Oolite Bulletins

Dear Oolite Commanders
ALERT: CONDITION RED

I am getting immensely frustrated with experiencing repetitious crashes usually after I witch space to a new system and it never used to do that I can't seem to isolate the cause.

Please be advised I have spent hours in this game so far and not sure if I have to restart all over again.
It lags on my laptop so badly and I've done everything to try and restore to last stable state.

First some quick questions.

1. Vector oxp mentions something about having the old local hero oxp. Is this required for the vector oxp to run?

2. I had povray planets working fine but tried deep horizons I have no texture pack for this cool oxp. Even turning detail down to a minimum still causes this to crash. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I also had to start thinking of removing oxps that aren't universe enabled. Seems pointless to have an oxp for one system in one galaxy. Suggestion to developers of oxps please consider missions as something possible in any galaxy. I am now forced to really weigh pros and cons as crashes are now occuring sometimes during launches from station.

3. Vampires these ships are amazing and awesome. I bought a mk I gold where is the energy bomb? I could have used it when I got jumped by over 12, dsp. Even with full boosters every missile was shot down by countermeasures its nearly getting close to not bothering with missiles.
1 in 20 fired ever are effective.
When I unzipped the various vampire sets the redux, diamondback and purgatory and dominatrix are just several folders, how does one properly install this as there is no oxp folder within the archive?

They also are showing up way too often I'm not seeing much variety of the other ships any and all suggestions will be humbly appreciated.

4. Deep space dregers needs a compass reference? Would be helpful please. After a salvage missile connects with a derilict I have pretty much an automatic game crash. It's awesome as an activity because you can make some decent creds but I'm tired of it crashing.

5. Smivs shipset I placed it in as an addition to the basic ships is it better to replace them? Reason I ask is because I love the registrations id oxp. Wish it could be put on all ships could this be put in as an extra transponder that displays on the Target info when locked? I'm designing my first oxp and this could be a valuable ambience. Just in brainstorming stage for this but I think it would be so cool.

6. Sothis, sirf oxps I've decided to remove to free up RAM resources, at least till I get a more upper end system.

7. Interstellar Tweak as it said started causing frequent crashing to desktop.

8. Interesting thing is povray planets despite its incredible size for textures making each planet truly unique and I appreciate the value of the realistic textures.

9. Entities that populate the space lanes I'm thinking furballs is causing lags or taking up valuable resources anyone that has managed to tweak their lower end systems to maximum enjoyment of the game.

Any and all suggestions will be humbly and greatfully appreciated..

Please open hailing frequencies with direct channel protocol to this channel if possible
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Megalodon - re the crashes, I think a helpful exercise would be to to try and narrow down if there is an OXP cause by taking out 50% of your OXP's and playing for a while, then play for a while with the other 50%. If either experiment produces crashes then split up that subset of OXP's some more until you find the culprit.

If you don't get crashes with either subset it may just be you are running to many OXP's - Win 7 seems to much more likely to crash if memory is low than XP (I've got machines that run both) - I've don't know why this is although I have some doubts about Win 7s more advanced memory management. It may be GPU related rather than OS though.

It may be that there is a specific OXP interaction between 2 or more OXPs that is at fault. This is a bit more difficult to track down, but the above method should help.

Thank you Captain Murphy for those hints.

Here's something rather interesting to share I got all oxp happy and its ironic because povray planets worked amazingly but gameplay is what I like most.

I think what started consistent crashes was putting in local hero, the escape pod locator, accessories, and mucking around with system demux and the deep horizons.

I also have started taking out the oxps which bog the universe with entitieslike furball. It pretty much turned out to be life threatening for a bar brawl to break out seemed to happen every time I was trying to dock. Docking clearance protocols I enabled for realism and I changed the possibility of slipping through customs for real life simulation, makes it interesting for the most part. I do like the intrigue of the possibility of slipping past customs just for the random flavour but the way you set up the oxp was cool to the effect that based on tech level the higher it is the more likely they are able to discover the illegal goods.

Other oxps I've tried to weed out are the orbitals
Sirf although the animation for the stations and models were awesomely impressive.

