Release Oolite

[milinks]

I've just downloaded build 02, on the map screen ive still got a white band across 2 thirds of the map area from the bottom upwards, pressing number 6 again puts me onto the galactic map, which has the white stripe in the same place I ve played around with PNDconfig but still cant get the right nub to emulate any movements, so to fire its still a case of letting go of your directional keys to press the A button, thanks so much for your attention on this PtitSeb

edit: also, ive found that by adding either an ambiance OXP, or one that puts images etc on screen when docked, the view screen above the compass turns white, as per the map screen. i can only think of this being a resolution issue, knowing from the past when i worked on oolite that they used the 512x512 PNG image format, i think ill pop across to their boardso and see what standard resolution they are using for their Addons. When i remove any similar OXP then the screen reverts back to normal

 

[ptitSeb]

I've just downloaded build 02, on the map screen ive still got a white band across 2 thirds of the map area from the bottom upwards, pressing number 6 again puts me onto the galactic map, which has the white stripe in the same place I ve played around with PNDconfig but still cant get the right nub to emulate any movements, so to fire its still a case of letting go of your directional keys to press the A button, thanks so much for your attention on this PtitSeb

edit: also, ive found that by adding either an ambiance OXP, or one that puts images etc on screen when docked, the view screen above the compass turns white, as per the map screen. i can only think of this being a resolution issue, knowing from the past when i worked on oolite that they used the 512x512 PNG image format, i think ill pop across to their boardso and see what standard resolution they are using for their Addons. When i remove any similar OXP then the screen reverts back to normal

From what I have seen, the White background is due to unsufisant Video memory. For now, I have not put any automatic downscaling of image (because it fails with the manual mipmap calculation). But I can try again, by altering a bit the oolite source code to disable manual mipmap...

For info, I use a Giaghertz model with 4.03 drivers, and with no OXP, I had no white background.

For your nub issue, go to appdata/oolite with thunar

open left_nub (with mousepad) and put "mouse" inside, without the quote, without enter at the end., and open right_nub and put "absolute" the same way.

It should work as you want now...

 

[Ziz]

• Made the game to save in appdata/oolite/home instead of real home

Nice, I waited for this feature before testing oolite.

 

[levi]

Hmm, just loaded it up but it still reckons my saves are in my NAND home directory, judging by the parent directory. Looks like the quicksaves I made in play are not in appdata either. Do I need to clear out my appdata/oolite folder? Doesn't seem an awful lot in there that could be problematic. The white screen problem isn't fixed for me either - I now get the same white band occupying the middle half of the screen obscuring the stars, though I can now see the ones at the top. Same on both local and galactic maps.


Anyway, just had a rather interesting flight. Popped over to a poor agricultural democracy to offload some computers I bought off the back of a space-lorry only to find too many ships to be safe hanging around the hyperspace beacon. I tried to back away quietly, but unsurprisingly as they turned out to be cobra 3's too, they spotted me and were able to keep up. ECM equipped too, so my missiles were useless. In desperation I found a nearby communist agricultural planet which I just had enough remaining fuel to get to and hyperspaced away as my fourth energy bank was eaten into, only for three of them to hyperspace there too after me. I had a bit of a head start so I was just jumpspeeding away when they popped up behind me and stopped me. I had to limp away on impulse while my shields recharged, and eventually made it out of range and crept up to the space station via a rather circuitous route.


I made a fair profit on my computers there, but by the time I'd refuelled from nothing and bought four replacement missiles, I'd made a small loss overall. Oh well, least I lived to tell the tale.


Only button mappings I want are fire on X or B, and if possible yaw on shift-left and -right. I'll leave the other buttons for other people to suggest.

 

[ptitSeb]

Hmm, just loaded it up but it still reckons my saves are in my NAND home directory, judging by the parent directory. Looks like the quicksaves I made in play are not in appdata either. Do I need to clear out my appdata/oolite folder? Doesn't seem an awful lot in there that could be problematic. The white screen problem isn't fixed for me either - I now get the same white band occupying the middle half of the screen obscuring the stars, though I can now see the ones at the top. Same on both local and galactic maps.


