Oolite Bulletins

Oolite test release 1.69 - Ooh, Shiny Edition is now available from GURPO. This release is mostly about graphics and performance enhancements. The updater can be applied to 1.65, 1.67, 1.67.1 or 1.68.

Changes since Oolite 1.68:

• New materials model and more flexibility for shaders.
• Lasers can now be any colour, with the limitation that they must be reasonably bright. The new colour spec syntax introduced for lasers is also supported for sky colours, but not planets in this release.
• Raised vertex and face counts for meshes, while reducing memory usage.
• Reformatted keyconfig.plist to be more legible and easier to edit.
• Advanced Navigation Array default key changed to ^ (shift-6 on UK keyboards) to avoid surprise launches.
• Save/load screens now show more information, and show the correct ship type even if it isn’t currently installed (only applies to games saved with 1.69 or later). Also, a question mark is now shown in place of unknown ships (but looks bad due to bugs in setting up smoothed models).
  Under Mac OS X, this only applies in full-screen mode as standard system dialogs are used in windowed mode.
• The commander status screen now shows damaged equipment in orange.
• The appearance of interstellar space is now set in planetinfo.plist.
• (Mac OS X only) Support for a new Debug menu added. It is enabled by a special OXP, Debug Menu.oxp.
• New debugging key, key_dump_target_state, which dumps a lot of information about the player’s target (or the player, if there is no target) to the log. Not bound to anything by default.
• New requires.plist key added: max_version. This is not expected to be useful very often, except for Debug Menu.oxp. Any unknown keys in required.plist will now cause an OXP not to load.
• Improved robustness in various ways, especially with regards to property list parsing.
• Various redundant bits of code removed; code cleanup; some optimization.
• Cache is no longer pruned at all. Since it’s rebuilt when OXPs are changed, the maximum size of the cache is limited by the installed OXPs. In practice, sizes of a few MB can be expected. Under GNUstep, cache read/write should be more efficient and the folder the cache lives in will be created if needed.
• Under Mac OS X and Windows, you can force a cache rebuild by holding down shift during start-up. This probably sort of works on Linux other systems if you press it just at the right moment.
• Fixed various issues under Linux (catching up with changes since pre 1.67).
• (Mac OS X only) Spotlight indexer indexes name of ship for games saved with 1.69 or later.

Known bugs:

• Several OXP/scripting bugs have been reported and not fixed.
• Greyscale textures with alpha channels are not loaded correctly.
• Some textures still break when swapping between full-screen and windowed mode or resizing window (except under Mac OS X).
• Need to analyze memory usage; there seem to be significant leaks.
• equipment_price_factor only affecting station’s sell price not addressed.
• Civilian ships spawning in interstellar space not addressed.
• Ability to scoop more cargo than you have space for under some circumstances not addressed.

Due to a number of behind-the-scenes redesigns, changes and mass deletions, there are probably quite a few new bugs, too. Please report them. Also, please report any previously-reported bugs that are not fixed in this release.

There are three new JavaScript classes in 1.69 – Entity, Vector and Quaternion, but they can’t be used for much.

As of 1.69, image formats other than PNG are not supported for textures (under any OS).

Littlebear wrote:

Cool! Got it running. Much faster than 1.68, but it won't now run with these OXPs installed:- Llama, Thorgon Threat, Firewasp, nuke, boyracers, frog taxi, Missionaries and all of Charlie's ships.

I've got most of those installed and no problems yet for me, also no problems with how the sky looks either.

Oolite 1.69b fixes a problem which caused certain scripts attached to ships not to execute.

It is available in the usual place. Additionally, an updater (oolite-1.69-to-1.69b-mac-update.zip) has been provided for those who downloaded the previous release of 1.69. If you have not yet downloaded 1.69, you do not need oolite-1.69-to-1.69b-mac-update.zip, but rather either of oolite-1.69b-test-mac-full.zip (full copy of Oolite 1.69b) or oolite-1.69b-test-mac-update.zip (updater for Oolite 1.65, 1.67, 1.67.1 or 1.68).