I'm going to take out too the liners one its a huge file and was stable before but to avoid crashes I've got to free up as much available memory as I possibly can.

So I've basically just rolled everything back to just before everything started crashing hope this works.

I don't mind starting over again just incase there's my save file looking for something that I can't trace.

Can't believe I got too excited over the possibilities I should have quit while I was ahead LOL.
And nothing against Smivs awesome low non shaded textures but that and the other oxps I mentioned started causing incredible performance issues. I'm leaving them in for the moment to see if my corrections thus far will solve the problem..

Many thanks again
Commander MEGALODON

MEGALODON wrote:

I'm going to take out too the liners one its a huge file and was stable before but to avoid crashes I've got to free up as much available memory as I possibly can.

Having many oxps at the same time gives generally no memory problem as they are not loaded at the same time. The real memory users are single oxps with big textures. You say that the crashes happen on entering a system. That makes the addition of ships as cause of the crashes likely. You can try setting "reduced complexity" in the setting on. When I remember right, that also reduces the size of big texture files on loading them. Probably not a setting you want to keep but if it does reduce crashes, its a good hint that it are memory problems.

MEGALODON wrote:

I also had to start thinking of removing oxps that aren't universally enabled.

So do it. If an OXP only applies to one galaxy, rename the directory from Wombat-Mission.oxp to Wombat-Mission-Gal4.oxp when you install it and then you'll know when it does and does not apply. If you change the extension of an oxp directory it won't load, so you can disable oxps by renaming them e.g. to Fluffy_Dice.oxp-off

MEGALODON wrote:

Seems pointless to have an oxp for one system in one galaxy. Suggestion to developers of oxps please consider missions as something possible in any galaxy.

It gives the galaxies their own flavour. If all the galaxies were the same, there would be no point having 8 galaxies!

MEGALODON wrote:

Even with full boosters every missile was shot down by countermeasures its nearly getting close to not bothering with missiles. 1 in 20 fired ever are effective.

Yeah, standard missiles are just a distraction to give you time to run away

MEGALODON wrote:

6. Sothis, sirf oxps I've decided to remove to free up RAM resources, at least till I get a more upper end system.

Just uninstall the S.I.R.F. and forget it exists.

MEGALODON wrote:

9. Entities that populate the space lanes I'm thinking furballs is causing lags or taking up valuable resources

That one can be a performance killer on slow machines. Uninstall it.

MEGALODON wrote:

anyone that has managed to tweak their lower end systems to maximum enjoyment of the game.

I also had to uninstall the SuperHub, the Torus, the TransHab and the BuoyRepair. And pretty shipsets. And remove the background galaxies and reduce the number of stars & dust. And choose 'reduced graphics'.

MEGALODON wrote:

Any and all suggestions will be humbly and greatfully appreciated..

Install OXPs one at a time and play for a few hours before deciding to ditch or keep it. Do not install lots at once.

MEGALODON wrote:

I think what started consistent crashes was putting in local hero, the escape pod locator, accessories, and mucking around with system demux and the deep horizons.

Hmm. What do you mean by 'crashes'? Do you mean the program stops and you are returned to the operating system? Or do you mean your ship blows up for no obvious reason?

MEGALODON wrote:

I also have started taking out the oxps which bog the universe with entitieslike furball. It pretty much turned out to be life threatening for a bar brawl to break out seemed to happen every time I was trying to dock.

I got bored with that one pretty quickly too.

MEGALODON wrote:

Sirf although the animation for the stations and models were awesomely impressive.

= performance hit.

MEGALODON wrote:

So I've basically just rolled everything back to just before everything started crashing hope this works.

Good. Now only install OXPs slowly and you'll find the culprit.

