Oolite Bulletins

I have just installed a few new OXP's, one of them being the mission pack UPS-courier v1.1.1.oxp.

I just started a new game and a mission popped up almost straight away.
A guy called Ixat Behan (of the trading ship Proof of the Pudding) asked me to go to Soladies to pick up his uncle and bring him back to Lave.

Nothing strange about that. But I wanted to know what oxp this mission belongs to?

I got my PC to do a search of all text files (containing the words Proof of the Pudding, Ixat Behan, ect...) inside the main Oolite folder to find the oxp that this mission comes from.
However my pc couldn't find it anywhere. It's as though the mission doesn't exist.

Can anyone tell me what OXP this particular mission is in?

Longway Around.

The first OXP to be written (I think) by "Giles The Creator", it's a very simple ferrying job designed for new commanders, but it started the OXP ball rolling, and stirred the creatiive juices of the Oolite community.

And the final destination is not Lave. But you will find out.

And yes, you can't search anything inside an OXP. That's the same on a Mac. Spotlight is a very powerful tool, but it won't look inside an OXP, as OXPs are no folders, but packages, and therefore not indexed.

However, due to my Awesoma Powa, you can search for OXPs by the ships they define under Mac OS X 10.4. :-)

(As far as I’m aware, though, the whole package thing means nothing under Windows, so a search ought to work, as long as it recognizes plists as text.)

Ok thanks guy.
That clears up the pc searching issue for me and I will take a look inside the Longways oxp files for clues to the mission.

I take it you don't need a passenger compartment to transport this person?

Not for this one (as it was written before Oolite had passenger cabins) the guy sits up front with you. Other passenger missions will require a cabin though. Up to you if you want to look through the code, but it does spoil the missions. If you have a look at the Wiki Mission Page, this will give tell you want you need to do to trigger a mission without giving the plot away.

Wiki pages is here:-

http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Oolite_Missions

LittleBear wrote:

If you have a look at the Wiki Mission Page, this will give tell you want you need to do to trigger a mission without giving the plot away.

Wiki pages is here:-

http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Oolite_Missions

Yes I have seen that page. That actually raises another question.

All missions have a trigger that allows them to run. IE, go to a certain planet, have a score over ???, ect...

One such mission I have is triggered when you have a player score of over 150 and you are at a certain planet.
I have looked at the script file and see that the planet you have to be at to start the mission is "planet_number equals 143".

Now, I have no idea what planet '143' is or even if I need (or want) to go there.
So I was thinking.... if I deleted the variable "planet_number equals 143" in the script file, would the mission still work but this time only when I have a score over 150? Would the script run no matter what planet I was at, just as long as my score was over 150?

If that is the case then that would mean that I wouldn't have to hunt for planet '143' just to start the mission.

That would work in code. Although the Mission page would give you the name of the planet. . Most OXPs don't need you to be at a certain planet (although you often need to be in a certain Galaxy) and use a News Broadcast or an Incoming Message to tell you where to go.

Planet Numbers are used by coders. Eg Lave is Planet Number 7. So a script command "Galaxy number equal 0", "PlanetNumber equal 7". would only do somthing when the player was at Lave. In code 0 is 1 (if you see what I mean) so you have to substract 1 from the number used in script.

A list of all the planet numbers is on the Wiki here:-

http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Oolite_planet_list

Its only useful information for coders. Eg in a delivery mission, you only want the player to get a well done message and payment when he actually goes to the planet he meant to to deliver the stuff. Also needed when you want to modify a particular system. Eg in Assassins, the Victims appearing where they are meant to or Gas Giants being added to a certain system thats meant to have them rather than at every system.

elite wrote:

Now, I have no idea what planet '143' is or even if I need (or want) to go there.
So I was thinking.... if I deleted the variable "planet_number equals 143" in the script file, would the mission still work but this time only when I have a score over 150? Would the script run no matter what planet I was at, just as long as my score was over 150?

If you are using version 1.65 or older you can go to the long-range galactic chart and press "!". This will save a copy of the same chart on your HD with a number aside every planet. It also saves a list by number with all the planets in the galaxy.

And as LB said: you can also find this info and more at the wiki