Anyway, just had a rather interesting flight. Popped over to a poor agricultural democracy to offload some computers I bought off the back of a space-lorry only to find too many ships to be safe hanging around the hyperspace beacon. I tried to back away quietly, but unsurprisingly as they turned out to be cobra 3's too, they spotted me and were able to keep up. ECM equipped too, so my missiles were useless. In desperation I found a nearby communist agricultural planet which I just had enough remaining fuel to get to and hyperspaced away as my fourth energy bank was eaten into, only for three of them to hyperspace there too after me. I had a bit of a head start so I was just jumpspeeding away when they popped up behind me and stopped me. I had to limp away on impulse while my shields recharged, and eventually made it out of range and crept up to the space station via a rather circuitous route.


I made a fair profit on my computers there, but by the time I'd refuelled from nothing and bought four replacement missiles, I'd made a small loss overall. Oh well, least I lived to tell the tale.


Only button mappings I want are fire on X or B, and if possible yaw on shift-left and -right. I'll leave the other buttons for other people to suggest.

I don't understand.

I just re-launched the PND, and gone to the star map and get this: 

I save a captain, and by default, it is saved here: 

Maybe remove the /home/yourname/GNUstep folder if you have one?

I'll try the build on a CC also too.

 

[milinks]

i absalutely will make sure i spell absolute correctly in future  :wacko:   i'm hopefully getting a 1ghz model shortly, but i'm running it at 900mhz at the mo, would it be worthwhile bumping it up, would that make any difference?

@Levi - not sure if you've found the scanner zoom button "Z" i recall you mentioned yesterday that you had difficylty with the compass, just wondering if the zoom button is any help

edit: just for info the saved game option has saved directly to the oolite-saves folder on my SD card, so thats good

in relation to button mapping would it be possible to have the left and rigt shoulder triggers mapped to the speed W and S buttons. I think this would be good, as when youre in space, primarily combat, the buttons you are going to use are the speed to manouvre, the fire trigger, and the warp jump "J" button, maybe the "B" and "A" button for arm and fire missles, and maybe the ECM "E" button, i dont know what anyone else thinks.the remainder of the buttons are used in slow time, whereas the comabt ones really need to be to hand

 

[ptitSeb]

i absalutely will make sure i spell absolute correctly in future  :wacko:   i'm hopefully getting a 1ghz model shortly, but i'm running it at 900mhz at the mo, would it be worthwhile bumping it up, would that make any difference?

@Levi - not sure if you've found the scanner zoom button "Z" i recall you mentioned yesterday that you had difficylty with the compass, just wondering if the zoom button is any help

:lol:

About the Gigahertz, it's the GPU that may make a difference here, not really the CPU. Try also to change the SGX driver on you Pandora also maybe, it may works better (stay <= 4.03.02 anyway).

 

[levi]

I honestly can't remember what driver I'm on - I think it's the one Notaz recommended for GHz, so not the default. I'll probably have to go back to default, as not being able to close the lid while docked is getting irritating.


Regarding my home directory, I cleared out the GNUstep folder and shifted oolite-saves into my appdata/oolite folder. When I started the game, it defaulted the load folder to ~/GNUstep again, but that's not unexpected, and I was able to navigate through to my appdata folder fine. However, on exiting after playing I found it had created ~/GNUstep/Defaults/oolite.plist again (or at least I think it was called that). I thought, perhaps it was just because of the old default.


So I nuked that folder and file and restarted the game. It continuted to default to ~/GNUstep and on exiting it had recreated ~/GNUstep/Defaults, though not the oolite.plist file inside (I didn't load a commander this time, but exited as soon as I'd identified where it was defaulting me).


It's not a massive issue for me - my home directory is on my other SD card anyway, and hopefully this only affects the few of us that used build 01 first. I guess you'd like to get to the bottom of it anyway though.


