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Cataclysm.oxp (1.1) now available

Discussion and information relevant to creating special missions, new ships, skins etc.

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Screet
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Post by Screet »

Eric Walch wrote:
I've never seen such a bad docking however. Could be a combination between ship size or structure and dock size.
Svengali said those could be seen more often - however this was the first time for me to see this, and I've got already a huge amount of playtime.

I am not so sure about the ship size / dock size, as I did dock by shift-d on that station.

If the screen I missed was from Cataclysm, at least I can report that it was possible to continue with Cataclysm missions after the next galactic jump. If it was something else, well, then I've entirely missed what it was.

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Post by Svengali »

Screet wrote:
Eric Walch wrote:
I've never seen such a bad docking however. Could be a combination between ship size or structure and dock size.
Svengali said those could be seen more often - however this was the first time for me to see this, and I've got already a huge amount of playtime.
No. I've only said that we've had this in the past. And while tweaking the GRS station I've got this too. Rare, but it happened .-)
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Post by Screet »

Another strange encounter - might be from some thargoid oxp mixing in? When I docked, I received the mission to deliver refugees a second time...and then there was an emergency launch because of another thargoid attack - however, there were no thargoid ships flying around! When I docked, I did receive the reward from the other thargoid oxp's "auto reward system".

Hmmm...and I really like those mission screens when refugees are delivered, but I wish there were the option to reject the credits from the refugees as I am pretty rich in this game and would prefer them to keep the money in order to build up a new life on the planet where I brought them! REALLY!

I'd even pay to free slaves I've gathered while flying...but have never found any oxp to allow that...

Isn't that strange? In original elite, I didn't care about being fugitive, I did shoot everything down, sometimes I just did shoot a coriolis stations so that they would release their vipers and I could fight them...and with Oolite, there's such a clear distinction between pirates and traders that I just can't misbehave that much and even felt bad during some assassins missions! Anyone else with such "problems"?

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Post by Disembodied »

Screet wrote:
Isn't that strange? In original elite, I didn't care about being fugitive, I did shoot everything down, sometimes I just did shoot a coriolis stations so that they would release their vipers and I could fight them...and with Oolite, there's such a clear distinction between pirates and traders that I just can't misbehave that much and even felt bad during some assassins missions! Anyone else with such "problems"?
Me too. Although that may be more to do with the fact that I was 15 when I first played Elite, and now I'm 40! Partly it's about role-playing, as much as it is about (virtual) morality: now, I prefer to play the game on its own terms, rather than just play every situation to my own personal best advantage. It makes me do stuff like NOT eject any slaves I've scooped, even if there's lots of other pods floating around which could be a whole lot more valuable.

Which is not to denigrate anyone who enjoys role-playing as a scum-sucking pirate! It's just that I don't think the game is equipped to let you play that role convincingly – principally, because you have to go to a main station to save.
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Post by Eric Walch »

Screet wrote:
I'd even pay to free slaves I've gathered while flying...but have never found any oxp to allow that...
UPS has a slave mission series (3 mini missions about transporting slaves home or liberate slaves). There you not only have to release a scooped slave for no money but he even asks you to bring him to its homelands for free. That whole slave series is written to ease your mind and rewards are zero or very low.

The slave mission series start by scooping up the special pilot of a plain cobra III ship. Nothing special to recognise the mission start until then, when you read you scooped a "slave hunter". So people that never rescue a floating pilot will never get this slave mission series.
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Post by Screet »

Eric Walch wrote:
The slave mission series start by scooping up the special pilot of a plain cobra III ship. Nothing special to recognise the mission start until then, when you read you scooped a "slave hunter". So people that never rescue a floating pilot will never get this slave mission series.
Hmmm. I've scooped up slave hunters on many occasions, but never noticed a mission running around this. However, they were all sold as slaves on the market (automatically). Liked that :twisted:

I also did the boa mission several times now...and only with the last one I noticed traders thanking me for making the trade lanes safe again, nice job!!! That's what improves gameplay very much!

