Oolite Bulletins

Okay, two oddities related to the same trip into Ararus.

firstly, got into a barney w/ a pair of Cobra Is as i approached the planet. Tw@ed one, other turned and ran. i followed hammering away at his rear shield and in a bang he died, though the event was obscured by a load of "target lost" Right on commander" "locked on wreckage" "target lost" "bounty 20c" etc messages.....but when it cleared, the ship was there, engines dead but still a red lollipop on the scanner. so, i followed, firing, no result. Injected real close, and at that point he took evasive action, engines still dead. repeated that a couple times, fired a lot but got no "hit" noises. eventually i gave up and he buggered off on his own way w/out pursuing me :-/

and when i landed, i got the Constrictor mission, but it was overlaid on the HOopy's screen, so i never saw the ship :-(

anyone come across these things?

The ship sounds like a ghost ship - it's a known bug.

I don't think I ever encountered one myself, but I have run into ghost cargo a couple of times.

The mission screen clash is also a known bug.

The cluttering of the screen with messages is not even supposed to be viewed as a bug - except when they keep sticking there (which they do all the time on my setup). I'd still like to see those messages go somewhere else than the center of my view - ANYWHERE!.

Dr. Nil wrote:

The cluttering of the screen with messages is not even supposed to be viewed as a bug - except when they keep sticking there (which they do all the time on my setup). I'd still like to see those messages go somewhere else than the center of my view - ANYWHERE!.

Especially when trying to complete the Cloaking Device Mission, the little so-&-so is hard enough to hit when he's flickering in and out of view, but try shooting through:
TARGET LOST
IDENT SYSTEM LOCKED ONTO ASP MK II
TARGET LOST
IDENT SYSTEM LOCKED ONTO ASP MK II
TARGET LOST
IDENT SYSTEM LOCKED ONTO ASP MK II
TARGET LOST

especially when it's scrolling up the screen like a demented ticker tape.

Captain Hesperus
"The best thing in life is to defeat your competitors, see their companies crumble before you and hear the lamentation of their creditors."

I have come to the point where I really don't feel like playing the game until someone either fixes the bug or releases a version where the messages can be turned completely off. I just feels too much like I'm fighting a bug in the code and not those ships that I try to make appear behind the messages by playing Switch View.

It's still my favorite game though. I've only played to playtest for more than two months now, but what's that to an Elite fan . I can wait for years for this to fixed and will probably still remain faithful - at least with the current alternatives for open ended space trading.

I am getting this all the time. Zombie ships hang around doing nothing or suddenly come alive and start shooting. The factor that may do something to trigger the bug is that it appears to happen frequently when I tailgate a ship and blast away. If I attack from a bit more of a distance then they generally explode "correctly".

I think you've summed it up perfectly, the screen message sticking really is irritating, but my appreciation of how good Oolite is overides that, and I'm willing to put up with it because sOoner or later, a wizard will fix it.

The Zombie ships (pirate just sitting there!) is a bug in pirateAI (one of the native AIs). It should be fixable and I'll have a look at it when I have some time. This bug only seems to effect pirates, so I'm pretty sure its the pirate getting "stuck" somewhere in an AI state. I've noticed they come to life again when you fire at them!

The ghost bug (ship dying but still being on the screen) is unfixable by an AI tweak as its something in the code of the exe, which would need a proper programmer to fix!

The mission overlaying is wired! Usually what happens is that one brief stops the other being displayed. I suspect this is because "dockedAtMainStation Boole" is missing from the constrictor brief. Murgh only displays his brief if you a docked at a HoOpy. I used the same trick in Black Monks (only displayed if docked at a Monk Branch), and this usually stops conflicts as all other OXPs display their briefings at a main station. Guess the constrictor mission is the exception to the rule and displayes a brief if docked anywhere.

BTW I have worked out how how to stop the Thargoid Wars mission Clash, so the next version of Assassins will allow you to play both OXPs at once if you feel brave. (just decreiment the mission_thargoidwars_timer by 1, so the Assassins brief is displaid and the thargoid wars brief is put off until the next docking!).

TGHC wrote:

I think you've summed it up perfectly, the screen message sticking really is irritating, but my appreciation of how good Oolite is overides that, and I'm willing to put up with it because sOoner or later, a wizard will fix it.

The strange thing is that sometimes messages disappear just as they should, sometimes they don't. Yesterday I played for an hour and had again messages sticking in the middle of the screen all the time. I restarted the game several times, that didn't help.
Is it possible that a certain combination of addons causes the problem? (I'm using the PC version.)

Regards, F.

Think the sticky messages is a mainly PC problem. I have the same experience. Most of the time its fine but they stick occasionally. A quick F2/F1 a few times clears it, but can be tricky in the heat of combat!

Frunobulax wrote:

Yesterday I played for an hour and had again messages sticking in the middle of the screen all the time. I restarted the game several times, that didn't help.

The quick way to clear the sticky messages is to change the screen view a few times, just toggle rapidly between fore and aft views, job done, so it really isn't a big problem, I previously described it as really irritating, that was a bit strong, perhaps "inconvenient" is better. It would be nice to be fixed though.

The Grey Haired Commander has spoken words of wisdom.

LittleBear wrote:

Think the sticky messages is a mainly PC problem. I have the same experience. Most of the time its fine but they stick occasionally. A quick F2/F1 a few times clears it, but can be tricky in the heat of combat!

Not really

I usually end up with a screen filled with sticky messages telling me which views I switched between to try to get rid of the sticky messages.

I have to admit I would like to see the screen messages removed from a future update
Or better-still an option in the .hud defination
On my setup the same messages fill the centre of the screen ( and often stick ) while they also appear far more conveniently in the top-left corner.

Hmmm, I wonder... I don't know the first thing about 'C' but I wonder if a quick fix may be to download the sources - look for that bit of the code & 'break' it prior to re-compiling...

I've done that before with features in apps I haven't liked.

Removing those messages from the screen altogether would be a lot better than having your view obscured by them.

If you succeed in fixing it, please post your replacement exe somewhere. I'd like to play the game again sometime soon. So much new stuff has arrived since I last played more than 2 months ago. The sticky messages just took all the fun out of the game for me, since I avoided all battle because of that bug.

Ok - I'll give it a go...
Fire-up VMWare, install Linux ( shudder ) for the free tools & I'll see.

No promises I'm afraid, I know nothing about 'C' so this technique ( if such fiddling can be dignified by the term ) relies on my finding the bit of code & it not being requied by other parts of Oolite when I roger-it!!
:
:
-Uninstall Linux-

I hope that it works out. I'm just glad that someone is actually looking into fixing this bug which is the worst thing about Oolite.

Whenever I try to 'sell' the idea of playing Oolite to someone, I see the spark exit their eyes and the 'sale' failing when the sticky messages start to appear.