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[RELEASE] New OXP List

Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2010 9:51 am
by maik
UPDATE: Changed to release announcement

Dear fellow Commanders,

mcarans, Smivs, and maik proudly present the new OXP overview page.

Thank you all for the constructive discussions that took us through 3 release candidates to the final version.

The sortable table allows us to easily find updated OXPs, OXPs by category, by (main) author, by name, and by compatibility. You can even sort by two columns by first sorting the secondary and then the primary column.

While going through the existing categories we felt there were too many that had too few OXPs and too many OXPs that didn't quite fit. So we reworked those as well and came up with 12 categories:
  • Activities: OXPs that allow the commander to carry out a new activity or task, e.g. racing, gas giant skimming, taking out loans, etc.
  • Dockables: OXPs that mainly add new objects that the player can dock with, e.g. carriers, space bars, casinos, fuel stations, new space stations, etc.
  • Ambience: All OXPs that have the main goal of changing or adding to the scenery visuals or sound effects. This includes planet skins, adding new planets and/or moons to systems, moving suns further away, dimming nebulae, adding monuments, etc.
  • Equipment: Stuff that can be added to your ship but which is not a weapon
  • Mechanics: OXPs whose main function is to change the game play in a specific way, e.g. changing market mechanics, adding more pirates
  • HUDs: Modifications of your dials, gauges, and other read-outs
  • Missions: OXPs that have the main objective of adding missions.
  • Retextures: All OXPs that mainly retexture existing objects, either by replacing or adding variations, but without adding objects that did not exist before
  • Ships: OXPs that add any number of new ships, except dockable ships
  • Systems: OXPs whose primary goal is to change multiple star systems in a number of ways, e.g. changing main station and local police ships, adding new stations, ships, activities, missions
  • Weapons: Stuff that you use to blow up the baddies.
  • Misc: OXPs that don't fit into the other categories, e.g. debug consoles, internationalisations, config mechanisms, demo OXPs
Note that there is no multi-category: every OXP is categorised once according to its main purpose. Also note that Misc is really meant as an exception. If too many end up here the category scheme has failed. The categories are linked to the automatically generated Wiki pages based on the category assignment in the OXPs' Wiki pages. Since the categories have been reworked, there will be some OXPs that are listed under a different category than before. We already updated the OXP Wiki pages with the suggested categories. If you are unhappy with our choice, please let us know.

The descriptions try to capture the essential information from the old OXP A-Z list, including the information from the ships and stations columns. They always start with the OXP's name to enable sorting. Some explanations have been left out to keep it concise. In order to work towards the goal of keeping the list short, we restricted the description to one line (about 140 characters) and in our humble opinion it works out rather well. As the list is meant as an overview, all OXP details that go beyond the brief teaser description should go into the OXP's Wiki or web page.

Adding the author column required quite a bit of archaeological savvyness for some OXPs. While the vast majority should be attributed correctly, there will still be the odd case where we made a mistake. Note that we list the main authors, all contributing authors can be added in a tooltip next to the main authors' names. In some cases we might have picked the wrong author as main author or missed contributors. Please accept our apology in advance; no offense meant. Let us know and we will fix it or, if you have a Wiki account, go ahead and fix it yourself.

Filling in the date column also required a fair bit of research. We took the information from the OXP documentation, file dates, the BB, and even Oosat.

The information in the compatibility column comes from our own experience and the OXP documentation, but for many OXPs it is still empty. Please help us filling in the blanks.

Some author and date fields have been left empty, we just couldn't dig it up or were not sure enough. Pointers towards filling in the missing bits and pieces are greatly appreciated. Wiki authors filling them in themselves even more so ;-)

Cheers,
mcarans, Smivs, maik

edit: poll removed. Two thirds voted to have an OXP list linked from the [wiki]OXP[/wiki] page vs. to have it included.

Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2010 11:17 am
by Killer Wolf
that's a Hell of a piece of work! gonna have a full trawl through when i finish my current OXP.

Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2010 11:31 am
by Cody
Yeah, great work, guys... looking really good.

Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2010 11:36 am
by maik
El Viejo wrote:
Yeah, great work, guys... looking really good.
8)

Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2010 11:45 am
by mcarans
Killer Wolf wrote:
that's a Hell of a piece of work! gonna have a full trawl through when i finish my current OXP.
Thanks - just added your Sothis station.

