CustomShieldsv083.oxp(NEW RELEASE)(Sept. 24, 2012)

[Commander McLane]

The second issue is that after destroying a pirate my targeting system locked on to a named piece of wreckage.

Maybe this metal fragment is the ship nameplate

I would think that this issue is better solved from the Random Shipnames OXP.

To me it looks like the result of the wreckage having the isCargo-flag not set. That in turn may have a couple of reasons, on which I can only speculate. Properly created and set-up metal fragments are already excluded from being named (or else everybody would have seen nothing but named fragments since installing randomshipnames).

[Commander McLane]

Okay, I downloaded and tried the OXP. So far haven't come across named alloys.

However, I discovered one issue: when I fire whilst cloaked, the OXP doesn't do anything. No optical effects, and no shield simulation. Suddenly NPCs have no shields at all. The reason is that "whom" is null.

That'll be a difficult one to get around, I guess. (NPC-shields OXP doesn't have this problem, because it doesn't need to check for "whom".)

[CommonSenseOTB]

Thanks for posting guys!

@JazHaz: Ships that have fuel will leak fuel until the fuel runs dry, including the player, when fuel leak damage happens.

@Shipbuilder: The flicker of flame at long distance is the ships missiles that it just launched prior to being destroyed exploding for whatever reason. If you suspect otherwise, perhaps try and get a snapshot of the event and post it so I can have a look see.
I've never seen a named piece of wreckage. I'll try using the randomshipnames.oxp again and see what happens.

@CommanderMcLane: As I stated before the blown panels are "like_shipped" to the scarred-alloy and so are CARGO_ALLOY. Therefore the isCargo flag should be set. However, there are some strange things going on in 1.76(1.77trunk works just fine, have these issues been fixed in this version?) with this issue as when I set the bounty to zero for the blown panels, I still very rarely can get a 1.0credit bounty for something I shot when I was destroying the ship. I'll probably have to instead of like_shipping the blown panels instead make a separate entity from scratch instead and still use the model and texture from core oolite. Maybe this will solve any random names issue as well.

About the cloaked issue: Hmmm...is there any way to determine the whom? Or maybe there is an event that fires before shipTakingDamage that I can get a whom from? I'll have to do some more tests. Any ideas from the developers or scripting gurus?

Until one attempts to circumvent hurdles one doesn't know if they can be overcome. If not and the cloak works the same in 1.77 then it might be difficult to make proper shields in 1.77 as well and might make some of the reason for visual effects in 1.77 moot.
This might be a serious issue that bears scrutiny by the devs. Perhaps cloaking shouldn't block getting a whom when being attacked then? Looks like I have some major investigating to do this weekend...

Any playtest reports on this from the community at large may prove helpful as well.

[Thargoid]

There isn't a direct way of getting a whom for a cloaked ship (as that would rather defeat the object) but you do have shipBeingAttackedByCloaked event. You could use that to kick off a scan to see if there is a cloaked player ship nearby (scan for an entity that isPlayer, isShip and isCloaked) and take it from there.

[CommonSenseOTB]

There isn't a direct way of getting a whom for a cloaked ship (as that would rather defeat the object) but you do have shipBeingAttackedByCloaked event. You could use that to kick off a scan to see if there is a cloaked player ship nearby (scan for an entity that isPlayer, isShip and isCloaked) and take it from there.

Great idea Thargoid, I'll start there!

[Shipbuilder]

@Shipbuilder: The flicker of flame at long distance is the ships missiles that it just launched prior to being destroyed exploding for whatever reason. If you suspect otherwise, perhaps try and get a snapshot of the event and post it so I can have a look see.
I've never seen a named piece of wreckage. I'll try using the randomshipnames.oxp again and see what happens.

@ ComonSense - I have finally managed to capture one of the flicker of flames I mentioned previously. This particular one was when I destroyed a missile with the ECM system. The missile was launched from a Griff Prototype Boa 19.5km away.

I also seen them however when I destroy a ship (Probably about 50% of the time). Following further playtesting as far as I can see this only occurs when I destroy missiles.

[Commander McLane]

<derailment ahead>

Griff Prototype Boa: The Reincarnated Lioness II

What a great name!

