Oolite Bulletins

First of all, I am a dunce.. really. Aside from typing, my skills with a computer are akin to my 3 year old son's skills. With this in mind, anyone should bew able to do this, if they wish.

First of all, you will be working with the 'Add on' section of your oolite folder.. you know the one where you drop all those OXPs.. yep, that one. Find it and have it open.
Now that you have it open, you need to create a file. Call it 'Config' or 'My ships name' or whatever. Once you have that done, open it... it is of course empty.
What you now need to do is creat a text file (or document on my Ubuntu computer), and simply copy and Paste this

{
"cobra3-player" = {
"display_name" = "Ulster Dawn";
};
}

Where Ulster Dawn is, you obviously put your own ship's name.. and of course, if you are using a different ship (ie not the Cobra MIII), you need to find it's specific line in the shipdata list (more on this later). Save the document, and close it.
You should now have one document in your new created folder. This is in the 'Add Ons' part of the Oolite file. Right? Good. Start the game, holding the shift key in as you do (resets the cache or something apparently), and viola!

The shipdata.plist is found in the oolite.apps section of the Oolite file. You should be able to see it in the same place you spot the 'Add On's' file. When you click into the Oolite.app file, you should see a 'resources' file. In there (click it open) you will see a 'Config' file. Open it. The shipdata.plist is there. Find the ship you own (and make sure it is the player ship, not the trader one, unless you want a a load of galaxy wide cobbies named 'Jennifer'!)
When you have your ship, and know the way it is written there.

So, if you have a Fer de Lance, it will be

{
"ferdelance-player" = {
"display_name" = "Jennifer";
};
}

Ah! You have an OXP ship do you? Well.. in that case, you go to the OXP file from whence your boat came, and in there will be a shipdata.plist there. Just find your boat name, and so the same as mentioned above.

You can apply decals onto some* ships - needs shaders iiuc. - looks like it can be done without shaders even.
(* all ships I guess, but some come prepared for that)

I think Smiv's Shipset offered this, and some others, maybe Griff Cobra ?

But this does not keep the game from addressing you as Commander [name-of-savegame] .

ulaidian wrote:

I did a search, and found nothing.. but I don't pretend to be an expert in such things.. anyhow, I digress..

Ok, I am a dynastic kinda family man, I like clans and all that, and with this in mind, I would like to be able to Name my ship. Ok, she is a hunk of keek, but she gets me from A-B, and back to A via C..and the 'Ulster Dawn' will be a proud ancestor to the 'Ulster Dawn X' in the future

So, is it possible already? If not, is it actually possible?

Yes, it's possible, but it depends on what you want to do.

a) You want your ship's name to appear on the ship itself. A decal is the way to go. Alternatively you could put the name on its texture PNG file, but most textures have not a high enough resolution to do that.

b) You want your ship's name to appear on the status screen, where you only see the ship type by default. To replace that by a unique name, all you have to do is to insert a key 'display_name' into the shipdata. The usual precautions apply: don't edit Oolite's own shipdata, but make a copy and put it in your AddOns-folder. Even more elegant is the use of a shipdata-overrides.plist in your AddOns-folder.

Naming one's ship is important to many of us... mine is named on the hull, on the hud and on the F5 screen.

El Viejo wrote:

Naming one's ship is important to many of us... mine is named on the hull, on the hud and on the F5 screen.

Ah yes, I forgot the HUD. That would be c) then, and requires no more than a paint program.

Commander McLane wrote:

ulaidian wrote:

I did a search, and found nothing.. but I don't pretend to be an expert in such things.. anyhow, I digress..

Ok, I am a dynastic kinda family man, I like clans and all that, and with this in mind, I would like to be able to Name my ship. Ok, she is a hunk of keek, but she gets me from A-B, and back to A via C..and the 'Ulster Dawn' will be a proud ancestor to the 'Ulster Dawn X' in the future

So, is it possible already? If not, is it actually possible?

