[SCR][MD][TC][AP] LIFE-V0.95b (update: 06-May-2014)

hourheroyes · Post by **hourheroyes** » Mon, 3. Mar 14, 04:49

True, I am aware of the XRM performance caveat but I have a pretty rad system that has worked fine thus far. It could also be the sector I'm in, and the fact that two racial response fleets spawned to attack a Xenon destroyer...

Also as I play, I'm getting a lot of annoying astronaut distress calls when I'm in the middle of a dogfight. Does disabling the LIFE popup message also disable the astronaut calls?

(I'm gonna go read through this whole thread before I ask a ton more questions lol)

Shush · Post by **Shush** » Mon, 3. Mar 14, 04:53

hourheroyes wrote:Also as I play, I'm getting a lot of annoying astronaut distress calls when I'm in the middle of a dogfight. Does disabling the LIFE popup message also disable the astronaut calls?

"You can already disable mission popup messages at "System -> Disable or Enable LIFE mission messages:" in the configuration menu."

I quoted that from 6 messages above your message ;P

Seriously though, I do need to add a configuration section to the documentation, I just can't bring myself to capturing 500 screenshots and documenting all the possible options in LIFE. Not only do I not have time, the sheer potential tediousness of it sends me under the bed into the fetal position sucking my thumb.

hourheroyes wrote:(I'm gonna go read through this whole thread before I ask a ton more questions lol)

Good luck with that

hourheroyes · Post by **hourheroyes** » Mon, 3. Mar 14, 05:02

You probably don't need to take screenshots of each configuration option. You could make a nicely formatted forum post. Hell, if I get all the bells and whistles of LIFE figured out, I wouldn't be opposed to helping write something up. Gotta say, if I may opine for a moment, seeing such a quality mod come out so late into X3's life, as well as your quick responses / updates is really inspiring. The Rebirth forums really broke my spirit about the X community, but it's cool seeing there are some gems left.

THAT being said, can't wait for .88.

Shush · Post by **Shush** » Mon, 3. Mar 14, 05:19

hourheroyes wrote:You probably don't need to take screenshots of each configuration option. You could make a nicely formatted forum post. Hell, if I get all the bells and whistles of LIFE figured out, I wouldn't be opposed to helping write something up.

Be my guest, any help in this department would be most welcome!

hourheroyes wrote:Gotta say, if I may opine for a moment, seeing such a quality mod come out so late into X3's life, as well as your quick responses / updates is really inspiring.

Thanks for the kind words, I just so happen to be working from home today so in-between coding up OpenGL shaders I'm hanging out in the X3 forums. I normally answer LIFE's questions daily though and try to get an update out roughly once a week even if it's only a small bug fix/configuration addition. I have grand plans for LIFE, there is so much more I want to do with leveling NPC's, dynamic missions and station news/missions.

hourheroyes wrote:The Rebirth forums really broke my spirit about the X community, but it's cool seeing there are some gems left.

Initially I spent a lot of time in the Rebirth forums as well and I completely agree with you, not only were/are they spirit breaking, but they're a caustic, poisoning free for all that truly goes against and undermines a nearly 15 year old community of honorable and wonderful contributors. It just so clearly shows how the anonymity of the internet and the lack of age and/or IQ requirements to participate in it can turn it into an apocalyptic wasteland.

hourheroyes wrote:THAT being said, can't wait for .88.

0.88b should be out within the next 24 hours, I have a couple of issues to track down once my work day is over and then it's golden.

46852 · Post by **46852** » Mon, 3. Mar 14, 20:00

Hi Shush,

What an excellent mod you have created!

I'm enjoying LIFE currently with XRM and a selection of mods, everything went smooth until SCS v4.11 (Salvage Command Suite) revealed LIFE MD queue ships in Kingdoms End. What problems will this cause? Are MD ships standard dereclits, so that any NPC salvager could claim them at some point? Is there a way to destroy and respawn the ships to get LIFE back up in case those ships get claimed or destroyed?

