Oolite Bulletins

I've been engaged in some discussions with Svengali recently, and he's decided that it's time for him to move on from Oolite. Some may have noticed that his presence on the boards has dropped right off, over the last several months to a year. On the subject of 1.80 and his OXPs, he had this to say:

Svengali wrote:

That sounds really good. But I've stopped to work on Oolite related stuff. I've been waiting far too long for such features and my motivation went south. I guess it's simply time to move on. Maybe someone will keep an eye on my OXPs - there's still a lot of unique (and it seems mostly unknown) stuff in these OXPs.

So, given the above, and having allowed a decent interval in case he wanted to put out the word himself, I'm now putting the call out there for interested parties to take on Svengali's OXPs.

I've agreed to take on HyperRadio, and am currently planning a number of new features for it, to take advantage of the new audio architecture in 1.80, but the rest of Svengali's work will need new maintainers. Some were collaborative efforts, so the other team members may be interested in taking those projects on, the rest will need new homes. Some may be better maintained by a team effort, so if someone has offered to take on a project that you're also interested in, please don't hesitate to put up your hand too.

A full list of Svengali's OXPs (and other team members) can be found here:
http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/User:Svengali

And all his publicly available files (including a number of useful development tools and resources) can be found here:
https://app.box.com/shared/h78y01lg9b

Should anyone need/want to contact Svengali for more information on particular OXPs, PM me for his email address.


Please post expressions of interest below, so we will know if/when we have them all covered. I'll update this post as maintainers are found.

So far we have:

• BGS - Tricky
• BuoyRepair - Eric Walch
• Cabal Common Library - Norby
• Cabal Common MaterialsFinder - Maintainer needed
• HyperRadio - Diziet Sma
• OXPConfig - Lone_Wolf
• Snoopers - Norby
• Vector - Norby
• Localhero - Lone_Wolf
• Keyconfig - Maintainer needed

Edit:
Svengali was also maintaining a number of orphaned OXPs which will need new homes as well. They are:

• FarstarMurderer - Redspear
• Globestation - Redspear
• Murghs Stations - Redspear
• Pallas - Redspear
• RoC - Redspear
• RVandGS - Redspear
• Tori - Redspear
• WPB - Redspear

<nods> I ain't too surprised, tbh - 'tis a pity though. CCL and BGS would be the important ones for me - but help, I cannot.

Always sad when an 'old hand' moves on. Good luck with whatever you choose to do now, Svengali, and it would be nice to see you from time to time if you decide to look in.
As far as the OXPs go, I am snowed under with my own portfolio at the moment, and in fact don't even use any of these myself except a very heavily edited version of BGS which has everything removed except the docking-tunnel and hyperspace effects.
On this point (and this is purely a personal opinion), would whoever takes this project on consider breaking it up into more of a modular suite of OXPs. I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't want all of the various features, but really likes one or two. To my mind offering independant OXPs for screen backgrounds, sounds and audio, and special effects etc would be a really positive move. People could then pick and choose the parts they want rather than either having to install loads of stuff they don't want, or go to the trouble of editing out all the unwanted parts (which may be beyond the abilities of non-tinkering players) .

Smivs wrote:

On this point (and this is purely a personal opinion), would whoever takes this project on consider breaking it up into more of a modular suite of OXPs. I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't want all of the various features, but really likes one or two. To my mind offering independant OXPs for screen backgrounds, sounds and audio, and special effects etc would be a really positive move. People could then pick and choose the parts they want rather than either having to install loads of stuff they don't want.

Seconded this^^
It might also help anyone with the ability who takes over it to have it in smaller parts, then several could look after parts. (Sadly my own abilities don't stretch far enough to take any on )

Smivs wrote:

On this point (and this is purely a personal opinion), would whoever takes this project on consider breaking it up into more of a modular suite of OXPs. I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't want all of the various features, but really likes one or two. To my mind offering independant OXPs for screen backgrounds, sounds and audio, and special effects etc would be a really positive move. People could then pick and choose the parts they want rather than either having to install loads of stuff they don't want, or go to the trouble of editing out all the unwanted parts (which may be beyond the abilities of non-tinkering players) .

