Oolite Bulletins

Hello everybody,

I am stuck with something and would like to know if this is possible. I would like to use Griff's flashers as a kind of ILS system, (see screenshot), purely for eye candy purposes. However, the flashers are of course a dat file and when you fly into them, they kill you.

Now I would like to know if there is a parameter line in Oolite that I could use in the Flasher's section to to turn off their "collision" ability with other flying objects like the player ship and the npc's. I've tried the mass, collisiondetection and relative position values, but they don't seem to do anything.



Any ideas anybody ?

As eye-candy, I really like that idea.

Ooh, EV, I'll have more eye candy for you if I can pull this off, I am in the release of something, and this would be the cherry on the cake. - On another note, I read part of Kaxgar and love it. Nice job sir !

Thank you commander... if you like Kaxgar, try Coyote next.

Flashers are normally sub-entities of the model to which they are attached, and indeed they can be positioned externally and even away from (distant to) the model. However as they 'exist' they may well be liable to aspects such as collision detection.
But surely this is right, and in the case you are asking about makes perfect sense unless you want ships flying through the lights as if they were not there.

Smivs wrote:

you want ships flying through the lights as if they were not there.

My dear Smivs, that is exactly what I want, without making the player ship invulnerable. A workaround would probably be to write a script that the player ship should be invulnerable during docking procedures... but.... hm thats still a workaround and beyond my ability. That would open new game possibilities as well, but I don't want to go there (yet).

Thargoid wrote:

"Proper" flashers are subentities of the ship/entity, and have no solid mass or anything and you can't crash into them.

If you want examples of such usage as you are trying to do, see the docking practice and the docking drones in my Lave Academy OXP. I also use them in the fuel station OXP for the glow in the middle of the station that you fly into when you want to tank-up.

The wiki entry for flasher subentities is  here (under subentities), although it's a little tricky to follow in places as it deals with both model subents and flasher subents. They aren't that complex in themselves though, especially if you use the entries in shipdata.plist for the trunk as an example.

But for the "trail of breadcrumbs" usage, the Lave Academy example is exactly what you are trying to do, and it works well.

Coool, thank you Thargoid, will look at this now

dertien wrote:

Smivs wrote:

you want ships flying through the lights as if they were not there.

My dear Smivs, that is exactly what I want,

Ah, I was picturing something perhaps like small buoys with bright lights on them. What you're thinking of sounds more like some sort of light-emitting holographic projection. Clever stuff.

Smivs wrote:

dertien wrote:

Smivs wrote:

you want ships flying through the lights as if they were not there.

My dear Smivs, that is exactly what I want,

Ah, I was picturing something perhaps like small buoys with bright lights on them. What you're thinking of sounds more like some sort of light-emitting holographic projection. Clever stuff.

Exactamundo Ser, and with regular flashers it doesnt look as cool since they don't move in that distinguished pattern like Griff's flashers do. hm... gotto find a way around that now

Oh and I know you're not worried but I just wanted to mention that I didn't forget your Pirate python for your Toughguys oxp. Something I will take care of after this release.
Ta

It might be cool if such only appeared in slightly higher tech level and government type systems.
The flashers of a main station in a TL4 Anarchy might be broken through docking collisions (damaging wherever the flasher projectors are at) and lack of funds for repair.

Well it would be cool to have them function in the first place, but yes I catch your drift. I have found a way to use these things, but since scripting is not my field of expertise I would need Thargoid's help on this.

dertien wrote:

Oh and I know you're not worried but I just wanted to mention that I didn't forget your Pirate python for your Toughguys oxp. Something I will take care of after this release.
Ta

<Brief thread derailment>
No hurry, dertien. I still haven't got the Boa fully working yet . It is actually a Boa 2 I'd like, not a Python. Appreciate the help, whenever you get the time.
</thread derailment>

dertien wrote:

Well it would be cool to have them function in the first place, but yes I catch your drift. I have found a way to use these things, but since scripting is not my field of expertise I would need Thargoid's help on this.

It depends slightly on what you want them to do, and how you want them to be realised.

If you want the shader versions (so that they can be animated fully to act like running lights) then Griff is your man. But if you want the standard sub-ent flashers (like I used in Lave Academy as mentioned before) then they just have to be set in the shipdata.plist of the station.

To have them depend on tech level or govt type is possible, although it may be simpler just to have an entirely different station model for lower tech or lower govt types, where not only are the docking flashers absent, but also the station itself is more banged-up and decayed/rusty.

But if there are things that you need my advice on, just holler.

Thargoid wrote:

dertien wrote:

Well it would be cool to have them function in the first place, but yes I catch your drift. I have found a way to use these things, but since scripting is not my field of expertise I would need Thargoid's help on this.

It depends slightly on what you want them to do, and how you want them to be realised.

If you want the shader versions (so that they can be animated fully to act like running lights) then Griff is your man. But if you want the standard sub-ent flashers (like I used in Lave Academy as mentioned before) then they just have to be set in the shipdata.plist of the station.

To have them depend on tech level or govt type is possible, although it may be simpler just to have an entirely different station model for lower tech or lower govt types, where not only are the docking flashers absent, but also the station itself is more banged-up and decayed/rusty.

But if there are things that you need my advice on, just holler.

You've got a pm Thargoid