Oolite Bulletins

Buyable Map OXP ver 0.3.1 (28.8.2012)

Author: spara

_The_Story_

In the world of Oolite, everything comes with a price tag. When you start your game, you get a shining new Cobra mk III with a factory installed map-module. It's somewhat disappointing to notice that your map-module is a bit dated. All you've got is a map with the names of the systems and the current statuses of the "Old Worlds." All other information about the other systems is simply unknown.

You can explore the unknown systems and your map gradually updates itself or you can buy a new map module for the current galaxy with full information and replace the factory installed one. You can also buy short range update on main stations.

The bought-in map-module is a bit fragile, so it can be damaged. If that happens, you simply put back the old one and use it until you get the broken one fixed. The original module is indestructible.

_What_it_does_

This oxp hides information of unknown systems from the short range scanner screen and the system data screen. When you visit an unknown system, the new system is updated to the map. When you visit the main station of a system, you can buy an update that updates all nearby systems the map.

If you buy the galactic map equipment, you will get the whole galaxy of data, but your old map does not get updated. If your bought map get's damaged, your old map module is in use again.

You will need a different map for every galaxy.

_Word_of_warning_

This oxp alters the properties of systems when the player is in the short range scanner screen. The properties are restored in the other views. If another oxp reads system properties when they are altered, problems may occur.

Enjoy

https://www.box.com/s/c9dd6a74b177c744ef67

I like very much that idea! I'll use it in pair with explorer's club.

This is an excellent idea! Good work! Downloaded.

Tichy wrote:

I like very much that idea! I'll use it in pair with explorer's club.

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

This is an excellent idea! Good work! Downloaded.

Thanks.

At first I made a version that hid everything from the map. It didn't even have names of the systems! Now that's a true explorer's heaven. And in the contracts list you see all these weird places that you have no idea where they are . You could also get bloomberg-ads for places that are somewhere out there. The game wass quite difficult.

I've been testing and brainstorming a bit further. This idea could be expanded to missions, that involve re-mapping areas that have for some reason been wiped out from the map. Perhaps by some virus or data corruption.

I have also pondered if there should be a screen in the f6-cycle that would contain some random data of the nearby systems (sort of rumours or clues heard in a bar or somewhere). Something like: System aaa: TL6; System bbb: anarchy, poor agricultural... . Maybe I should pump the price of the map a bit higher and integrate this to the oxp? And if there are hints, should there be a buyable map at all? What do you think?

spara wrote:

Tichy wrote:

I like very much that idea! I'll use it in pair with explorer's club.

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

This is an excellent idea! Good work! Downloaded.

Thanks.

At first I made a version that hid everything from the map. It didn't even have names of the systems! Now that's a true explorer's heaven. And in the contracts list you see all these weird places that you have no idea where they are . You could also get bloomberg-ads for places that are somewhere out there. The game wass quite difficult.

I've been testing and brainstorming a bit further. This idea could be expanded to missions, that involve re-mapping areas that have for some reason been wiped out from the map. Perhaps by some virus or data corruption.

I have also pondered if there should be a screen in the f6-cycle that would contain some random data of the nearby systems (sort of rumours or clues heard in a bar or somewhere). Something like: System aaa: TL6; System bbb: anarchy, poor agricultural... . Maybe I should pump the price of the map a bit higher and integrate this to the oxp? And if there are hints, should there be a buyable map at all? What do you think?

Sounds like some MUDs I've frequented.

In real life, unless you have purchased the AA map (ignoring the internetz), you won't have a clue as to where places are. True map discovery is based on word of mouth.

"Could you tell me how to get to Foo?"

"Not sure, but I can tell you how to get to Baz. Maybe you can get directions to Foo from there."

The games of the Escape Velocity series have that. Initially you only see your current system and the adjacent systems. While you're flying across the map, after each jump the adjacent systems are added to the map. So you don't have to physically go everywhere in order to acquire the complete map, but at least you have to go neighbouring to everywhere. It makes sense that each system would indeed have sufficient information about its direct neighbours. Alternatively you could buy a map.

For mission destinations, the destination coordinates were highlighted, but not the way to these coordinates. So even with a mostly empty map, you had at least an idea to which direction you needed to head. I'd consider this a minimum also for Oolite.

Ok. Been testing your and mine ideas and it's time for a new version. The link in the first post is updated.

