, so haven't been around doing Oolite lately, but will be back again soon.

Are there any other Nav Buoys available other than Smiv's and the Deep Horizon one? The former is too simple and the latter too complex(for my system). Thanks and sorry for the Ninja but the topic-title suits the question here

MAWL wrote:

Are there any other Nav Buoys available other than Smiv's and the Deep Horizon one? The former is too simple and the latter too complex(for my system).

http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Accessories_OXP maybe? It's just a reskin, though.

Frankly, I'm surprised the Deep Horizons buoy is too complex: I'm running it on a 1GHz p3-m with 1.25G RAM . . . does Oolite itself even run on lower spec machines?

fronclynne wrote:

Frankly, I'm surprised the Deep Horizons buoy is too complex: I'm running it on a 1GHz p3-m with 1.25G RAM . . . does Oolite itself even run on lower spec machines?

I, too was mystified when suddenly my smoothly running Oolite became laggy. I thought I had messed it up somehow. It would hang on a black screen whenever exiting a station or jumping to a new system, and the appearance of anything "new" would cause the game to lock up for few seconds. I was seriously considering a reinstall as I was sitting at the "New Commmander Y/N" screen looking at the different models when the Deep Horizons Nav Buoy came up, it took several seconds for the model to load as opposed to all the other models. As soon as I removed the OXP my game returned to normal with no lag.

I am using a Dual Core 1 GHz w/ 873mb Ram. I have about 40 OXPs rolling normally.

MAWL-
I am using some very large textures in that OXP. Maybe even the original authoring dimensions... Not sure if I ever reduced them now that I think about it. I can probably make you a version that would utilize far less memory... If you're interested?

MAWL, what graphics card are you using and what memory does it have? My guess is Intel or onboard graphics with low memory. When the system runs out of memory on the gfx card, usually the case with very big textures and shaders (which the DH buoy also has), it tries to offload to standard RAM, which is way slower and the result is basically loss of 3D acceleration. If this is the case, I am afraid that only a better graphics card or maybe newer drivers can solve the problem.

I can second this I'm afraid. My computer only has on-board Intel graphics and it can't handle this OXP either

another_commander wrote:

MAWL, what graphics card are you using and what memory does it have? My guess is Intel or onboard graphics with low memory. When the system runs out of memory on the gfx card, usually the case with very big textures and shaders (which the DH buoy also has), it tries to offload to standard RAM, which is way slower and the result is basically loss of 3D acceleration. If this is the case, I am afraid that only a better graphics card or maybe newer drivers can solve the problem.

I'm not a buoy, I'm all man...

Ah, I have max-texture-size (from ~/GNUstep/Defaults/.GNUstepDefaults [qv]) set to 1024. & that may be the difference, being as how this primitive monster has crippled i855GM graphics.

Cmd. Cheyd wrote:

MAWL-
I am using some very large textures in that OXP. Maybe even the original authoring dimensions... Not sure if I ever reduced them now that I think about it. I can probably make you a version that would utilize far less memory... If you're interested?

I would be very interested I'm sure that others would like to see it too, if it's not too bothersome or difficult to do(I've coded some LUA so I know the work involved).

You guys are too perceptive, lol, you are all correct in one way or another; I have a crappy on-board GPU that is very limited and I frequently have to run things at reduced detail. I really do need to update my system, its about 5 years old now. I tend to prefer game-play over graphics so I don't mind so much, but sometimes the lack of hardware can be a real obstacle to having fun

fronclynne wrote:

Ah, I have max-texture-size (from ~/GNUstep/Defaults/.GNUstepDefaults [qv]) set to 1024. & that may be the difference, being as how this primitive monster has crippled i855GM graphics.

Is this something I could do to improve performance? I am running Ubuntu 11.04.


Thanks everyone for your help and suggestions.