Save Any Where OXP Version 3.2 [RELEASE]

[mcarans]

I have suggested this to be standard in Oolite here:
https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.ph ... 419#116419

[Frame]

blasted middle ear infection is to blame..

I had planned to release it just before the summer holidays, however I got sick, and was forced to undergo a rush-cure of penicillin and be spoiled by the wife before leaving for sweden: kopparberg..

Since then, I nearly completed the testing and cosmetic changes and I'm planning a release this evening at between 20:00 - 24:00 GMT+1.

Cheers Frame...

[Frame]

snag, tracking a bug...

it will let you save once, but no more... :-/

[Frame]

Version 3.0 released.. read first post..

Cheers Frame...

[Switeck]

one major change, if you are within 100000 km of the mainstation on a carrier or a station, you will not be able to save.

How does this distance compare to the typical distance of a witchpoint beacon to the planet? Closer/further?

And with your wording, do you mean you can ONLY save if not within (or in) a station or carrier?!

Basically a save only-if-nowhere instead of a save somewhere-in-particular?

[Frame]

one major change, if you are within 100000 km of the mainstation on a carrier or a station, you will not be able to save.

How does this distance compare to the typical distance of a witchpoint beacon to the planet? Closer/further?

And with your wording, do you mean you can ONLY save if not within (or in) a station or carrier?!

Basically a save only-if-nowhere instead of a save somewhere-in-particular?

I just find it silly to save when a station is in range.. 100.000 kms meters is not that far... and always substantially further than witchpiont-planet distance..

cheers frame

[Switeck]

I cannot imagine going much further out than the witchpoint-planet distance...with the only exception being the star-planet distance. But I seldom travel to it anymore, unless on a mission!

[Kaks]

I just find it silly to save when a station is in range..

A man after my own heart!

In any case, it shouldn't be too big a task for the keen career criminal to tweak it, so they can avoid going to the main station, even if it's close by: it does feel oddly appropriate as the first task for a future public enemy number one...

[Commander McLane]

one major change, if you are within 100000 km of the mainstation on a carrier or a station, you will not be able to save.

I guess you mean to say 100,000 m, because all distances in Oolite are given in meters, not kilometers. 100,000 kilometers would therefore be absurdly far away.

How does this distance compare to the typical distance of a witchpoint beacon to the planet? Closer/further?

Your scanner has a range (radius) of 25,600 meters. The aegis of the main station (that's where you see the "S" on your HUD and can activate the insta-dock) has twice that radius, that's 51,200 meters. Which means that 100,000 meters is roughly twice the station aegis.

The witchpoint beacon is anywhere between roughly 300,000 and 900,000 meters from the centre of the planet, which means that it is usually a little closer than that to the main station. By the way, you can find that out very easily yourself, if you press shift-F. Pressing shift-F displays your current position relative to the centre of the planet in the upper left corner of your screen. If you're at the witchpoint, and it reads (roughly) "pwm 0.0 0.0 750000.0" that means that you are 750,000 meters away from the planet's centre.

And with your wording, do you mean you can ONLY save if not within (or in) a station or carrier?!

The absolute precondition for being able to save or load in Oolite is that you are docked. Only when you're docked the save/load-screen (F2) is even accessible. How would you save if you can't press "save"? On top of that, the save/load screen in Oolite is only accessible if you are docked at the main station of the system, which is what this OXP is all about. What it does is to lift this additional restriction by some very clever scripting. Still, the basic condition is: you have to be docked somewhere. I guess being docked is what you are referring to with being "within (or in) a station or carrier".

So the answer is no. You can NOT save if not within (or in) a station or carrier. You can ONLY save if you are within (or in) a station or carrier.

[Frame]

I guess you mean to say 100,000 m, because all distances in Oolite are given in meters, not kilometers. 100,000 kilometers would therefore be absurdly far away.

yes Thanks for the heads up, yes meters not kilometers. (to much car talk)..

And with your wording, do you mean you can ONLY save if not within (or in) a station or carrier?!

sort a missed that I'm afraid, but Commander McLane is right.

Switeck: you can only save when within a Station or Carrier.. There is no way triggering a save in mid flight, unless you want to carry a sort of Insurance that will invoke your clone in the case of Death.. and you allready got that got Free. other than that, there is the Escape pod/energy Bomb , only it costs 900 credits, and that is cheap when you think about it is your get out of trouble free card..

cheers Frame...



I think I never come across s space simulator that lets you save at will in the midst of a flight, save Eve that have lots of payed programmers doing the job on Alien Ware..

