Oolite Bulletins

Having recently built myself my first desktop box since about 2010 - with a "proper" graphics card (1GB Nvidia GeForce 210 on this new thing called a "PCI-Express" bus), I'm seeing just a little difference in graphics between this (hooked into the telly by HDMI) and the laptops diddy little screen. Yes there is a reason to download those 130MB packages of "Lave is Earth 8k" and the like.
But while I'm doing that building, running cables, drilling ventilation holes in cupboards, etc, I'm also doing one of my occasional "try a new distro a day" surveys of the field of play. That has been ... interesting. But also threw up an issue.

The first couple of distros (KDE Neon and Elementary) on a convenient magazine cover disc behaved reasonably well, Oolite cracking away at a decent speed. Slackware had a hard time of it, just didn't want to install and I'll maybe come back to that. Pure 35-boot-floppies nostalgia! Then one of the big boys - Fedora.

Fedora 34, out of the install image, immediate updates applied, and a fresh Oolite1.90 download - won't play the game. That's slightly worrying, being "one of the big boys", very up-to-date. I bet this is going to start appearing on the forum at some point, so I put some effort into investigating.

1. [*} Running the program from the installed "Activities" link (whatever the current GNOME terminology is) - silent death.
2. My ~/ directory contains a GNUstep directory with only a couple of DTDs in it, and ~/.Oolite with a size-0 oolite.run file. Clearly something is profoundly wrong, and it looks like it's in GNUstep, not necessarily Oolite itself.
3. Try running it from the command line - that's more informative. Strangled-sounding messages about Oolite having died, silently, and reference to a "libGLU.so.1" file being missing. That's part of the Mesa-GL package - which isn't in Fedora's default install. Thank you for being so cutting edge, Fedora. Leave out the legacy cruft, why don't you?
4. I won't go into detail about how I dislike the excuse for a GUI package manager in Fedora - a major footshot there, I'd say. They seem very resistant to providing a package manager of the detail of Synaptic. That's Fedora's problem, not Oolite's, but worth noting for anyone else planning to "tour the distros" in the future.
5. But when I got my fingers round the command-line package manager ("dnf" - very appropriately as Formula One also "Did Not Function" today), I found I needed to install mesa-lib (a graphics package) then libnsl (a networking/ name-spacey type package going back to the days of Token Rings and coaxial network cabling) , ... and then Oolite started working.
6. Did I add a couple of non-standard repositories via the "Gui package manager"? I think I did, but I didn't note which ones. Sorry.

So, major problem solved. Or worked-around.

A large part of why I'm writing up this work-around is that I suspect other users of the "SDL" and such-like packages which provide sub-structure to Oolite (and lots else!) are also going to start running into problems with those formerly common ("basic", even) libraries and APIs (if that's the word). Quite how to propagate the information back "up hill" to the maintainers there, I'm not sure. Does this mean that the missing dependencies are going to have to start being packaged with the game download - further bloating it?
Is a retro-fit expansion pack through the OX{P|Z} manager possible?
I dunno. But I do know that code jockeys can't work without bug (or "issue") reports, so here it is, with as much detail as I managed to note in the process.

A couple of foot notes.
- is that 8k globe spinning in approximately game-real time?
- The first time my fresh Jameson popped out of the station above Lave-is-8k-Earth, I recognised that I (he) was above the Aral Sea, heading towards Novosibirsk, and was wondering if that was an accident ... but now I realise I'd spent a bit of time since start-up mucking around in the station menus so the longitude is probably from the game-clock time ... and now I'm trying to work out what the inclination of the Coriolis station's orbit is. A bit far north to be an ISS-like orbit - which is constrained by Baikonour.
- Does anyone remember a screensaver family of "X-planet" displays. There was one which displayed recent earthquakes from the USGS's (now closed) "finger" earthquake real time service which reminds me strongly of cruising around this high-def Earth. And on that subject, tomorrow's (this afternoon's!) distro is an Earth Sciences specialist one.

Sorry. No idea... but I did come across this:

Hello

The first couple of distros (KDE Neon and Elementary) on a convenient magazine cover disc behaved reasonably well, Oolite cracking away at a decent speed. Slackware had a hard time of it, just didn't want to install and I'll maybe come back to that. Pure 35-boot-floppies nostalgia! Then one of the big boys - Fedora.

Fedora 34, out of the install image, immediate updates applied, and a fresh Oolite1.90 download - won't play the game. That's slightly worrying, being "one of the big boys", very up-to-date. I bet this is going to start appearing on the forum at some point, so I put some effort into investigating.