Yes, it's possible, but it depends on what you want to do.

a) You want your ship's name to appear on the ship itself. A decal is the way to go. Alternatively you could put the name on its texture PNG file, but most textures have not a high enough resolution to do that.

b) You want your ship's name to appear on the status screen, where you only see the ship type by default. To replace that by a unique name, all you have to do is to insert a key 'display_name' into the shipdata. The usual precautions apply: don't edit Oolite's own shipdata, but make a copy and put it in your AddOns-folder. Even more elegant is the use of a shipdata-overrides.plist in your AddOns-folder.

I appreciate this answer, and am glad that it can be done.. now.. is there a 'naming ships in shipdata for dummies' anywhere? I really have no clue what that it, or how to do it

As I said above, the better way is to not do it in the original shipdata (at least not in Oolite's), but in an extra file named "shipdata-overrides.plist".

So what you need to do is: go to your AddOns-folder, create a text file named "shipdata-overrides.plist" there (note: if on Windows, don't use Notepad; Wordpad is fine), and type (or copy & paste) the following in it: Of course you have to look up the entity-key of your ship first in the shipdata.plist that contains your ship. You haven't written which ship you're flying, so I don't know which it is.

Save the file and restart Oolite. You're done.

Commander McLane wrote:

El Viejo wrote:

Naming one's ship is important to many of us... mine is named on the hull, on the hud and on the F5 screen.

Ah yes, I forgot the HUD. That would be c) then, and requires no more than a paint program.

Ah, no, just add a text line in the legends section of your own personal HUD. Takes 1 minute to cut and paste and a couple of tries to get the line close to where you want it. No painting required.

It is a Boa Clipper (Where do I find it?), and guys I really appreciate this!

ulaidian wrote:

It is a Boa Clipper (Where do I find it?), and guys I really appreciate this!

Boa Clipper.oxp seems like a good first guess. (Is it unreasonable to expect that you know yourself which OXP you have installed in order to get your ship of choice? Also, you could simply browse to your AddOns-folder. Lastly, the ship list on the Elite Wiki could tell you where you find your ship.)

I spent ages going through every file I had before realising that the OXP file would have the bit I need, so don't be so bloody patronising.. not all of us know the intimate details of every part of the game.. some of us just like playing!

.. friendliest forum ...

ulaidian wrote:

I spent ages going through every file I had before realising that the OXP file would have the bit I need, so don't be so bloody patronising.. not all of us know the intimate details of every part of the game.. some of us just like playing!

.. friendliest forum ...

I know what you mean, I've managed to have to do 2 or 3 apologies already. I think it's just a symptom of a text-only communications medium; what is intended as a gentle suggestion comes across as harsh criticism. And because this is a friendly forum, criticism stands out all the more.

Two good friends of mine no longer talk to each other after a minor difference turned into a nasty exchange by text message. When asked by one to read the messages to confirm the 2nd person had been unreasonable, I could see they were both seeing things between the words that were not there - one telephone call early in the exchange would have fixed everything. Pure text is a rubbish medium for social animals to use.

What you may not have seen is that a stable version of Oolite came out a few weeks ago and so many forum members this past month or two will have been through the process of editing .OXPs, upgrading them, testing broken ones and as a consequence will be up-to-speed on .OXP content and structure. They've probably forgotten there is one hell of a cliff between installing Oolite and being able to edit JavaScript customisations with confidence.

Have a not-meant-to-be-patronising internet-hug:

P.S when you've christened your ship, would you mind posting a summary of how you did it 'cos I don't know how to and I'd rather spend my time playing than doing all the same research as you are...

ulaidian wrote:

so don't be so bloody patronising

Apologies about that, ulaidian... I'm sure that impression wasn't intended. Thing is, occasionly boffins (ie OXPers and coders) tend to forget how difficult it can be at first for us mere mortals (ie simple players). The important thing is have you managed to get your ship named yet?