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[Release] Rock Hermit Beacons v1.1

Posted: Mon Sep 07, 2020 6:41 pm
by dybal
[EliteWiki] Rock Hermit Beacons OXP
v1.0, by Dybal

Most Rock Hermits start as mining communities in an asteroid-rich region, often on a shoestring budget (it's a huge capital investment), with no beacon, or a beacon with very limited range but still useful to find the way home in the asteroid field.

As time goes by, their wealth hopefully goes up and they can afford wider range beacons, which they might need since they have to go further to mine, as the asteroids closer to them become depleted of useful minerals by their mining activities.

Finally, the time comes when there are few useful asteroids around them, and they have the choice of moving on to richer fields, leaving an abandoned rock hermit, or convert into a station-like business, offering servicing, equipment, market, accommodation, etc., for which a still wider range beacon would allow them to attract a larger clientele.

Rock Hermit Beacons OXPs tries to bring the Rock Hermits closer to that story. It:
  • adds beacons with diverse ranges, from 50km up to the whole system, to the majority of the Rock Hermits (Pirate Coves included), allowing them to be found through Advanced Space Compass and seen in the 'In-system distances' Station Interface screen (F4);
  • adds and maintains an asteroid field around the Rock Hermit, the number of asteroids based on its beacon range.
The beacons are added to the Rock Hermit themselves, no Navigation Buoys are involved.

It doesn't add beacons to all Rock Hermits if finds, since some of them would be true hermits, and desire to be left alone, some would want to keep a low profile and not attract attention (from the government, from the police, from criminal gangs... the reason would vary with the Rock Hermit role and system government's meddling), and some simply can't afford yet to buy and maintain a beacon.

Note for OXP developers

This OXP doesn't create Rock Hermits, it acts on the Rock Hermits it finds, and it waits a bit after startup for other OXPs to create them..

It does three things, and all of them can be controlled by properties in the Rock Hermit's ship.script, so the Rock Hermit's creator can control what this OXP does with its creation.

The first thing this OXP does is create beacons for the Rock Hermits a few seconds after startup. This can be controlled with the property ship.script.$rhbCreateBeacon; Rock Hermit Beacons OXP will not create beacons on RHs that have this property set to the value "no".

The second thing this OXP does is create and mantain an asteroid field around the RH. The size of the asteroid field can be controlled through the property ship.script.$rhbAsteroidsQtt.

Finally, it manages beacon visibility based on their range and the player's ship position. The beacon's range can be defined (in game meters) through ship.script.$rhbBeaconRange, and whenever ship.script.$rhbCreateBeacon is "no" Rock Hermit Beacons will not change the beacon's visibility to On even if the beacons's range is defined and the player's ship moves into range, allowing the RH's creator to keep the beacon Off through that property.

License

This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).

The beep.ogg sound is based on JustinBW's buttonchime02up.wav available at https://freesound.org/people/JustinBW/sounds/80921/ licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 International (CC BY 3.0).

Acknownledgments

This OXP started as a re-write of Eric Walch's Rock Hermit Locator (which was based on Frame's ideas), since it doesn't include a license allowing modification, but it took a life of its own after some suggestions from phkb induced me to take a step back and look at the bigger picture, so my thanks to Frame, Eric Walch and phkb for the inspiration!

Download

[EliteWiki] Rock Hermit Beacons OXP v1.0 is available on the Expansion Manager and here.

EDIT to correct list formatting

Re: [Release] Rock Hermit Beacons v1.0

Posted: Mon Sep 07, 2020 8:38 pm
by Cholmondely
Wonderful - thank you!

Looking forwards to trying it out.

Cholmondeley

Re: [Release] Rock Hermit Beacons v1.0

Posted: Mon Sep 07, 2020 9:31 pm
by dybal
Cholmondely wrote: Mon Sep 07, 2020 8:38 pm
Looking forwards to trying it out.
You will only notice something when you get into the beacons range (the ranges are random, but repeatable system by system, i.e., the range each RH gets is the same every time you reload a game in a given system).

The RHs are usually created close to one of the three main lanes: Witch Point - Main Planet, Main Planet - Sun or Witch Point - Sun, just Torus away on the lanes until you hear the chime...

