Oolite Bulletins

As you might be aware from this thread I have been looking at planets in G1, and I have come across what looks like an error on the wiki.
Initially I was intending to use Sori (planet 0 66) in my WIP OXP, but have learned that it is already being used so decided to use a close-by planet. Sori is the planet in the bottom right corner of the galaxy and is the last planet in a small 'peninsula' of planets, so I opted to use the first planet in the 'peninsula' instead. Looking on the galactic chart this is planet number 238 and a check on the planet list tells me this is Aruszati. However when I went there, I noticed it is named as Zaleriza on the short-range chart. A look at the planet list shows Zaleriza as planet 239 which is on the far left side of the galactic map!
It looks like the descriptions in the planet list have been swapped. If somebody would like to confirm this, I'll amend the wiki.

Not sure what you mean.

planet list on the wiki wrote:

#238. Zaleriza (247,196), {15,170,182,223} within 7.0 LY. Radius 4087 km.

Anarchy, Average Agri. Pop. 2.3 B, Prod. 2944 MCr. HC: 4, TL: 5, Fierce Bony Lobsters.
This world is a tedious place.

#239. Zasoer (4,126), {19,27,72,155,165,193} within 7.0 LY. Radius 3844 km.

Confederacy, Average Agri. Pop. 2.8 B, Prod. 8064 MCr. HC: 6, TL: 5, Human Colonials.
Zasoer is mildly well known for its exotic night life.

But:

Older, less useful, and crucially, not zero-indexed list on the same page wrote:

238. Aruszati, (146,139), TL: 9, Small Green Bug-Eyed Lobsters, Democracy, This planet is noted for Zero-G cricket.
239. Zaleriza, (247,196), TL: 4, Fierce Bony Lobsters, Anarchy, This world is a tedious place.

It's probably time to delete those older lists from the pages.

I didn't realise I was looking at the 'old' list - Doh! I NEED MORE COFFEE!
Agree with cim...time they were deleted.

cim wrote:

It's probably time to delete those older lists from the pages.

Yes, but... .-)

The first list (id zerobased) uses the ingame displayed techlevel (+1), while the second (id non-zerobased, +1) the zerobased techlevel. Funny - it's a mess .-)

Smivs wrote:

I didn't realise I was looking at the 'old' list - Doh!

You definitely do not get the job as navigator!

El Viejo wrote:

You definitely do not get the job as navigator!

I'm just a dumb pilot

Svengali wrote:

The first list (id zerobased) uses the ingame displayed techlevel (+1), while the second (id non-zerobased, +1) the zerobased techlevel. Funny - it's a mess .-)

Well, the fact that Oolite uses one-based for TL output and zero-based for TL input is the mess. It should probably use one-based for input as well (even if it continues to use zero-based internally), but that would break all existing equipment.plists and some planetinfo.plists. Ideas on how to smoothly make that transition welcome!

cim wrote:

Well, the fact that Oolite uses one-based for TL output and zero-based for TL input is the mess. It should probably use one-based for input as well (even if it continues to use zero-based internally), but that would break all existing equipment.plists and some planetinfo.plists. Ideas on how to smoothly make that transition welcome!

Why not simply change the WIKI -> TL: (4)5 ? Other values are zero-based too (e.g. galaxyNumber=0 is Galactic Chart 1), so it's not really new for OXPers and a core change would add to the confusion.

Changing the WIKI would also cover needs of scripters and players.

Svengali wrote:

Why not simply change the WIKI -> TL: (4)5 ?

That I think would just be confusing for everyone. I think keeping that list as the output value (and likewise having "Feudal" rather than "Feudal (1)", etc.) and just making the documentation on the planetinfo.plist page clearer about the input values would be more useful to OXPers.

cim wrote:

Svengali wrote:

Why not simply change the WIKI -> TL: (4)5 ?

That I think would just be confusing for everyone. I think keeping that list as the output value (and likewise having "Feudal" rather than "Feudal (1)", etc.) and just making the documentation on the planetinfo.plist page clearer about the input values would be more useful to OXPers.

Agreed, I have already gotten used to the fact that when scripting you always take 1 number away for tech levels and system numbers and even galaxy numbers (have I missed one? ) but I would imagine it would confuse new OXPers as it used to confuse me!

EDIT: Couldn't the code internally be modified so that when you input tech level 5 it decreases it by 1 for the internal workings? I know this would possibly screw a lot of old OXPs, but maybe there could be an internal way of determing if the OXP was an old or new one?

Pleb wrote:

EDIT: Couldn't the code internally be modified so that when you input tech level 5 it decreases it by 1 for the internal workings? I know this would possibly screw a lot of old OXPs, but maybe there could be an internal way of determing if the OXP was an old or new one?

Oh, modifying the code like that would be trivial. As you see, however, modifying the code like that in a way that doesn't subtly break every equipment OXP and some planet-changing ones would be much trickier (I think impossible).

Damn.

Looks like I'll need to redo ooliteinfo as that's where I got all my planet data.

Obviously I'd like to do it procedurally but hey.

Stupid thought, but how about implementing the generation code in JavaScript or php attached to the wiki?

!m!

cim wrote:

Oh, modifying the code like that would be trivial. As you see, however, modifying the code like that in a way that doesn't subtly break every equipment OXP and some planet-changing ones would be much trickier (I think impossible).

Is there no way of making it so that the game can determine if an OXP is old or new, perhaps something that would have to be included with new OXPs to determine its a new one? Then different input value could be used? I'm just theorising I know what I said before is trivial to implement I was thinking more about a way of the game determining if an OXP was made after a certain version release, that way you could implement a load of new coding features like updating system numbers and galaxy numbers to actual values (eg - Galaxy 1 = Galaxy 1 not Galaxy 0 = Galaxy 1) without screwing old OXPs?

Pleb wrote:

Is there no way of making it so that the game can determine if an OXP is old or new, perhaps something that would have to be included with new OXPs to determine its a new one?[/b] without screwing old OXPs?

If anyone was ever to pick up the previous plans for the OXZ expansion format, that would be a potential time to make such a change as the format would be incompatible in a few ways anyway, so a couple more would be mostly harmless. Other than that I think it would be more likely to introduce more confusion than it removed.

"Add one to the value in equipment.plist to get the real TL" (or "The value in equipment.plist is the repair TL, not the purchase TL") is an inconvenient but simple rule.

"Add one to the value in equipment.plist to get the real TL, unless {condition}, in which case the value is the real TL" is still inconvenient, but also more complex and harder to check, and makes sharing examples of equipment.plist code trickier as the meaning will depend on something elsewhere in the OXP, for all {condition}s I can think of for doing this old/new detection. But I may well be missing an obvious way to do it.