Same applies for Cataclysm - the auto launches to defend a station are much nicer than the older counterpart from another oxp, as one even does get "safe to dock" messages. Wish that would be included with the older oxp ;)

I thought that it could be pretty nice if there were a status report after docking, something that would report how many defenders did fall (and which type of ship they did fly)...and maybe how many thargoids have been shot down (and by whom?). However, that's also only "fun" stuff, not required...

Those oxp's really make the game much more fun!!!

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Post by Eric Walch »

Screet wrote:
Hmmm. I've scooped up slave hunters on many occasions, but never noticed a mission running around this. However, they were all sold as slaves on the market (automatically). Liked that :twisted:
The reaction is very delayed. After scooping it waits till the player passes a suitable system as future homeplanet for all coming slave missions. Only than it will occasionally add slavehunters that have a mission slave on board in a barrel. Only when docking with such a barrel the player knows the slave mission has started for real and he gets its first slave briefings. A bit of complex way but that you get when you do the system selection completely random without any pre-defined systems.
Screet wrote:
I also did the boa mission several times now...and only with the last one I noticed traders thanking me for making the trade lanes safe again, nice job!!! That's what improves gameplay very much!
Yes, that code was put in several versions ago but on a previous update I broke these messages somehow. In my last ups update I fixed this so the messages are back.
Screet wrote:
Same applies for Cataclysm - the auto launches to defend a station are much nicer than the older counterpart from another oxp, as one even does get "safe to dock" messages. Wish that would be included with the older oxp ;)
That is probably because you can do much more with the new scripting system. I also liked it better than its original. In the original you also got the reward by immediately redocking without any fight, in this remake you are only rewarded when you dock with no hostile targets around the station.
(With the old legacy code you could not do a scan within a limited area. When you counted for example all pirates, than it is always all pirates over the whole system. With JS you can scan for all pirates within a certain radius around a certain ship or station so it becomes possible to know if a station area is cleared of pirates or thargoids)
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Genship oxp problem with Cataclysm

Post by Screet »

Hi,

I've tried to fly the mission from Esenma to Onrace 5 times with genship oxp in - no good idea.

When I exited witchspace, I was in a huge blue, sparkling bubble...and then either had a press space moment or another witchspace transition. Only once I've been able to survive the arrival after the second jump. The reason for my instant deaths became suddenly clear: there were 1-2 generation ships everytime I was exiting witchspace for the structure. Those generation ships are equipped with jump engines and instantly jumped out of the system, sometimes causing me to crash before, sometimes after me being force-jumped with them.

Took the genship oxp out and then I was able to do that mission. Used a fuel tank and didn't have to fight...seems I need to go back and not use injectors for more fun ;)

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Post by Screet »

Uhm...I could require some help.

I've moved as close as possible to that hive, did target the thing inside, ensured that the laser hits it, and then put something on my keyboard in order to have a constant fire (side lasers won't allow targetting that well, they hit the walls). For minutes nothing happened...and then I obviously have been drifting too close to the entry - kaboom.

Thus the following questions:
1) Should it be possible to fly inside? My ship always explodes instantly (turret bug?) - reading the mission text, I thought this should be possible.
2) How many minutes do I need of constant fire with a military laser, or is rotating to side lasers required because of a too high recharge rate? If so, it's really dangerous, as one needs to close up almost to impact distance of the object.

Oh, and I'd really like to see how it's meant to be looking. My ATI drivers won't allow that. I've got a different look of that thing every time I go there...

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Post by Screet »

Hi,

there's a little bug with the required galactic jumps from 3 to 5: The player only gets 5K for ONE galactic hyperdrive, but is required to use two.

