Oolite Bulletins

A friend of my son saw me playing oolite the other day and asked about it. One question he asked was how hard it would be without a joystick. I explained that although it was certainly easier with a stick, it was still quite playable. His first hurdle though, was docking. When using the keyboard it is difficult to match rotation speed with the station. This led to my first OXP - Roll Limiter. The idea behind this, and the code itself is quite simple. When activated it limits the player's ship's roll rate to that of the main station in the system they are in. When deactivated, roll rate goes back to normal.

I've made this available at all stations and feel the price should be quite low as what it does is very basic.

What are people's thoughts on this idea at all and what price should it have. I felt it would be advantageous only to new players and specifically those using a keyboard input.

Thanks for any thoughts.

I would have immediately got this when I started!

Nice idea. The price depends on if you want to be available from the start - this is why my [wiki]ILS[/wiki] need 50cr only. If the cost is more than 100cr then will be usable later ony.

I would make it very cheap too. That's why I wonder why the docking computers were even made part of the game, especially in the 8-bit times when every byte of memory was valuable. If you still haven't figured out how to dock safely when you can afford 1500 Cr for buying one, you're doing something seriously wrong!

Neal wrote:

I've made this available at all stations and feel the price should be quite low as what it does is very basic.

For something which helps brand-new players to dock, I'd make it free, and installed automatically when they install the OXP - just make it something that has to be turned on and off by the player.

What Disembodied said!

I agree that such a newbie help should come free!

Being a newbie to OXP develpment I'm trying to figure out how to implement installing the item without it being purchased. Can anyone help me with that?

Thanks,

Neal.

I've never tried it, but does setting the price to 0 (zero) Credits work?

Smivs wrote:

I've never tried it, but does setting the price to 0 (zero) Credits work?

It works fine for McLane's  Asteroids3D, so I presume it would.

Thanks, I'll do that when I get home this evening.
Neal.

Thinking about it, would a minimal price - say 5 (or 10) Credits - be preferable?
I said the same to McLane about Asteroids3D, but he ignored me. <chortles>

Cody wrote:

Thinking about it, would a minimal price - say 5 (or 10) Credits - be preferable?

Personally, I don't think so: 5 credits can be a lot of money on your first run. On your first several runs, in fact - it can be the difference between having a spare TC of Food to throw to a pirate pack, and having to give them something more expensive!

If a player needs or wants the help, I think they should have it - especially in this case, where the player's ship is being rendered less manoeuvrable in order to make the final docking approach easier. Charging a fee for it would be like charging a fee so that the station shows up on the compass.

Neal wrote:

how to implement installing the item without it being purchased.

Call player.ship.[url=http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Oolite_JavaScript_Reference:_Ship#awardEquipment]awardEquipment[/url]("EQ_ROLL_LIMITER"); for example in the startUpComplete event handler.

In addition if you set "portable_between_ships"=yes; in [wiki]equipment.plist[/wiki] then will stay in the ship if the player buy a Cobra1 or an Adder right at start. Not so important due to these can dock without roll.

Thanks again everyone. Norby, it took me a little bit, but I figured out where to put the statement you suggested. I didn't have a worldScript which was causing me problems when I first tried to put the awardEquipment in place.