Oolite Bulletins

Oolite test release 1.73.2 autopackage and Ubuntu (9.04) debs are now available from GURPO. This is the first official 1.73 release for Linux, yay.

Changes since Oolite 1.73:

• Fixed incorrect counting of cargo when docked, which partially resulted in misbehaviour of -availableCargoSpace.
• Fixed laser purchasing bug.
• Fixed bug whereby after buying an item, the equip ship screen would be refreshed, even if this screen had ceased to be the active one.
• Various cosmetic and spelling errors fixed (especially 'targetting').
• Improvements to Mac OS X 10.6 crash reports.
• Legacy scripts inside CARGO_SCRIPTED_ITEMs now work again. (bug #15454)
• Fixed bug that allowed players to get rich quickly by selling missiles at start of game and then going to the shipyard screen.
• [Mac-specific] Missing file traderInterceptAI.plist is now included.

Changes since Oolite 1.72.2:
Gameplay

• Made procedurally textured planets a game option. Can be switched on/off in settings. (This feature is currently not available on the Mac environment.)
• Added splash screen and application icon to Windows and Linux versions.
• Added support for tangent space effects in shaders, including normal mapping.
• Default shader now supports normal mapping and parallax mapping options.
• Game over screen now displays ranking as well as credits.
• Made passenger carrier market a bit more interesting by rewarding long taxi runs. Credits paid increase exponentially with number of hops required. Reputation of player is also taken into account.
• Interface change: While in flight, pressing H from the local galaxy map will initiate hyperspace jumps - before, the player had to exit the map to do so.
• Added new equipment: Wormhole Scanner.
• Implemented targetting of nearest incoming missile. This is activated using Shift+T or an assigned joystick button.
• Sell/buy as much as possible on the F8 screen via Shift+left/right. Prefer to buy with Shift+Return.
• Time Acceleration Factor. Activated while in pause mode with left and right arrow keys. Can be from 1/16 to 16 times the normal time. TAF is visible in the FPS display.
• Raised the limit on gold, platinum and gemstones to 10000 units.
• Various AI changes. Most noticeable is that docking ships are now more likely to react to attacks, and less likely to crash during the final docking stage with bigger ships.
• Find systems on the long range chart screen: all possible matches now highlighted while typing.
• Last save directory is now saved in prefs; oolite-saves is only created when defaulting to it.
• Repositioned message row. Messages are now fully readable in standard Oolite.
• Equipment on the status screen now displays on multiple screens when needed, instead of overwriting the message and HUD areas.
• Repeating messages: after 6 seconds of displaying a message, the same message is shown again. They're discarded otherwise, as before.
• Game settings screen: Mac fullscreen resolution changes are now immediate.
• If no external views are defined for player ships, the cobra3 ones are used instead.
• The left and right square bracket keys can now be used as controls.
• Joystick hats are now supported on the Windows and Linux builds.

Expansion packs

• Icons and symbols can now be associated to beacons, and will be shown on the advanced compass.
• Subentity definitions in shipData can now be dictionaries.
• Removed restrictions on vertex and face counts for ship models.
• Introduced the cloak_passive ship dictionary key. When set to true (or yes), it will cause the cloaking device to be deactivated whenever a main weapon or missile is fired, making the cloak somewhat less of a superweapon. Default is no.
• CLASS_NO_DRAW can be used inside plists for specific (ghost?) ships again, as in 1.65 and before. However, the system populator still overrides CLASS_NO_DRAW for incoming ships.
• Customsounds.plist now accepts arrays, in a similar way to descriptions.plist.
• Added new system settings to planetinfo.plist: "sun_radius" (float), "sun_color" = (any colour specifier), "corona_shimmer" = (float: 0-1), "corona_hues" = (float: 0-1), "corona_flare" = (float: 0-1). Two more settings: "texture" = (string), "texture_hsb_color" = (hsb color) available when procedural textures are active.
• Renamed planets: %H and %I now use scripted planet names, including inside planet descriptions.
• Plural handling for languages with more than one plural form.
• requires_equipment, requires_any_equipment and incompatible_with_equipment restrictions now work for weapons.
• New %J token for string expansion: expands %J000 to %J255 to its corresponding system name.
• Implemented the key cloak_indicator_on_status_light in hud.plist (Off by default).
• Added example of drawing a yaw indicator bar (disabled by default).

