Oolite Bulletins

Moderator: Split from Fast Forward Mode topic in Discussion.

Thargoid wrote:

At the risk of perhaps re-opening a debate, I believe it is due to be removed from the next stable release (1.76), or at least that was the last plan I heard. As mentioned above, it's designed as a debug and testing tool rather than a game-play one.

You can compile the source in 3 different ways: debug, test-release & deployment. When you compile it as deployment, you will already see that TAF is missing. And with shift-F you only see the FPS value, all other debug numbers are also left out. Also the console won't work with a deployment build.

Also things like drawing bounding boxes is gone or hiding the HUD for cleaner pictures. I noticed that shift-8 no longer makes screenshots. It is new to me that this is also considered as debug feature. (I knew that the js command to take this screenshots would be removed).

Quite a lot of this seems to be a backwards step - taking screenshots is a "debug" feature - surely not... (going to make the Screenshot thread somewhat under utilised... (Given that it has been shown that on PCs simply hitting "Print Screen" generates different results (including screen tearing) from the dedicated Oolite-internal screen dump))

As for TAF - as I've always said - I'd rather TAF than Torus drive, so I guess, when I upgrade it's compile from source and in debug mode.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Quite a lot of this seems to be a backwards step - taking screenshots is a "debug" feature - surely not... (going to make the Screenshot thread somewhat under utilised... (Given that it has been shown that on PCs simply hitting "Print Screen" generates different results (including screen tearing) from the dedicated Oolite-internal screen dump))

You know, I am not sure why screenshots were disabled in deployment. I did a quick check on the SVN logs and the feature was disabled by Ahruman back in December. The strange thing is that this was part of a commit titled "Joystick code cleanup" and the more I look at it the more I get convinced that it was unintentional and that it was meant to be part of disabling the takeSnapshot JS method. I don't see why screenshots shouldn't be part of the deployment builds.

another_commander wrote:

You know, I am not sure why screenshots were disabled in deployment.

For me is also seems a deployment feature. Related to that: pressing 'o' while paused hides the HUD. It used to be a debug feature, but 2 years ago in r2749 you turned it into a real feature.

another_commander's svn comment wrote:

HUD hiding is no more a debug flag, but a proper feature. While in pause, 'o' toggles it on/off. Added visibility of HUD hidenness to scripts via the player.ship.hudHidden read/write boolean property.

But in deployment it still does not work. Although all the variables like 'hudHidden' can be set in deployment, the final code in universe.m that starts the drawing/hiding is enclosed in debug flags and won't compile in deployment.

.. It starts going off-topic now.

Shift-8 was a full-blown feature in 1.65, so this is indeed a regression bug!

I seem to remember this bug was introduced because we were testing shaderified planets, and at the time Oolite would automatically output the generated texture maps upon entering a system. You could then simply disable that by toggling a temporary debug switch...

I've got a couple of other fixes waiting to be committed, I'll see if I can fix this (and the hud one) in the next hour or so...

Cheers,

Kaks

Alright... I'm a little confused and need some clarification please: in the normal 'players' version, what is staying and what is going?

My 2Cr worth.
Keep the screenshots and the HUD disabling. These are much-used and really useful features and should be available in the 'normal' game as it's downloaded.
I'm also really not sure about disabling Torus drive. It's a useful feature and is much easier to use than TAF. OK, so NPCs don't have it, but neither do I when any NPC is in scanner range, and if they are out of scanner range for all I know (when I'm in immersion mode) they could be Torus-ing as well.

I think the TAF could remain if hostile NPCs can easily and reliably shoot down the player when it's being used – otherwise it's just a cheat mode (fine for testing, but it shouldn't be a part of the core game).

Replacing the Torus system with a properly functioning TAF would be a doable, and positive, long-term, post-MNSR development, with lots of potential gameplay and immersion benefits.

Disembodied wrote:

I think the TAF could remain if hostile NPCs can easily and reliably shoot down the player when it's being used – otherwise it's just a cheat mode (fine for testing, but it shouldn't be a part of the core game).

Replacing the Torus system with a properly functioning TAF would be a doable, and positive, long-term, post-MNSR development, with lots of potential gameplay and immersion benefits.

erm, I sincerely hope there will be a lot more discussion before attempting to remove a key Elite feature! My vote: KEEP THE TORUS!!!!!!
By all means make things configurable, but please leave the Elite bits as they are for those of use who care.

m4r35n357 wrote:

erm, I sincerely hope there will be a lot more discussion before attempting to remove a key Elite feature! My vote: KEEP THE TORUS!!!!!!
By all means make things configurable, but please leave the Elite bits as they are for those of use who care.

