Oolite Bulletins

Now I was going to work on this and then approach Murgh the original creator of hoOpy I do not want to step on this person's toes but do perhaps make a joint collaboration because I would like to let some credits ride and win some credits.

Now perhaps some of you might turn an eyebrow if you could win a ton of credits you would upset the balance.
Not if you have a status check where if you break the bank or win a jackpot or something your banned for a period of time or something like that.

Have you Murgh thought of putting in some other wacky games ? No offence the shell game doesn't have bells and whistles like a slot machine or a black jack style game or an Oolite version of roulette.

My point is that if hOopy could be augmented to provide more variety in games to the commander it might get us to stay and play a while or could be used for an avenue for future mission oxps.

I've already figured out a couple neat ideas but I do not want to step on anyone's toes.

The shell game might be more interesting if you won consecutive times in succession that every additional time you won the pay out would increase. I'm not just talking about offering more games but writing my first novel I've got some ideas that might occur as sub plots when your getting some entertainment.

A very seedlings idea to enhance this oxp is there anyone out there in the oomiverse that feels as I do?

Sadly Murgh hasn't posted this forum since Sept. 2007, so you're talking to the the my friend.

https://bb.oolite.space/memberlist.php?m ... ofile&u=87

Well hello there I really love this game but I don't want to step on anyone's toes or offend anyone

That's sad to hear its been an honour to talk to fellow enthusiasts about this phenomonal game first heard of elite in 85. This Oolite iS going to be a game I play till the end of my time.

I wasn't sure if it would be ok to help enhance this oxp. The more and more I meet Tue people on here talking about oxps the more and more I'm wondering how to get started. I seem to be more of an idea person. The time I'm not sure how long it would ake on average to learn how to do it. It would probably take less time if I organized a team to help build it from my concept.
Have you ever done an oxp before ?

How on average would it take to learn?

I don't do OXPs - my creativity in the Ooniverse is limited to the text that goes into Snoopers, many of the YAH ads and of course a pinch of fan-fic. (and the occasional brilliant idea that gets picked up by the clever people who do make OXPs)

As for how long it takes to "learn" how to OXP, will depend on 1) what do you want to do 2) how good are you at logical thought, programming/scripting (in Javascript)?

If you want to fiddle with HOopy casino then what you'll need to do is:

1) dig around to see if Murgh put some kind of licensing agreement in the package (unlikely, this was a "good old days" OXP - although we have discovered recently that NOT having a licensing agreement is actually a very bad thing)

2) If Murgh didn't put in a licensing agreement then you need to go back through his postings on this forum (go newest to oldest) to see if he made any statements about his OXPs being free for (re)use.

3) Send him a PM and hope that his email still works and that he is willing to respond.

Good luck.

Oh and 4) Create a brand new OXP that does virtually the same thing but doesn't use any of Murgh's original code.

Learning to make OXPs can take as much or as little time as you want. It's probably true to say that most of us started knowing absolutely nothing, and worked up from there.
The first thing to do is make sure you understand the structure of an OXP - the various folders within the .oxp folder you place in AddOns. Some, like 'Textures' are pretty self-explanatory, whereas the 'Config' folder may just contain one file or may have seven or eight!
It might be best to start by studying some of the OXPs you have already downloaded - maybe start with something simple like a single ship OXP. In it's simplest form this will have a Config folder containing a shipdata.plist (the details and spec of the ship) and a shipyard.plist (which is the 'purchase' details if the ship is buyable). If there is a demoships.plist this just shows the ship on the ship parade you get when you start the game.
A few words of advice. When writing and/or changing plists, don't use Notepad as this adds spurious characters and breaks things. Use Notepad++ or any other good text editor. And as you look through the OXPs you have you will find two 'languages' used, XML and openstep. Openstep is recommended strongly as it is much easier to both read and write.
XML looks like this The same code in openstep is There will be a 'Models' folder which obviously contains the ship model, and the 'Textures' folder contains the ship's 'skin'.
See how all the parts relate, and try to get an understanding of things like the plists. Remember there is all the information you need on the Wiki, and the OXP how-to page is a good place to start.
In more complex OXPs you will find AIs folders which contain the AIs (artificial intelligence) for the OXP, the code that tells the ships and entities how to behave, and a Scripts folder which contains the javascripts for the OXP. These scripts do all sorts of things, such as add ships, control what happens when they are destroyed etc. This side of OXPs is a bit more complex, so is probably not a good place to start though.
You might also find Shaders folders, which deal with the shaders used by many OXPs - again quite a complex subject.
If you are keen to learn, do what I did for my first OXP. Modify an existing ship. Take a standard ship and make an OXP for a new version of it. Change aspects of it in the shipdata.plist to maybe give it less cargo space but more energy banks, fewer missiles but higher top speed. Remember that balance is important - no one will take seriously a ship that just has more of everything! And if you have an artistic side, try making a new texture for it.
Doing this will help you to become familiar with the basics, and start you on the road to understanding how all the parts work and link together, and then as your knowledge grows, you can start looking at AIs and scripts.
It's great fun, and you'll find lots of help here. But be warned...it's addictive and OXP making can take over your life if you're not careful.

