Oolite Bulletins

Once you install a few OXP's, the F3 Ship Outfitting screen becomes, no matter which way you cut it, confusing. While there might be a logic to the way items are ordered, but it is very obscure.

A discussion here explores some solutions to this, and Nite Owl offered a equipment-overrides.plist file that began the task of grouping equipment items into categories.

Using that as a start, I've put together something that covers a lot more items. Applying my epic prosaic skills, I'm calling it "Equipment Reordering". "Loadout by Category". You can download it (for now) from here: For Oolite 1.91 and later: LoadoutByCategory.oxz. For Oolite 1.90 and prior: LoadoutByCategory_190.oxz. And if you'd like to offer a more interesting/descriptive/"just better" name, jump right in. I won't be offended. (Well, maybe a little bit. But I'll get over it). New name has been applied!

What does this do? It introduces categories to the F3 Ship Outfitting and groups all equipment items under those categories. What is more, those categories actually have headers. So you can tell you're in the Pylon Weapons section, or the Navigation section. Pretty much all the OXP's in the download manager have been included, so it should work pretty much out of the box.

I've taken a stab at putting items into the categories, which for some items is a lot harder than it seems. If you think something has been miscategorised, let me know and I'll argue with you briefly before moving it anyway.

Big shout out to Nite Owl and Cholmondely for doing a lot of the ground work on this one.

Here's some screenshots to give you a feel of what it looks like:

(Just ignore that "Minijump" item there. That's a programming tool and not a released OXP, which is why it's not been sorted with the other items).






(And before you ask, yes, I did notice the headers have a cost and install time on them. For the moment, I can't get rid of those elements.)

Obviously, if you find some OXP's haven't been included, shout them out and I'll add them. I'll do those updates as they get mentioned from this point, given they are a lot of OXP's not in the download manager, and not all of them see high use. Point out the main ones you use, and I'll include their details in this OXP.

So, this is one big equipment-overrides.plist file. And if you're wondering, I did apply some coding smarts to create it. Using the Oolite Expansion Index on GitHub (the downloadable ZIP file on the releases page) I was able to pull out all the equipment names, then quickly sort all the items in alphabetical order in their respective categories (with some exceptions), and it then lets me know what equipment items I still haven't added to the list. Which massively reduced the amount of time it took to put this together, and it will make future releases a pretty painless exercise. I can run the code, check out the excpetions list, add them to the data, rerun the code to sort everything, and hey presto! Update is done! I don't know that the code is worth writing home about, but if anyone is really interested (and you can read/use C# code), I'll happily post it somewhere for you to digest at your leisure. I reserve the right to claim someone else wrote it if you think the code stinks!

Edit to update download links and OXP name.

Could a hard return be added to have one category per page?

And for the name calling competition, I would like to propose "[F3]equipmentordering" or "equipment[F3]ordering"

That’s a hard no on the one category per page, unfortunately. Can’t control the pagination to that level.

Naming? Loadout by Category

Could I put in a plea for astrogation rather than navigation?

It was the term used in the original Elite documentation - and always induced a little ripple of exhilaration when I came across it! It was introduced into our wiki descriptions in 2006 by Selezen, and has been used in Science Fiction since the 1940s.

phkb wrote: ↑Thu Dec 07, 2023 9:41 am

Once you install a few OXP's, the F3 Ship Outfitting screen becomes, no matter which way you cut it, confusing. While there might be a logic to the way items are ordered, but it is very obscure.

HA!

If you think the F3 Ship Outfitting screen looks a little confusing, have you looked at the F5 screen for current manifest of both equipment and carried goods and contracts?

It takes me as much as a minute to find something as standard as the Galactic Hyperdrive in my long list of extras on my ship.

On top of that fun, the equipment activation list doesn't seem to match that...

At least I don't look at the F3 Ship Outfitting screen often, but maybe other players do...so my feelings are misplaced.

Switeck wrote: ↑Thu Dec 07, 2023 11:18 pm

If you think the F3 Ship Outfitting screen looks a little confusing, have you looked at the F5 screen for current manifest of both equipment and carried goods and contracts?

It takes me as much as a minute to find something as standard as the Galactic Hyperdrive in my long list of extras on my ship.

Well, you should be happy to know that by reordering all the equipment on the F3 screen, there is a flow-on benefit to the F5 screen.

For eaxmple, here's one of my test commanders without the Reordering OXP installed.


And here is the same commander after.

Notice all the MFD's are grouped together, as are all the targeting items, the navigation items. So, some benefits all round.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Thu Dec 07, 2023 11:09 pm

Could I put in a plea for astrogation rather than navigation?

Well, because it's you! I'll add an option to switch between Navigation and Astrogation, so everyone can be happy.

Cody wrote: ↑Thu Dec 07, 2023 12:48 pm

Loadout by Category

What do you think of "Outfitting by Category"? Loadouts to me suggests a system where you have a loadout for mining, and another for dogfighting, and swapping between them quickly.

Possible Name: "F3 screen (ordered equipment list)"

In the next nightly, this...



The cost and install time values can now be removed for selected items, making headers and submenus much more understandable.

phkb wrote: ↑Fri Dec 08, 2023 10:07 am

In the next nightly, this...



The cost and install time values can now be removed for selected items, making headers and submenus much more understandable.

Well-wangled, Sir.

No wonder they bombard you with the pink gins at the Admiralty Bar!

Prefer Loadout (singular) but Outfitting is fine.

I thought I might have gotten an easy win - the fact that the F5 page is using the sort order I've applied, I thought it might be possible to add the headers to that page as well. And it works! Kind of...



So, that's three pages of my sample commander. Page 1 and 2 are fine. But on page 3, at the bottom, note that "1 Passenger Berth" has slotted into the "Laser Weapons" section. The reason for this is that, in the core code, those last three items (passenger berths, and installed lasers) are built up on the fly and added to the page outside of the normal equipment list, so the sort order isn't applying.

Which is a bit annoying, and something I can't see an immediate work around for. I mean, if you don't have a passenger berth installed, everything would look fine. But as soon as you do...

I think the only viable option is to leave off the "Laser Weapons" header, and let the lasers fall into the "General/Misc" section. It's the only way I can avoid the issue. But let me know what you think.

Thinking about it a bit more, I could add the "Laser Weapons" header if you don't have a passenger berth, and if you do, add a different header that says "Berths/Weapons". It's a weird title, but at least it would be accurate. What do we think?