Oolite Bulletins

I'm thinking about replacing 1.76.1 with the current trunk version, for playing. Do planet textures work in the nightly version, or are they still having problems? I would like to use the Povray Planets OXP.

What else would I need to know about? Obviously there are a whole load of new OXPs ready for trunk 1.77.

Just downloaded the 1.77.0.5556 version.

Nightly builds are designed to live together with the official releases so you can install trunk in a separate folder and have both 1.76.1 and latest development happily co-existing.

I do not seem to recall any problems with planet textures in trunk. Can you be more specific? We have now reverted to the non-shader code for planets, which as far as I can recall, did not have any issues pending. Povray planets should work and if they don't, we need to know about it.

As for what else there is to know: Trunk changes on an almost daily basis. Right now it stands in a pretty stable state, which has a very good chance of offering a nice gaming experience. Tomorrow it may cause your computer to melt. We have repeatedly noted (and it is also mentioned in the nightly builds threads) that you run trunk at own risk and that it is offered mainly for testing. The same goes for the experimental OXPs following trunk's development. The OXPs that are ready-to-go with 1.77 today may be completely useless and in need of full re-write tomorrow. It's the nature of software development.

If you feel comfortable with the above, go ahead. In any case, if there is anything you don't like about trunk, you can simply uninstall it and fall back to 1.76.1 at any time.

another_commander wrote:

Povray planets should work and if they don't, we need to know about it.

Povray Planets works fine in trunk (r5556).

another_commander wrote:

Nightly builds are designed to live together with the official releases so you can install trunk in a separate folder and have both 1.76.1 and latest development happily co-existing.

Yes I've been doing that for a while.

I do not seem to recall any problems with planet textures in trunk. Can you be more specific? We have now reverted to the non-shader code for planets, which as far as I can recall, did not have any issues pending. Povray planets should work and if they don't, we need to know about it.

Yes, it was the shader code for planets that wasn't working last time I installed trunk (a couple of months ago or more).

JazHaz wrote:

I'm thinking about replacing 1.76.1 with the current trunk version, for playing. Do planet textures work in the nightly version, or are they still having problems? I would like to use the Povray Planets OXP.
What else would I need to know about? Obviously there are a whole load of new OXPs ready for trunk 1.77.
Just downloaded the 1.77.0.5556 version.

I have been playing trunk for the better part of 2 years now. In that 2 year period I have had 3 or 4 instances where the current build has had problems making the game unplayable. These were mostly fixed immediately (next build).
On top of that I have encountered one major issue where the game would crash, making it unplayable for a 2 to 3 week period before the bugs were squashed. I learned a lot from that bug hunt.
Lastly, there were some OXP's that stopped working for a while, and a few that still need updating to work. This was mostly an issue when 1.76 was released though.

So my conclusion is, trunk is playable, but it does require a little work to keep up it up to date, check logs, hunt for broken oxp's and so on. I always keep the last stable installed, both for comparison and also just in case trunk breaks.
Another issue you will meet is that you need to keep track of what version of an oxp's work with which version of Oolite. This can sometimes be a little tedious.

All in all, trunk is certainly playable, but at your own risk.

Hi Jazhaz,

Currently running Trunk. No problems with Povray Planets. You have indeed look for broken oxp's. Thargoid updated his OXP's to Beta status and they work fine. My P.A.Groove Stations had problems in Trunk but the latest version fixes that (thanks to Griff). And I have to say that the new fx lift the game to the next generation. It's that good (new lasers and exhausts). So yes. Try it. I have a stable 1.76 install and a Trunk install living happily together on my HD.

I'll tell you what doesn't work, but not in the current trunk because this thing changes frequently.
In the Last-night-downloaded trunk, the Contract page (double tap on 8 ) didn't work.

Bothkill wrote:

In the Last-night-downloaded trunk, the Contract page (double tap on 8 ) didn't work.

Yep, that will stay disabled in future. This functionality is moved to the F4 page. This way allowing more scripted OXP influence on that page.

One other question about trunk. Is there a list of changes for each revision accessible somewhere on the web? The nightlies download page only has the changes since the last nightly.

I looked on Berlios, but the only references there that I could see, was for 1.76.1 and earlier.

If you just want a summary, Doc/CHANGELOG.TXT is mostly up-to-date with the changes since 1.76.1

If you want the actual commit log entries, then there's a web view of the SVN tree. The first commit to trunk code after 1.76 was r4685 so there's a fair bit of reading to do if you want the lot...