In other news, I've installed my first OXP - MarketObserver. Back in the day I had a pad of paper with hundreds of numbers scrawled on it recording market prices around Lave, but this plugin means I can set up shop wherever I like and make a decent profit. Might be nice if the game autocreated the /appdata/oolite/AddOns directory for me, as I really wasn't too sure I was doing for that step, but it worked out of the box for me in the end.


I did lose a life earlier. A cobra was hanging around the space station, and I targetted him with a missile to figure out what he was. He apparently took offense to this and opened fire on me with some powerful lasers. Can that happen? Can NPCs detect when you're targetting them? I remember in ArcElite it was bad form to target the space station, though I don't recall if that was ever coded in the game, or just something in the manual.


Oh, and thanks for the tip about Z - I had noticed the scanner seemed a lot longer range than I was used to, and I was often left wondering where things were that were apparently right in front of me according to the scanner. That's not the problem I was having with the scanner though - my problem is the sticks are really hard to see, and it's hard to work out whether something is above or below me without moving, and when moving it's hard to work out when it's exactly on the level.

 

[ptitSeb]

In other news, I've installed my first OXP - MarketObserver. Back in the day I had a pad of paper with hundreds of numbers scrawled on it recording market prices around Lave, but this plugin means I can set up shop wherever I like and make a decent profit. Might be nice if the game autocreated the /appdata/oolite/AddOns directory for me, as I really wasn't too sure I was doing for that step, but it worked out of the box for me in the end.

Yeah, I'll do that for next release (I wanted to do it for build 02 but forgot).

For Yaw: not {A}/{B}? You prefer Right Shoulder + DPad Left/Right ?

 

[ptitSeb]

I honestly can't remember what driver I'm on - I think it's the one Notaz recommended for GHz, so not the default. I'll probably have to go back to default, as not being able to close the lid while docked is getting irritating.

And so, do you have the white background or black beackground?

Regarding my home directory, I cleared out the GNUstep folder and shifted oolite-saves into my appdata/oolite folder. When I started the game, it defaulted the load folder to ~/GNUstep again, but that's not unexpected, and I was able to navigate through to my appdata folder fine. However, on exiting after playing I found it had created ~/GNUstep/Defaults/oolite.plist again (or at least I think it was called that). I thought, perhaps it was just because of the old default.

So I nuked that folder and file and restarted the game. It continuted to default to ~/GNUstep and on exiting it had recreated ~/GNUstep/Defaults, though not the oolite.plist file inside (I didn't load a commander this time, but exited as soon as I'd identified where it was defaulting me).

It's not a massive issue for me - my home directory is on my other SD card anyway, and hopefully this only affects the few of us that used build 01 first. I guess you'd like to get to the bottom of it anyway though.

So still some work on the home folder it seems...

 

[levi]

I got white background in build 01, middle band white in build 02.


If we put speed on the shoulders then I guess that cancels out using the shoulders as a d-pad modifier. I guess yaw can stay on the keyboard - I only really use it when docking, and never in combat. More important to have speed, lasers and ECM easily accessible. That doesn't leave enough buttons for missiles by the way, unless you were to make target and cancel a toggle or something (though that might break the identification system, dunno about that yet).

 

[levi]

Oh, and I've just put my driver back to the stock one, and I still get the white band on my charts. So something's up regarding that. I am now able to close the lid and get the game back when I open it though, which is nice.

 

[milinks]

@Levi - in oolite there is an existing AI with all NPC's in the game, so you can see battles going on between police vipers (blue) and oirates etc that youre not involved in, and if you target  someone with your missile lock, which is how you used to do it back in the day to get an ID, theyll get a bit pi**ed at you, and either run or attack. If you press i think its "R" ship ident button, it will identify any ship in your crosshairs without getting annoyed. the ship ident also has many functions if you buy adavnced targetting computers etc, as do many things. It really is worth having a look at the quick start guide linked on page 1 to see what is available, as most functions have advanced options, especially if you buy certain items etc.

