Oolite Bulletins

Posted: **Mon Jul 23, 2007 11:26 pm**

I decided to put this in here... hopefully it's not too pitiful. It's a spinoff from the Bounty Hunting thread.

OK... now let us assume, for the sake of argument, that I am an imbecile whose coding experience consists of dicking around to no particular purpose with Sinclair BASIC some time in the 1980s, and a passing acquaintance with idiot-grade HTML. Laughable I know, but humour me.

How would I go about assembling a set of junk accessories into a functioning OXP? All I'm looking for here is something which will make equipment appear in the F3 page: none of it will do anything but cost you money (and possibly provide some cheap ablative armour to protect the good stuff).

I've had a brief look over the Wiki and, although it made my left brain hurt, I think I need to make a "Config" folder which contains an "equipment.plist" which gives the tech level, the price, the name and the description of the item, e.g.

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> 
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> 
<plist version="1.0"> 
<array> 
   <array> 
      <integer>1</integer> 
      <integer>500</integer> 
      <string>Nodding Trumble</string>
      <string>EQ_NODDING_TRUMBLE</string>
      <string>A guaranteed dead Trumble on a spring that bounces up and down in an amusing fashion.</string> 
   </array> 
</array> 
</plist>

(nicked and textually modified from Dr. Nil's first post in his Ore Processor thread -- I sincerely hope it's OK to do this!)

Now -- remember we're still all pretending I'm an imbecile -- is this even remotely close to what I should be doing? If so, what next? If not, then what? For the love of God, what? *boohoohoohoohoo*

I have other ideas for useless, functionless crap, and would welcome any other suggestions (and, obviously, assistance with coding and possibly psychiatric counselling). There could be:

Glow-in-the-dark OmniDeity: a handsome and only mildly radioactive universal icon which will win you the respect and favour of the supernatural agency of your choice.
Air Freshener: a small cardboard ping tree, impregnated with the refreshing sent of ping.
Vibrating Pilot's Chair: ease away the tension of those long-haul runs with this soothing Magic Tentacles command couch.

and so on and so forth.

Posted: **Mon Jul 23, 2007 11:42 pm**

Oh, triumph! I've actually made an entirely functionless but working piece of junk!

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> 
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> 
<plist version="1.0"> 
<array> 
   <array> 
      <integer>1</integer> 
      <integer>500</integer> 
      <string>Nodding Trumble</string>
      <string>EQ_NODDING_TRUMBLE</string>
      <string>A guaranteed dead Trumble on a spring that bounces up and down in an amusing fashion.</string> 
        <dict>
            <key>available_to_all</key>
            <false/>
        </dict>
   </array> 
</array> 
</plist>

I assume I now just add in more arrays! Oh, the heady rush of excitement! This is so cool I have to go to the bathroom...

Posted: **Tue Jul 24, 2007 7:38 am**

Disembodied wrote:

Code: Select all

      <string>A guaranteed dead Trumble on a spring that bounces up and down in an amusing fashion.</string>

You evil so-and-so!!!!!! For this you shall die!!

++++GalNet Bulletin Board++++

WANTED: Retirement Specialist to give a great send-off to Commander Disembodied of Zadies. No previous experience required, but must have own ship and must be discrete. Cr5000+ dependant on expediency. Apply to Captain Hesperus on the Dubious Profit (DP-099): message box DP-099/G1/150/CH23153.

What? You don't think I'd risk my neck hunting you down when for Cr5k (plus Cr3.5 for the ad) I can have half the assassins and bounty hunters in the galaxy tracking you......

Captain Hesperus

Posted: **Tue Jul 24, 2007 10:53 am**

If only I had skill with the GUI, I'd have added a cute furry pet to sit on your shields console, scanner etc. long ago.

(which would hide under it if combat starts..)
Maybe chessire-cat-fashion-like.

edit: don't forget the ping-machine, the incredebly expensive piece of equipment no autodoc should be without, which goes 'PING'.

Posted: **Tue Jul 24, 2007 11:07 am**

Captain Hesperus wrote:
++++GalNet Bulletin Board++++

WANTED: Retirement Specialist to give a great send-off to Commander Disembodied of Zadies. No previous experience required, but must have own ship and must be discrete. Cr5000+ dependant on expediency. Apply to Captain Hesperus on the Dubious Profit (DP-099): message box DP-099/G1/150/CH23153.

Tragically, Captain Hesperus's Cr3.5 was spent to no good purpose... he spent a frustrating few weeks fielding calls from a range of detached, different, disconnected, discontinuous, distinct, diverse, separate, several, unattached and/or various party planners and manufacturers of gold watches, instead of the discreet, not to say judicious, prudent, professional cold-eyed killers, full of discernment, stealth and subtlety, that he had sought. He vowed never again to rely on speech recognition software when calling in a hit on the GalNet boards...

Now that, OXP-wise, I've learned to crawl, or at least fall forwards in one general direction six times out of ten, my ambition knows no bounds! I think these sorts of accessories could get old pretty fast: what would be a good way of making them relatively rare, apart from giving them stupidly high tech levels? Is it possible to make types of equipment only available in certain places? E.g. Rock Hermits, or some other, as-yet-unmade station type, like an Orbital Flea Market (which might also contain the odd bargain item of practical worth)?

Posted: **Tue Jul 24, 2007 11:34 am**

Not just with equipment.plist, you'd have use shipdata too. Clone a rock hermit using like-ship, but set the tech-level to 30 and set the name to Orbital Flee Market (or whatever.) In equipment .plist set the tech-levels for the junk to 30. The Junk will then only be offered when docked at an orbital flee market as it'll be the only thing in the game with this normally impossible to meet tech-level.

