Oolite Bulletins

No one take this personally, please.

I say this to myself, as well as others; we all do it, I've done it; we think of some flashy WhizzBang idea to add, so we put it into the Suggestion Box. NOTHING wrong with that.

But I'm guessing that the developers want to stay as close to the Elite Canon as much as possible.

I think they do a good job of responding. They might say "That isn't very close to the core canon" or something... simple statement of fact.

They COULD say "Thats not CANON, you slimy FROG! That belongs in an OXP, so shut up! N00B! Simpering Thargoid Sycophant! INVADER!".

Before posting suggestions... maybe we should consider "does this fit into the canon - or at least not *interefere* with canon philosophy?". If so, Suggestion Box. If Not, OXP; so maybe post in the Expansion Pack area with that suggestion?

Of course, if it REQUIRES changes to the game... such as controller support, support for the "Next Big Thing" in video (holographic VidCards, direct cranial brain implants), then it SHOULD go into the suggestion box.

There is something I want to ask... maybe the general Discussion is more appropriate, but I could make a case for it belonging here.

The "most hated question" that developers probably get (especially from relative n00bs)... and the game veterans probably hate to see it too... is "when is the next version (1.74) going to be released"?

I'm not going to ask that.

Can I ask... IN GENERAL... what will be different about 1.74? In particular, will it tend to make any OXPs obsolete (specifically eye-candy OXPs such as system_redux, sungs_detailed_textures, HUD OXPs, various station OXPs).

I can't seem to find a site (or thread) that definitively provides details on what 1.74 will be.

- Thank you...

The "That isn't canon" line always sounds like an excuse to me, if it wasn't any diff from the original game, why would we play it instead of the original game?

And most of the time we're not asking for this or that to be put in the game, just support for it so we can add it ourselves with oxp's

Furthermore, this game isn't made for the developers solely, it's for the community to enjoy too.

JeffBTX wrote:

There is something I want to ask... maybe the general Discussion is more appropriate, but I could make a case for it belonging here.

The "most hated question" that developers probably get (especially from relative n00bs)... and the game veterans probably hate to see it too... is "when is the next version (1.74) going to be released"?

I'm not going to ask that.

Can I ask... IN GENERAL... what will be different about 1.74? In particular, will it tend to make any OXPs obsolete (specifically eye-candy OXPs such as system_redux, sungs_detailed_textures, HUD OXPs, various station OXPs).

I can't seem to find a site (or thread) that definitively provides details on what 1.74 will be.

- Thank you...

Ahruman and the dev team in general post details of code changes in the Progress thread: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t= ... ss&start=0 Obviously the stuff most relevant to 1.74 is closer to page 34 than page 1...

BTW, the moderators are very good at moving threads around to possibly more appropriate locations if that turns out to be the case - suggestions often turn into discussions and vice versa...

Okay... yes, someone suggested that to me before... somehow I got the impression that the Progress thread veered off-topically, but that was MY impatience... I will peruse "Progress" more carefully... maybe make my own "master list" for "what will be different about 1.74".

Ah. A SUGGESTION! "Progress" should be a sticky.

Just wanted to comment here that it is not a question of a suggestion being canon or not. Oolite has quite a few things that are not canon in Elite already, like fuel injectors, advanced nav array, wormhole scanner, targetting incoming missiles and many many more. It is simply a question of whether the effort required to create a feature is worth the time the developers will spend on it. It is a difficult question. One can not know in advance what effort will be required. So I would say, bring the ideas on regardless. They are all evaluated and responded to. Sometimes the response is positive, sometimes it is something like "will make a note for post-MNSR" and sometimes it is "sorry, no, for this and that reason".

Recently, most requests are being put in the waiting list and there is a good reason for that: There are plans for releasing a stable Oolite version in the near future. This means that at some point we will have to stop adding features and start concentrating on a) finalizing adding whatever has been planned already as a new feature and b) bug fixes. Inevitably, requests for brand new wham-blam stuff will have to be put on hold, otherwise there will never be a stable release and we will suffer from severe feature creep. Keep this in mind when making requests, but feel free to make them anyway, because all this does not mean that we stop taking opinions for improvements in. For example, the recently requested mouse control with yaw has been inserted in the trunk and is now available. Same for background images in the various interface screens.

