Oolite Bulletins

Hi Board,

After releasing a hacked version of Furball http://www.box.net/shared/4v1n5e0uc1, I've been looking at applying similar JavaScript/AI techniques to a slightly different scenario, space battles between several factions/teams etc. I now have working code available, which depends on Cabal common library, and ALL the systems OXPs (the navy one is currently under-used ATM though). The basic idea is to provide some points of interest to MultiGovernment systems, in the form of a power struggle for such systems involving the "cheap seats" powers Of course GalCop isn't exactly chuffed with this, and I intent to involve the Navy a bit more in due course. So, I'm up to speed with the JS/AI API and have working code which I am about to make available, but I am rubbish at creative writing/back stories, and would also welcome the thoughts of others as to where/how the code could be used best. So, what does it actually do?

1. Teams from each of: anarchy, feudal, dictatorship & communist approach the midpoint of the space lane and start fighting, They only fight with ships of opposing factions (!).
2. Each team member can call for assistance when its energy is low, this depends on how occupied the other team members are at the time.
3. The player being may opt to express its political views by attacking ships from one or more of the factions, they will remember this for the duration of the run only. Whether you pay the ultimate price depends again on how busy the particular faction member are.
4 There are funky scanner displays to help you sort out who is whom.
5. That's it, I think.

OK, first I'm going to PM the systems authors, don't anticipate issues as I'm not releasing any of their code, but best to be sure I think . . .

Nice idea.

Oddly enough I suggested something similar some years ago - my concept was that Corporate States could be plunged into Anarchy temporarily as two giant corporations slogged it out for control of the system.

Having Multi-Govs do it for similar reasons (allowing the uneasy alliances spill into space - or even choosing to fight in space (by agreement?) rather than damage their precious planet - quite grown up really!) sounds really promising.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Nice idea.

Oddly enough I suggested something similar some years ago - my concept was that Corporate States could be plunged into Anarchy temporarily as two giant corporations slogged it out for control of the system.

Having Multi-Govs do it for similar reasons (allowing the uneasy alliances spill into space - or even choosing to fight in space (by agreement?) rather than damage their precious planet - quite grown up really!) sounds really promising.

Well your first idea would be trivial to implement (the code is already working, just a change in config), but quite rare I suspect What ships did you have in mind for that BTW?

During play testing it also occurred to me that this code would be useful for ship combat/uberness testing too, eg. a team of stock NPC cobras vs the new ship. Lots of good stats available from the extensive debugging I've built in too, you like match reports?. Anyway, here's the code, you need the systems dependencies (or you can edit shipdata.plist to taste) and CCL. I use colour coding for the scanner so I know what's going one, see script.js for colours. Logging is enabled, and script.js has some other config points to look at.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?rqk7v7rzqdc6ak6

Remember this is just a proof of concept ATM, Enjoy!

When I was doing the news for Local Hero2 and Snoopers I started to think about what makes a Corporate State a corporate state - a single company controlling everything. What would happen if a rival (in system or nearby system) tried for a hostile take-over...

I started to re-texture some of the stock ships with Corporation logos based on the YAH ads (my own mostly!) but ran out of time as RL(tm) kicked in - and besides this was also the time Simon B's and Griff's ships and even Deepspaces texture and remodelling oxps were coming out and my efforts looked rather drab. (I got better during my time playing with the Racing Team Textures)

DaddyHoggy wrote:

When I was doing the news for Local Hero2 and Snoopers I started to think about what makes a Corporate State a corporate state - a single company controlling everything.

I think that would be actually the extreme case. A famous fictional example being the Soylent company which, IIRC, controls more or less everything. Another example would be the corporation (I don't remember the name) in Highlander 2, if a movie of that name actually existed.

For Corporate States in Oolite I would assume this extreme as a possibility, but not a necessity. I can also imagine a world more or less controlled by its corporations (plural), where money and corporate interests would always trump people and democratic decisions. A RealLife™ analogy would be what the US—according to some of its critics—is developing into or at least showing signs of.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

When I was doing the news for Local Hero2 and Snoopers I started to think about what makes a Corporate State a corporate state - a single company controlling everything.

Oh no!

Presenting alpha two:

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?s38xpdn5lyr2y5p

You can probably still get away with hitting the fighters, but can you survive killing one? I have made the factions more aggressive to players who kill (rather than just hit) a fighter, but obviously there is a limit to this as I need them to keep fighting the others.

I have also upped the default number of ships per faction to 16.

Enjoy!

Good job, but just for the record, I want to say that mediafire sucks. I would be a happy puppy if people just moved away from it, especially given the fact that there are much, much better (and safer) file sharing services out there.

My released stuff is on box, I just find mediafire easier to use in development.

4shared is better than mediafire and even gives you 10gb free space unlike most which give you 5

Staer9 wrote:

4shared is better than mediafire and even gives you 10gb free space unlike most which give you 5

Excellent, I could keep about two million different versions on that

Thanx Staer9, gonna look into that.

OK, I'm calling this version 1.0 . . .

http://www.box.net/shared/ux4o0us94s

Enjoy!

If I may suggest some changes to the distribution:

The zip file unpacks to a directory with the suffix .oxp-1.0. This is not readable by Oolite, Oolite expects a directory with the suffix .oxp.

Best practice is to have a zip file that unpacks to an enclosing directory e.g. Factions, which contains a readme, a license, and the OXP directory, e.g. factions.oxp.

If you don't add a license then the distribution rights for your OXPs are unclear. There are quite some discussions on the board about this and why this is a problem.

Also, to add it to the [wiki]OXP List[/wiki] it would be good to have a complete description. Did you change anything between alpha 2 and 1.0?