Shush · Post by **Shush** » Mon, 3. Mar 14, 23:39

46852 wrote:What an excellent mod you have created!

Cheers

46852 wrote:I'm enjoying LIFE currently with XRM and a selection of mods, everything went smooth until SCS v4.11 (Salvage Command Suite) revealed LIFE MD queue ships in Kingdoms End. What problems will this cause? Are MD ships standard dereclits, so that any NPC salvager could claim them at some point? Is there a way to destroy and respawn the ships to get LIFE back up in case those ships get claimed or destroyed?

The MD Queue ships in Kingdom's End are used by LIFE's MSCI scripts to communicate with LIFE's MD scripts, they should be invisible, unclaimable, undestroyable, non-communicative and stationary around the 1000km, 0km, 0km position. If they are somehow destroyed/accessed, (through a LIFE bug or another errant script or a cheat script), then they will be re-created the next time you load a saved game.

If any of these ships are somehow missing, then large portions of LIFE's functionality will cease to function, i.e. parts of the emergency broadcast system, all dynamic missions, communications officers, news representatives and pilot conversations.

PDouma39 · Post by **PDouma39** » Tue, 4. Mar 14, 06:27

Morning/Evening Shush, something I noticed in my game, have not changed anything since last update, somehow station messages are not shown anymore.
I had recently 2 station attacks, one against a Pyranid station, and one against a Pirate station. None were mentioned in the LIFE news, and the stations were more than half way damaged so to speak.
Only thing I can think of is that I am playing with TC for AP and before the war in AP broke out I did get messages, now that the war is going on, no more messages.
But maybe it's a coincidence, the only other thing I added since last update was a cockpit mod.
I do remember while using that mod I did get messages from station attacks, but also before the war..

Shush · Post by **Shush** » Tue, 4. Mar 14, 06:51

PDouma39 wrote:I had recently 2 station attacks, one against a Pyranid station, and one against a Pirate station. None were mentioned in the LIFE news, and the stations were more than half way damaged so to speak.

Did your notoriety change with these two races? You won't see station attacked/destroyed news if/once your notoriety drops below a certain level. The notoriety level is adjustable within configurations -> news menu;

- 'Threshold notoriety for access to news:' controls access to the news representative/news hotkey.
- 'Threshold notoriety for friend news:' controls access to the actual news articles themselves.

The defaults are set to -10000 for access to news and 100000 for friend news.

You can also bypass the friend news notoriety check by just setting 'Disable or Enable Global News:' to 'Enabled' under the same menu, that way as long as you have access to the news you will see all news events generated.

I am planning on adding station attacked and destroyed news from the attackers point of view, so for example if you are friendly with Paranid and they destroy a Pirate station a news article will be generated with the Paranid gloating about their success.

PDouma39 · Post by **PDouma39** » Tue, 4. Mar 14, 07:07

Ah will check that out, but my notoriety with the Paranid is level 10, but Pirates could do with some more I guess. Thanx for your quick reply.

Shush · Post by **Shush** » Tue, 4. Mar 14, 07:19

PDouma39 wrote:Ah will check that out, but my notoriety with the Paranid is level 10, but Pirates could do with some more I guess. Thanx for your quick reply.

No worries, let me know how you go. I had a quick check of the station news generation and filtering code and I can't see anything obvious with it, especially anything that would initially work and then fail over time.

PDouma39 · Post by **PDouma39** » Tue, 4. Mar 14, 09:24

I still think it has something to do with my current TC-AP game, when I started this game everything was working okay, but since recent this station news events are not shown.
Could it be that those attacked stations are to much sectors away from the sector that I am in as a player?
I checked my LIFE configuration and that is as good as you mentioned.
In my 'normal' AP game I never had this 'problem'.
For the rest LIFE works as a charme, great work, thanx for that.