Well, as Svengali himself pointed out more than once, and documented, BGS is a framework intended for other OXP authors to take advantage of as they wished.. many parts of it can be changed and/or disabled, as desired. One of the things that disappointed him was that rather than run with it and see what they could produce using the tools he'd made, (OXPConfig being another such tool), most other OXP authors seemed content to just treat it as a monolithic bloc, and showed very little interest in exploring how to use it to push the boundaries. Similar things could be said about his cut-scene demo..

BGS as it exists currently was intended as an example of what could be done with the tools.. not as a finished product. I can fully understand his frustration and diminished enthusiasm.. he made a lot of well thought out, versatile tools for the community to use, and almost nobody has taken advantage of them, preferring instead to see them as single-purpose, finished products.

Diziet Sma wrote:

most other OXP authors seemed content to just treat it as a monolithic bloc...preferring instead to see them as single-purpose, finished products.

Exactly. having one, huge, complex product makes it extremely difficult to do anything with it, whereas smaller single-purpose OXPs would be more user-friendly for the community, and much easier for other OXP authors to exploit.
For example I produced a 'unified' docking graphics package as part of Accessories, where the station dock graphics were co-ordinated with a custom BGS tunnel graphic to give a seamless visual experience when docking. However this only worked with the full BGS OXP installed, and it would have been so much better if just the 'effects' (hyperspasce and docking tunnels) were available as a standalone. I did at one point try to isolate the tunnel effect (and for that matter the hyperspace effect) for my own use, as those are the only parts of BGS that interest me, and it was almost impossible for me (who understands a little bit of coding) to achieve this. Somebody with little or no js and shadery knowledge wouldn't stand a chance.
If all the modules were stand alone such a task would be much easier (and indeed probably un-necessary), and with the other benefit (as has already been pointed out) that maintenance would be easier and could be split amongst several people.

As a co-author of BGS (A lot of sounds I made for it) I first have to say that this is a bit sad news. I did not hear from Svengali that he wanted to move on but I understand. Sometimes you have to do other things and maybe then your motivation comes back (or not). Anyway I can maintain the sound side of it but I need to be paired with a strong programmer for the scripting side of BGS.

Well, I like most of these so I made the oxz versions of Svengali's works and the manifests are under my login in the oxz admin page, but I am not planning any upgrade so if anybody wants to be the maintainer then simply ask cim in PM to transfer the manifests from me.

This weekend, I will update BuoyRepair to 1.3.3

I didn't realise that Oolite 1.80 broke this oxp. The oxp uses two core ships that are 300% enlarged. (Anaconda and Boa2) It uses the texture from Oolite, that now are removed from Oolite. As a quick fix, I now added them to the oxp. For a future fix I have to create enlarged models of the current ships (ore other big ones)

So does that mean I can put you down on the list as the BuoyRepair maintainer?

pagroove wrote:

As a co-author of BGS (A lot of sounds I made for it) ... Anyway I can maintain the sound side of it but I need to be paired with a strong programmer for the scripting side of BGS.

Did you grab a copy of the BGS Female Comms Chatter patch yet? And would you like a copy of the original audio files it was made from?

Diziet Sma wrote:

So does that mean I can put you down on the list as the BuoyRepair maintainer?

I have never been from that list.

Eric Walch wrote:

I have never been from that list.

Good point. List updated.

Diziet Sma wrote:

Svengali was also maintaining a number of orphaned OXPs which will need new homes as well. They are:
•FarstarMurderer - Maintainer needed
•Globestation - Maintainer needed
•Murghs Stations - Maintainer needed
•Pallas - Maintainer needed
•RoC - Maintainer needed
•RVandGS - Maintainer needed
•Tori - Maintainer needed
•WPB - Maintainer needed

I'm much less capable than some here (and perhaps with less time) but I can model (a bit) and know my way around a shipdata/shipyard plist.

If no one else is up for it then I could perhaps look after the FarstarMurderer (always liked the later version) and potentially any of the other ships.
I really like the globestation but I don't understand docking ports yet ...

I would hapily 'maintain' any of those listed by Dizzy in his edit.

Sorry you're going Svengali and thanks for all your contributions...

Well, at this point the ships and stations probably won't need a lot in the way of work, other than roles, etc.. so mostly plist type stuff.. and if it comes down to the point where the docking ports need attention, there's lots of help available here.

If you're agreeable then, I'll put all the 'orphans' under your care.