Cheers,
Mike

Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2010 11:52 am
by Thargoid
Some of the data is still wrong (category and author mainly) but it's certainly getting there. Having the brief description in with the name looks a bit weird to me, but I can't see any better way to do it.

Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2010 12:19 pm
by maik
Thargoid wrote:
Some of the data is still wrong (category and author mainly)
Quite likely. Categories are a difficult beast. There might be a few cases where we misunderstood what an OXP does and chose the wrong category.

The categorization was subject to much debate amongst three of us already, especially finding the "right" categories, i.e. categories that overlap as little as possible and make choosing the appropriate category for an OXP as straightforward as possible.

What you see in the table in its current version is the best that we could come up with. There certainly is room for improvement, suggestions welcome!

Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2010 12:33 pm
by Smivs
Thanks for the warm and positive response.
Thargoid wrote:
Some of the data is still wrong (category and author mainly) but it's certainly getting there. Having the brief description in with the name looks a bit weird to me, but I can't see any better way to do it.
A fair bit is probably still 'not quite accurate' (wrong in other words :oops: ), because so much of the information was spread all over the place. What we need is for the 'people who know' to contact us so we can put it right, or sort it out themselves if they have Wiki access. If you can help out with more accurate data, post here or PM myself, Maik or Mcarans.

The name-and-description thing was the best compromise we could come up with as well. It certainly has made the table nice and compact, and actually works rather well as you get used to it.

Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2010 1:09 pm
by Cody
Smivs wrote:
The name-and-description thing was the best compromise we could come up with as well. It certainly has made the table nice and compact, and actually works rather well as you get used to it.
Been looking at this for a while... you're right, once you get used to it, it works well.
I presume this is not yet a complete list, as System Redux is missing.

Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2010 1:12 pm
by mcarans
El Viejo wrote:
Smivs wrote:
The name-and-description thing was the best compromise we could come up with as well. It certainly has made the table nice and compact, and actually works rather well as you get used to it.
Been looking at this for a while... you're right, once you get used to it, it works well.
I presume this is not yet a complete list, as System Redux is missing.
It is a complete list. System Redux is under Deep Horizons as Cdr. Cheyd wanted it.

Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2010 1:14 pm
by Cody
Sorry, mcarans, I wasn't clear... I meant Capt Kev's original System Redux.

Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2010 1:16 pm
by Smivs
I think he means System Redux 1, which I believe is by CaptKev. I'll check and sort it out.

Edit:- Ninja'd!

Edit:- System Redux added to table. The date needs to be confirmed.

Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2010 1:17 pm
by Thargoid
I'll go through and correct the errors I found later on if I get chance (fuel station certainly ain't equipment, unless your ship is somewhat on the large or thirsty side ;) ).

The only other thing I wondered was the use of symbols rather than text for the categories, to make the table a little thinner and easier to read perhaps.

Also for me OXPs with broken download links should be separated out into a different table pending new links - there's little more frustrating than finding an OXP you want but not being able to get it. And I still think a size column would be useful.

Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2010 1:29 pm
by Pluisje
Looking good, even on my small laptop screen. Nice to see the authors in the list.

I still prefer having multiple categories for an OXP though. Makes mixed OXPs easier to find. Probably should have said that half a year ago :?.

Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2010 1:32 pm
by maik
Thargoid wrote:
The only other thing I wondered was the use of symbols rather than text for the categories, to make the table a little thinner and easier to read perhaps.
Neat idea. That would be way beyond my capabilities though. I found it already difficult (and am still not 100% satisfied with the result) to come with a word that captures the essence of a category. Coming up with a pictogram instead seems to be an order of magnitude more difficult... But as always: suggestion welcome! ;-)
Thargoid wrote:
And I still think a size column would be useful.
We tried to come up with use cases for having the columns, e.g. I want to make Oolite prettier: sort by category and look at ambience OXPs, I want to see what got updated in the past weeks: sort by date, I want to find an OXP and know its name: sort by name, I'm an author and want to update my OXPs: sort by author, I have updated Oolite to 1.75 and want to see which OXPs are still compatible: sort by version.

What would be the use case for having a sortable size column?