Oolite Bulletins

Hi,

I have a problem! After adding one or two oxps, I decided to take advantage of a new Mac (and lots of memory) and go the whole hog downloading and installing everything that didn't look stupid. Would be great, though I do seem now to have about 25 dockables in every system! My major problem though is that something is now causing my (military) lasers, which never used to miss a beat, to fail in every combat (sometimes without even being used)! I've tried deleting a few obvious possibilities (realistic damage etc.), but nothing seems to work, and either I am missing something or it is some unwanted interraction between two completely unrelated oxps! Has anyone else come across this problem and is able to offer any advice? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Jim

Hi Jim, and welcome aboard. Try removing (not deleting) a bunch of OXPs from the AddOns folder. If the problem persists, remove another bunch. Rinse and repeat. If the problem disappears, add the OXPs back in one at a time 'til the problem reappears. Failing that, you could post your Latest.log (within code tags, preferably). It can be found here: ~/Library/Logs/Oolite/Latest.log (that is, in your home folder, open the folder named Library, then Logs, then Oolite). A passing boffin (which I ain't) may be able to spot the problem from that.

Thargoid wrote:

... (as I've never thought it quite right that lasers, and for that matter pylon weaponry) are indestructable.

<nods> Especially pylon-mounted ordnance!

Hi, Uncle Sams On Mars!

Can you give more specific information? What exactly do you mean by "fail" "(sometimes without even being used)"? How does this failure manifest itself?

Some possible manifestations off the top of my head:
- The laser doesn't fire, although you press the correct key/button;
- you hear a laser firing sound, but see no beam;
- there is a beam and sound, but every shot seems to miss;
- you seem to hit your enemies, but they refuse to die;
- there is a screen message to the effect of "your laser is failing".

There are probably dozens more that could be abbreviated to "my laser fails", so it's a little difficult to figure out what you are actually experiencing from this rather general description.

If it's the last option, then Thargoid's reply must be the relevant one, because nothing in vanilla Oolite (or in any other OXP that I know of) would give such a message (and probably disable your laser along with it). Therefore only this OXP can be the culprit.

This would be, by the way, a good example for why we discourage players from installing every OXP, but recommend adding them one by one, and only if you (a) understand what each OXP does, and (b) actively want what it does.

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the welcome and the helpful comments.

As further detail, the laser failure is an "official" gameplay failure ... message appears in the log saying something about "laser fail detected" (rather too busy using them at the time to read it properly), after which all I can do is run away or hope enemies will stay still long enough to hit them with the rail gun! In at least one instance, I turned my back (only ever bother with lasers front and rear) only to find that the rear laser was also u/s. This happened in both a Werewolf and a FdL3G, both similarly equipped with almost every available combat upgrade (short of plasma and turrets).

So far (fingers crossed), Thargoid's suggestion that it was his laser booster seems to be correct. For some reason the OXP was hiding and I didn't see it (only a search of the folder turned it up) else it would have been the first to be moved/deleted to try to solve the problem. Since moving it out of the add ons, no more problem.

Thanks again for all the help, and if Thargoid would like more detail to try to recreate the problem, please let me know and I can provide a full list of both the oxps running and the equipment on each vessel that suffered from the problem.

Jim

When the failure is logged, it seems intentional and than I bet you have to blame the thargoid(s) for it.

Eric Walch wrote:

When the failure is logged, it seems intentional and than I bet you have to blame the thargoid(s) for it.

Actually, what's getting logged is a failure of the script itself (I just downloaded and checked it). So there may be something for Thargoid to fix. He'll be back soon asking questions, I'm sure.

Guys.. I don't think Uncle Sam is actually referring to the actual Latest.log.. going by the phrasing here:

Uncle Sams On Mars wrote:

message appears in the log saying something about "laser fail detected" (rather too busy using them at the time to read it properly), after which all I can do is run away or hope enemies will stay still long enough to hit them with the rail gun!

I suspect when he says "log" Uncle Sam is referring to the Message Console in the HUD. In which case it's simply the OXP writing a message to the console..

(Uncle Sam, any OXP can send messages to the screen in-game.. not just the "official" core game.)

Diziet Sma wrote:

I suspect when he says "log" Uncle Sam is referring to the Message Console in the HUD.

Thargoid wrote:

I was going on McLane's comment that he'd downloaded it and found something.

Dizzie is probably right, and I misunderstood the use of "logged". From the script I just found out that the OXP can indeed log something under certain circumstances, thus I guessed that this is what Uncle Sams On Mars was referring to.

But re-reading what he actually wrote it seems indeed much more likely that he was referring to the screen messages that come with the normal functioning of the OXP.

This strengthens my hypothesis: USOM installed an OXP whose features he doesn't really want. Which is a reason against installing many OXPs without caring what each one of them does.

Sorry guys, been a bit busy.

Yes, when I said "log", I meant the HUD status log, hence my comment that it seemed to be "official gameplay" rather than an actual programming bug. So, yes, it was the laser booster that was causing it, though I obviously don't have a clue what interaction was causing the lasers to fail in every single combat.

Uncle Sams On Mars wrote:

...So, yes, it was the laser booster that was causing it, though I obviously don't have a clue what interaction was causing the lasers to fail in every single combat.

Randomius Factorius - In other-words, pure bad luck.

It's actually quite an eerie feeling, being out there without any lasers!