Oolite Bulletins

I'm in process of working on a new version of OOLiteInfo and want to generate everything procedurally.

The problem is, I'm having some trouble understanding the methods in the twist and the planet names.
Given what is listed in the spreadsheet, how does it know whether to use 3 or 4 digrams for the planet name.

Also, does it do less that 4 twists depending on the number of digrams used?

I've got a basic version running, so I get:
TIBEDIED - Correct
QU@@BEDI - Miss out the @@ and how does it know not to take the DI?
LELEERBE - Again how to miss off the BE
BIMABIED - Totaly WRONG!!!!


Can anyone shed a little light on the subject for me?

Thanks.

!m!

It's all shown in my spreadsheet which is linked from the Planet List page in the wiki (But here it is for your convienence: http://bit.ly/HYuwRq).

Depending on how you look at it the seed consists of either 3 16 bit numbers or 6 8 bit numbers. My spreadsheet uses 3 16 bit numbers. These are referred to as w0, w1 and w2. If you use the 8 bit then they are usually referred to as a, b, c, d, e and f where w0 = b * 256 + a, w1 = d * 256 + c and w2 = f * 256 + e.

Whether it takes 3 or 4 digrams is determined by the 7th bit of the w0 (or a) for the first system (TIBEDIED) the value of a is the galaxy seed a which is 74. 74 = 01001010 in binary so the 7th bit is the 64 column which is the 2nd character in which is 1.

You then add 3 to that value and you get 4, so you use 4 digrams.

Not sure what you did to get BIMABIED it should have been BIARGE(RA).

Hope that helps.

Thanks. That does help.

I have been looking at the spreadsheet but for some reason the format didn't covert well into Excel. The macros seem to have got lost.
Also I've found the wiki page to be somewhat difficult to follow as it's not formatted in a way that makes it easy to follow.

Once I've done what I've done, I might make a few updates. I think the mention of the number of digrams is not on the Wiki page.

Anyway, once I've finished, I'm hoping for a simpler version of OOLiteInfo with a version that runs in a web browser.

If I get really stuck, I might paste my code up and see what light can be shed.

Cheers.

!m!

maaarcooose wrote:

I have been looking at the spreadsheet but for some reason the format didn't covert well into Excel. The macros seem to have got lost.

It doesn't use macros only cell formulae. I didn't provide an Excel version for two reasons. 1) Excel won't show the name of the system on the graph 2) Excel is a proprietory format.

It might easier just to install Libreoffice and you can just open it without issue.

I'm installing Libre Office on my Mac.

I am surprised the cell formula didn't work though in Windows Excel 2007.

Ah well.

!m!

PhantorGorth wrote:

maaarcooose wrote:

I have been looking at the spreadsheet but for some reason the format didn't covert well into Excel. The macros seem to have got lost.

It doesn't use macros only cell formulae. I didn't provide an Excel version for two reasons. 1) Excel won't show the name of the system on the graph 2) Excel is a proprietory format.

It might easier just to install Libreoffice and you can just open it without issue.

I totally get where you are coming from with the labels on Excel graphs. After trying to do my work resource profiles in an Excel graph I eventually gave up and used a Javascript graphing package.

!m!

Got it now thanks.

Was a combination of programmer incompetence (typed one of the seeds in wrong) and PHP's base_convert function behaviour not doing what I thought.
Seems to be working now.

Now the planet descriptions.


!m!

@maaarcooose: I am glad you got it working. That spreadsheet document has a sheet that does planet descriptions too. I will say that figuring that out was a lot trickier to do.

PhantorGorth wrote:

@maaarcooose: I am glad you got it working. That spreadsheet document has a sheet that does planet descriptions too. I will say that figuring that out was a lot trickier to do.

Yes....

The planet descriptions definitely look a lot more tricky than anything else. I've still got a few bits to do, but I would like to remove my dependency on CSV files form the tool.

If my plans come to fruition, I will have a go at making it so that you can put in different seed values and recalculate the 8 charts based on those seeds.

The thing I find interesting is that I know Braben and Bell did a fair bit of experimentation with different seed values but the ones used must have been arrived at by some method as I can't see that they were completely random, unless they had it run a mass printout of lots and lots of different galaxy maps and names.

It's a fascinating bit of maths.

!m!