On ?buntu it should work without any problems "K" and "L" 20/21.04


Next i'll test it with "Q4OS" ( small/fast distry )
i think it should also work, because it's Debian based too

---
btw. a GT210 could be too slow for 8K /// i think the GT210 is not in production anymore .. since a few years

mattthias

Hi

Do you have installed the original driver from NVIDIA?
Does NVIDIA support the GT210 for your new Fedora?

the "free" linux nvidia driver - you can use for "office" but not for "games"

Nvidia for Linux ... long time ago --- use ATI/Intel ( i will do that in the future )

Matthias

Slartibartfast wrote: ↑Mon Nov 22, 2021 12:08 am

Hello

On ?buntu it should work without any problems "K" and "L" 20/21.04

Next i'll test it with "Q4OS" ( small/fast distry )
i think it should also work, because it's Debian based too

---
btw. a GT210 could be too slow for 8K /// i think the GT210 is not in production anymore .. since a few years

mattthias

I can confirm on Ubuntu this Oolite thingy works marvellous. I meanwhile even have a VirtualBox with Oolite inside - but do not expect that one to win any performance prizes. It is just a preconfigured combination of Ubuntu 20 LTS, Oolite 1.90 and the Oolite Communicator - which some people find easier to mess with.

hiran wrote: ↑Mon Nov 29, 2021 11:38 pm

and the Oolite Communicator

Eh, wossat?
This?
I don't recall seeing that on the OXP list. I take it it's only for developers?

RockDoctor wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 12:58 am

hiran wrote: ↑Mon Nov 29, 2021 11:38 pm

and the Oolite Communicator

Eh, wossat?
This?
I don't recall seeing that on the OXP list. I take it it's only for developers?

Nope!

It's Hiran's attempt to create a multi-player set-up for oolite: we can't quite play in the same system, but we can communicate with each other. Hiran can give more detail - I'm just another dumb pilot! Currently in alpha. It works via the debug console.

Want to join in?

RockDoctor wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 12:58 am

hiran wrote: ↑Mon Nov 29, 2021 11:38 pm

and the Oolite Communicator

Eh, wossat?
This?
I don't recall seeing that on the OXP list. I take it it's only for developers?

You are just referring to a protocol. But yes, this protocol is included in the developer's version of Oolite. However that version can be used by non-developers - it looks, feels and acts like the release version.

I use it because I am trying to add functionality that OXPs cannot provide per design. Someone prompted me to this possibility and hey! It is not ideal but powerful enough to do a decent job. So we're trying to get the maximum out of it.

So in case you are interested, find more here: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=21033

hiran wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 6:29 am

I use it because I am trying to add functionality that OXPs cannot provide per design. Someone prompted me to this possibility and hey! It is not ideal but powerful enough to do a decent job. So we're trying to get the maximum out of it.

Oh yes, I remember the discussion. So it has made it into the real world.
So, you need to ... well, PUSH entities into (or POP them from) the program's memory space. Which would need a fairly detailed knowledge of the data structures involved. But in theory, I'd be able to pause the game, use the console to determine that there are 174 pirates in the swarm attacking me, including 17 Basilisks flying as a convoy. Then resume the game and run like the clappers.
Or, more pertinently, in that accursed "The Collector" OXP, I'd be able to find the Collector's base in less than 30 attempts by PEEKing at it's location and adjusting mine to suit.
(I'm using terms I remember from BASIC of the era of the original Elite. Not that I actually ever used Dad's BBC Master.)

RockDoctor wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 10:29 am

But in theory, I'd be able to pause the game, use the console to determine that there are 174 pirates in the swarm attacking me, including 17 Basilisks flying as a convoy. Then resume the game and run like the clappers.
[/quote]

Target System Plugins has an MFD (Short Range Snapshot (SRS)) which gives me as much of this as I need.



SRS Categories

Hostile: all targets that are hostile toward the player ship
Outlaw: offenders and fugitives, including Thargoids
Neutral: traders, hunters, etc.
State: police and military
Cargo: cargo containers, escape capsules, metal fragments, derelicts, etc.
Rock: asteroids, boulders, splinters, rock hermits
Other: almost everything else (excludes wreckage and wormholes)

RockDoctor wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 10:29 am

So, you need to ... well, PUSH entities into (or POP them from) the program's memory space. Which would need a fairly detailed knowledge of the data structures involved.

That is it for now. The communicator polls commander name, ship name and location every few seconds.
And when credits/fuel/commodities are posted between players it removes the stuff on one player's Ooniverse and injects it into another player's Ooniverse, which makes them grow together with interaction.

There are some more ideas but first we need a stable base.

RockDoctor wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 10:29 am

But in theory, I'd be able to pause the game, use the console to determine that there are 174 pirates in the swarm attacking me, including 17 Basilisks flying as a convoy. Then resume the game and run like the clappers.

Imagine you would not have to pause the game since the Oolite Communicator performs this while you are running like clappers.

For the time being it is not useful to know there are 174 pirates. But I don't know the future, maybe one day there is a meaning to it or we give it a meaning. The only reason why I did not go for the all so often dreamt of multiplayer mode where you see other ships passing your ship while jumping the docking queue or teaming up with pirates to get your cargo... well it is the reason that we do have lag over the internet. But how much lag? Would it really matter? So let's get started with something and measure.

Otherwise playing in 3D space with multiple ships all in the same arena (solar system) has been available decades ago: Descent. Whenever I used multiplayer it was on the LAN, but Wikipedia states you could have played online as well. So there must be a way to get this done...

We should try and get hold of Rob Huebner.

hiran wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 11:42 am

Otherwise playing in 3D space with multiple ships all in the same arena (solar system) has been available decades ago: Descent.

I never knew there was a multi-player mode for Descent. but since I didn't have a phone line until a bit after that, it wouldn't have been much use. I think it reminded me of Elite a bit, but with much crashing into the walls.
Rather like the "mining outpost". Or is it the scrapyard with their "one gunfight guarantee"?