Edit:
Sorry for the long post, but I found a little bug in the Bounty Headlines while I was in the Boron sector Queens Harbour:
'An enemy Pirates Sao t'Snt in an M6 IM6PH-67, in the sector Spires of Elusion, vapourised the terrorist and fugitive Boron Susu Du in an M6 BM6AI-94.'
I guess the pirate ship and the boron ship got mixed up in the news, the pirate should have been the terrorist in the Boron eyes I'd say.

Shush · Post by **Shush** » Tue, 4. Mar 14, 18:39

PDouma39 wrote:Could it be that those attacked stations are to much sectors away from the sector that I am in as a player?

I don't do a sector distance check on Station News, it's globally accessible as long as the notoriety checks pass.

PDouma39 wrote:I checked my LIFE configuration and that is as good as you mentioned.

Try setting Friend News notoriety in the News menu much lower and see if that changes anything, (e.g. -10000).

PDouma39 wrote:I found a little bug in the Bounty Headlines while I was in the Boron sector Queens Harbour:
'An enemy Pirates Sao t'Snt in an M6 IM6PH-67, in the sector Spires of Elusion, vapourised the terrorist and fugitive Boron Susu Du in an M6 BM6AI-94.'
I guess the pirate ship and the boron ship got mixed up in the news, the pirate should have been the terrorist in the Boron eyes I'd say.

As long as you weren't talking to a news representative on a pirate station, then it could be a bug. But same race fugitives can and do produce news like this, it's unusual but I have seen it happen and I coded it so that fugitives of the same race killed by enemy bounty hunters would produce news articles like this. I'll check the code out and track down the bug if there is one for the next version; thanks for the feedback

Tom5Cat · Post by **Tom5Cat** » Tue, 4. Mar 14, 19:40

How about the idea of rare solar- and/or other storms, that, depending on the kind of storm, either render your shields depleted for a while, slowly deminishes them as long as you stay in the storm or even nibble on your hull?

Could even trigger creative extra's, like some teladianium panelling breaking loose from your ship (a container of 1 or 2 teladianium in your wake, as compensation for a very slightly damaged hull). This could make use of having a mechanic onboard, who can repair the ship over time, if you either have some teladianium onboard or even when you have to make sure you get the lost containers back on board to be able to do so.

Just an idea

PDouma39 · Post by **PDouma39** » Tue, 4. Mar 14, 19:56

Will try the new settings with the new update thanx for that.
Oh and I did not talk to a news guy, I used a short-cut to bring up LIFE-news.

Edit: Station news is working again(just had a pirate station attacked and destroyed), I think it was due to some invincible plot stations, their hull won't drop under 93%, so no news is generated after that I guess.

hourheroyes · Post by **hourheroyes** » Wed, 5. Mar 14, 06:46

Liiiiiife!

So the Trade News is still pending? I haven't seen anything come up yet.

Shush · Post by **Shush** » Wed, 5. Mar 14, 07:34

Tom5Cat wrote:How about the idea of rare solar- and/or other storms, that, depending on the kind of storm, either render your shields depleted for a while, slowly deminishes them as long as you stay in the storm or even nibble on your hull?

I'd love to do something like this, i.e. bring back an updated version of X2's localised hull eating nebula's. But I'm not a modeller/artist and even if I was I would be reluctant to turn LIFE into a fully fledged mod because of the usual incompatibility issues it entails.

PDouma39 wrote:Station news is working again(just had a pirate station attacked and destroyed), I think it was due to some invincible plot stations, their hull won't drop under 93%, so no news is generated after that I guess.

Yeah that makes more sense, LIFE will only generate station news entries, (replace old ones), when the station's shields decrease by more than 20% or it's hull decreases by more than 10% compared to the shield/hull values sampled by the previous news entry.

hourheroyes wrote:So the Trade News is still pending? I haven't seen anything come up yet.

Trade news was scheduled for 0.88b, but adding/refactoring the configuration menus was more important. The initial implementation will be simple, sectors within a certain radius will be sampled every few minutes and flavoured news entries will be generated whenever a sector starts to run low or have a surplus on crucial wares.