</end of derailment>

[CommonSenseOTB]

Well, that was an interesting weekend of scripting and playtesting, and the result was excellent. There is now full cloaking device compatibility for this oxp as any ship(player, npc or thargoid) attacked by a cloaked vessel, including a cloaked player ship, has its' shields effects work properly. Also the blown panels have been redone as a separate cargo entity like what you would find in an oxp like cargo wrecks and teasers with the cargo "Alloys" being set when scooped and the properly working bounty of 0.1 credits has been included as well, just like any regular alloys cargo. I playtested for many hours with Randomshipnames.oxp and the Bountyscanner.oxp and everything is as it should be regarding the names and bounties in both 1.76 and 1.77trunk. These blown panels should only be spawned by the customshields oxp as blown panels because they are a CARGO_SCRIPTED_ITEM with a unique role. They have been named "Hull plating" to differentiate them from other core and oxp alloys named "Metal fragment". I have a hunch that some other oxp script is involved with regards to metal fragments with names and perhaps some of the bounty issues. In previous posts some playtesters have mentioned some errors with a reference to script "griff_spawn_wreckage 1.1" and perhaps this script might bear some scrutiny for these issues as well? As a side note while doing my investigations for the cloaking issue, it appears that the shipdata.plist wiki page needs some updating as default cloak_passive = false has been changed to default cloak_passive = true but the wiki listing for the shipdata.plist still says the default is false. Just a mention for anyone looking after the wiki pages or for those referencing this for thier own purposes.

And with that my next post introduces version 0.83 of CustomShields is available for download.

[CommonSenseOTB]

CustomShieldsv083.oxp is now available for download.

Sept. 24, 2012
changelog: version 0.83

-blown panels redone as a separate scripted cargo entity to resolve many issues.
-full cloaking device compatibility, shield effects now work for the victim of any cloaked attacker, including the player.

I think we finally have a winner here. It is recommended that if you have version 0.8, 0.81 or 0.82 to discard it in favor of this new version 0.83.(this is v5, if you have v4, discard it as it has no counts as kill = 0 on the blown panels, and next time give a guy more time to finish updating his files. )

Download link:

https://www.box.com/s/mnc729196xnlqlz80ahr



Enjoy! Now back to working on the advanced damage routines for 0.9.

[Zireael]

Downloaded, will play as soon as my Oolite starts working...

[CommonSenseOTB]

Just little progress report for upcoming version 0.9.

I currently have most of the extra damage events coded but they need tweaking for the player still and much more testing. In addition there are still a few things on my to do list for other enhancements so should have 0.9 available in a couple of weeks.

If there is something related to shields, shield effects, damage, damage effects, or equipment that the npcs should use and have damageable, or anything else someone has on a wish list for this type of oxp, feel free to mention it as it has a reasonable chance for inclusion in this oxp, in 1.76, or down the road for 1.77(there are a few cool things that I already have planned for 1.77 but aren't doable for the 1.76 version).

And, as always, comments and test results are welcome.

[pagroove]

Glad I have installed this OXP. It's so good it should be almost an inbuilt feature of Oolite. Well done sir.

[Disembodied]

Indeed, it really makes the game more beautiful! My one reservation is with the blown panels: I don't know whether they're somehow suppressing other forms of debris, but after every trip now I seem to have a cargo bay full of alloys and not much of anything else. I tweaked the OXP to remove the blown panels entirely, and (for me) I think it's an improvement ... although maybe all it needs is a reduction in the chance of generating them? 1%, 0.5% even? It's a very minor quibble, though.

[CommonSenseOTB]

Thanks so much for the kind remarks pagroove and Disembodied.

@Disembodied: In a day or so the new damage routines for 0.9 will be installed on the player as they are working very well on the npcs and then I can adjust percentages and do minor tweaks. At this very second you've inspired 2 possible cool ideas for how to handle your blownpanels concerns pop into my mind. Thanks Disembodied!

[Geraldine]

Glad I have installed this OXP. It's so good it should be almost an inbuilt feature of Oolite. Well done sir.

+1 from me also, great work!