Oolite Bulletins

Very minor rework of the asteroids expansion pack: it was borrowing 2 textures from UPS.oxp. I gave it 2 new textures & it should now stand on its own two feet, so to speak.
Also removed 1 extra requires.plist (used as a spare?) file and updated the changelog.

Only found that out by accident btw. While checking my OXPs with a new build of Oolite I put asteroids in the AddOns folder first, and tried -veryfy-oxp without adding the other ones first.


It's surprising what a bit of spit and polish can do to an old thing. Here it is now, looking nice and shiny and ready for new challenges, or for being blasted away without a second thought.

There shouldn't be any nasty surprises with this one, but I'm crossing my fingers just in case.

[ EDIT: ] Link removed, as per commander McLane's request.

As mentioned elsewhere: Please remove the download link. This OXP is not needed anway.

Ok, removed.

What's going to happen to asteroids.oxp inside the wiki?

On the wiki, you do get the impression that asterodis.oxp is separate from asteroid storm, plus it looks like it's got no dependencies. However, it does need to be installed together with the ups oxp, othewise it's got missing textures...

Cheers.

Kaks.

Kaks wrote:

Very minor rework of the asteroids expansion pack: it was borrowing 2 textures from UPS.oxp. I gave it 2 new textures & it should now stand on its own two feet, so to speak.
Also removed 1 extra requires.plist (used as a spare?) file and updated the changelog. ......However, it does need to be installed together with the ups oxp, othewise it's got missing textures...

You are right, my release was buggy. And it was my intention to remove the bugs. Bad work from my side. To be complete:

I repaired the original reference bugs. Then on some point I decided to use 3 of charlies asteroids for my own asteroid mission in UPS. I changed texture names to avoid conflicts between the two. Then I discovered that I not just copies the textures, but moved the textures from asteroid to UPS. I copied them back, but somehow forges to set the ups references back. (The textures were there but the references in models were wrong.) So you are right, the new one only could work if UPS was also present.

I just uploaded it again. Not with extra textures, but with repaired references. (Same version number as Kaks, as it probably is doing the same and the same bug was removed.

The double version.plist I oversaw. I mist this plist on the correct place so I added one. I didn't realise there was already one inside the config folder (were it was useless)

On the issue of asteroid storm, doing the same I won't comment further. Asteroid storm keeps using unnecessary time after mission completion. Changing the code to put everything behind an end condition would help, but it still needs to read the whole code every update time. Only a Java script version could eliminate the code checking after mission completion completely.

I know its buggy, but I'm trying to get a V1.1 of Random Hits done ATM, so it may be a while before I get round to fixing Asteroid Storm up. If someone else wants to fix it I don't mind at all!

Eric: it's good to know that asteroids.oxp is, redundant or not, working smoothly once again. As my major fumbling proves all too well, it can be very easy to make even obvious mistakes.

LB: <me raises eyebrow />Hmmm, someone to look at asteroid storm while you're busy polishing up Random Hits v1.1 ...

You don't say....

<intermingling_mode: on>

Weeeeellll, if you're really really busy & I've got nothing else to do, I might have a look into it...

I make no promises, you understand...

<intermingling_mode: off> *********ERROR Command not recognised!

Seriously, I'm going to look through the oxps mentioned in 'orphaned OXPs', but, yeah, I'll jump at the chance. There's a lot of stuff I don't yet know about how to put a mission together and, if nothing else, that should provide some good inspiration for hotrods.oxp: the as yet not-quite-thought-out gang warfare oxp.

@both. Thanks for all the comments. Really, greatly appreciated!

Cheers,

Kaks.

Eric Walch wrote:

On the issue of asteroid storm, doing the same I won't comment further. Asteroid storm keeps using unnecessary time after mission completion.

As does Lave.oxp, as does Diso.oxp, as does tgy.oxp, as does Tianve.oxp, as does monument.oxp, as does ringpod.oxp, as does eagle.oxp, as does longway.oxp, as does spyhunter.oxp, as does blackbaron.oxp, as does Taranis.oxp, as does Ionics.oxp, as does the native constrictor-script (at least in its legacy-form), to mention just those that are related to Galaxies 1 and 2 exclusively. I think in this mix the resources used by AsteroidStorm.oxp are fairly negligible. And yes, I don't expect the ordinary player to take out any of these as soon as he reaches Galaxy 2 or 3 respectively, because that's not how people function. So I am just asking: Why bother so much about the quite short and lean asteroidstorm.oxp-script, when it really is next to nothing compared with the rest of the bunch?

Or do you want to create clones of all OXPs that add some ships together with a mission, so that the player has to switch the original with its clone after finishing the mission, in order to keep the extra ships (or changes to the Ooniverse) without the script running anymore? I just can't imagine a lot of people actually doing this.

Sorry Eric I have to agree with commander McLane on that.
Imagine if I create and submit an ionicsship oxp without the mission code. After that commander McLane do the same thing with the ships from assassins and call it assasinsships and then someone else ……

McLane wrote:

Or do you want to create clones of all OXPs that add some ships together with a mission, so that the player has to switch the original with its clone after finishing the mission, in order to keep the extra ships

This was in no way my intention. With the asteroids I never realised that they were also included in Asteroid storm. And when I asked Charlie for permission to put it on the wiki he never mentioned that it was already part of an other OXP.
I apparently belong to the few that remove an OXP after it's missions are completed. So there must be more like me that have discarded that OXP and now miss the fun of the plain asteroids. It is the only in his kind and some new creations would be better.

The current Oolite asteroids have a materials directory. These old asteroids still don't have one. But my computer is to slow to use shaders so it gets disabled. Maybe we needs a complete new set with new features. But when I can not see them on my computer I also can't test this.

Eric Walch wrote:

With the asteroids I never realised that they were also included in Asteroid storm. And when I asked Charlie for permission to put it on the wiki he never mentioned that it was already part of an other OXP.

So actually our different way of obtaining the asteroids may be the root of our argument? I myself had just downloaded (and installed) AsteroidStorm.oxp long time ago and wasn't even aware of the existence of Asteroids.oxp until we started discussing it. (IIRC back then LittleBear made Asteroid Storm quite recently after Asteroids was available. So it was quite easy to just download Asteroid Storm and forget about Asteroids.)