Scripting

• Work towards securing legacy scripts, AIs and shader uniform bindings by whitelisting methods. Game will now print an error message in the log if non-whitelisted methods are used in legacy scripts or AIs.
• Added class ShipGroup. Groups are now defined in a different way than previously. ShipGroups are exposed to JS as a property of ships.
• Made time acceleration factor controllable by JavaScript using the read/write timeAccelerationFactor global property for bullet-time-like effects.
• PlayerShip.removeEquipment() now works for missiles. Also, awardEquipment()ing a missile when the player has none now causes the new missile to be selected.
• Reworked Aegis messages. sun aegis is recognised, approaching planet event is restored, all handlers have a planet or station as argument.
• Added the JavaScript read/write player ship property scriptedMisjump. Boolean value, scripted misjumps have a lifespan of one jump only. After that, auto reset occurs and subsequent jumps become normal ones again.
• Bounty for script added pirates and traders now follow populator rules when auto_ai is true.
• JavaScript system.info.xx & system.infoForSystem([present galaxy],[system number]).xx are read/write now. Reading infoForSystem values from outside the present galaxy is not supported and will return null. However, writing system info anywhere in all galaxies is fully supported at all times.

New event handlers:

• stationLaunchedShip(ship)
• playerWillEnterWitchspace()
• playerTargetedMissile(missile)
• playerBoughtNewShip(ship)
• arrivalReportScreenEnded()

New JavaScript methods:

• ship.setAIState()
• ship.fireECM()
• player.ship.galaxyCoordinates()
• player.ship.cursorCoordinates()
• station.dockPlayer()
• player.addMessageToArrivalReport(message)

New AI commands:

• dropMessages
• debugDumpPendingMessages
• exitAIWithMessage:
• messageSelf:
• abortAllDockings
• throwSparks
• randomPauseAI:
• launchIndependentShipWithRole:
• checkOwnLegalStatus
• setSpeedToCruiseSpeed

Changed commands:

• Added delay parameter to playerStartedJumpCountdown event.
• Made Entity.position and Entity.orienation read/write, and deprecated Entity.setPosition() and Entity.setOrientation()
• Ship.exitAI() now can specify a message. Default is RESTARTED.
• Deprecated system.goingNova and system.goneNova in favour of existing Sun equivalents.

Bug fixes

• Fixed far away docking of ships. Ships that start the dockingAI further away than 2.5 times scanner distance from a station are sent back to their original AI.
• SDL & Windows fixes: reworked Windows port to resize game view without texture loss. Splash screen for both Linux and Windows. When switching fullscreen resolutions using F11 Oolite now saves the new fullscreen resolution.
• Fixed negative cargo bug shown in shipyard for ships with cargo capacity less than 5t that had EQ_PASSENGER_BERTH as optional equipment.
• Oolite now takes incompatible equipment into account when generating ships for sale.
• Fixed weapon position. It now follows the defined position in shipData instead of always using the default one.
• Fixed an inconsistency in oolite-font.plist.
• Prevent ships from escorting things with different scan classes.
• Pirates returning to their own pirate cove are now correctly added to the station defence ships.
• Cloak no longer works as an energy generator when not cloaked.
• Escorts cannot have escorts of their own anymore. This avoids memory overflows in cases of recursive escort-ship, escort-role and mutual escort ship references between two or more ships.
• Motherships with a clean legal status now only accept clean escorts.
• Fixed hasShipyard.
• Fixed crash when max_missiles is set to higher than maximum allowed (16).
• Fixed bug in performFaceDestination where a ship would hang still in space.
• launchTrader now launches traders with correct escorts for that ship type.
• sun_radius loop bug: should now cope with all sun_radius values.
• Limited checkcourseToDestination to scanner range so it only changes course when it actually "sees" something.
• scanForOffenders no longer finds fellow group members.
• Minimum player-bouy distance when entering system raised from 500 to 750 metres.
• Resolved bug that caused ships with subentities to explode inside closed structures and other sudden collisions near bigger ships.
• More systemInfo changes for the current system are now validated and are effective immediately, including most sun settings, main planet texture, and derivative ones (ie commodity market/economy, ship and equipment markets/ techlevel). Properties not yet effective immediately produce a warning.
• AI command setCourseToPlanet no longer sets course to moons, only to the closest planet.
• Fixed joystick precision mode switch causing continuous yaw to left (Linux and Windows builds only).

