Oolite Bulletins

i know this has been discussed before

But i would really like to be able to rent a station hangar.
so that i could

1. Store commodities...
2. have 1 or 2 extra ships.. not entire fleets. if you want to move them from one station to another, you could buy a inexpensive ship like the adder.. and go back and get your ship, and sell your adder once again..

im not talking about hirering pilots, which however would be a nice addition when you "rock" about in an anaconda.. which yes handles like an asteroid.. and cruises at a mere 110 lm

Sometimes i like to go mining... with the ore processor OXP since it extracts gold, platinum, gemstones, alloys and minerals..

however.. currently there is no way of knowing if a system has an asteroid belt other than cruising along the main trade route, with all its drawbacks, or if you can see a rock hermit at long distance..

im not sure either of these things can be done in a OXP, and since 1.68 i find some OXPs are partly broken, so im not sure what i can learn from previous OXPs such as the ore processor has a minor feature which now means when you scoop "precious", onscreen it says "splinter scooped".

A little about me....

i have done some c++ programming in the past on strictly Hobby basis, and have created my own random universe generator, with a naming algorithm that eliminates dirty words and so on.. and the universe is also created in 3 diemensionel space. rather than 2 diemensionel, like in oolite and Elite..

For a while i was bug crunching the freespace 2 source code when it was released and modified by the public, mainly i worked with the mission editor removing restrictions such as maximum number of ships at anyone time in a mission...

I left as soon as more experienced "programmer" arrived to do the work, since the project would benefit the most from him taking over.. i was merely learning as i went ahead...

lately, which is 2003 - 2005 i was part of the "galactic Conquest" project, which was a mod for Battlefield 1942. The mod was about star wars.
on that project i was modeler, texturer, and scripter like oolites OXP scripting..

i did Tuneups of the models, reducing polygons on the collision models..
also created a few real models such as the wave skimmer, including alot of textures... and some cockpit textures...

I do Models in 3d max 7, and use photoshop cs2 for textures..

by this i mean to tell, i know the work involved when making something like this..

But i dont know if its possible for oolite to load as an OXP, the modifications i am enquirering in some sort of file.

i would like to do these myself, if i could get a answer do this, rather than starting to tamper with the source. and release an "alternative" version

Cheers...

1) Storing commodities might be done as an oxp if there's some way to query for each particular cargo type (the results could then be stored in a set of variables and you could get cargo back by using 'awardCargo: <amount> <Commodity name>'). But you'd have to do some kind of workaround because of the mission screen clash - and also to avoid players being offered to store their cargo each time they docked. I'd suggest that you make a special storage company with it's own stations positioned near main stations, where players can dock if they want to have their cargo stored while in-system.

2) The storing of ships is the wish that I've repeated second most times (after the fixing of the sticky messages) since it would be a major step towards making a Sidewinder Commander oxp.

Not sure what's up with the ore processor vs. v1.68. If anybody knows please post a solution in the Ore Processor thread or a new thread in Expansion Packs, and I'll update that oxp.

Dr. Nil wrote:

2) The storing of ships is the wish that I've repeated second most times (after the fixing of the sticky messages) since it would be a major step towards making a Sidewinder Commander oxp.

It's also top of my list

This is something lots of people want! You could achieve this kind of manually:
1. Buy a new ship
2. Decide where you've "left" the old one.
3. Adjust your save file to reduce your credits to what they'd be if you hadn't traded in your ship.
4. Then when you go off in your new ship, you have to return to the station at point 2 to "collect" (ie alter your save file again to be the right ship) your other ship. You could even do it with two save files that you could swap between. I know if would feel a bit "outworld"; maybe someone could write a little "oolite style" external program that updated the save files, but gave the impression of a ship hanger.
Editing save files doesn't HAVE to be cheating!

Would any of that work? And could that be built into the game, or even an OXP? I'm not sure if OXPs can "remember" things eg what ship you had before.