Hi MEGALODON,
The symptoms you describe do suggest that your system is simply being overloaded, and Capt. Murphy's suggestion of removing half the OXPs etc is a useful exercise.
Obviously I can't speak for other OXPs, but concerning Smivs'Shipset I assume you have the standard definition edition. This should be fine for most computers (the HD is for computers with a decent graphics card) and on its own will not cause problems, although if combined with lots of other 'big' OXPs the cumulative effect could be an issue.
I would not expect much difference between using the 'Add' and 'Replace' versions. If anything, using 'Add' might even lighten the load a bit as ny ships will be 'diluted' with core ship textures which are very light.
However, the Registration ID OXP (which I'm not too familiar with) might be having some effect on the 'core' ships which makes them more resource-hungry.
Have you tried shift-'F' in-game? This shows your frame-rate and the number of entities present and can be quite useful for diagnostics.

Smivs wrote:

Have you tried shift-'F' in-game? This shows your frame-rate and the number of entities present and can be quite useful for diagnostics.

I live with that on much of the time; it gets turned off when I can't read the <F5> screen properly.

For performance checking clockwork-and-rubber-band computers like mine, it is an essential tool. Jumping into a system it is immediately obvious if there is a highly detailed object (like the repair buoy station) killing the frame rate, or loads of objects causing the problem (like when a Thargoid invasion fleet start launching Tharglets as the Navy are firing missiles.

Also, when I had the brilliant ( ) idea of fitting Commie commuter transports with 100 escape pods, I can tell when a pirate shoots one down as the Escape Pod Locator gives me a message and ..... the ..... machine ..... suddenly ..... gets ..... very ..... slow. Because I had installed the Escape Pod Locator and made the tweak to the transporter at the same time, it took me a while to realise the slowness problem was of my own making. That's an example of why changes should be made one at a time.

In a forced misjump Thargoid v Navy battle, I sometimes have to slow down to 0.12 to be able to fly my ship at all because of all the stuff going on. And Furballs were no fun as I was just a witness to the action.

But, by accepting I cannot yet afford a new PC to play Oolite, I just live without the relevant OXPs and still get to play the game, unlike most modern games which I cannot play at all.

MEGALODON wrote:

1. Vector oxp mentions something about having the old local hero oxp. Is this required for the vector oxp to run?

The updater in Vector deletes mission variables from older versions. This includes variables from Localhero, because I want to merge both OXPs. Localhero does not work with current Oolite and installing it is your own risk. I think the last version where it worked was v1.71.2.

In other words - don't install Localhero, don't use Localhero .-)

Thank you everyone for all your suggestions they will be vital to restoring my ooniverse to functionality.

Crashes when mentioned referred to the window popping up saying Oolite.exe has stopped working.

Funny thing is sothis never caused any issues before. Cobra mkiiixt and cobra mkiv never did cause any issues either.

Thank you for the frame rate tip. The registrations id only works for shaders if they are full on. Wonder if someone can come up with almost like a font or decal pack that would be non shaded but random enough to paste on two letters and three random numbers for a registrations I'd not requiring shaders.

Now one of you mentioned reducing complexity is that reduced details on? Or is that a oxp I need to get?

I put in deep horizons amazing should the orbits oxp go hand in hand with that?

Oh the other thing I'm also going to try is I've just downloaded new NVIDIA drivers for my geforce 9100g card so hopefully that will help as well.

Is there an oxp that lowers the population of systems I'm wondering if somehow we could collectively figure out an oxp that would check your system info and then go from there..

Going to now implement those suggestions oh the vector oxp local hero has been removed. Where can I go to see if vector will actually start the missions?

Povray planets was the most stable planet changing experience. But I think I'm going to leave it out for the moment, it'd the gameplay that I'm most focused on and it being smooth..

Thanks for your help please continue to share because like maintaining my ship I want to maintain this great game also

Oh I wasn't trying to bad mouth any of the oxps for galaxy specific ones but if they have access to galactic hyperdrives wouldn't there be a chance of seeing them?, just an interesting thought

My observations:

I only had a pc and with a reasonably powerful graphics card at the moment I made the Superhub and The Aurora/Orisis and Tigershark oxp's.
My system had no problem whatsoever with extremely large textures. My latest PC is now about 4 years old.

Recently I bought a Macbook Pro 2011 for work but also did an install of Oolite on it.

