Oolite Bulletins

Hey guys - I'm a new player, just introduced to Oolite about a week ago. I have to say, one of the main things I love about it is that I can get in and hack around and mod the game's code in all sorts of awesome ways (a personal interest of mine).

My only issue is that I'm stuck on one problem -- the startup screen. I'd like to remove the spinning Cobra MKIII, change the title font, remove the horizontal rule under the title, and move the developer and trademark text to the bottom of the window.

So far I've changed the background image and the music, but I can't seem to find any other configurations for the startup screen in the core directories. I'd greatly appreciate it if I could speak to a main developer to figure out how to make these modifications.

I completely love the game -- so I'm modding it around a bit to make the overall visual experience the best it can be.

Thanks for any suggestions ahead of time (:

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UPDATE (links to work in progress):

V1: https://app.box.com/s/wnfx8hig4u71437bgko4g4gz06prtj90
V2: https://app.box.com/s/pudmt9ubi2y8kr746ovpbt5vkm6dvfs5

FINAL GALLERY: https://app.box.com/s/57kgnqvdqso460a74warz0l3oh0hdb5e

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Hi and welcome. I am afraid most of what you ask requires direct modifications to the game's code. For this reason, I will assume that you have a copy of it handy and will make references to it as it currently stands in the github repository (rev. 10ca9e2). In more detail:

Altaira wrote:

I'd like to remove the spinning Cobra MKIII,

I think this might be trickier than it seems. I have not tested it so cannot be sure of potential side effects, but I think the/a way to do it is to remove the line that reads ship = [self newShipWithName:PLAYER_SHIP_DESC usePlayerProxy:YES]; in Universe.m, setupIntroFirstGo method.

change the title font,

I don't think you can change font just for the title without changing everything else too, unless maybe you create an own font file, with the letters of the word Oolite appearing in it as symbols of a different font, but I think that's just work with low return of investment.

remove the horizontal rule under the title

This is easy. Open gui-settings.plist and add a line that reads "screen_divider_color" = "0.75 0.75 0.75 0.0";, save and restart Oolite with shift held down. Since you want the bar to disappear, only the last of these numbers matters (the alpha) and it must be zero, the others can be any float value capped between 0.0 and 1.0.

and move the developer and trademark text to the bottom of the window.

Not possible without source code modification at this time. You want to change the block that reads in PlayerEntity.m, setupStartScreenGui method and specifically modify the number 15 to a higher number.
Hope this helps, good luck and feel free to ask more if something is not entirely clear.

Awesome — thanks so much. That really helps.

I'll get started when I get home from work. I'll post the final result of the startup screen if it all works out (:

Thanks again.

Hey, so here's what I got so far (:

https://app.box.com/s/wnfx8hig4u71437bgko4g4gz06prtj90

Turns out I can't remove the title or divider without removing every other title and divider in the game (Commander, Planetary Data, etc). So I just left it, and plan on changing the color for all of the menus and titles later.

But yes. I removed the spinning Cobra MKIII and the other text that was annoyingly placed in the center of the screen......

The Oolite logo is part of the static background image. I figured instead of changing the font, I'd just place the name as part of the image.

And then there's my lovely Copperhead MK2: Daelta -- on my lovely trade route between Raleen & Maesin in the Usralaat system.

Oh, and not to mention the amazing startup background music: The Battlestar Galactica 1978 Theme

My Browser blocks your link as malicious site...

Mine didn't, can see it fine.
Not using IE are you?

As for the music, good call! I have The Last Starfighter as music.

I have Cobra as theme music - of course.

Version 2: https://app.box.com/s/pudmt9ubi2y8kr746ovpbt5vkm6dvfs5

Figured out how to remove the top text title w/o removing all the rest.
Also changed the yellow text to white (only on startup screen).

Still can't figure out how to change the red highlight to gray - or any of the other text/highlight colors within the submenus.

Will keep trying.

Text highlight is selected_row_background_color and selected_row_color in gui-settings.plist.

i get time out or web page offline for your links...

Same here.

Edit: Seems to be ok now.

another_commander wrote:

Edit: Seems to be ok now.

Updated the links anyway – they go to my Box now.

cim wrote:

Text highlight is selected_row_background_color and selected_row_color in gui-settings.plist.

Yeah, I've tried that before and after source build, but still not updating :/ I'll try again – maybe I made a mistake somewhere.

Altaira wrote:

Yeah, I've tried that before and after source build, but still not updating :/ I'll try again – maybe I made a mistake somewhere.

When you make changes to files inside resource folders, being OXP or core, you need to start the game with the Shif key held down in order to trigger a cache rebuild. If you don't, then the game will just use whatever is in its cache file at that time, which most likely will not contain your changes.I think that's probably what has happened here.

another_commander wrote:

When you make changes to files inside resource folders, being OXP or core, you need to start the game with the Shif key held down in order to trigger a cache rebuild. If you don't, then the game will just use whatever is in its cache file at that time, which most likely will not contain your changes.I think that's probably what has happened here.

Yeah, I figured that out last night - Although, apparently the Shift key doesn't load the changes on my Debug build (probably because I disabled loading of the splash window on startup [it just goes straight to the start screen]).

So I've just been deleting the GNU folders in the Oolite root and my home directories, and it's all working out.

Thanks for confirming that - I'll be sure to delete the cache first from here on out.



I'll be posting a link to a screenshot gallery of my entire GUI in a few hours.

Altaira wrote:

I'll be sure to delete the cache first from here on out.

Or you can set the key always-flush-cache to true in your user defaults file and Oolite will unconditionally rebuild the cache on each restart. Although I am sure that the splash screen does not have anything to do with all this. If it does, then it's a bug.