Oolite Bulletins

I'm in the process of creating a collection of ships (and hopefully a mission or two).

I've looked through the wiki and found that one of my intended names is already in use

Is there any way to reserve some names for my OXP

Also will it cause issue to re-use an existing name

For reference the names I'll be using are Cheetah, Leopard (as used as my avatar), Jaguar, Tiger (see where I'm going here ), Goliath, and Minotaur.

I'll have to rethink the Tiger if it causes an issue, but having said that the internal name will differ. All ShipData.plist names will begin 'pdg_' it will only be the display name that will clash.

It's not impossible for two entirely different craft, built by different manufacturers, to use the same name -- e.g. the Lockheed Lightning and the English Electric Lightning. And the Lockheed F-35 Lightning II. Man, those arms manufacturers are an unimaginative bunch. I suppose if you wanted to differentiate your Tiger from the other Tiger you could call it the "YourCorp Tiger", or even the "YC-Tiger". Or -- if you don't fancy fighting protracted lawsuits across a dozen worlds -- you could always go for "Tyger", as per William Blake.

Don't know if there's any way to reserve names for an OXP, beyond getting it out there faster than anyone else, though!

Gunney_Plym wrote:

I'm in the process of creating a collection of ships (and hopefully a mission or two).

I've looked through the wiki and found that one of my intended names is already in use

Is there any way to reserve some names for my OXP

Also will it cause issue to re-use an existing name

For reference the names I'll be using are Cheetah, Leopard (as used as my avatar), Jaguar, Tiger (see where I'm going here ), Goliath, and Minotaur.

I'll have to rethink the Tiger if it causes an issue, but having said that the internal name will differ. All ShipData.plist names will begin 'pdg_' it will only be the display name that will clash.

Yeah, there's already a Tiger (uber-ship), so maybe Panther?
On an aside, eventually (when time allows), I'll see about going through the Wiki and starting a thread detailing the 'used' ship names with their plist names, to prevent clashes in OXPs. Though if we start it early, it could prevent difficulties later.

Captain Hesperus

Disembodied wrote:

It's not impossible for two entirely different craft, built by different manufacturers, to use the same name.

That was my thought, but I was concerned in case the Oolite engine may have issues.

I've done a quick test using to different Jaguar models with a 50:50 chance of each being used for the role and then added them to the game with a script. All appears OK.

Disembodied wrote:

beyond getting it out there faster than anyone else, though!

True, but some other Commander beat me to it

Captain Hesperus wrote:

there's already a Tiger (uber-ship)

My version handed my posterior to me one a plate during testing as well

How about a Lion, if it's big and fierce? Or a Wildcat, if it's small and fierce?

Disembodied wrote:

Or a Wildcat, if it's small and fierce?

Stoat?

Gunney Plym, take some inspiration from here.

ClymAngus wrote:

Stoat?

Or (with unpleasant implications for those flying snakeships) there's always Mongoose...

You know, I've often thought that there's some interesting work to be done on the psychology of naming things after animals. Some work, and some just don't. "Wasp", for instance, sounds aggressive, zippy, mean: "bee", though, doesn't. And it's nothing to do with how lethal a thing is: "tsetse", for example, doesn't even get a look-in in the naming stakes.

Bird names are almost always raptors: eagles, hawks, falcons. No sparrows, no grebes, no pelicans. There are a few which get through based on colour, like bluejays or cardinals. The only (and decidedly weird) exception I can find to this are the Oregon Ducks. Apparently they're playing the Washington Huskies shortly. I can see the point in "Huskies", despite the slobbery connotations, but "Ducks" ... ?

Cats get a better time of it than dogs. "Wolf" is OK, and possibly even "Coyote", but try calling something a "Hyena" or a "Jackal" and watch its popularity plummet. Most cat species names, with the possible exception of "Geoffroy's Cat", have a reasonable chance of working well.

And rodents! Some of the most successful mammalian species around, and they get practically nothing. Dangerous buggers, too: the Black Rat helped wipe out somewhere around 40% of the European population and yet can you imagine anyone naming a tank or APC after it? Where's the justice?

The reasons for the names chosen was because of the pattern of their fur would make an interesting texture to apply to the relevant ship.

The canine family would have been my first choice (big dog fan here) but I couldn't think of a big enough list of good names. Wildcat (thanks Disembodied) would be a good choice but it's colouring is a bit dull and I like the connotations with Mongoose but it wouldn't fit the series.

Looking through the wikipedia page (thanks JohnnyBoy) gives me Lynx, excellent

Stoat ClymAngus, go and sit in the corner

So with a bit of shuffling to match relative sizes we have Lynx, Cheetah, Leopard, and Jaguar.

Off on holiday for a week now so the work won't happen 'til I return. Likewise for an update to my wiki page but thanks for helping me out.

Disembodied wrote:

ClymAngus wrote:

Stoat?

Or (with unpleasant implications for those flying snakeships) there's always Mongoose...

Been done.

Captain Hesperus

Re: naming things - The British Army has often picked a "theme" when naming its vehicles - for a time they used historical royal family names and hence we have the "Saxon" Truck, but it was so very nearly called the "Norman"...

you could also go the humorous way... for example name a Fighter "Kleenex".. would be sort a funny, but still get the point through...

i would´nt be surprised if they named something like that in 500 years... when nobody uses paper to wipe their noses anymore... although i can´t imagine what they would then be using...

its sort of a cool name, if not you knew, what it actually is...

Frame wrote:

you could also go the humorous way... for example name a Fighter "Kleenex".. would be sort a funny, but still get the point through...

Would that class of ship be used by GalNavy for 'clean-up operations'?

Captain Hesperus

Captain Hesperus wrote:

Would that class of ship be used by GalNavy for 'clean-up operations'

Enemy bogies at 5 o'clock!

I agree that it is not impossible that two different ships could have the same name. And we don't have to reccur to fighter plans for example, I think even car manufacturers did that occasionally.

@ Gunney_Plym (and the rest of the designers): The name of a ship (the name that appears on the F3-F3-screen, and next to the target reticule), or in other words: the name defined by the <key>name</key>-entry of shipdata.plist (which can BTW from 1.72 on be overridden by an optional <key>display_name</key>-entry - quite useful for non-English localizations), is actually quite insignificant for the engine. There is only one single case where it bears some significance: If said ship is a dockable entity, the check whether the player is currently docked with it is done with the script-method dockedStationName_string (in legacy scripting) or player.dockedStation (in JavaScript). In both cases the variable returns a string which is the name-key from shipdata.plist. So, if two dockable entites happen to have the same name-key, the script could not decide with which of them the player is currently docked. If you are not planning to make your ships dockable, the content of the name-key is irrelevant, as far as the game engine is concerned.

The same is not true, however, for the following names:

• The entry-name in shipdata.plist (the name between the <key></key>-tags in front of the dictionary that contains the keys defining the ship's specifications), which serves as an unique identifier. Therefore it has to be unique. A second, equally named entry in another OXP will override and therefore practically delete a previous entry (position of OXP-name in the alphabet counts).
• All file-names related to a ship, specifically
  
  • the name of the dat-file in the Models-folder and
  • the name of the texture-file(s) in the Textures-folder.
  Equally named dat- or png-files will override and therefore practically delete previous files in the same way as shipdata-entries do.

And this is why giving unique names to your creatures is so important.

In short: While there can be as many ships with a <key>name</key><string>Tiger</string> as anybody wants, there can only ever be one <key>Tiger</key><dict> ... </dict>, one Tiger.dat, and one Tiger-tex.png in the Ooniverse.