* If you jump to a new system, that system is added to your map
* If you dock to the main station AND go to f6-screen, systems that are closer that 5 LY are updated (thanks for the idea Commander McLane)
* Price of the map is now 1500 cr. It's the same price as the docking comp and it can be bought from any system with TL > 5.

After playing I feel that this oxp adds a bit of that exploring feeling I was looking for, but at the same time doesn't change the core play a lot.

What do you think about the availability of the full map? Should it be restricted more? Should the government or economy be restricted? Does it feel logical that you can buy the map of the galaxy from an anarchy system? What about the price, is 1500 way too much or too little for all the info of the galaxy?

Thanks for all the comments.

My opinion is that this would be a great OXP for an Ooniverse with a different galaxy seed.

spara wrote:

* If you dock to the main station AND go to f6-screen, systems that are closer that 5 LY are updated

One could argue that 7LY would be better suited to the Ooniverse, but whatever floats your boat.

spara wrote:

What do you think about the availability of the full map? Should it be restricted more? Should the government or economy be restricted? Does it feel logical that you can buy the map of the galaxy from an anarchy system? What about the price, is 1500 way too much or too little for all the info of the galaxy?

Note that all main stations are operated by GalCop, not by the planetary governments. So you never buy your equipment from an anarchy (or corporate) system, you always buy from GalCop. Thus the political status of the system shouldn't make a difference.

On the other hand, there's no need for the map to cover the whole galaxy. It could cover only portions of it, depending for instance on tech level. Only TL 13 and above stations would have the whole galaxy. TL 1-3 stations would have maps of just a little over 7LY around them.

Love the idea, downloading!

spara wrote:

Buyable Map OXP withdrawn.

I've been kindly pointed of major flaws in my approach . Flaws that will break other oxps. Because I can't find a way not to break things, I have decided to completely withdraw this oxp. I was too hasty releasing, apologies .

Now I'll just have to find another idea...

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. I like this idea. Find a way, think outside-the-box, you can do it spara.

Agreed. This was a good idea, and you shouldn't give up on it. If nothing else just release it with a caveat that it is incompatible with certain missions...leave it up to the player to choose what they want.

You are so supportive. Thank you so much. I will re-release the oxp after I have polished it a bit. I have found solutions to some of the problems and have a couple of problems left (I think ):

1. To hide system information in the short range scanner screen (from the i-key), I have to change the surrounding systems properties (eco, gov and TL). Properties are returned, when player changes the screen to something else. The problem is that another oxp might try to access those properties while the player is short range scanner screen. I don't know if this problem is solvable. I'm out of ideas.

2. To keep up with the players progress I have to save an array per galaxy. In an array is a list of planets player has acquired. So that would mean 8*256 values in the worst case scenario. I'm afraid that it might blow up the save-file. Then again explorers club saves an entry per system. So is it as bad thing as I think it is?

spara wrote:

To keep up with the players progress I have to save an array per galaxy. In an array is a list of planets player has acquired. So that would mean 8*256 values in the worst case scenario. I'm afraid that it might blow up the save-file. Then again explorers club saves an entry per system. So is it as bad thing as I think it is?

No. But I'd suggest just using the Explorers' Club array, if present, rather than duplicating it. In startUp check if the Explorers' Club worldscript is present, and if it is delete the functions in your script that record the visited systems array.

spara wrote:

1. The problem is that another oxp might try to access those properties while the player is short range scanner screen. I don't know if this problem is solvable.

Not really, but you can work around it a bit.

Accessing properties, while on the short range scanner screen, for other systems, is I think going to be relatively rare behaviour in OXPs, so if you can get it down to just that problem, you may be able to get away with noting the incompatibility with the few OXPs that currently do it, and then talking to the writers of those OXPs to see if they'll work with you to get compatibility back.

You store the real system data somewhere while doing this, after all, so you could put that somewhere another OXP could read it, and work that way.

spara wrote:

2. To keep up with the players progress I have to save an array per galaxy. In an array is a list of planets player has acquired. So that would mean 8*256 values in the worst case scenario. I'm afraid that it might blow up the save-file. Then again explorers club saves an entry per system. So is it as bad thing as I think it is?

It should be fine. You can store that quite compactly if you need to: a string of 2048 characters either 0 or 1 will only be 2k in the save file (and you could compact it by more than that by using more than 0 and 1, of course, at the cost of simplicity) and is fairly straightforward to convert back and forward to a JS array.

(For comparison, my New Cargoes OXP stores around 10k of data in the save file, and no-one's ever complained about that to me)