MEGALODON wrote:

Now I was going to work on this and then approach Murgh the original creator of hoOpy I do not want to step on this person's toes but do perhaps make a joint collaboration because I would like to let some credits ride and win some credits.

There already have been several minor changes after Murgh released it.
Murgh abandoned Oolite before we got JS. The original legacy scripts were converted to JS by Paul Wilkins some time ago. Then when we got the new offering mechanism for missionscreens, I updated that last script so the current version works only with oolite 1.74 or newer.

Seeing the old model of the station, the best thing would be to create a complete new oxp with new ship so it won't look 'outdated'. You already intended to add a fully new script. That way there will no problem with ownership altogether. It will be completely yours.
There exist third party oxps that might want a installed version of the casino. At least I know that one of frame's mission oxps uses a hoopy casino. On the other hand, if not present he adds one of his own. To make those happy, you might give it the original role.

MEGALODON wrote:

The more and more I meet Tue people on here talking about oxps the more and more I'm wondering how to get started.

Here's some easy practical suggestions to get you introduced to amending OXPs.

Sound, .ogg files and an introduction to JavaScript
Look at
hOopyCasino1.2\hOopyCasino1.2.oxp\Config\script.js
and you will see references to
[size=120]music: "hoopy_theme.ogg"[/size]
which is in
[size=120]hOopyCasino1.2\hOopyCasino1.2.oxp\Music\hoopy_theme.ogg[/size]
Have a rummage around for some suitable sound files (probably .WAV wave files) to represent winning and losing. Do a Google search for how to convert .WAV files to .OGG for free. Save them to the \Music directory.
Go back to
hOopyCasino1.2\hOopyCasino1.2.oxp\Config\script.js
and you will see references to WINNER and LOSER which should suggest where to make changes to use the sound files you created. That will quickly and easily make the game more fun.

Markets
Next, change the commodities to a different model. What should be for sale in a casino (luxuries, liquor, furs, gems) and required to run (food, slaves)? Have a go at changing
[size=120]hOopyCasino1.2\hOopyCasino1.2.oxp\Config\commodities.plist[/size]
to see how that works. That will make trading at the casino more realistic.

JavaScript - new game
An easy change to the casino would be to increase the number of hoops to four and the amount of winnings for getting it right. That would just mean some fairly easy changes to the JavaScript in
hOopyCasino1.2\hOopyCasino1.2.oxp\Config\script.js
and simple graphics changes to the .png files
[size=120]hoopy\hOopyCasino1.2\hOopyCasino1.2.oxp\Image\hoopy_*.png[/size]

Editing ships
The defence ships "sidewinder-casinodefender "are defined in:
hOopyCasino1.2\hOopyCasino1.2.oxp\Config\shipdata.plist
It is by editing this file you can change them. Have a go changing some of the parameters and see what effect it has when you attack the casino.

And what should the defence ships for a casino be? Vipers? With ball turrets? Have a go at changing from Sidewinders to one of the other ships available. Just look at the \Config\shipdata.plist files used by some other OXPs. Maybe make the defenders into Falcons?


They should keep you busy for a few hours and give you an idea of what is involved, without even touching ship design and graphics or understanding how the AI works.

Ok again everyone thanks for your thoughts.

I've always wanted to learn programming and what better way than to do it with a game I absolutelylove mass effect 3 is gathering dust !!!

Capt Murphy gave a brief assistance to coding re vampires they were showing up every time so he showed me how to fix it so that it might show up about 10% of the time but I applied logic I hardly want to see them so instead of putting (0.1) after the roles for all the various ones from mki to iv I put (0.05) which if I follow his suggestion this would tell the program to allow a 5% chance? No crashes so I assume for the moment that this was correct as Ben kenobi might say.

