Oolite Bulletins

I've been messing about with the galaxy seed numbers in save-files. As soon as they are changed, the system properties become inaccessible and cannot be over-ridden by a planetinfo.plist file, by a local_planetinfo_overrides dictionary in the save-file, or by manipulation of the system properties by javascript. That means I can create alternative galaxies with more interesting charts than the default, but I can't curate them to over-ride unfortunate names, or apply textures to the planets. Untextured planets - boo!

Why is it so? What am I doing wrong? How do I over-come this limitation?

Wildeblood wrote:

I've been messing about with the galaxy seed numbers in save-files. As soon as they are changed, the system properties become inaccessible and cannot be over-ridden by a planetinfo.plist file, by a local_planetinfo_overrides dictionary in the save-file, or by manipulation of the system properties by javascript.

Don’t Do That, Then.

Why is it so?

Because making it not so would require the game to go out of its way to support arbitrary seeds, and that has never been a design goal. (Making galaxies more customizable or overrideable would be a potentially interesting goal; save file hacking to produce more random ones isn’t particularly.) The only reasonable expectation you have when changing undocumented stuff in saved games is that it doesn’t damage your computer.

If you get a copy of the source code for Oolite, you can change the initial galaxy seed from the start and therefore you could compile a 'different' Oolite that would start you in a alternate galaxy and give you a different set of other galaxies. However I am not going to give insturctions on how to do this, but it is very simple to do for your own enjoyment (I have tried to find some rude planet names but haven't come across any yet).

Wildeblood wrote:

Why is it so?

Ahruman wrote:

Because making it not so would require the game to go out of its way to support arbitrary seeds, and that has never been a design goal. (Making galaxies more customizable or overrideable would be a potentially interesting goal; save file hacking to produce more random ones isn’t particularly.)

I expressed myself poorly: I meant, of course, how is it so?. I am curious about the mechanism of this behaviour, not the motivation for either deliberately including it, or not improving it if it is merely incidental. How does changing the seed numbers cause the system properties to become read-only?

Pleb wrote:

If you get a copy of the source code for Oolite, you can change the initial galaxy seed from the start and therefore you could compile a 'different' Oolite that would start you in a alternate galaxy and give you a different set of other galaxies.

You don't need to compile Oolite with different seeds included in the source to explore alternative ooniverses, because the galaxy seed is stored in the save files, and for a galaxy jump it is whatever seeds are in the save file that are shifted to create the next galaxy. Would compiling Oolite with my preferred seeds included solve the problem of not being able to texture the planets, or otherwise manipulate individual systems?

Wildeblood wrote:

You don't need to compile Oolite with different seeds included in the source to explore alternative ooniverses, because the galaxy seed is stored in the save files, and for a galaxy jump it is whatever seeds are in the save file that are shifted to create the next galaxy. Would compiling Oolite with my preferred seeds included solve the problem of not being able to texture the planets, or otherwise manipulate individual systems?

I know you can edit save games, I was suggesting this method as a possible way around your problem - however I am currently at work and unable to test this method but I will investigate when I get home.

I will never understand why the devs deliberately withhold the option of creating whole new sectors by being able to manipulate the galaxy seed and use any number bigger than 0-7 for the new chart ... that would be a great option of creating "out there" new worlds without any clashes between oxps if someone wanted to invent new worlds ...

Probably I am going to hear that this would be much more work than I imagine to do and no one wants to do it ... otherwise, AC showed off a chart 9 once here on the forums, so perhaps it's that idea of keeping Oolite pure somehow raising its ugly head again

Lestradae wrote:

... otherwise, AC showed off a chart 9 once here on the forums, so perhaps it's that idea of keeping Oolite pure somehow raising its ugly head again

I seem to recall we've had this discussion in the past.

The idea of more than 8 galaxies seems to have been thrown around for a long time now. I can understand why a lot of people are reluctant to have this option in Oolite, as it would change the game considerably and also make it less like the original Elite. Elite Plus however did have an ninth galaxy in it, and an extra level 'Archangel' which was reached by completing a special mission involving destroying a space station in a system that had been invaded by the Thargoids.

If I also recall correctly, wasn't an 'Oolite Extended' project once talked about that invloved more sectors? Was this shelved?

another_commander wrote:

I seem to recall we've had this discussion in the past.

You've had that discussion in the past, and I'm not trying to revisit it. That's a discussion about adding extra galaxies as well as the traditional eight, adding scripting methods to get a player from the traditional eight to the extra galaxies without starting a new game, whether the extra galaxies need to be hard-coded into Oolite or whether OXPs should be able to set the galaxy seeds from script, blah, blah...

My question, which I believe is a reasonable one, is quite simple: if one uses different seed numbers, Oolite successfully generates a different set of eight charts but otherwise plays normally, except the system properties become read-only and planetinfo files, local_system_overrides and JS system methods become useless. The result being no system makeovers - System Redux, Orbits, Povray Planets etc. are rendered useless. How does that occur? What causes that effect?

Wildeblood wrote:

My question, which I believe is a reasonable one, is quite simple: if one uses different seed numbers, Oolite successfully generates a different set of eight charts but otherwise plays normally, except the system properties become read-only and planetinfo files, local_system_overrides and JS system methods become useless. The result being no system makeovers - System Redux, Orbits, Povray Planets etc. are rendered useless. How does that occur? What causes that effect?

No idea. Will have to look and analyze the code before responding. All I can say is that we don't normally expect people to fiddle with the savegames and then hope that everything will be a-ok.

Piccy. Just because.

Wildeblood wrote:

Piccy. Just because.

Wow I like this galaxy... There are little areas that you can't just get to, you'd have to use a Gal-Drive just to get there. Can you PM me the Galaxy Seed for this, I'd love to explore this galaxy!

Pleb wrote:

There are little areas that you can't just get to, you'd have to use a Gal-Drive just to get there. Can you PM me the Galaxy Seed for this, I'd love to explore this galaxy!

I can and just did.

A clarification for those reading along at home: I altered the galaxy number specifically to create this screenshot, it's usually my chart 5, not 51. So the galNumber being outside the proper range of 0-7 is not the cause of the system properties becoming unchangeable.