Of course the first lazy action was to copy the add-on directory over to the new machine. It was playing mostly fine but I've noticed some severe lagging when entering a busy system. So just porting over is NOT a good Idea

I then immediately remembered some messages on the forum about people having problems with big textures of the Superhub and some liners and indeed on my Mac it is incredibly slow near those large structures. Making a smaller version of the same texture seems to work. Is it just me or is the Mac not so fast with the textures/shaders in Oolite?

Sometimes when I start Oolite the ships look white. When I turn shaders on/off the problem seems to go away. I know, I know. The charm of playing of Oolite on a Macbook or any laptop is that you could do just that run before going to sleep.

Anyway. Thinking about freeing up a bit time to update all my oxp-ships with smaller textures. Those very big textures don't seem to make that difference if the basic texture is good. So it could be that some of my orbitals could be one of the causes of lag. (especially Superhub, not the Pagroove stations as they have not a big texture file)

Well pa groove stations is one of my favourite oxps. I like the Torus stations because it gives some variety to when you enter a tl 14 system which isn't all the time.

Also re your ad here. I remember seeing convenience stores in the same form as the taxi galactica stations are they still around? It might help free up some valuable resources. But I've not seen them in a while. Please be advised that this runs smoothly. It also gives me a chance to make a few runs within a system and make some money.

Thargoid wars I love being able to travel to a system and sending those critters to oblivion. I remember in the original versions of elite and the new kind that you might encounter the odd one here and there.

Looks like factions is another entity machine oxp I'm going to leave out for now.

I remember going to a system and there being an incredibly large fleet attacking one another. Most profitable energy bomb I ever used. Went from 15k to 45k from all the bounties after that release.. it was amazing.

The victory bonds for the navy after a year do you get some kind of payout? Reason I ask is I passed my first year in Oolite adjusted for jumps and stuff like that. Then all of a sudden I had over two million credits.

Pretty cool.

pagroove wrote:

Anyway. Thinking about freeing up a bit time to update all my oxp-ships with smaller textures. Those very big textures don't seem to make that difference if the basic texture is good.

You can also point people to the page with [wiki]Hidden_Settings_in_Oolite[/wiki]. Most settings are mainly useful for the programmers, but some, like the Graphics setting 'max-texture-size' helps users on slow computers. Any graphic bigger than the setting will be reduced on loading.

Thank you Eric! That I didn't know.
You see? Still learning everyday.

COOL.....
Just wondering where do I find the texture logic to set this lower?

I don't quite understand how to actually find this sorry about that...

Is it possible for your ad here to add the box convenience stores to improve performance? Will this bug the current version or if I take the model files and add it to the current ones will that cause a crash with the new version?

Don't get me wrong I love the newer constores very impressive.

Anyone thought of using these types of dockables to put say a booger king it even a MAC doonalds restaurant in that form? Would be pretty cool. I happen to work at McDonald's and it would be kind of cool to add it.
Also perhaps if someone would eventually have an activity oxp that you would dock and then someone approaches you and offers you a mission of some kind or to reduce gal cop suspicion of a major shady deal going on.

Another cool idea for an oxp I have been just in the practical thoughts about it but where you could join a pirate guild or cartel or go on with gal cop as a blade runner style detective and try to hunt down these guys but like I said its very new idea.

I think what I might have to do is allow oxps to be a joint project because I really Suck at modelling and programming, but I'm writing a novel so my ideas are pretty fluent as far as flavour writing goes but it would be cool to see my concepts come to life utilizing the talents of various people to see a vision come alive.
The other off question I have is if shaders are off then do you still get the white station nav lights to track toward the docking bay?
Some of the landing bay art and concepts are cool any chance I can copy and paste the textures i like into the folders?

MEGALODON wrote:

Anyone thought of using these types of dockables to put say a booger king it even a MAC doonalds restaurant in that form? Would be pretty cool. I happen to work at McDonald's and it would be kind of cool to add it. Also perhaps if someone would eventually have an activity oxp that you would dock and then someone approaches you and offers you a mission of some kind or to reduce gal cop suspicion of a major shady deal going on.

Is that the sort of thing that happens at your Maccy D's?

(I know they are the principal shop outlets for drugs, but still...)