Oolite Bulletins

Ship_Storage_Helper.oxp

Capt Murphy 2012
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 - see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ for more info.
Requires: Oolite 1.77 - Trunk builds after revision 5025 (nightly build 23/06/12).
Version 0.20 24/06/12

Overview.

Ship_Storage_Helper contains helper functions for OXP writers that wish to use the new Trunk JS method player.replaceShip(dataKey[,entityPerosnality]). It facilitates storing information about the current player ship in a variable or missionVariable, and reinstating a stored player ship as the players current ship, taking into account known OXP variables that also need to be stored/reinstated.

As development and testing is ongoing it is anticipated that additional OXP compatibility code will need to included. I would be grateful if testers and OXP authors could alert me to any bugs using the current release. In the long term I hope this OXP to become a community maintained OXP as it will require regular updating in light of new OXP releases.

Current OXP Compatibility.

Ship_Storage_Helper contains code to explicitly overcome compatibility issues for the following OXPs:

New Cargoes, HyperCargo, Vortex, APRIL, Iron Hide, Missiles and Bombs, Railgun, Target Autolock Plus, Target Reticle Sensitive, Armoury, Aquatics, Battle Damage, 'Breakables', TCAT, Respray for Griffs.

Functions.

worldScripts["Ship_Storage_Helper.js"].storeCurrentShip()

This function can be called from other worldScripts immediately before changing the player's ship with player.replaceShip(dataKey), and returns a string including the stored ships essential attributes.

worldScripts["Ship_Storage_Helper.js"].restoreStoredShip(storedShipString)

This function takes the output of storeCurrentShip as an argument and uses it to reinstate the player ship from the stored information. Returns true if successful or one of the following error strings if it fails.

"Error-Invalid Parameter, expected String" - indicates that storedShipString is in wrong format
"Error-Invalid Parameter, array incorrect length" - indicates that storedShipString was created by a newer version of Ship_Storage_Helper.
"Error-Invalid dataKey" - indicates that the OXP that defined that dataKey has been removed since storedShipString was created.

The output of storeCurrentShip is a JSON stringified array of ship attributes, containing the following indices as of v0.16.

0: Place and time of storage - Array [galaxyNumber,system.ID,clock.seconds,player.ship.displayName,system.name,stationAttributes,player.ship.price] (stationAttributes are [player.ship.dockedStation.primaryRole, player.ship.dockedStation.dataKey, player.ship.dockedStation.position])
1: dataKey (e.g. "cobra3-player")
2: aftWeapon equipmentKey
3: forwardWeapon equipmentKey
4: portWeapon equipmentKey
5: starboardWeapon equipmentKey
6: Array of pylon equipmentKeys
7: Array of normal equipment equipmentKeys & equipmentStatus
8: Array of manifest contents.
9: fuel
10: passenger contracts
11: array of subEnts (only if frangible subEnts are missing on storage)
12: serviceLevel
13: entityPersonality
14: unused
15: Cim's New Cargoes suspended cargo variable
16: Array of Thargoid's HyperCargo missionVariables
17: Array of Thargoid's Vortex/Maelstrom missionVariables
18: Array of Thargoid's APRIL missionVariables
19: Array of Thargoid's IronHide missionVariables
20: Ramirez's Missile & Bombs missionVariable
21: Array of McClane's Railgun missionVariables.
22: Thargoid's TargetAutoLock Plus missionVariable.
23: Eric's TargetReticle Sensitive missionVariable.
24: Thargoid's Armoury missionVariable.
25: Thargoid's Aquatics missionVariable.
26: Smivs Battle Damage missionVariable.
27: Respray for Griff's missionVariables.

Individual elements can be accessed from your own script. For example-

var myStoredShip = worldScripts["Ship_Storage_Helper.js"].storeCurrentShip()
var dataKey = JSON.parse(myStoredShip[1])

worldScripts["Ship_Storage_Helper.js"].disableVortexPBNSFunc(context)
worldScripts["Ship_Storage_Helper.js"].disableMaelstromPBNSFunc(context)

Context must be a string – valid values are “delete” & “retainName”.

Used to temporarily modify the behaviour of the playerBoughtNewShip function in Thargoid's Vortex.oxp, to either prevent it running, or to prevent it renaming a Vortex or Maelstrom that has previously been stored.

worldScripts["Ship_Storage_Helper.js"].enableVortexPBNSFunc()
worldScripts["Ship_Storage_Helper.js"].enableMaelstromPBNSFunc()

Reverses the changes made by the above functions.

worldScripts["Ship_Storage_Helper.js"].disableTCATPBNSFunc()
worldScripts["Ship_Storage_Helper.js"].enableTCATPBNSFunc()

Used to temporarily disable the playerBoughtNewShip function in Thargoid's TCAT.oxp. Buying a new ship is a trigger for mission failure in this OXP, but this may not always be appropriate behaviour using the new methods.