If you give the Flee Market the roles "rockhermit(0.5) station oolite-rock-hermit(0.5)" then about 1 in 4 rockhermits will be Flee Markets.

Posted: **Tue Jul 24, 2007 12:05 pm**

LittleBear wrote:
Not just with equipment.plist, you'd have use shipdata too. Clone a rock hermit using like-ship, but set the tech-level to 30 and set the name to Orbital Flee Market (or whatever.) In equipment .plist set the tech-levels for the junk to 30. The Junk will then only be offered when docked at an orbital flee market as it'll be the only thing in the game with this normally impossible to meet tech-level.

If you give the Flee Market the roles "rockhermit(0.5) station oolite-rock-hermit(0.5)" then about 1 in 4 rockhermits will be Flee Markets.

Thanks! That doesn't sound impossibly far beyond my ability to do... I'll see how I get on.

Posted: **Tue Jul 24, 2007 12:52 pm**

It’s possible to add a condition to an equipment item, in the “other stuff” dictionary (alongside available_to_all, with the key conditions). This can be either a single condition statement or an array of them. Something like <key>conditions</key><string>d100_number lessthan
10</string> should work.

Oh, yeah… in 1.65 up to 1.67 or 1.68, the value of available_to_all is ignored, but I’ve changed it so that setting available_to_all to false does the sensible thing, i.e. has no effect. You probably want <true/>.

Posted: **Tue Jul 24, 2007 1:32 pm**

Ahruman wrote:
It’s possible to add a condition to an equipment item, in the “other stuff” dictionary (alongside available_to_all, with the key conditions). This can be either a single condition statement or an array of them. Something like <key>conditions</key><string>d100_number lessthan
10</string> should work.

Oh, yeah… in 1.65 up to 1.67 or 1.68, the value of available_to_all is ignored, but I’ve changed it so that setting available_to_all to false does the sensible thing, i.e. has no effect. You probably want <true/>.

OK, thanks. Just so I'm clear: the conditions key would specify a percentage chance of an item being available for sale, so (despite the strident objections from certain anti-competitive types) it would be possible, with <key>conditions</key><string>d100_8</string> to make Nodding Trumbles twice as common as <key>conditions</key><string>d100_4</string> The Machine That Goes PING?

And I'm assuming that available_to_all means that these pieces of equipment could be found on NPC ships and ships available for purchase. Under this assumption I set it to <false/>, but -- if I'm going to make the junk much less common -- then there's no harm in making it <true/>. Always assuming, of course, that these settings are doing what I think they're doing!

Posted: **Tue Jul 24, 2007 1:49 pm**

Another option would be to have a small dockable gift shop at certain planets where you could go and buy souveniers to give to the family.

Posted: **Tue Jul 24, 2007 2:07 pm**

I don't know if you intend to make all this funky equipment available in the commander status screen (admittedly it would be ultra cool having The Machine That Makes Ping appear next to the Energy Bomb), but be aware that if you do so, there might be a good chance of this equipment overflowing the view area and getting printed over the scanner and HUD area. I think any more than 28 items or so and things will start getting printed where they shouldn't.

Posted: **Tue Jul 24, 2007 2:21 pm**

There are 4 viewscreens available (furrydice only appearing in rearview)
to stow crap...uh cool stuff.

Besides that there are all the inventory screens.

another option would be to model the inside of -yourcrewquarters- or somesuch INSIDE the mainmodel of -yourship- and have an extra viewpoint for that from the inside.
There you could stuff yor stuffed trumble etc.

edit: As a 2D image that is. no subentities can be added to an object while the game is running.
That is a big WANNA: dynamic subentity management for handling external equipment and nice stuff like 3D trumbles in your-cabin.

Posted: **Tue Jul 24, 2007 2:23 pm**

Arexack_Heretic wrote:
There you could stuff yor stuffed trumble etc.

That's repetition!

Posted: **Tue Jul 24, 2007 2:55 pm**

TGHC wrote:
Arexack_Heretic wrote:
There you could stuff yor stuffed trumble etc.
That's repetition!

Stuff your stuffed trumble and other stuff.

Posted: **Tue Jul 24, 2007 3:18 pm**

another_commander wrote:
I don't know if you intend to make all this funky equipment available in the commander status screen (admittedly it would be ultra cool having The Machine That Makes Ping appear next to the Energy Bomb), but be aware that if you do so, there might be a good chance of this equipment overflowing the view area and getting printed over the scanner and HUD area. I think any more than 28 items or so and things will start getting printed where they shouldn't.

A good point... currently (ha!) all I've managed to do is make some new items appear on the F3 Equipment screen which, if bought, then show up on the F5 status screen. Presumably, if a ship carrying one gets shot up, messages like "Nodding Trumble damaged" would be a possibility. But you're right, too much junk and it'll spill over onto the HUD. Is it possible to buy Equipment which *doesn't* then show up on the F5 status screen? If so, then using the various viewscreens to plaster crap is a nice idea. Maybe even some "collectible crap": stick-on trading card sets of famous pilots, etc.... "Captain Hesperus's Docking Tips" and the like.

I like Dreamcatcher's idea of a souvenir shop, too -- although that sounds like it's getting into the realms of serious work. Using "like-ship" to fiddle with someone else's existing hard graft seems much less demanding.

Or just playing about with the probability of an item appearing.

Oolite Bulletins

Useless Junk

Useless Junk