Oolite Bulletins

Inspired by recent contributions I've been putting together an .oxp of fripperies for Oolite.

Nothing clever, I'm completely new to scripting.

So far...
Additions to Usceed system are ok, if not perfect.

It's the game-wide additions that's having me pulling my remaining hair out.
-Lots of new textured plannets + moons
-Lots of new asteroids
-A black hole!
-Some other stuff

Getting it all to appear when & where I want is the problem.

Any tips would be appreciated.
I can post my .plist's if that would help.

At the least I've now got a bunch of models going spare if anyone wants them. ( I could do more to order )

Thanks.

Charlie wrote:

-A black hole!

Sound interesting. And more asteroids! I'd like that too. I actually already made an Asteroids.oxp folder within Addons to play around with, but haven't had time to put anything in it.

Have you tried looking at the system modding stuff in OXPs like the Pulsar, TGY, Lave and Assassins?

This page should hold some of the answers
http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Methods

Thanks - I'll have a look

A black hole...


// model size: 305756.344 x 397675.875 x 305756.359

and growing...

odd behavior for a black hole?

Incidentally - anyone know if there is a maximum size for models in Oolite?

Charlie wrote:

// model size: 305756.344 x 397675.875 x 305756.359

and growing...

odd behavior for a black hole?

Perhaps it's just how things look when you get close to one of those things space being increasingly warped to make everything aroud you seem ever smaller relative to the hole or some thing. I look forward to seeing it.

Have a look at the planetinfo.plist in Assassins. 15 extra planets moons and gas giants in 10 systems. It is fairly easy to do. Define object in the first part of the planetinfo and then place object in the second part. You need to know the planet number and galaxy though. But you can get this from the wiki which has the numbers for every system. Remember Galaxy 1 is zero for codeing, Galaxy 2 is 1 and so on. So if you want somthing to come up at Lave, then its is Galaxy number (0) space (7) planet number.

If you want somthing to come up everywhere then use Univervial <key>. Not reckomended though as then everywhere is the same!

Thanks for the replies.

I wonder if part of my problem is a combination of lazyness & trying to run before I can walk.

I've been trying to use pseudo-random numbers to populate the systems & exit_witchspace etc to trigger the script.

The idea being I would have a lot less typing to do ( 8 galaxies to populate ) & the pseuo-random numbers would ( hopefully ) take care of systems looking the same each time.

Populating Usceed wasn't too hard, but then all the other systems looked kind-of empty.

As an aside the Black-Hole is proving to be a pain too.
It needs to be big enough that it is easily visable, while being far-enough away that that it's not practicable to visit.
( the illusion doesn't work if you get close enough to see its just a bouy )
I may see if it can be given some spin - maybe set it up as a station if such things can be placed a long way off.

Ooo, maybe do a 'Black Hole' spaceship to dock with...
If - I can make it look real close up
- I work out these docking-slit thingies

Hmm, lots to do...
Maybe not to many ship releases in the near future.

You could copy the code for the Gas Giants in Assassins! Same problem. I did it by making them massive & far away. radius determins the size and the last co-ordinate in position determins the distrance from the sun. If you put specified your balckhole.png at the texture then their you go a black hole! Just put it a different system to my planets please! to do this change the numbers in the defination at the end. Look your system up on the wikki to get it number. Eg Lave would start with "0 7" =

Thanks again... I'll look.

I guess the easiest thing to prevent clashes would be to check galaxy number before anything else happens.

If you want to know where to position the objects. If you play the game and press Shift+F in the top left hand corner you get the three pcm numbers of the position you're currently in.

ramon wrote:

If you want to know where to position the objects. If you play the game and press Shift+F in the top left hand corner you get the three pcm numbers of the position you're currently in.

Now THAT is useful info.

The coordinate system makes sense to me, but translating that into: 'place this object HERE' has been a bit tricky.

P.S.

I guess there must be a max size for objects as my largest BlackHole so far causes much wierdness when you jump into a system with one present.
( You bounce away from the planet @ great speed )
The opposite would have been more in keeping & could have been funny if on jumping into a random system you see a black hole, get sucked in &...

I couldn't resist posting this early shot:



...and so perish all un-Godly gamblers.

( I still haven't found a size limit yet! )

Very nice!

Should have mentioned, it is best to add the object with addmoon rather than addplanet as addplanet dosn't work properly for PC users running the planets branch exe. How are you doing the beam thing comming out of it?

Wild Thing!

Yes, all I get with addPlanet: is a huge lump of cotton wool

The 'BlackHole' is a .dat file for a small sphere, & the disc + ejecta stream is another .dat file setup as a slowly rotating subentity.
( flying a BlackHole around has been fun )

Looks pretty cool even though I say so myself.
( going to try some lighting effects next )

I may have found the reason for the odd behavior with increasing size:
I think when objects spawn overlaping in-game elements the 3D engine goes crackers. As long as I make sure the BlackHole is away from anything else there should be further room to grow...
Fingers crossed this will work & I'll get the effect I'm after.

If all goes to plan I'll replace the event-horizon with a hidden space station. With any luck the combination can be used to simulate some wormhole action...

( my orb.oxp may get involved too )

LittleBear wrote:

Should have mentioned, it is best to add the object with addmoon rather than addplanet as addplanet dosn't work properly for PC users running the planets branch exe.

You've mentioned this before - what is the problem with AddPlanet when using textured planets?

I'm considering doing a final update to the textured planets code to bring it up-to-date with the trunk code, and perhaps make the number of faces and verticies constants into variables so people can experiment with more complex models. So I can try and fix this problem too.

Note I tried this before without success (when importing Orbiter models), but other people may have some luck.