All of these functions are called from Extended_Shipyards.OXP if you need examples of how they can be used.

Variables.

worldScripts["Ship_Storage_Helper.js"].dataKeyArray

This is an array of valid player ship dataKeys from the users currently installed OXPs. It is built at startUp. It is not necessarily comprehensive, and is less likely to be comprehensive the more unique player-flyable ships are installed. It can generally capture up to 60 to 70 unique dataKeys.

ChangeLog

v0.16 31/5/12 – Added additional information to header including system.name as a string, information about the station the ship is stored at, and the full price of the stored ship. Added entityPersonality as a ship attribute that is saved and can be restored (maintains paint colours on Griff's ships under full shaders). Thanks to cim for making this option available from trunk revision 4968. Fixed a bug were version 0.15 was unintentionally dependent on the Breakables OXPs.

v0.17 05/06/12 - v.017 05/6/12 – Fixed a bug in handling of subEntities when the ship doesn’t have any.

v0.18 09/06/12 – Added compatibility for v0.2 of Respray for Griff's.oxp

v0.19 16/06/12 – Updated compatibility for v0.3 of Respray for Griff's.oxp

v0.20 24/06/12 – Updated compatibility for v0.4 of Respray for Griff’s.oxp so that adjusted decals are correctly restored. Ensure that player shield strength is set to maximum on restore (thanks cim for the report).

Capt. Murphy wrote:

ship.dataKey (read only - reference to the dataKey in shipdata e.g "cobra3-player".
player.replaceShip(dataKey) - a method to change the player ship!

Thargoid wrote:

It will also depend somewhat on whether playerBoughtNewShip gets triggered or not.

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

So, when buying equipment, you could check for requires cargo space in the equipment.plist and when the equipment is bought then change ships to one with one less cargo space...and the reverse for selling equipment. Would this work now?

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

About the laser cooler that you want to prevent, if you switch ships to an identical one does the laser temp still remain the same?

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

So now one could set up a docking sequence mission screen when getting near a derelict and if you wanted to swap ships you could have your ship change to the derelict and the derelict change to your ship. Would this work now?

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

So if you wanted to have a performance tweak of a specific ship you could set it up to swap between different versions with different values for max speed, pitch and roll, thrust, etc. Would this work now?

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

Is this the bomb or are there more to be dropped on us before 1.77

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

And could someone please post a good link for where to get and how to compile the current trunk for windows xp. As amazing as it may seem I have never bothered to do this so I could use some friendly instruction as I will now be shifting all my oxp development towards what will be available in 1.77.

Capt. Murphy wrote:

Don't get too excited CSOTB, the replaceShip method only works when docked. Building from source - https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5943

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

Isn't passion and excitement the primary driving factor in oxp development?

Personally I find it's more inspiration and beer.

Thargoid wrote:

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

Isn't passion and excitement the primary driving factor in oxp development?

Personally I find it's more inspiration and beer.

cim wrote:

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

So, when buying equipment, you could check for requires cargo space in the equipment.plist and when the equipment is bought then change ships to one with one less cargo space...and the reverse for selling equipment. Would this work now?

It's not completely impossible, but you would have to define all the reduced variations in shipyard.plist (with chance 0 so they don't appear for sale) and shipdata.plist. Impractical, given how often new player ships are brought out, unless you wanted to restrict the equipment to a small set of special ships.

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

About the laser cooler that you want to prevent, if you switch ships to an identical one does the laser temp still remain the same?

Since you can only switch ships while docked it doesn't really matter. (There are so many other conceptual issues with switching ships in flight that you shouldn't expect that to happen)

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

So now one could set up a docking sequence mission screen when getting near a derelict and if you wanted to swap ships you could have your ship change to the derelict and the derelict change to your ship. Would this work now?

Should be possible.

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

So if you wanted to have a performance tweak of a specific ship you could set it up to swap between different versions with different values for max speed, pitch and roll, thrust, etc. Would this work now?

As long as you define all the variants in shipdata and shipyard, yes.

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

Is this the bomb or are there more to be dropped on us before 1.77

You'll have to wait and see

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

And could someone please post a good link for where to get and how to compile the current trunk for windows xp. As amazing as it may seem I have never bothered to do this so I could use some friendly instruction as I will now be shifting all my oxp development towards what will be available in 1.77.

Windows pre-compiled nightly builds from trunk are available. See https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6852 for details.

Thargoid wrote:

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

Isn't passion and excitement the primary driving factor in oxp development?

Personally I find it's more inspiration and beer.

Smivs wrote:

In my case it's the little voices inside my head...