"You've just taken your first step into a larger world."

Now based on your two examples of text editing the notepad ++ seems to be the way to go when I've taken time to read some code I found this to be way easier.

As far as the casino remake goes I'm basically creating a design document to become organized.

If I make a new casino chain ill have to have the person responsible for the planetfall oxp to be possible when landing on a planet too to properly do it.

Does anyone have a pdf file that I can download and look at on my pc I can't tether my Android to the net and failed when I tried to. I found and downloaded a pdf for blender which seems to be the best program to use for model creation I have an old version of wings but it frustrated me.
I'm guessing once the model is created a texture file can be created with an overlay that one can start using textures for???

Thanks everyone for your advice I think the best way to go is to announce a new chain of casinos into the ooniverse.
The MEGALODON CASINO IS OFFICIALLY UNDER CONSTRUCTION.

oops I use caps to emphasize not yell hope I haven't upset anyone if I yell ill use the proper punctuation the exclamation LOL

To pay respects to the original hoOpy ill if possible have hoOpy as a part of my new chain...?

I also think it would be cool to have the possibility of playing at any major stations because for scale these stations are huge surely they'll have a leisure area.

What do you all think of that being a feature?

The new dockable casino will be a huge model, another possibility is to have a subsection featured in the liners oxp?

MEGALODON wrote:

Does anyone have a pdf file that I can download and look at on my pc

A .PDF of what?

The pdf I was referring to was one of all these lists on how to program ai and such or explanations of the functions.
What I was hoping to do was download it to my phone then transfer it to my laptop so I cam go through it please if someone knows of a link that will give me a chance to go sequentially through it.

MEGALODON wrote:

The pdf I was referring to was one of all these lists on how to program ai and such or explanations of the functions.
What I was hoping to do was download it to my phone then transfer it to my laptop so I cam go through it please if someone knows of a link that will give me a chance to go sequentially through it.

Here is this thread.

I think megalodon probably asked if there was a 'how to program Oolite' manual, available as pdf...

I'm afraid there isn't one, as far as I know. However there's a pretty comprehensive online reference.

One useful page to have bookmarked is http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/OXP_howto - it does give you an overview of the overall OXP structure, and gives links to various very useful pages.

It can all be fairly overwhelming, however OXPs don't have to contain all the files mentioned there, and indeed most only need a couple of files to do their thing!
My own farsun.oxp is an example of a fairly minimal, yet functional oxp.

I personally have http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Catego ... _Reference permanently bookmarked. From there you can find more or less everything that can be done via Oolite's javascript.

For generic javascript reference, there are many resources online: google (or any search engine) is your friend there.

Hi MEGALODON,

I'm also a complete noob at Oolite and there are a few other issues, so please 'ask a grown-up' before taking anything I say too seriously. If I'm wide of the mark then we can rely on the bouncers to bat me back into line.

Coding skill is just a part. Everything you might do at a casino would have to be done with mission screens. Basically you can put up text and display a background and foreground image. The player can then take options which might display different screens/images. So, it's a bit like a 'slide show'... I think... so perhaps the most difficult thing would be to produce the artwork.

If I were artistic then I would use the existing hOopy Casino (with the original creators consent if possible!) infrastructure as a framework to display new artwork. A picture can speak a thousand words...?

It might help to know more about your thoughts as to what kind of games... roulette? blackjack? strip insectoid poker?

Greyth wrote:

strip insectoid poker?

Or the opposite, a Beetle Drive.

(I can't see that catching on in Las Vegas ... or do I underestimate the age of its tourists?)

Did you just make that up SandJ?! S'pretty good! I used to like the peanut game.. you know? Where you keep buying ridiculously small packets of peanuts to reveal the scantily clad vixen in evocative underwear printed on the cardboard backing? Sophisticated or what! Heh! But I could learn to like Beetle!

Seriously though, what has already been done with mission screens is impressive to say the least. I am genuinely curious as to what Megalodon is thinking. My guess is it's something I would never have thought of. I love the way the Casino is done. The artwork is great and the game makes me chuckle as does the well cheesy bass (guitar?) descant. It's brilliant - quite apart from buying up the furs and precious metals. But I don't often play the game itself, just now and then when the endless senseless mayhem and slaughter get me down.

So, come on Mega! What's it all about?