So far I've found the following incompatibilities:
- generationship oxp (making witchspace hive mission impossible, needs to be removed)
- realistic shipyards (disabling eq, either ignore it or fix the cataclysm variables)
- turreted ships (blow up instead of allowing to shoot the hive, remove the turret subentities before doing the mission and then put them back in after the job is done)

Sadly, sometimes after receiving "energy fluctuations" I just have a press space moment instead of a timer. I've been unable to track this down, it might be caused by ATI drivers low OpenGL framerates. With 6 fps it often happens that a ship cannot stop properly and thus slightly drifts away...thus maybe I just hit the wall after some time instead of the countdown being missed. The center structure didn't blow up in that case...so I'm pretty sure it's the slow ATI performance to be blamed on this.

Still I'm curious as to how the hive should look...any screenshots from non-ATI users or do I have to wait until my card is exchanged for a nVidia one?

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Post by Eric Walch »

Screet wrote:
I've moved as close as possible to that hive, did target the thing inside, ensured that the laser hits it, and then put something on my keyboard in order to have a constant fire (side lasers won't allow targetting that well, they hit the walls). For minutes nothing happened...and then I obviously have been drifting too close to the entry - kaboom.
You definitely need the side lasers. First time I only used front and aft. That didn't do any harm. Than I used the console to read out the energy of the target after a few rounds of fire. It stayed at its max. The energy regeneration is so high that it beats the cooling of two lasers. :x

With four lasers it became easy. The target explodes within 2 full cycles. (4 laser fires pro cycle). Just don't do it from a distance. For some reason you than often shoot through the target and not on it. Fire from within the final room!
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Post by Screet »

Eric Walch wrote:
With four lasers it became easy. The target explodes within 2 full cycles. (4 laser fires pro cycle). Just don't do it from a distance. For some reason you than often shoot through the target and not on it. Fire from within the final room!
Yes, the distance was the problem. When I took the turrets off the ship, I was able to fly inside...hope there's soon a Oolite bugfix for this, as similar space structures (Fuel Station,...) do have the same problem with turreted ships. Once in, it was easy. I just had to ensure that the ship would not move backwards, as happens with low framerate sometimes.

It's even big enough in there for a caduceus to turn around without trouble...and the caduceus is much larger than a BCC ;)

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Post by Screet »

Another incompatibility...not cataclysms fault, as far as I can see:

Realistic Shipyards / OSE does change the composition of ships available. With the warship replica this creates some trouble, as it's not available because RS/OSE did override the ships!

Thus, if someone wants to go for the replica, RS/OSE has to be removed prior to that, and if it's OSE, the missiles and bombs have to be installed or otherwise the pylons will be empty upon reloading the saved file.

Of course the cargo hold should also be empty and it's a good idea to have a maintenance just before (thus not performing maintenance during cataclysm before it's time to switch ships).

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Post by DaddyHoggy »

Screet wrote:
Another incompatibility...not cataclysms fault, as far as I can see:

Realistic Shipyards / OSE does change the composition of ships available. With the warship replica this creates some trouble, as it's not available because RS/OSE did override the ships!

Thus, if someone wants to go for the replica, RS/OSE has to be removed prior to that, and if it's OSE, the missiles and bombs have to be installed or otherwise the pylons will be empty upon reloading the saved file.

Of course the cargo hold should also be empty and it's a good idea to have a maintenance just before (thus not performing maintenance during cataclysm before it's time to switch ships).

Screet
Isn't it this that started the brief (ie locked down by admin) sniping thread over "deliberately breaking other oxps"?
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Apparently I was having a DaddyHoggy moment.
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Post by Screet »

DaddyHoggy wrote:
Isn't it this that started the brief (ie locked down by admin) sniping thread over "deliberately breaking other oxps"?
Yes, that's the oxp which was targeted by the function added to cataclysm. Strangely, it seems not to have been tested with cataclysm before...otherwise, the missing possibility to get the ship would have been catched before.

I wrote it here so that people who play cataclysm and want that ship won't run into a problem...and also in the hope that a way can be found to prevent the problem with the next release of OSE.

This thing clearly shows that it's better to work together, not against each other. At least, that's a bug, not intentional breaking something.

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