Whether this will be useful to anyone's game play styles I am not certain, therefore I am open to suggestions. I basically have the capability, (through the MSCI), to read any wares properties, (price, quantity, etc), in any station within any sector.

builder680 · Post by **builder680** » Wed, 5. Mar 14, 07:45

New LIFE version? WHY WASN'T I PERSONALLY NOTIFIED!

Downloading

46852 · Post by **46852** » Wed, 5. Mar 14, 09:53

What would be the best procedure to follow to re-initialize LIFE, to make sure all it's parts are functioning properly? Are the config menu reinits enough or should I delete the scipts/MD and reinstall?

PS. Also if I delete and re-install the LIFE files, do the NPC ship levels still stay in a save?

builder680 · Post by **builder680** » Wed, 5. Mar 14, 12:04

I love the ability to limit tunings. Thank you for this. I have small ships at 2 max tunings, with big/huge ships at 1 tuning.

This keeps it reasonable for my game. Much, much appreciated. This script is really becoming a "must-have."

For clarification, is the below accurate?

Small = M5/M4/M3/M8 + TS/TM/TP
Big = M6/M7
Huge = M1/M2/TL

I've noticed something, you can watch the kill counter on levelling NPC ships to get a feel for what classes of ships are good for OOS combat. It's probably not super accurate, but it is data I would never have seen without the levelling display.

For future versions, is it possible to GREATLY increase the amount of kills required for levelling? XRM is a very combat heavy mod, so ships level in no time even at max settings. Higher kill count requirements would likely make it so that many/most NPC ships would never even get to level 2 or 3, let alone level 10, but I'm perfectly fine with that. A possible setup would be the following:

Small ships 50
Large ships 100
Huge ships 250

Or even higher. If I dig around some I could probably find this myself, but every time I edit a script my friggin' hotkeys and custom controller settings go haywire on me, so I've stopped trying. Same thing happened when I tried to edit software requirements on my Trader ships for another script I use. Not sure why, I use Wordpad or the in-game script editor, both produce the same result.

Sorry, went off on a tangent there... TLDR - great work on this update.

Shush · Post by **Shush** » Wed, 5. Mar 14, 13:15

builder680 wrote:New LIFE version? WHY WASN'T I PERSONALLY NOTIFIED!

46852 wrote:What would be the best procedure to follow to re-initialize LIFE, to make sure all it's parts are functioning properly? Are the config menu reinits enough or should I delete the scipts/MD and reinstall?

LIFE initialises itself whenever it detects a version change on any significant scripts, in this case 0.88b re-initialises all it's data structures the first time it runs automatically, (it's why you lose any configuration options you may have set). So you normally don't need to use the initialise functions within the Configuration -> System menu unless you are trying to isolate a bug in LIFE or solve a compatibility issue with another script/mod.

46852 wrote:PS. Also if I delete and re-install the LIFE files, do the NPC ship levels still stay in a save?

You don't need to delete any of the old scripts before installing new ones, just write directly over the top of them, (although it doesn't hurt to delete the old ones first). All important state, (such as NPC levels), is stored within your save games, so yes they will be remembered even after upgrading LIFE to a new version.

builder680 wrote:Small = M5/M4/M3/M8 + TS/TM/TP, Big = M6/M7, Huge = M1/M2/TL

Small = M3, M4, M5, TS, TP.
Large = M6, M7, M8, TM
Huge = M1, M2, TL

builder680 wrote:For future versions, is it possible to GREATLY increase the amount of kills required for levelling?

As you probably know the current maximums are 10/20/50, I'll extend those out to 200/400/1000 using a logarithmic scale.

*EDIT* I found a show stopping bug in the handling of missile loading percentages, so 0.88b has been superseded by 0.88b1 which contains the fix for this bug as well as the extension to kills required to level discussed just above.

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

[SCR][MD][TC][AP] LIFE-V0.95b (update: 06-May-2014)