Oolite Bulletins

When we go into witchspace nothing more happens then a tunnel.

When other ships go into that, A Wormhole appears. If I fly through a wormhole, it never brings me further then one system away, so I think this is like what happens when you go into witchspace as well.

So I would like it, if 1 or 2 sec before my ship falls into witchspace this blue ring or something would appear to fly through.

j

Well, if you watch closely how other ships are entering witchspace, then you'll see that they leave the wormhole after entering it. The blue sphere replaces the ship. They have no blue ring 1-2 seconds before they fly through it.

So why should it be different for the player?

They leave after entering? Wow, trippy. ;-)

same matter cannot occupy the same space....no wait!
the same object cannot exist in the universe twice.

That is why the ship needs to dissapear before the wormhole appears.
Otherwise it could occur that ship is destroyed before entering and ship is always present at other end, so you would find it there nonetheless.
(And it will meet itself on the other side too!)

Perhaps the ship could glow or flicker, or have a halo or something during the hyperspace countdown, untill it disappears.

might be possible, IIRC there is a STATUS_WITCHSPACE_COUNTDOWN
which could concievably be linked to shaders?

As it stands (in the development version), it’s possible to bind a shader uniform to a ship’s status, but not the countdown time. If/when scripts gain the ability to set uniform values, it’d be possible for a script to set the time the countdown started, and for the shader to use that and the existing time uniform to work out the remaining time.

However, I’m not sure whether non-player ships have a countdown. My guess is no. On top of that, since each ship type has its own shaders, different ships would have different effects (or in most cases, no effects) which would be rather weird.

NPCs usually have a "pauseAI: 15.0" before the "performHyperSpaceExit", which is not a countdown and also doesn't establish a state of its own.

This calls for a (AI)method 'switchShader: shadername' ?

Sorry but IMO shading ships before they hyperspace is not a realistic proposition. All that goes on is the witchdrive booting and warming up. I don't see why that would change the ship's appearence, so I'd say to leave it as is.

Why have you not followed the "messing up the classics' thread?

If those glowy things on the 'wings' of the Krait iterceptor were only activated on 'countdown to Jump' then it would be very obvious.
Other ships may just get red glowy bits when the drive powers up.

In any case it is up to the ship-modder whether he/she wants to spend an hour working on a glowmap for something that will most likely be witnessed fairly sporadically by a player_entity.

Besides, a switchshader method can be used for many more purposes than only pimping the witchdrive.

I've nothing against the method, was just commenting my personal opinion on the proposed application... It's really none of my business if some shipyards decide to put out pimped prototypes that announce when the toilet is being used...

Hm, ok leave it as it is. I thought the blue ring is comeing up as a result of the witchspace drive ... ähm ... naaa cant think about realism there. .... .. .

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

This calls for a (AI)method 'switchShader: shadername' ?

Switching shaders is a relatively costly operation. Changing uniform values is much more reasonable.

why would switching on/off a shader be more costly than having it in the first place?

Maybe I don't understand or maybe you misunderstood my meaning:

I did not mean switching from shaderA to shaderB. ...although that should be possible IF switchOn/Off was possible.