I have a slight graphics issue. The new shaders don't work with the new version for me and in Console I get this message
Now I've tried updating my drivers, but to no effect, and I've just got very confused when I Googled the message. Any suggestions/help?

Uncle Reno wrote:

Now I've tried updating my drivers, but to no effect, and I've just got very confused when I Googled the message. Any suggestions/help?

What OS X version are you using? What graphics card?

Best wishes,
Oscar

ovvldc wrote:

What OS X version are you using? What graphics card?

Best wishes,
Oscar

10.3.9 and a ATI Radeon 9200.

The Radeon 9200 graphics processor does not support GLSL shaders.

As per the PC version announcement thread, 1.69 will take away all your money if a script tries to give you any money. I intend to fix this and any other bugs that turn up over the next few days in a 1.69.1 update this weekend or earl next week.

Until then, be careful! Don’t save over old commanders.

Ahruman wrote:

The Radeon 9200 graphics processor does not support GLSL shaders.

Bugger!

questions: when i first found/started playing oolite (a few days ago) i could only find the 1.65 version. i installed the fuel tank oxp. and bought some, but it did not increase my range. i was under the impression that it increased your range by 3ly. am i incorrect in this?

just a few moments ago, i joined the forum, and discovered the update to 1.69b and installed that. still no extra range on the fuel tanks. did this fail to work as it was not compatible with 1.65? and is still not working despite update? if i sell the pylon mounted equipment, will that take the fuel tanks with them? if i rebuy them, will that work?

i realize that only one of these questions are specific to this thread. sorry about that! *^^*



edit: is there an oxp which is particularly incompatible with this? recently i keep getting crashes where oolite will quit out of nowhere, usually right after i issue some command. mac os x.4, on a pro. i just put installed the asteroid storm oxp, and have quite a few others tossed in.

and btw. fuel tanks are still not giving any extra range or benefit that i can notice. (command to use, perhaps?)

nijineko wrote:

questions: when i first found/started playing oolite (a few days ago) i could only find the 1.65 version. i installed the fuel tank oxp. and bought some, but it did not increase my range. i was under the impression that it increased your range by 3ly. am i incorrect in this?

The fuel tank puts extra fuel in your spacecraft in case you need it somewhere (get stuck in hyperspace, overuse your fuel injectors). Use the tank to partially refill your empty fuel tank (IIRC).

You cannot and will never get more than 7 LY jump range. This is hardcoded to balance gameplay.

Best wishes,
Oscar

The hard-coding of the 7ly limit is correct. The Fuel tank OXP simply allows you to buy the future equivalent of drop tanks which replace your missiles and each carries 3ly of fuel. But be warned! Replacing less than 3ly of fuel means you lose the excess.

Captain Hesperus

I've never bothered with the extra fuel pods, I prefer to carry hardhats, if I want extra fuel I just get out the suntan lotion and head for the sun.

nijineko wrote:

edit: is there an oxp which is particularly incompatible with this? recently i keep getting crashes where oolite will quit out of nowhere, usually right after i issue some command. mac os x.4, on a pro. i just put installed the asteroid storm oxp, and have quite a few others tossed in.

Please e-mail the crash log, (found at (home folder)/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Oolite.crash.log), and the run log (open Console in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder, open the Console Log from the File menu, and copy it all, or only the bits related to Oolite if you feel like cleaning it up) to <PYMOLCLSXGQP squiggle spammotel point com>.

comforting looking email, that. >.> so i sent a similarly titled message. ;D

well, it's off. seems to be one of two errors. i only sent the top few, as i was getting tired of editing out the rest. ^^ if you need the entire, rather extensive log, i can do that. let me know.

btw, does the log reporter insert at the top, or append to the bottom?