Oolite Bulletins

There are a few questions that people keep asking about the game and addons and OXPs and stuff. Would it be an idea to keep a common questions (or FAQ) list of these and make it easily accessible?

I'm asking this because I have a couple of questions about stuff that I KNOW have been asked before but the forum's search utility is, to be honest, rubbish and I don't have the time to page through what could be hundreds of pages of posts that MIGHT have the answer.

Can I please ask the following then?

QUESTION: My OXP textures are reversed, like a mirror image.
ANSWER: you are using an old version of the obj2dattex.py file. Download the newest version from here: http://svn.berlios.de/svnroot/repos/ool ... 2DatTex.py.

QUESTION: The brightness levels on the rotating ships screen at the start of the game has gone dark.
ANSWER: this applies to versions what have shader facilities (1.68 to 1.71 as of writing). The Shader effects are on full. Set them to medium or off.

Yes, please to all of the above. I am among the people you mention. In old forum discussions people asked all the same questions as I am asking ...

There are a few questions that people keep asking about the game and addons and OXPs and stuff. Would it be an idea to keep a common questions (or FAQ) list of these and make it easily accessible?

Yes, please! There is the "How to OXP", but lots of it is severly lacking in relevant information and partially outdated, it seems to me.

I'm asking this because I have a couple of questions about stuff that I KNOW have been asked before but the forum's search utility is, to be honest, rubbish and I don't have the time to page through what could be hundreds of pages of posts that MIGHT have the answer.

Been there, done that, see above.



L

Selezen wrote:

There are a few questions that people keep asking about the game and addons and OXPs and stuff. Would it be an idea to keep a common questions (or FAQ) list of these and make it easily accessible?

Yay, more FAQs. :-) Say, isn’t this what the things I wish… thread is for?

Firstly, my textures are showing up in 1.71 reversed. Since I only have OXPs that I am developing installed at the moment, I have only seen it in these ones.

X co-ordinates in Oolite DAT files should be flipped compared to most of the formats (including OBJ and Meshwork files). Some versions of the conversion tools don’t do this, giving you a mirror image ship. For a mostly-symmetrical ship, the visible effect of this is that the textures are the wrong way around, which tends to be most noticeable for text.

Secondly, the brightness levels on the rotating ships screen at the start of the game has gone dark. I know this was mentioned recently but I can't find the information!

This is a problem with the lighting model for ships using shaders. All the shaders I’ve written, and most of the other ones I’ve seen, will automagically look right when I’ve fixed this.

Ahruman wrote:

Say, isn’t this what the things I wish… thread is for?

In theory, maybe, but it isn't a very accessible thread. I was thinking more like a properly ordered FAQ with a table of contents. Something that could easily be scanned.

Ahruman wrote:

Firstly, my textures are showing up in 1.71 reversed. Since I only have OXPs that I am developing installed at the moment, I have only seen it in these ones.

X co-ordinates in Oolite DAT files should be flipped compared to most of the formats (including OBJ and Meshwork files). Some versions of the conversion tools don’t do this, giving you a mirror image ship. For a mostly-symmetrical ship, the visible effect of this is that the textures are the wrong way around, which tends to be most noticeable for text.

Is there a way to fix this when creating a model in Wings? Or can the obj2dattex.py file be changed to do this?

The current version already does this.

Selezen wrote:

Firstly, my textures are showing up in 1.71 reversed. Since I only have OXPs that I am developing installed at the moment, I have only seen it in these ones.

I don't think you're the only one. I saw this the other day, looking for a yellow-and-black barrel, but I didn't realise it might not be intentional -- if I thought about it at all I thought maybe it was for people looking in rear-view mirrors or something. Although why one face should be the right way round and the other not, I don't know!



This is barrel_ah, from the Cargo & Wrecks 1.3.1 OXP.

Could the turned-around textures thing have to do with the following?

I noticed that two ships (the Urutu MkIV and the Leviathan from behemoth.oxp) suddenly have back parts of their hull turned around so that the jet appears to be a shiplength behind the ship itself.

I have not seen this behaviour in any other ship, but it could be that a texture is getting inverted.



L

in Wings3d try flipping the UV's that have the mirrored texture on them, sometimes when you make uv's they can be created as if wings was looking right through the model from the other side of it resulting in a mirrored UV.
to fix it - in the UV editor window select the uv's with the mirrored texture on them, then right click and select Fip -> then either Horizontal or Vertical until the texture looks correct in the main viewport, then save and re-obj2dattex.py your model to get the .dat

Cool, thanks to all. I'll try all that. Once I find something that works I'll update the first post with the fix!

I admit I'm using a really old obj2dattex so I'll try that one first.

Edit: Yep, it was the old version of the obj2dattex.py file that was the problem. The one Ahruman linked to has sorted the textures out!

Well, of course there is a FAQ.

And I've just added the second question (unwanted effects of shaders on brightness) to it.

I think, however, that the first question and its answer should be put up somewhere in the "how to make a model"-tutorial in the wiki. As this is not my occupation, I leave that to someone else. (Selezen? Are you up to do it yourself?)

Hmm...looks like that tutorial has been half started. Not all that much information there, really! I could have a go at finishing it off, but I'd rather concentrate on actually creating the OXPs that are burning a hole on my memory stick. Getting distracted was what ground the TOGY to a halt last time.

Is it worth having more than one FAQ on the wiki? Maybe one for players, one for developers and one for OXP writers?

Selezen wrote:

Is it worth having more than one FAQ on the wiki? Maybe one for players, one for developers and one for OXP writers?

I don't know about having different FAQs for different people. However it crossed my mind that the existing FAQ has grown enough that it could be a good idea to split it into sections, before it becomes an abomination to have to scroll through the whole text in order to find the question I am looking for. Will look into that.

Splitting it into sections is the better idea IMO.