List of Planets used in OXPs

[Wildeblood]

Which means that I'm with Smivs here: the burden of making a fundamental change in such a way that the result stays compatible with existing OXP has to rest on the author of the fundamentally-changing new OXP, not on the perfect anticipation of everybody else before him. As a general principle, that's the only one that's practical.

What you say is correct, Commander McLane. The point of disagreement is whether system names, which actually perform no function in core Oolite, are part of the "fundamental" nature of the game. You assert they are, but don't make a persuasive case. Other people might think that the ability to expunge a criminal record by bailing out in an escape pod is one of the fundamental aspects of the game that should never be questioned, but you changed that in your OXP. No one would seriously suggest renaming Tionisla or Tianve, because they are names that serve their purpose well: they are pronounceable words that refer to a particular object, and it is well-known what that referent is. But who apart from Smivs and I even know which systems Beanxeet and Qutius are? I don't know of any version of Elite where the Thargoids had 8km diameter Annihilator ships, but Smivs (as many before him have done) didn't hesitate to tamper with one of the fundamental tenets of Elite/Oolite - that Thargoids are an occasional curiosity that the player will encounter very rarely, and can easily kill for a few bonus points. I would say this wholesale meddling with the role of Thargoids that so many OXPs do is far more an attack on the "fundamental" nature of the game, than changing an unpronounceable name of an unreachable system that no player will ever visit without the use of OXP equipment.

[Cody]

But who apart from Smivs and I even know which systems Beanxeat and Qutius are?

Hmm... quite a few of us, I expect. As for unpronounceable... there I disagree with you. Most, if not all, planet names are quite pronounceable.

[Smivs]

What you say is correct, Commander McLane. The point of disagreement is whether system names, which actually perform no function in core Oolite, are part of the "fundamental" nature of the game. You assert they are, but don't make a persuasive case.

The function the names perform is quite simply to act as universal identifiers so that everybody playing the game knows exactly what planet is what. It's what names do. This is as fundamental as it gets. If I arbitrarily decided to call you 'Fred' and hereafter refered to you as Fred, nobody would have a clue who I'm talking about!

But who apart from Smivs and I even know which systems Beanxeet and Qutius are?

I think you've answered your own question here. Many will not know from memory, but any player can immediately and easily find out where Beanxeat or Qutius are simply by going to the wiki. Try it...go to the main page and type 'Beanxeat' into the search box and it will tell you not just where to find the information, but gives you much of it in the search result.

Oolite planet list/Galaxy 6
: # 41. '''Beanxeat''' (211,180), {202} within 7.0 LY. Radius 3795 km. :: ''The world Beanxeat is notable for its unusual oceans and the Beanxeatian evil poet. ''

This ability to quickly access the information is only possible because each planet has a unique name, which is consistent in the game, the Wiki, here on the BB....everywhere.

One other thought. Around the Eight there are 2048 planets. I genuinely find it hard to believe that not a single one of those would be a suitable candidate in it's original form for use in a proposed OXP. And if none of the 2048 are suitable, as I mentioned in a previous post, why not 'make' a new planet that would be even better suited to the OXP than a hijacked 'regular' planet. This would avoid the need to mess with the existing planets we all know and love, and avoid all the possible confusion this could lead to.

[Smivs]

<Redundant post removed>

[Wildeblood]

The function the names perform is quite simply to act as universal identifiers so that everybody playing the game knows exactly what planet is what.

Everybody playing the game? It's a single player game! Why can't you and Commander McLane understand that? If I go through my planetinfo.plist and fix all the unpronounceable and stupid names, it does no more harm to McLane than his going through his descriptions.plist and changing the GUI strings to German does to me. That is, it does no harm to anyone at all.

[LittleBear]

Systems changed by Assassins are (all Galaxy 7 - 6 in code) :

Code: Select all

Orramaor - PN73
Esrire - PN107
Tiared - PN194
Beatle - PN203
Geteve - PN18
Ateslete - PN39
Ataneries - PN81
Quandixe - PN53
Estiri - PN 82
Angeriri - PN71
Eszausve - PN 13

Having re-started playing Oolite after a long break (new laptop, new Jameson and all the eye-candy and new OXPs! - Wow - It looks amazing and there's a lot more going on out there since I last played!) personally I think (in principle) it would be really cool to change names and descriptions of every planet to make them more unique and less procedually generated. Playing with Famous Plants installed it's fun when I come accoss a hand-crafted description and would be nice for every planet (work required aside).

However and its a big However (in practice) I'd be against is as names can't be changed without causing gameplay problems due to the way the planet-list works. I've altered a lot of planets with my OXPs, but I left the names unchanged to avoid clashing problems. For example Assissins makes changes to just about every statistic for the above planets, but I kept the names unchanged because other OXPs could well be directed players to the system under its original name. If for example I'd changed the name of "Quandixe" to "Wolf 357" this wouldn't have caused a problem internally with Assassins as in my mission text I'd tell the player to go to Wolf 357. However if UPS Courier, Random Hits, Galactic Navy, RRS or any other OXP generates a mission at this system those OXPs will still be using the orginal name (which now no longer exists due to the changes made by my OXP). As there are a lot of OXPs generating missions, it's got to be factored in really that when writing an OXP another OXP is pretty much bound to generate a mission at the same system you have used, given the high number of both scripted and randomly generated OXP missions out there. If we all stick with the orginal names then lots of OXPs doing different things really add to the depth of the gameplay. If UPS Courier asks you to deliver documents to a system where you are killing a mark for Random Hits, doing a job for the Galactic Navy whilst dropping of a fare for Taxi Galaxtica no problem occours and the many OXPs play nicley together. However if each OXP was changing names then its impossible for the player as 5 missions would be refering to the same planet with different names. Although therefore I think its a great idea, the result would be OXPs breaking each other rather than adding to the fun of OXPs interacting.