[Switeck]

Commander McLane,
I know about the distances in the game, or I wouldn't have asked. I also know about Ctrl+F, though I don't know how to translate the second trio of numbers into anything meaningful...and find it hard to move only along 1 axis, especially in interstellar space. I've been using the distances and CTRL+F to exploit the deadzone between the trade route and deep space pirates spawn region.

Frame,
Don't get me wrong, I don't want a TRUE save anywhere feature -- that's too cheesy! Being able to save only at stations and not carriers...or both carriers and stations works well enough for how I play.

There are big trader ships for which it's extremely hard or impossible to dock at the regular main station may work just fine with the Superhub station...but it is unfortunate that they're unable to save there because the Superhub station is placed relatively close (<25km away) to the main station.

Being able to save at carriers, such as a Behemoth...or more ironically, a Thargoid mothership...is more game-imbalancing than that.
One way to avoid making docking-and-saving a way to avoid a fight...is to not allow saving if there's hostiles (pirates and Thargoids) within ~25 km (nearly max radar range) when you dock. That should be doable. Ironically, because I've seen hostiles around even the main station as of late...so this may not be a great idea either.

[Commander McLane]

I know about the distances in the game, or I wouldn't have asked. I also know about Ctrl+F, though I don't know how to translate the second trio of numbers into anything meaningful...

Just a small nitpick: it's SHIFT-F, not Ctrl.

Let's have a quick look at the coordinates:

For this screenshot I have positioned my ship straight in front of the witchpoint buoy (in fact I got so close that the turning buoy pushed me away ). I also tried to be exactly on the side of the planet, so the x- and y-coordinates are close to 0.

The first triple is my absolute position, indicated by the "abs". The "abs" coordinate system has its origin precisely at the witchpoint, in the centre point of the buoy. It's z-axis runs towards the planet, the x- and y-axes in perpendicular directions. These are, from the player's point of view, completely arbitrary, which means that there is no distinctive feature at all in the x- or y-plane. The only thing you have to know is that at the straight line from the buoy to the planet is the corridor, therefore, if the x- and/or y-coordinates get too big you know that you're out of the corridor. As long as they are resonably small (like below let's say 10,000) you know that you're in the middle of the corridor, and the z-coordinate is more or less equal to your distance to the witchpoint. It tells you how much ground you've already covered.

The second triple is in the "pwm" coordinate system. For our purpose it is practically the same as "abs", but the other way round. Strictly "pwm" means that the origin of the system is at the centre of the planet, that the z-axis runs towards the witchpoint, and the numbers are given in meters. (Alternatively the numbers could be given in fractions of the distance between planet and witchpoint, or in multiples of the radius of the planet.) Again, because I have positioned myself (almost) exactly on the straight line between planet and witchpoint, the x- and y-coordinates are very close to 0, but this time the z-coordinate give my distance to the planet's centre, and you see that for this screenshot I jumped into a system where the witchpoint is relatively far out (not quite exactly 877975.19 m + 104.77 m). If I started on my way to the planet, the "abs" z-coordinate would grow, and the "pwm" coordinate would shrink.

There are big trader ships for which it's extremely hard or impossible to dock at the regular main station

I firmly believe that player ships that are too big to dock at (or launch from) a main station do not belong into Oolite. This is not to say that there shouldn't be NPCs bigger than that, as long as their creator takes care that they never dock at a station too small for them, and never launch from one.

But that's just my personal standpoint.

[Lestradae]

Yes! Very happy about the release

I'm also happy for you that you are healthy again!

Cheers

L

[Eric Walch]

Is the version number an error? 0.1 -> 0.2 -> 3.0 or missed I some versions?

I just tested it with a seedy spacebar. On reloading the saved game, I entered in a loop of docking and launching. After some time I got an arrival report were I 4 times was fined with 5000 credits for docking without clearance. And than a crash to desktop.

I think the seedy bars must be added on the banned list because save everywhere is not able to add a correct space bar. The main reason is that JS can only identify a ship by its role and not by its key. And the bars have a primaryRole that does not exist in shipdata.plist. Therefor spawning a ship with the old primaryRole fails and save_anywhere is not prepared for that.

For 1.73 and older it was needed for the market that the primaryRole of the station matched an entry in commodities.plist. And instead of adding 42 different entries in commodities.plist for every of the 42 possible space bars, it was easier to just add one entry and make that all space bars have just that single role after spawning. And there are more reasons for a script to change roles after adding to the system, so I might expect some more stations giving similar problems.

[Cmdr James]

Can I get a look at the log of that crash?