Oolite Bulletins

Quick link into the wiki page:Galaxy Guide

Hi!

I'm working on a Oolite perl module giving me all the data I need to create a fully linked and indexed galaxy guide in wiki format. For a test, I'm working on this on my personal (non-public) wiki.

My goal is a wiki entry for every system in the eight galaxies, containing:

• * all the relevant header information (TL, Economy, Government, etc)
  * an image of the planet (See question d)
  * an icon for the system (See question e)
  * a small local map and a galaxy map showing where the local map is located
  * a commodity market list stating average prices and availabilities
  * links to neighboring systems with short infos on the basics and eventually autogenerated trading tips
  * information on piracy levels
  * an oort cloud weather forecast
  * the grouping of systems via wiki categories for TL, Economy, Government, etc.
  * a prepared (but initially empty) section for collecting fictious infomation on the system (like in the page for Lave in the wiki).
  * a prepared (but initially empty) section for cellecting information which fiction, OXP, mission etc. references this system to help authors to avoid logical collisions (i.e. when a story describes a system as basically empty and an OXP stuffs it with a gargantun ship graveyard).

Once this basic structure is completed, the system guides can be expanded and edited like any other wiki entry. As it is a "generated once, maintained manually thereafter" thing, the pages should be as perfect as possible - manually editing 2048 pages just to add something one forgot in the initial run is not my favourite pastime...

My questions to the board:

• a) is this something that I could include in the Oolite wiki when finished? Especially when using the standard namespace - a few system already have a page, so I would manually copy that "old" content into the new page.
  
  b) Should I set up a few sample pages if I get access to the wiki?
  
  c) Anything important I left out? Anything in my list that should not be there?
  
  d) How could I get nice pictures of the systems/planets out of the Oolite engine without travelling the eight galaxies for screen shots? A small animated gif showing the rotating planet is what I'm thinking of as the ultimate goal.
  
  e) Are G. Presti and C. Angus still around? OK, found the vector map thread - absolute great job! How did they generate the icons for the systems in that gargantuan PDF, and could they do this for all systems as standalone images? Are the graphical templates for the gouvernment type they used avaliable from somewhere?

Yours, Christian Treczoks

The idea is great but I have the following Questions.

For Famous Planets v2 I also edited the WIKI for the already included planets. See also the .pdf manual in the OXP.

1. So are you going to include OXP's in your pics or are you referring to standard planets?

2. Please include sun type/ or color (red, white or blue star). From 1.73 suns have different colors and now can be classified such as Red Giant or White bright

3. Could be even greater if you include all flavor OXP's like:

Commies, Dictatorships, Anarchies, Random Hits (for the bars) Feudals, Navy, Constores and Fuel stations so that the guide sums up which objects are in system.


For Example (an this is a made up example)

Planet X:

Normal sysdata
Sun color: Red

objects in system:

Coriolis station: 1 (type Dodo)
Constore: Star
Other orbits: Lave Academy, Fuel satellite

Finally GOOD LUCK because it seems an almost impossible task

Also, System Redux 2 is going to provide different textures, planets, moons, and also "plays" with the star properties. So you can't guarantee that "Sun Color: Red" is a true statement.

pagroove wrote:

1. So are you going to include OXP's in your pics or are you referring to standard planets?

For the base guide I will stick to the standard, as it contains the only available canonical information. Anyone can write an OXP redefining any system in any way, so I just can't say "this is right, and that is wrong".
If a page is alread defined for a system, I will take its contents and integrate it with my data, maybe under a heading "OXP Extensions influencing this system"

pagroove wrote:

2. Please include sun type/ or color (red, white or blue star). From 1.73 suns have different colors and now can be classified such as Red Giant or White bright

Is this canonical or OXP? Where can I get the data for the suns' colour?

3. Could be even greater if you include all flavor OXP's like:

pagroove wrote:

Commies, Dictatorships, Anarchies, Random Hits (for the bars) Feudals, Navy, Constores and Fuel stations so that the guide sums up which objects are in system.

If and only if I get the data. If not, I can still expand the system template and add extra "fields", but then one would have to fill in the blanks - preferrably someone who knows his/her ways in and out of that OXP.

One important point here is "how canonical is an OXP"? That was one point why I started this discussion. I already started to collect data from the Galaxy map PDFs (like traderoutes and regions). But I' really open for more suggestions.

pagroove wrote:

Sun color: Red
Coriolis station: 1 (type Dodo)

I have not yet found where the station type is encoded in the data. Similar for the sun colour. Anyone from the coder fraction that could fill me in with the details?

pagroove wrote:

Constore: Star
Other orbits: Lave Academy, Fuel satellite

I think I'll put them under "OXP Extensions".

pagroove wrote:

Finally GOOD LUCK because it seems an almost impossible task

I started with the idea on sunday. I already have the standard data generated (not read from a database) in sync with the list, have most of the base system template up and running, have the first complex calculations up (like "best buys" and "best sells" for a system, which in turn gets referenced to neighboring systems best buys and best sells data to quantify trade routes automatically)

Yours, Christian Treczoks

They're all here:

http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Planetinfo.plist

Do look around the wiki. It's a goldmine of information.

treczoks wrote:

I have not yet found where the station type is encoded in the data. Similar for the sun colour.

