Oolite Bulletins

I think it's time to resurrect this idea, now that there are more and more powerful beasties out there to get you.

The basic idea is that when an object is in target the reticule changes colour to red, and when not in target stays it's normal colour. This was a piece of kit available to buy in Xelite and was very useful. With the shielding that some opponents have, and the the laser overheating issue, it would allow you to use your laser more effectively so that you would only fire it when the reticule was red. Some of those blighters out there are very nippy and agile and with an ATR fitted it would reduce the number of misses at long distance (it's the eyesight ya knows).

It would be a very expensive purchase and only available at the highest tech planets, to ironass Commanders who a) could afford it and b) had a status of deadly.

Now there's a challenge for the OXPers

ATM

for OXPers that is impossible.

For coders(source code changes), anything is possible, given people are willing to spend the time required on making that real...

For OXPers

While changing Target information is quite trivial, we do not have acces to the colours of the targeting reticule, nore do we have ability to render/draw something else dynamicly.

for OXPers something like

player.reticle_colour property would be needed

the code would be in a timer like this And it would only update every second or minimum pr 0.125 second... if we are able to call timers with less than a second... something i have not tested yet...

grr fast double click mouse is bugging me

We can call timers down to 0.25 seconds. Don't know whether that would be fast enough for somehing that has to change dynamically.

I gues hardcoding is the way forward then

<looks wistfully towards programming wizards>

I'll ditto the Grey Haired One for this gadget, it would come in handy.

TGHC wrote:

It would be a very expensive purchase and only available at the highest tech planets

Agreed. Tech 13+ certainly, that would make it a rare device to find.

to ironass Commanders who a) could afford it and b) had a status of deadly.

This I don't quite agree with. It's not a device that auto-aims, or makes the mil laser run any cooler or any more powerful. It's not turning lasers into superweapons, and besides, the superweapons are available to all. So why shouldn't this simple device be available to the Commander who can afford it, regardless of kill rating?

EDIT: I recall Winston whipping up an experimental device like this once, but Giles would have nothing to do with it.

EDIT 2: An idea would be to make it usable only with an STE and mil laser installed.

[quote="Cmdr Wyvern"]EDIT: I recall Winston whipping up an experimental device like this once, but Giles would have nothing to do with it.[quote]

Actually it was Winston who was anti, Giles AFAIR did not comment.

Winston's device IIRC was the multi targeting gismo.

Implemented for v1.72. Not as equipment for now, though. To use the feature, you must set the reticle_target_sensitive key in hud.plist to true. If this key does not exist, the default value is false. Now, every time your selected target goes through the cross hairs, its target box and description changes color to red for as long as said target remains shootable. Bleeding edge players are kindly requested to test and report any eventual problems.

Yeeeehaaaa

Way to go, A_C! This gives a new meaning to the phrase 'laser surgery'.
Winston's "fancy targeter" lives again...sort of.

In xElite, the mil laser's crosshairs turned red when you had the target lined up; but this'll do nicely.

Seems like a good time to improve NPC AI then!
Always thought they were a bit daft to hold course whilst being toasted.

reticleTargetSensitive is now visible from JavaScript and can be read/set as a player.ship property. Scripts can now do to read the current value or to set it as required.

Writing this up as a piece of equipment is something I will leave as an exercise to scripters (;-)) when v1.72 comes out. It should be trivial at this point.

There's one glaring bug in build 1731 that has nothing to do with the target box improvement. The tweaked target box is working nicely.

If you start the game and load a save, then launch and try to fly outsystem to the witchpoint beacon (or anywhere else outsystem), you'll find your 'j' drive won't work. With nothing around to masslock you, you're masslocked. This condition clears up as soon as you power up the witchspace drive and jump to another system.

Build 1731 also partially breaks some OXPs.
- Orbits.oxp won't work on it's own, but seems to do well with system_redux.
- I have to buy the bounty scanner again after loading a save, regardless of having it when I saved.

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:

There's one glaring bug in build 1731 that has nothing to do with the target box improvement. The tweaked target box is working nicely.

If you start the game and load a save, then launch and try to fly outsystem to the witchpoint beacon (or anywhere else outsystem), you'll find your 'j' drive won't work. With nothing around to masslock you, you're masslocked. This condition clears up as soon as you power up the witchspace drive and jump to another system.

I cannot reproduce this. Are you using System Redux or other OXPs that add planets? When you noticed this, did you happen to be close to a big planet with plenty of moons nearby? How far from the station did you go before deciding that there might be a bug with 'j'? Some stations are particularly big and you need to travel quite a distance before jump drive can be activated.

I have to buy the bounty scanner again after loading a save, regardless of having it when I saved.

I cannot reproduce this either. Can you send me the save file causing you problems? nikbar2004 at yahoo point com.
Edit: Bug confirmed. It should be fixed now with SVN 1733.
Edit2: No it wasn't. It should be fixed now with SVN 1734 (hopefully) ...*sigh* 1735 and still hoping...

another_commander wrote:

Implemented for v1.72. Not as equipment for now, though. To use the feature, you must set the reticle_target_sensitive key in hud.plist to true. If this key does not exist, the default value is false.

Code: Select all

<key>reticle_target_sensitive</key>
<true/>

Now, every time your selected target goes through the cross hairs, its target box and description changes color to red for as long as said target remains shootable. Bleeding edge players are kindly requested to test and report any eventual problems.

Ooooooooooooooo I gotta have it. Can this change be easily back-ported to 1.71.2? Could some kind soul send a diff or give a description of what needs to change if the change isn't too huge?

For some reason tortoise SVN doesn't work for me so I have to go a file at a time via the SVN web interface...