Now there's a definite reason to upgrade from 7.10 to 9.04!!!!

I -may- build 8.04 packages as well (since Hardy is a long maintenance release) if there is any demand for it, but I won't be building packages for all the in-between versions. It's pretty easy to build from source yourself these days, and the autopackage will be here hopefully tomorrow.

Incidentally, I'm currently mirroring the packages on my ISP, setup as a proper Ubuntu repository. To use, add this to your apt sources list:

Just thought I should mention that Linux users who download the .debs from BerliOS will need to download both the data.deb and the appropriate .deb for their processor, either i386 or amd64...

Oh.. and I put in a plug for 1.73.2 over at the Ubuntu Forums..

If people use the repository I've made, architecture selection will happen automagically. But fair point for those downloading from BerliOS. I thought was fairly obvious though..

Agreed, but don't forget there are all these Linux noobs around these days... it doesn't hurt to point out the (apparently) obvious... and thanks for the repository, that makes life simple..

Oolite test release 1.73.2 package is now available from GURPO.
It has been successfully installed on:

• Ubuntu 8.04 & 9.04
• Fedora 11
• Mandriva Linux One 2009 Spring
• openSUSE 11.1

Cheers.

Oh.. and I put in a plug for 1.73.2 over at the Ubuntu Forums..

...to which thread I am now subscribed... good work!

Diziet Sma wrote:

Oh.. and I put in a plug for 1.73.2 over at the Ubuntu Forums..

Hi Diziet,

Even though the testing releases may be more 'stable' from a general running perspective, the reason they are still in 'testing' is that the feature set is mutable; ie, not only are we adding features, we may also remove some before the MNSR.

You may want to clarify that in your post..

Cheers,
- Micha.

Thanks Micha.. will do that.. I was more or less just paraphrasing what Ahruman had written at oolite.org

Getafix wrote:

Oolite test release 1.73.2 package is now available from GURPO.
It has been successfully installed on:

• Ubuntu 8.04 & 9.04
• Fedora 11
• Mandriva Linux One 2009 Spring
• openSUSE 11.1

Cheers.

OK, I thought I'd try the new package on 7.10 just so you knew if it worked or not - but I'm confused.

Downloaded - OK
Run Packager manager - OK (right click in FF download box and unpack from their)

This is where is starts to go wrong - part way through it asks for a password - I presumed it was 'my' password but it is not - so I selected 'no password' - it finishes installing I get a little tick but also an error which states that it was installed as root and can only be removed by root.

Problem is, if it did install I can't find it!!! I've searched my whole HD for 'oolite' and only find the dirs related to 1.72.2 (plus a few old stray files from 1.65 which I didn't know about!). So, where should it be? Did it actually install? If it didn't, how do I persuade it to?

At least then I can report one way or another if it works on 7.10.

Note: I also tried running Synaptic Package Manager from System menu and selecting the .package from the download dir using the 'add downloaded packages' option - but the .package is greyed out and not selectable...

@DaddyHoggy

I do not get the way you try to install the .package file.
Please, download oolite 1.73.3 test release and execute the following in a terminal window:

Getafix wrote:

@DaddyHoggy

I do not get the way you try to install the .package file.
Please, download oolite 1.73.3 test release and execute the following in a terminal window:

Code: Select all

# cd <path where oolite-1.73.3-test.x86.package resides>
# chmod 755 ./oolite-1.73.3-test.x86.package
# sudo ./oolite-1.73.3-test.x86.package

This works just fine! Right clicking and "opening" the package from the Tools->downloads from inside FF runs the autopackager - it even looks the same to start with - it just doesn't actually install it!

So, a quick half hour play and I can report that 1.73.3 seems to work fine under Gutsy Gibbon, so you can add that to your list if you wish.

@DaddyHoggy

I just got it!
You have installed 1.72.2 using your password. This is used by autopackage
to verify that you can install this package as root (in /usr/lib/Oolite/) and not
as simple user (in /home/<your login>/.local/Oolite/).

Now, you are trying to install 1.73.2 without password. However,
Autopackage first wants to uninstall 1.72.2, but it can't (remember that it
was installed as root!).

Just proceed and install oolite 1.73.3 test release using your password.

I did - as per my post above your post - I realised as it I watch it uninstall original version what must be going on - thanks for being on the case (as ever!)

Cheers,

DH