Commander LittleBear (Dangerous) - Aboard the King Cobra - Nostalgia for Infinity

[Cody]

Having re-started playing Oolite after a long breack (new laptop, new Jameson and all the eye-candy and new OXPs! - Wow!)...
Commander LittleBear (Dangerous) - Aboard the King Cobra - Nostalgia for Infinity

Welcome back to the spacelanes, Commander!

[Thargoid]

Yes, welcome back!

For the comment - I refer you back to my previous post(s). If the OXPs use the expansion I keep mentioning for their scripting and mission text, then it will automatically do the replacement. For me I don't see any reason at all not to do that (rather than hard-coding text), other than the excuse perhaps that people didn't know that they could/should do it when they wrote the OXPs. And from this discussion they now may know, and so a quite version-up tweak of affected OXPs will easily fix it.

[Fatleaf]

But who apart from Smivs and I even know which systems Beanxeat and Qutius are?

Hmm... quite a few of us, I expect. As for unpronounceable... there I disagree with you. Most, if not all, planet names are quite pronounceable.

I know where they are and also what that I would not recommend the food...! Go to Lago for the best restaurant in the eight.

And welcome back LittleBear. Good to see you around once more
I might want to pick your brains on a "little" wip I have started on.
Looking forward to your Avatar returning.

[Cody]

Go to Lago for the best restaurant in the eight.

Ahh yes... the deadly edible moth tempura is delicious!

[Wildeblood]

I have seen many fantastic looking planets via posted screenshots and oxps but to be honest I am not too sure which combination of oxps provide which planets or which screenshots are currently WIP only.

More than 1000 quality textures, each one used only twice:-

Ambience - Povray Planets adds unique procedurally generated textures to all planets in galaxies 1, 2, 4 and 5
Ambience - Povray Planets Missing Galaxies re-uses Povray Planets textures and applies them to galaxies 3, 6, 7 and 8

[Switeck]

One minor problem with going by planet names...there are a tiny handful of duplicates.

[PhantorGorth]

Try it...go to the main page and type 'Beanxeat' into the search box and it will tell you not just where to find the information, but gives you much of it in the search result.

Oolite planet list/Galaxy 6
: # 41. '''Beanxeat''' (211,180), {202} within 7.0 LY. Radius 3795 km. :: ''The world Beanxeat is notable for its unusual oceans and the Beanxeatian evil poet. ''

This ability to quickly access the information is only possible because each planet has a unique name, which is consistent in the game, the Wiki, here on the BB....everywhere.

Hate to point this out but the systems are not all uniquely name. See this thread I started. By the way "Qutius" is one of them!

Also I am thinking that the use of [J%xxx] needs to added to the Best Practices thread .

[PhantorGorth]

Thinking about it the wiki page that Smivs has started could benefit from, when near complete, a list of impacting OXPs for reason of clashing Planetary System changes. There would be different levels of impact such as:

1) Minor - Changes to systems in OXP A are updated in OXP B.
2) Medium - Changes to systems in OXP A are not updated in OXP B but does not stop either OXP from working.
3) Major - OXP A is not compatible with OXP B.

[Commander McLane]

The function the names perform is quite simply to act as universal identifiers so that everybody playing the game knows exactly what planet is what.

Everybody playing the game? It's a single player game! Why can't you and Commander McLane understand that?

Because it's not solely the game I'm talking about. The fact that you and I are debating this proves in itself that we neither have a single player BB nor a single player Wiki. These are the places where I am concerned about name issues.

If I go through my planetinfo.plist and fix all the unpronounceable and stupid names, it does no more harm to McLane than his going through his descriptions.plist and changing the GUI strings to German does to me. That is, it does no harm to anyone at all.

That's true, and I don't object to it, as long as the name changes stay on your HD. However--and that's my point--as soon as you make an OXP out of it, and people start installing it without really understanding what it does (which is--let's be honest here--the default way of installing OXPs for many people), they then will begin to post bug reports or ask I-don't-get-on-with-some-mission-please-help questions here on the board, using planet names in the description of their problem that nobody but Wildeblood has ever heard of. If Wildeblood happens to be on vacation at the time (or has left the boards for good), the rest of us will not be able to understand and help.

Now, this may be a tad overstated. Through making the person post their latest.log, finding out which OXPs they have installed, downloading and installing/examining it ourselves we can of course finally determine what the person has been talking about; but at a lot more effort than would actually be necessary. And that's exactly the point. Using the same names for the same things, just like using the same language, makes communication easier. Arbitrarily using different names as other people for the same things makes communication harder. At the end of the day it's the communication I'm concerned about, not any player's non-communicated single-player game experience.

Or, to use another example of yours: You're right. My using a German language OXP in my game doesn't hurt you at all. However, if we were to have a debate on these boards, or you wanted to know something from me, and I would write my part of the communication exclusively in German (or in an obscure African language that would perhaps be a little more difficult for Google Translate), that would hurt you (assuming you're interested my answer). It's the inter-player communication I'm concerned about.