And if you notice a dense asteroid field, there might be a RH in there with a very limited range beacon, or no beacon (I haven't experienced this, all my testing was in a system with one legitimate RH in the MP-Sun lane that got a 500km beacon and a large-enough-to-be-noticed-as-you-move-nearby asteroid field, and sometimes (they're not deterministic) a Pirate Cove in the WP-MP lane with a 1000km beacon and a sparse asteroid field)

Re: [Release] Rock Hermit Beacons v1.1

Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2020 12:49 pm
by dybal
Errata...

[Release] Rock Hermit Beacons v1.1

Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2020 12:51 pm
by dybal
Rock Hermit Beacons v1.1 is available on the Expansion Manager and here.

Changes:
  • Fixes bug in the handling of timer to repopulate asteroid fields.

Re: [Release] Rock Hermit Beacons v1.1

Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2020 1:47 am
by Nite Owl
The beep.oog sound used in this OXZ has the same name as one of the default game sounds. The result is that the default beep.oog sound is being overwritten by this one in every instance. The default sounds can be found at Oolite\oolite.app\Resources\Sounds. Several other OXZ's (such as Audible Docking Clearance) use the default beep.oog along with the many default game assets that make use of it. Made a quick fix for myself by changing the name of the sound file in this OXZ to bing.oog (no Microsoft jokes please) and also making the proper (hopefully) code changes to reference the new name. As you know my Ooniverse and my ship are very sound orientated so this was an easy pick up once a chance to play arose. Thanks Again for your attention to detail and for an ever expanding range of choices.

Re: [Release] Rock Hermit Beacons v1.1

Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2020 2:43 am
by dybal
Nite Owl wrote: Sun Sep 13, 2020 1:47 am
The beep.oog sound used in this OXZ has the same name as one of the default game sounds. The result is that the default beep.oog sound is being overwritten by this one in every instance. The default sounds can be found at Oolite\oolite.app\Resources\Sounds. Several other OXZ's (such as Audible Docking Clearance) use the default beep.oog along with the many default game assets that make use of it. Made a quick fix for myself by changing the name of the sound file in this OXZ to bing.oog (no Microsoft jokes please) and also making the proper (hopefully) code changes to reference the new name. As you know my Ooniverse and my ship are very sound orientated so this was an easy pick up once a chance to play arose. Thanks Again for your attention to detail and for an ever expanding range of choices.
My naivety showing again...

I have a bug-fix release in the works, probably for Monday, so this will go into it.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Release] Rock Hermit Beacons v1.2

Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2020 2:10 pm
by dybal
[EliteWiki] Rock Hermit Beacons OXP v1.2 is available on the Expansion Manager and here.

Changes:
  • Removes timers and resets Rock Hermit list when player's ship enters a wormhole.
  • Renames beep.ogg to rhb_chime.ogg.
My previous testing was done with a commander that was "locked" by unfinished business in a system, so I started a new commander that can jump around and some bugs manifested themselves...

[Release] Rock Hermit Beacons v1.3

Posted: Wed Sep 30, 2020 2:56 pm
by dybal
[EliteWiki] Rock Hermit Beacons OXP v1.2 is available on the Expansion Manager and here.

Changes:
  • Doesn't add beacons to Astromines (they replace Rock Hermits in Communist systems if Commies OXP is installed, and already have an unlimited beacon).

Re: [Release] Rock Hermit Beacons v1.1

Posted: Wed Sep 30, 2020 6:15 pm
by Cholmondely
Aahaah! Does that explain the surreal experience last night when whilst whizzing around Red Relaes, Benedict noticed that a Rock Hermit had popped up in detectable range. When we went to investigate, it turned out to be a gulag emblazoned all over with the dreaded hammer and sickle - and looked nothing at all like a self-respecting rock hermit of any imaginable description.

Has anybody worked out what can be done about the poor serfs toiling away in those dens of torture and enslavement? Cousin Digby assures me that Amnesty Intergalactic refuse to help the poor buggers and that they have turned away a large number of escapees who came to them for succour over the years. Is there really any meaningful difference between slavery and a life of torture in a gulag - apart from the fact that most anarchies & dictatorships don't try and starve their slaves to death or encourage them to feed off each other?