The actual player experience, most of the time, wouldn't be very different (except you wouldn't be required to sit around waiting as you plod through another masslock) – and the game already has plenty of core changes which differ from Elite (e.g. fuel injectors, non-player-centric system activity, etc.). But I should have added "this would represent a major step away from E/Oolite". This is really an Oolite 2.0 idea at least (and it's also worth pointing out that I have no say in where, how or if the game develops, beyond being a member of the forum).

Disembodied wrote:

except you wouldn't be required to sit around waiting as you plod through another masslock

Ha... for me, that is all part of the 'immersion factor', and I like it.

OK, here is a summary of what the current status is and what we think it's going to happen. I do hope that Ahruman will make an appearance some time soon and confirm this, but the situation we had planned until recently is as follows:

The stable version is scheduled to be released as a "Deployment" build. This build of the game is meant for end-users who just want to play and has the characterisics that Eric mentioned earlier (no Debug Console connectivity, no Graphviz generation for AIs, reduced debugging support in exchange for some performance improvement, no tools to assist in localization of system descriptions, no OXP verifier, no capability to switch off HUD (I consider this a regression bug, as Kaks mentioned before), no TAF and no ability to take screenshots via JS). Torus is not to be touched for Oolite 1.x, regardless of build configuration.

An updater program is scheduled to "promote" the Deployment build to Test Release status, which is what we have now. So it won't be necessary to build from source if anyone wants the Test Release build with all the goodies incorporated. Running the updater program on the already downloaded Deployment will suffice. Test Release is what you would need if you are developing OXPs. It is also what you might need if you really want TAF, but be aware that TAF in its current implementation is not suited for gameplay, because the AIs get somewhat messed up at anything above TAF x2. It is just something we hacked in for speeding up the game when we want to test stuff or slowing it down when we want to take glorious screenshots. That's all there is to it.

Personal opinions follow:
In order to be able to make a correct deployment release, we need to have at least one release candidate published in this configuration. This means that 1.75.4 could be released as Deployment, so that people have a chance to test it and make sure that the only things disabled are the things we intended to disable and that the configuration works without issues. Following that, we can then go for full-final stable as planned. This of course means that some more time will be needed before a final realease.

However, the recent developments with Berlios shutting down may have to bring a change in the plans. It is pretty obvious that we do not have enough time to publish a release candidate in Deployment configuration, test it for a period of time and then go for stable. Independently of that, right now none of us in the team seems to have time in our hands or ability to migrate the project to another hosting service and, most importantly, the project is without a leader. My idea and proposal at this stage is to close any pending issues that can be closed in the time we have left and publish a final stable version in Test Release mode, same as what we've always had, before the end of the year.

As I said, consider this my personal point of view. It is not intended as a guideline or an official plan. It is just what I think is reasonable, given the circumstances and the present availability of the developers, which is unfortunately limited at this stage.

Disembodied wrote:

m4r35n357 wrote:

erm, I sincerely hope there will be a lot more discussion before attempting to remove a key Elite feature! My vote: KEEP THE TORUS!!!!!!
By all means make things configurable, but please leave the Elite bits as they are for those of use who care.

The actual player experience, most of the time, wouldn't be very different (except you wouldn't be required to sit around waiting as you plod through another masslock) – and the game already has plenty of core changes which differ from Elite (e.g. fuel injectors, non-player-centric system activity, etc.). But I should have added "this would represent a major step away from E/Oolite". This is really an Oolite 2.0 idea at least (and it's also worth pointing out that I have no say in where, how or if the game develops, beyond being a member of the forum).

use of injectors is optional, you do get my point about optional/configurable stuff? FWIW, I don't have docking computers installed, and I find it improves my enjoyment of the game greatly, but I wouldn't presume to remove that option for others . . . .

another_commander wrote:

OK, here is a summary of what the current status is and what we think it's going to happen.

Thanks Admiral, for the clarification. For the record, I like the Torus drive, and do not like the TAF (for gameplay).
Will the ability to hide the hud be lost, or kept? If I read it right, shift+f will only display the fps... the entity count would be useful at times, as well.

I am a little puzzled by some of this, specifically the suggestion that HUD removal and the ability to take a screenshot could be removed. At first glance these are very negative steps, and I don't see the logic behind them.