Oolite Bulletins

I seem to have ended up with a few ideas on the go at once, so I thought I'd set up a thread to keep things in one place until they become fully fledged.

At the moment, I am working on a complete retexture job on Commies.oxp in order to provide improved eye-candy. I intend to release the updated texture pack in the not too distant future. Further down the line I may consider updating the 3D models also.

Corporate Systems OXP will add flavour to corporate systems, relating to the big bucks fuel industry and will feature new ships, a dockable station and trading opportunities. Missions may also be implemented in a Phase 2, depending on my ability to script. This is a bit further off

Another idea I have had is that of themed systems. Some OXPs have already been introducing vessels and stations borrowed from other sci-fi environments, for example Star Wars. These proposed additions would provide eye-candy but not alter the game in other ways. Additionally they would probably only alter a single chosen star system each, not altered by existing flavour OXPs such as commies, anarchies, corporate, dictatorships or feudal systems. For example:-

1) Arthur C Clarke's 2001 saga, would include the major spaceships from 2001 and 2010 movies including a spaceborne monolith that I'd really strongly recommend that you do not attack.
2) Mongo System, with vessels based on the 1980 Flash Gordon movie.
3) PPK, featuring 5 new small fighter craft and a station based upon the music videos of Russian techno group PPK.

Sounds excellent - the last one is particularly intriguing!

Amaranth wrote:

including a spaceborne monolith

I bet that was difficult to model :p

Amaranth wrote:

with vessels based on the 1980 Flash Gordon movie.

YES!!!

seriously though, good one for (re)doing commies & Corporates.

I love the flavours.

DH, If you have not seen the them, here are youtube links to the videos for PPK Resurrection, and Reload.

These are very early stage WIPs of
1) The shuttle in Flash Gordon used by General Klytus when visiting the Hawkmen floating castle thing. I need to change the front end a bit to reduce the poly count.



2) One of the craft from PPK Resurrection



Is it possible for an NPC to deploy an energy bomb? and if so will it kill a fully iron-assed Cobra Mk3?

Amaranth wrote:

Is it possible for an NPC to deploy an energy bomb? and if so will it kill a fully iron-assed Cobra Mk3?

In a word, No. NPCs cannot have energy bombs - it would be a gamebreaker if the player could be suddenly destroyed without warning and with no possible means of avoiding it. This 'unfairness' is one of the reasons in a future release of Oolite the energy bomb will be removed. NPCs can have Q-bombs.

Thanks for the help with the energy bomb idea. I had thought of the monolith doing something really nasty to you should you decide to try and shoot it down.

The model building is progressing gradually and I think there's not much more I can do with the commies retextures.

I think I'll add the PPK ships to the corporate systems oxp as executive runarounds for the time being.

One day this may also see the light of day in an OXP also

Amaranth wrote:

At the moment, I am working on a complete retexture job on Commies.oxp in order to provide improved eye-candy.

Much appreciated - in particular, your commie defender looks so sleek, I am thinking about flying one myself.

Another idea I have had is that of themed systems. ...
For example:-

1) Arthur C Clarke's 2001 saga, would include the major spaceships from 2001 and 2010 movies including a spaceborne monolith that I'd really strongly recommend that you do not attack.
2) Mongo System, with vessels based on the 1980 Flash Gordon movie.
3) PPK, featuring 5 new small fighter craft and a station based upon the music videos of Russian techno group PPK.

I had been trying to build a Dark Star oxp , but the darn buggers always bombed the planet and everything out of existence before I ever got to see the ship.

I had thought of the monolith doing something really nasty to you should you decide to try and shoot it down.

You can easily have the monolith acting as q-bomb when destroyed, via shipdata.plist, like this example in XML (purple haze).
(I think it doesn't even need to be equipped with a q-bopmb to work.)

<key>death_actions</key>
<array>
<string>commsMessage: Grrr</string>
<string>becomeEnergyBlast</string>
</array>

This killed me many times before I got the idea.

Thanks for the input. A q-bomb does at least give some warning it's going to go off, and if you have injectors it is possible to outrun the blue sphere of death (TM) unless you are right next to it. Really, at the moment, I am brainstorming some ideas before I spend too much time on them if I am attempting to do something that either won' work, or spoils the game.

I'm still looking to do some obscure spaceships from pop vids or similar however.

Amaranth wrote:

I think there's not much more I can do with the commies retextures.

Does that mean we can expect a release soon? Yeayy

Work in progress - Duck Class

Common in low-tech systems, the Duck Class is a basic workhorse light transporter. Based around a rugged but basic spaceframe, the Duck Class is a cheap and simple to build, maintain and run vessel generally built indigenoulsy in low tech systems. Although externally similar, no two Ducks are the same, cobbled together from spare parts and salvaged items from broken down ships, space wrecks etc.



The reasoning behind the Duck was to see what sort of a ship I could build with the minimum number of polys. The duck clocks in with 6 polys and 7 vertices and also harks back to original Elite styling.

This vessel is primarily intended as an NPC system filler as due to its low spec I doubt it would make a good player ship.

At a large enough size, the Duck could have decent cargo capacity even if it's like a Python in terms of speed, maneuverability, and acceleration/deceleration.
The simplicity of its design could make it cheaper than a Python, but admittedly at a lower cargo capacity because I get the impression it's also smaller than a Python.
Design costs could be reduced if it can't carry any missiles, can only mount front and rear lasers, and cannot have military shields.
These might allow the cargo space to be maximized, since that equivalent internal space+mass isn't used otherwise.

Switeck wrote:

At a large enough size, the Duck could have decent cargo capacity even if it's like a Python in terms of speed, maneuverability, and acceleration/deceleration.
The simplicity of its design could make it cheaper than a Python, but admittedly at a lower cargo capacity because I get the impression it's also smaller than a Python.
Design costs could be reduced if it can't carry any missiles, can only mount front and rear lasers, and cannot have military shields.
These might allow the cargo space to be maximized, since that equivalent internal space+mass isn't used otherwise.

And that sounds like just the sort of ship an Oolite Ooniverse would have loads of in the safer, poorer, systems. Like loads of old clapped-out white vans bimbling about doing jobs: "A Man in a Can".

Rather than hijack the other thread, here's my concept for a tanker or generic bulk liquid transporter.



Unfortunately I'm no good at coding plists, so if anyone wants to play around with this, I'll put the dat and texture on my box account.

I hope you are going to define the 6 tanks as subentities. People will love to shoot of such tank, so make them also frangible.