Meant to say, Oolite requires the use of plenty of imagination, so maybe an extension of imagination outside the programme would do the trick, rather than demanding code changes from our illustrious programmer.
After all, role-players manage to explore whole worlds with paper and dice!
*cat
PS: Just took out a stolen constricter (AND scooped up the thief - not much bounty for him though, all around the pi42 convenience store of all places) and found my rating had jumped from 300ish to 560! Is this normal?

IIRC the reward for taking out the constrictor is 250 kills, AFAIK it's the only mission that rewards with kills.

It's actually 256 kills and the Thargoid Plans mission also does the same amongst the built-in missions. Not sure if there are any OXP missions that make use of it.

*cat wrote:

Would any of that work? And could that be built into the game, or even an OXP? I'm not sure if OXPs can "remember" things eg what ship you had before.

Yes, in a limited way. (Memo to self: the ability to put arrays in mission variables from JavaScript would be useful.) However, I don’t think scripts can swap out the user’s ship… certainly not while maintaining all the relevant state, like equipment and damage.

United Blobs wrote:

It's actually 256 kills

And this is a heritage of the original Elite. Taking out the Constricor should make you "dangerous".

IIRC when I was playing Elite for the first time on a C64 killing the Constrictor was the action that made me Elite. I had not known that there are missions at all and I guess I had made a full turn through all galaxies before, when I returned to Galaxy 1 with already a lot of kills, the mission finally was triggered. Imagine how excited I was: I honestly thought I had seen everything there was in this game (8 galaxies!) and then something completely new: a mission!

Commander McLane wrote:

IIRC when I was playing Elite for the first time on a C64 killing the Constrictor was the action that made me Elite. I had not known that there are missions at all and I guess I had made a full turn through all galaxies before, when I returned to Galaxy 1 with already a lot of kills, the mission finally was triggered. Imagine how excited I was: I honestly thought I had seen everything there was in this game (8 galaxies!) and then something completely new: a mission!

What a cool way to become Elite, did you know that you were that close when the mission started.

No, I didn't. I was however hoping that I couldn't be that far away from becoming Elite, IIRC.

Hey, that was all twenty years ago.

Just had a go at swapping ships via a text editor and the save file: it's not quite as simple as changing
<key>ship_desc</key>
<string>supercobra-player</string>

to

<key>ship_desc</key>
<string>adder-player</string>

The right picture comes up when I try to load the new save file, but the program locks up (I'm on the mac version).

Can anyone explain which fields need changing to alter your ship (if it can be done via a text editor)? I notice there's a shipyard history too - that's interesting; presumably a list of all your ships up to now.
Wow - how about an OXP where you deliver ships (on trade plates, presumably) across the galaxy?
Has anyone come up with a save-file editor? I remember there was one for the BBC (or was it the PC version?)
Though it's kind of depressing to know that your hours of playing is represented by a few numbers - 100m credits - tap - no problem, Elite? - click - haveaniceday!

As far as I remember that's what I did when I last changed ships via the save file. Maybe the problem is that you've got equipment that will fit in the Supercobra but not the Adder. Try removing all the equipment tags and then reloading.

UB is right, the Adder can't mount any shield enhancements (it's energy output is too piddly to cope) so a lot of equipment is off-limits. The best way is to open the shipdata.plist in the Oolite directories, search for the Adder and check what equipment it is allowed. Delete anything that isn't allowed and your Adder should work (though why you'd want to swap a tricked out SuperCobra for an Adder is beyond me....)

Captain Hesperus

That'll be it then; I'd have to edit the equipment. I just did the Adder 'cos it was the first ship I could think of with a simple name to type.
But this is something I might try: when I can afford a big cargo ship outright, I'll save my current ship, copy the savefile, buy the cargo ship, save, edit down my credits by the trade-in value of my last ship, then jot down where and when my ship was stored. I can even "charge" myself a storage fee for when I come back to "collect" it (with yet more credit-editing).
As someone who's able to imagine my house is a specced-out SuperCobra, this leap of imagination is a mere trifle!

PS: I'll have to ask this some time - is the Tiger better (as an iron-arsed combat ship) than the SuperCobra. Should I aspire to getting one? And it what wayy?