@Ptitseb - ive the same as levi, with the white band across 2/3 of the map screen, thats without any OXPs etc, i dont know what others think, but i honestly think the speed buttons could be better placed on the Pandora if they werre wither the shoulder buttons, or Y and X buttons, with maybe Yaw as B and A buttons

 

[levi]

Ah, quite right - r is the id computer. I thought you needed to buy one of the upgrades before that would work, but no, it works!


I think ECM would be useful to have on the game buttons too. I dunno, I keep coming back to using the shoulders as modifiers, how about this:


Pitch and roll on d-pad


Yaw on d-pad with L trigger


Jump on d-pad up with L trigger


Laser, untarget, ecm, id on B,X,A,Y


Target, untarget, missile launch on B,X,A with R trigger


I'm missing something to use on Y with R trigger, but the only significant thing I can think of is hyperspace, and I tend to think that's something you want deliberately out of the way, even though it's perfectly cancelable.

 

[ptitSeb]

Ok, based on both @Levi and @milinks feedback, I propose this mapping:

Pitch & Roll stays on DPad as there are

{L} + DPad Left/Right = Yaw

{L} + DPad Up/Down = Speed

{X} = Laser

{B} = untarget

{A} = id

{Y} = ecm

{R} + {B} = target

{R} + {X} = missile

{R} + {A} = Jump

{R} + {Y} = Hyperspace

Sounds ok?

 

[milinks]

that sounds spot on for me

I might be talking rubbish, but ive run oolite on PC (just so that i can rate the playability, came from levi mentioning not being able to see the compass propely) ive noticed that the shaders running on the pc are brighter, it may be my eyesight, i dont know what others think, when an object isnt in the rught light on the pandora they goquite dark, whereas the shaders on the PC seem to brighten the objects. I could be wrong, and this is probably something that couldnt be enhanced with the port, and im definately not trying to throw more work at you PtitSeb, as im in awe of your work on billardGL and Neverball

 

[levi]

I think it's just the resolution of the Pandora screen that's causing the problem - the lines are just too damn thin.  Yellow ships aren't too bad to identify, but if they turn red I lose the ability to easily spot where they are.  Blue police ships are also problematic.

I just noticed if you zoom in to 5:1 on the scanner and approach the space station, you get a little luminous rotating space station on your scanner surrounding the radar dot.  That's hella cool!

 

[Ziz]

Ok, based on both @Levi and @milinks feedback, I propose this mapping:

Pitch & Roll stays on DPad as there are

{L} + DPad Left/Right = Yaw

{L} + DPad Up/Down = Speed

{X} = Laser

{B} = untarget

{A} = id

{Y} = ecm

{R} + {B} = target

{R} + {X} = missile

{R} + {A} = Jump

{R} + {Y} = Hyperspace

Sounds ok?

For me it sounds great, but I am not used to this game like Levi and Milinks.

 

[ptitSeb]

Ok, so I think I have found the issue with the White background (issue with mipmapping). I have made a new glshim for that.

About the key mapping, I will try to do that, but I still need some input:

{L} + DPad Left/Right = Yaw => . / ,

{L} + DPad Up/Down = Speed  => w / s

{X} = Laser                 => a

{B} = untarget              => ??? <=

{A} = id                    => ??? <=

{Y} = ecm                   => e

{R} + {B} = target          => t ?

{R} + {X} = missile         => ??? <=

{R} + {A} = Jump            => j

{R} + {Y} = Hyperspace      => h

Also, you are sure you want the modifier for the DPad to by Left Shoulder and for Buttons the Right Shoulder? Wouldn't "crossing" the shoulder easier?

About sources code, I'll plan to switch to 1.77.1, but maybe I'll publish a version with fixed textures and hacked keymap before?

 

[milinks]

having played oolite on the console, and "ghosting" the new proposed controls, im in agreement with PtitSeb that "crossing" feels more comfortable, especially when youre moving about a lot and pressing numerous keys, it just feels more natural when theyre opposite, suppose that comes from all the FPS kinda games ive played lol!