Oolite Bulletins

Heads up! I am planning to commit the core shipset update based on the 1.88 Normal and Spec Maps OXP this afternoon (Europe time). The installer that has been already generated as part of the testing weighs at about 207 MB. Some testing will be required. Keep an eye on this space for more info as it becomes available.

Woo hoo! Alright!

The updated gloss/specular/normal mapped core shipset is now in. You can download the nightly containing it from the usual location here. The build tag is

Apart from the fresh core ships appearance, pay attention to the stations too. In shipdata.plist, I have included examples of how to create very bright, blooming emission lights and the stations have been selected as the test subject for this. You will find that the station windows now have elevated luminance, making them feel much more alive, vivid and, well, lit from inside.

Objects such as boulders, missiles and q-bombs have not been touched. Maybe something can be done about boulders in the future, but for the rest I decided to deliberately leave them out because under normal circumstances you never get to see them up close and in high detail. Overloading the system with resources that will very rarely - if ever - will be seen in actual gameplay seemed a bit overkill.

Testing the package would be greatly appreciated. I think I have not missed anything, but you never know with this stuff. If you find something out of the ordinary, give us a shout and we'll do our best to fix.

Edit to add: It goes without saying that if you have the 1.88 Spec/Gloss Ships OXP installed, you may now uninstall it. Everything it contains and more is now part of the default game's resources.

another_commander wrote: ↑Thu Aug 17, 2023 3:11 pm

... pay attention to the stations too. In shipdata.plist, I have included examples of how to create very bright, blooming emission lights and the stations have been selected as the test subject for this. You will find that the station windows now have elevated luminance, making them feel much more alive, vivid and, well, lit from inside.

Any chance of seeing an example?

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Thu Aug 17, 2023 4:19 pm

Any chance of seeing an example?

OK, this is a very rough example. You really have to see this in motion to fully get what is happening. This is the same shot of the Coriolis taken with the previous emission settings (First pic) and the new ones (second pic).





Note how in the second pic the light seems to be bleeding out of the station windows.

And I think this here is a slightly better example. Approaching the Coriolis docking bay.

Yep, that is nicer.

When looking at the massive illumination around the docking bay I get reminded of PAPI. Wouldn't it be nice to have more guidance for manual docking?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_ap ... _indicator

Yep, that is nicer.

When looking at the massive illumination around the docking bay I get reminded of PAPI. Wouldn't it be nice to have more guidance for manual docking?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_ap ... _indicator




Edit: Someone was faster than me. Roughly 10 lightyears...
https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?p=210113#p210113

Initial observation is that the game takes about twice a long to start. With no OXP's, 1.90 starts in around 2.05 seconds (according to the log file). The new 1.91 starts in about 4.22 seconds. And when you've got a lot of OXP's installed, the delay is noticeable.

It seems to have a long delay between clearing the splash screen and just before showing the spinning cobra. Not sure what it's doing at that point (other than loading all the textures, that is).

I'm not saying this is wrong, or needs to be addressed per se. Just what I've observed so far.

Other than that, I'm loving the new ships. Looks so good straight out of the box.

Oh, and there's a "oolite_asp_specular2.png" in the textures folder, but it doesn't seem to be referenced in the shipdata.plist file. Was that intentional?

phkb wrote: ↑Fri Aug 18, 2023 5:02 am

Oh, and there's a "oolite_asp_specular2.png" in the textures folder, but it doesn't seem to be referenced in the shipdata.plist file. Was that intentional?

Probably an experiment that accidentally got left there. I think it can be removed, although I'm trying really hard to remember what it was for.

I'm starting to wonder whether the problem is my build environment. The oolite.exe file I produce out of it is 20mb, whereas the oolite.exe in the github pack is like 6mb. And when I use the github version everything does go a bit quicker.

phkb wrote: ↑Fri Aug 18, 2023 6:51 am

I'm starting to wonder whether the problem is my build environment. The oolite.exe file I produce out of it is 20mb, whereas the oolite.exe in the github pack is like 6mb. And when I use the github version everything does go a bit quicker.

Your exe contains debugging symbols. Just do a strip -s oolite.app/oolite.exe and it will strip its size down to 6MB for you.

Also, are you building a debug version? Are you doing something like make debug=yes maybe? If so, then yes, the debug executable is noticeably slower than the non-debug one.

No, I always do debug=no.

It's very strange. The GitHub 1.91 package starts up in 2.2 seconds. My own build version starts in 4.2. After I stripped the symbols. So the issue is probably local to me only, rather than a systemic one.