Oolite Bulletins

I'm pretty sure that this has been a topic of discussion, at least to some degree, but in more general terms, so forgive me if it has. On the dell, I can't seem to aim for the life of me - the controls are too touchy. I've noticed the entries such as in the shipdata.plist files, but what I'm wondering about is a more quick and dirty fix through the operating system. I've tried to play around with some of the system keyboard settings to see if that would help, but I'm not sure whether there is any kind of difference in play after making these changes.

The specs are slightly different now, as I have an ATI Rage agp card installed now, and I switched from Xubuntu to Mint 13 (Xubuntu stopped letting me login to the desktop about three days after installing, in another completely unrelated, but altogether sad story - the same thing had happened in a virtual machine, too).

Anyway, I'm just wondering if there is anything I can do to slow yaw/pitch/roll down? I should mention that 3D graphics are processed through the CPU (not GPU) via llvmpipe, so CPU usage is quite high when Oolite is running, which might be related to or even responsible for this issue.

Thanks for reading !

There is a keyboard precision mode available in trunk now, I think - that may help you.

I feel pretty dumb asking this but should I download the trunk, or could I simply add:
to the .GNUstepdefaults file?

Ha, that's beyond my ken... you need a boffin to answer that, but I very much doubt it. Download trunk, I reckon!

El Viejo wrote:

Ha, that's beyond my ken... you need a boffin to answer that, but I very much doubt it. Download trunk, I reckon!

You and me both . I'll give the trunk a shot - cheers mang!

Update: looks like revision 5049 is the one currently available, so I'll give that one a shot...

CommRLock78 wrote:

I can't seem to aim for the life of me - the controls are too touchy. I'm wondering if there is anything I can do to slow yaw/pitch/roll down?

I had the same problem, so I wrote this OXP.

If you are playing a standard ship, this OXP will slow down its pitch and yaw.

If you're not flying a standard Oolite ship, tell me what it is and I'll add it to the OXP.

SandJ wrote:

CommRLock78 wrote:

I can't seem to aim for the life of me - the controls are too touchy. I'm wondering if there is anything I can do to slow yaw/pitch/roll down?

I had the same problem, so I wrote this OXP.

If you are playing a standard ship, this OXP will slow down its pitch and yaw.

If you're not flying a standard Oolite ship, tell me what it is and I'll add it to the OXP.

Thanks SandJ, I can't wait to check it out. This particular game I'm piloting a Farstar Murderer .

I guess I should wait to download the OXP?

CommRLock78 wrote:

I feel pretty dumb asking this but should I download the trunk, or could I simply add:

Code: Select all

<key>flight-arrow-key-precision-factor</key>
	<real>whatever#</real>

to the .GNUstepdefaults file?

That whatever# value gets clamped between 0.05 (low response) and 1.0 (normal response). The default value in case no flight-arrow-key-precision-factor entry is found in .GNUstepDefaults is 0.5 so you don't need to add anything unless you want to adjust the response further. To use the new feature, you will have to download trunk and just press and hold Ctrl+any pitch/yaw/roll key while you move. Releasing Ctrl reverts to the standard roll/yaw/pitch response for the ship.

another_commander wrote:

That whatever# value gets clamped between 0.05 (low response) and 1.0 (normal response). The default value in case no flight-arrow-key-precision-factor entry is found in .GNUstepDefaults is 0.5 so you don't need to add anything unless you want to adjust the response further. To use the new feature, you will have to download trunk and just press and hold Ctrl+any pitch/yaw/roll key while you move. Releasing Ctrl reverts to the standard roll/yaw/pitch response for the ship.

Work's great another_commander! I went ahead and added the code and sure enough I saw differences for different values. I've got it set to 0.2 as that seems to be the sweet spot for this machine.

Is this feature going to become a part of the mainstream version?

I think I'll try out SandJ's OXP, too, since it works with the current stable build. I would try and edit the configuration file, but I don't know the -player name for the farstar murderer .

SandJ wrote:

I had the same problem, so I wrote this OXP.

I have to ask - you weren't having this problem on your new computer, were you? I didn't see a processor on your post, but I'm quite surprised you were having trouble as our new computers can't be that different in specs. I have a Core i5 with 6GB of RAM, 64-bit and (sadly) Intel "HD Graphics 2000" (whatever the heck the '2000' means . It had been such a long time since I had been able to buy a new computer that I had forgotten to think about graphics when I bought the thing - I was more concerned with getting quad-core, 64-bit and a chunky amount of RAM ).

I say all this because I have a feeling its the CPU usage on the old computer that is causing the problem. I pilot using the keyboard on the new computer without any sort of problem to speak of.

CommRLock78 wrote:

Work's great another_commander! I went ahead and added the code and sure enough I saw differences for different values. I've got it set to 0.2 as that seems to be the sweet spot for this machine.

Glad you find it useful. I was considering changing the default value to 0.33 (1/3 of normal), so that it is equal to the joystick precision equivalent.

Is this feature going to become a part of the mainstream version?

Yes.

CommRLock78 wrote:

This particular game I'm piloting a Farstar Murderer .

I have added that, and the Dragon ships, to v1.2 of the OXP which is here.

CommRLock78 wrote:

SandJ wrote:

I had the same problem, so I wrote this OXP.

I have to ask - you weren't having this problem on your new computer, were you?

I say all this because I have a feeling its the CPU usage on the old computer that is causing the problem. I pilot using the keyboard on the new computer without any sort of problem to speak of.

On my old 400 MHz Pentium PC, just touching the controls moves the ship too far to make combat possible.

On my netbook, just touching the controls moves the ship too far to make combat possible.

On my new goes-like-clappers PC, just touching the controls moves the ship too far to make combat possible.

Hence the OXP to cripple the pitch and yaw. It's either that or turn down the TAF to 0.25

This reminds me of a TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident) program that slowed the keyboard input rate down, that had to be installed on PCs with a Pentium 2 or above just so you could play Elite+

Tricky wrote:

... that had to be installed on PCs with a Pentium 2 or above just so you could play Elite+

Did it? Not on my old P3 machine, it didn't!