Oolite Bulletins

Typhoon Class

This ship is what I'm replacing the Python with in my Ooniverse. However, it got somewhat warped in my quest for originality.

Currently working to upgrade to shaders - the partial oxp here should provide a good variety. Consider it version 0.9

Backstory:
The "Typhoon" started as a generic-hull trader refitted and strengthened for military attention.

Though the hoped-for military contract was not forthcoming, the ship did see service in backwaters as a basic cargo hauler. It's mid-size capacity and simple manouverability made it attractive to small, independent, traders.

The original startup eventually collapsed and the rights to the Typhoon hull fell to a consortium of merchants - mostly as a means of maintaining their own fleets.

Many modifications had been made to the standard design over the years, with an eye to standardizing, the Typhoon Group identified four major designs. These are:

Typhoon Class Free Trader (Appaloosa):
Long Haul Trader, cheap, robust, easy to maintain.
200mLS, 100TC lightly armed.

Typhoon Class Frontier Trader (Cougar):
Armed Trader - the Appaloosa is too lightly armed to brave the more lawless sectors. Capable of holding it's own in a firefight, or acting as a heavy escort. Follows the Typhoon characteristic of easy maintenance.
200mLS, 100TC, moderately-well armed. Surplus missile slots also add range with the use of drop-tanks.

Typhoon Class Blockade Runner (Coyote):
Fast Freighter - because sometime discretion is the better part of valor. This ship uses high tech engines to acheive a healthy balance of legs and capacity. The running economics is similar to many much more expensive ships.
380mLS 60TC lightly armed.

Typhoon Class Cruiser (Condor):
Light Frigate - intended as a capital ship, and initially seeing service as a heavy escort, this ship is intended as a deterrent. Lighter versions may be seen acting as regular traders. Distinctive with three cheap engines, smaller and more robust than the others.

300mLS, 80TC heavily armed

Military and Police versions tipped.

The basic design is deliberately modifiable - expect many "chopped" varients of the Appaloosa to appear over time.

cool!

nice! how did you get on with that shader designer program you found the other day Simon? i tried out the windows version - i shoved the griffkrait shaders into it - it worked quite well but the program wouldn't load in .obj files, i had to use the built in teapot model which was a real pity.

not tried yet - run into a couple of snags in other things which have been keeping me out of this.

My laptop just had a distro upgrade and now I have to troubleshoot the oolite install.

On this machine, I'm having unexpected issues with the obj2dat script, and oolite has started crashing.

crashing has been narrowed down to the galcops.oxp - I've been getting "no DTD found" errors. Which is weird and out of the blue.

I think I'll amalgamate my ships into a coherent package, copying the main shipdata.plist completely. Typhoons I'll work on separately.

Typhoons.oxp has been updated and the shaders now work properly. Well... sort of - the engine glow color is still wrong.

I've also amalgamated the bulk of my ship designs under the waka.oxp - keeping typhoons and arachnids separate. AND I've got distracted applying my newer modelling skills to the older designs.

It has been tempting to remodel the engines for these models.

Hi Simon,

Just a little (hopefully constructive) criticism about your ship oxps:

I have been following your ship`s development and am attempting to have their newest version in my game. Problem is, I am quickly losing orientation how many there are, which oxp contains what and what has been updated and what not.

Suggested solution: Unify or merge your ship oxps into one singular oxp and give it a version number (i.e. 1.0 etc.) that changes with each update you publish to 1.01, 1.02 etc. That way, anyone who wants to have this sees with one look on the download link and own AddOns folder if a further advanced version is available.

Hail Eris to you too ... but sometimes the chaos is just too much

L

Lestradae wrote:

Hi Simon,

Just a little (hopefully constructive) criticism about your ship oxps:

I have been following your ship`s development and am attempting to have their newest version in my game. Problem is, I am quickly losing orientation how many there are, which oxp contains what and what has been updated and what not.

The shipdata.plist usually has a "last-edited" date at the top with the license. All the OXPs except for galcops and blade have been updated... mostly to tidy them up.

Suggested solution: Unify or merge your ship oxps into one singular oxp and give it a version number

There's also a timestamp on the files ;)

I've paused amalgamating ships since the waka.oxp has passed the 4MiB stage... a nasty shock for dialup sufferers users. Now I'm looking for feedback on page layout and useability - so your comments are actually welcome.

Note - there are about 10MiB of data there - not everyone is on a fast connection, and most changes have been pretty small.

I could do one big one and add patches for updates? Then the big downloads are relegated to major releases - but how many people can apply a patch?

I will also post if I think an oxp is essentially working and thus "finished". As well as announce if there has been any major change.

So the typhoons.oxp is "finished" in that everything I set out for works the way I intended. Including the Coyote glowing stripes.

However - you are essentially correct: I need to reorganize that page.

I'm thinking that I need a descriptions page and a downloads page. Better pics - and a different way to include them. I need some more obvious way to tell people that an oxp has been updated and when.

I've started - by downsizing the images to make the page load more smoothly. Should probably get onto adding them to the wiki.

If you've downloaded the waka.oxp, you'll see a whole bunch of ships... I'm making detailed upgrades to some of the models. I don't know if they should be included instead-of the original models or as-well-as them.

Here's a preview: