Flickery ship

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Killer Wolf
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Flickery ship

Post by Killer Wolf »

Hi, just had an odd one in 1.73.3

i'm testing my Dominatrix : i've got a script Griff gave me that gens 8 of my ships when i launch from the station, along w/ a few of his that attack the station. all has been running a-ok ever since i started testing but just now i had a very odd occurrence : i'd messed up a bit of code so the ship's sub-ent guns weren't genning up for one of the variants. i fixed it and in game they came out fine, so a couple of tests later i decided to fire on my ship to provoke an attack and make sure the guns worked. this has worked great in all other times, but for some reason, this time my ship went loopy : she began flickering in and out of existence and flew about 3km in a beeline straight into the station whereupon she blew up :-(
i tried firing at another ship, and everything happened as it should, attacks and lasery things etc.
couldn't get a screengrab sadly, obviously there's software to record in-game footage but i don't have one :-/
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Svengali
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Post by Svengali »

Take a Snapshot -> * (shift+8)
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Killer Wolf
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Post by Killer Wolf »

a snapshot's not going to show it flickering.
matthewfarmery
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Post by matthewfarmery »

try a video capture software, there are a few around, camstudio, is free, although it outputs as AVI but there are a few converters that can convert it to other formats, worth a go

http://camstudio.org/

any video convert the base version is free
http://www.any-video-converter.com/prod ... ideo_free/

there are others, hope that helps
Screet
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Post by Screet »

Killer Wolf wrote:
a snapshot's not going to show it flickering.
Sounds like it was cloaked and had a bug in the AI when it tried to run away?!?

Screet
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Killer Wolf
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Post by Killer Wolf »

i was wondering about the cloak, the ships do have a 0.05 change of having one. i'll set one to have it by default and have a bit investigate.
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Post by Commander McLane »

Flickering is definitely a symptom for being cloaked, because that's exactly what the cloak does. It seems that the AI decided to flee. performFlee activates the cloak, if the ship has any, and makes it run straight away. It may also explain the crash into the station. AFAIK a ship flies straight while doing a performFlee, and probably it doesn't check for obstacles in front of it. So, as long as it still fleeing, it would crash into anything. Usually the fleeing ends when the AI receives the REACHED_SAFETY message, alternatively when it receives TARGET_LOST. However, the ship will not de-cloak until it runs out of energy. There is no AI method which de-cloaks a ship.
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Eric Walch
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Post by Eric Walch »

Commander McLane wrote:
AFAIK a ship flies straight while doing a performFlee, and probably it doesn't check for obstacles in front of it. So, as long as it still fleeing, it would crash into anything.
It flees in the opposite direction of the attacker without checking if that is a free flight. Same for attacking. Make sure there is a station in between and there is a big change your attacker hits that station.
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Killer Wolf
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Post by Killer Wolf »

tested, definitely is the cloak. i thought the ship would just vanish when cloaked, not flicker? :-/

anyways, wtf, if this is normal behaviour that's cool, least my graphics or install isn't playing up.
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Post by Commander McLane »

Yes, that's what the cloak does.

If a cloaked ship would vanish altogether, how would you ever have been able to kill the cloaked Asp and get your own cloaking device in the first place? :wink: (Or haven't you yet? In that case, hurry to Gal 5! :D )

And if you've got a cloaking device, switch it on, and go to external views, you'll see that your own ship flickers in exactly the same way.
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Killer Wolf
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Post by Killer Wolf »

not done the mission in Oolite. IIRC, in Elite, the ship vanished completely. you'd play chicken and it would vanish for maybe 20 secs or such like, and you'd be tensely waiting for it to reappear on your scope, to turn quick and hit it before it vanished again ~ it seemed to have a set cycle of 20 secs there, 20 secs cloaked or some such thing. hence me thinking it was the same behaviour here. the player obviously could remain totally cloaked only as long as your power held out.
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Post by Cody »

If you get the Cloaking Dervice, KW, be careful not to get it damaged.

See this thread:
https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t= ... 62230b3aa2
I would advise stilts for the quagmires, and camels for the snowy hills
And any survivors, their debts I will certainly pay. There's always a way!
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