Nothing is "encoded in the data". In the times of Elite it would have been impossible to store system data for 2048 systems in any computer! Therefore B&B came up with the ingenious "system seed", which creates all informations for all 2048 (and potentially millions of systems) on the fly, by algorithm.

Therefore there is no database for system stations, sun colours, or planet sizes anywhere in the code. You have to take it from the seed and the algorithms. Or visit all 2048 systems...

Ah, that's what treczoks was asking about! I see!

What Commander McLane said.

Nothing is hard coded, also including planet names, population, type of inhabitants, planetary radius, economy, government type, system description, etc...
It can be overridden within planetinfo.plist, though!

Commander McLane wrote:

Nothing is "encoded in the data". In the times of Elite it would have been impossible to store system data for 2048 systems in any computer! Therefore B&B came up with the ingenious "system seed", which creates all informations for all 2048 (and potentially millions of systems) on the fly, by algorithm.

Therefore there is no database for system stations, sun colours, or planet sizes anywhere in the code. You have to take it from the seed and the algorithms. Or visit all 2048 systems...

I'm well aware of this I analyzed and re-implemented the algorithms used by Oolite in a library which gives me all the standard data. What I was looking for is the formula that they use to derive newer data (like colour of the sun or station type) from w0/w1/w2.

I started off using a database approach on sunday, derived from the planet lists, but that was to cumbersome and did not enable me to get additional info like pricing levels. So I analyzed, implemented and verified the algorithms for the standard data on monday and tuesday. Yesterday I started designing the necessary wiki templates. I have to work on the prices and availabilities data and verify my algorithms there, which will take some time. I expect to have something up and showable next week.

Yours, Christian

Kaks wrote:

It can be overridden within planetinfo.plist, though!

This is indeed a mayor pain I'm facing...

pagroove wrote:

2. Please include sun type/ or color (red, white or blue star). From 1.73 suns have different colors and now can be classified such as Red Giant or White bright

I don’t know where people get the idea that suns used to be white. Suns had colours in Oolite 0.1. Suns had colours in Oolite 1.65. Suns will have colours in 1.74.

And the sun colours haven't changed either from 1.72 to 1.73. All that changed is that you can override them colours.
And their corona got slightly bigger, the latter because 'it's prettier', if I remember correctly.

Hi!

Current status of my project:

I've no write access to the Oolite wiki yet, so I'm still working on my personal (non-public) wiki. I hope that winston will give me access RSN so I can set a few example pages up. And I have to check if the Oolite wiki has the ParserFunctions extension installed.

I solved the Icon problem - Somewhere in the Oolite source there is a PNG with an Oolite font that I plundered. The Icons are still greyscale, but they can easily be improved.

I designed some rather tricky wiki templates for system lists, one for generally listing system as in a "list of all systems in this Galaxy sector", and one for the HubList (the short overview which systems are within 7.0 LY of the current system). The lists use aforementioned icons for economy and government type, and some hand-drawn for the techlevel - and they are fully sortable by clicking on the icon in the column header.

There is a general "System" template that gives a floating box on the right with the relevant system parameters, and a "GalacticCatalogueEntry" template to produce a nicely formatted box for the good old description ("Lave is most famous...").

So I've got a bunch of templates and a lot of data, and so I created "Galaxy Sector One" table and a bunch of system entries, and they work like a charm.

What I have not yet done:

I have not yet implemented the price and availability lists for the systems, and therefor the "best buys/best sells" are not yet available. I'll dig for these infos in the TXTELITE and Oolite sources RSN.

I have not yet found how to get the sun colour, planet colour, station type and similar parameters. I've got to get the algorithm from the Oolite source only, as TXTELITE does not provide them.

Also missing is the information on trade routes and regions I got from the Galaxy sector map.

As I'm not using any OXPs at the moment, and I am in no position to determine the canonicality of an OXP, I'm not sure if I should include any OXPs data in the base design or just leave them out. The big problem here is that some OXPs seem to alter some basic system statistics, which are difficult or even impossible to integrate without breaking the compatibility to the canonical system. But, well, I started this project as a germination point so anyone writing fiction or doing OXPs has a place to annotate and/or check a system to avoid logical collisions.

Yours, Christian Treczoks

I hope this flickr thingy gets this right - or I got the flickr thingy right.

This is a snapshot of the start of the system list of Galaxy Sector 1 in my wiki:



A snapshot from my wiki article on Qube as an example for a system entry:



The small icons in the list header indicate sortable columns - and no, they don't work on the screenshots...

Yours, Christian Treczoks

Wow.