I hope this makes things somewhat clearer.

JeffBTX wrote:

Can I ask... IN GENERAL... what will be different about 1.74? In particular, will it tend to make any OXPs obsolete (specifically eye-candy OXPs such as system_redux, sungs_detailed_textures, HUD OXPs, various station OXPs).

In general, it will be better. In general, it won’t obsolete any OXPs unless they’re buggy or rely on deprecated JavaScript features (a constant threat with the “test release” series). Other than that, we can’t really say until it’s done. For instance, I can’t currently guarantee that the new planet code will be in 1.74; we may make a new release before that.

When we make a release, we make release notes by going through the subversion log and summarising it. I was going to post the current log, but since it’s almost 2500 lines long, contains a lot of technical gabble and a bit of… informal language… I’ll refrain.

Some stuff we’ve done so far:

• Numerous bug fixes and minor enhancements. (We always say this, because they really are numerous. Listing them all would be boring, and most of them wouldn’t make much sense without intimate knowledge of the problem being fixed.)
• As another_commander said, mouse yaw control and background images.
• Reduced memory wastage for various entities, including flashers and the sun (and planets, if new planet code is included).
• Minor graphical improvements to flashers, stars and some built-in ship models.
• “Replaced horrible oolite-unknown-ship with more conceptually boring but non-horrible version.” Take that, grammar analysis!
• “Data cache writes are now asynchronous, for great snappy.” (This can potentially speed up loading and docking by several seconds.)
• Improved collision detection for large objects.
• Laser fire now generally depletes the correct shield.
• Better script access to cargo, equipment and contracts.
• Much improved scripting model for mission screens.
• Missile HUD icons can now be arbitrary polygons, even with self-intersections.
• HUDs can now lock elements to screen edges.
• Moar Graphviz (which led to some AI fixes).
• Vast amounts of extra OpenGL error checking to help track down certain error messages in the log – will require a special build to work.
• 64-bit build for Mac OS X.
• More efficient handling of background tasks (mainly texture loading) under Mac OS X 10.6.
• Improvements to Linux installer and debs.

For a good bed-time reading, I have put the entire SVN log from revision 2579 (which is the 1.73.4 release) to today here. This is everything that has been done till now, including all the boring, or incomprehensible, or not-suitable-for-minors (kind of) stuff, in pure unedited form. You can also see who you can blame if something doesn't work as advertised

JeffBTX wrote:

The "most hated question" that developers probably get (especially from relative n00bs)... and the game veterans probably hate to see it too... is "when is the next version (1.74) going to be released"?

Ahruman wrote:

Other than that, we can’t really say until it’s done.

At the risk of being smoted for asking that question, should I take Ahruman's line about 1.74's included features, to be a rough answer to the question?

I've looked at the 34 page thread, but I don't get any sense of when it will be coming, especially now that I realise other 1.73.x releases may come first. Thanks.

I would guess the most hated question is not when will it be done, but rather can we have "real physics" or can we have an oolite MMORPG.

Cmdr James wrote:

I would guess the most hated question is not when will it be done, but rather can we have "real physics" or can we have an oolite MMORPG.

Meh. Those, at least, have an easy answer.

(Actually, so does the “when will it be done” question. The answer is of course “never”.)

Ahruman wrote:

(Actually, so does the “when will it be done” question. The answer is of course “never”.)

I'm optimistic. My standard response is "Thursday"

Ahruman;
Thank you very much, that was informative, and it is appreciated! We'll actually have to try it before we can fully appreciate most of those things (especially n00bs and non-coders).

Ahruman wrote:

lot of technical gabble and a bit of… informal language…

Hehehehe

Ahruman wrote:

“Replaced horrible oolite-unknown-ship with more conceptually boring but non-horrible version.” Take that, grammar analysis!

... something I have not encountered in the game yet? I don't think I want to know!

Ahruman wrote:

HUDs can now lock elements to screen edges.

Ah! My first "real OXP" (other than ones I have downloaded and modded) was going to be a HUD I am working on. A good first project. I think I will suspend work on it for now then (not that important, and I may as well wait... what I had in mind WOULD benefit from "locking to...")

And very important;

Ahruman wrote:

In general, it won’t obsolete any OXPs unless they’re buggy or rely on deprecated JavaScript features...