The Galactic Almanac OXZ

Overview

Natural Celestial Bodies of the Lave System.

Incoming Message

In accordance with GalCop Directive Number 48753/A, all orbital platform operators were required to transmit the names of any and all platforms under their control from 09.00 today, Lave Local Time. Failure to comply with this Directive is a serious offence. All Commanders are encouraged to report any violations through their local Bulletin Board. Your onboard targeting software has been updated to display the names of all stars, worlds and registered orbitals. The Galactic Almanac of GAL-ID Registered Stars, Worlds and Orbitals has been added to your Dockside Services Interface. Access is available by selecting F4 whilst docked with any orbital or whilst landed on any planet or moon. Please take a moment to familiarise yourself with these new features of your Identification and Navigation systems.

Chief Cartographer Hober Marlowe.

Her Imperial Majesty's Bureau of Records. Autocrat House, 7 Triumph Road, Riverside Sector, Ashoria, Lave I, ZF1-007.

Registered Artificial Satellites of the Lave System.

The Galactic Almanac In Game User Settings Menu.

The In Game Procedural Name Generator Feature.

This expansion allocates unique and persistent names to all space stations, satellites, stars, gas giants, planets, moons and asteroids in the game. All names are persistent both for individual players and all players of the game. If, for example, you have the SIRIF Station Expansion installed then for you and all players of the game with the OXZ installed, there will be a SIRIF Station named Status Quo present in the Lave System. The Galactic Almanac OXZ does not itself add any stations or planets to the game. The expansion works by reading the changes made by the OXZs (if any) you have installed and naming only those objects which exist in your personal game.

The expansion does not name unique stations, such as the Tionisla Orbital Graveyard or stations which have already been assigned names by their creator, such as the Space Bars from Random Hits. The expansion automatically detects names added by other OXZs and will display any name assigned by another OXZ to any object in the game. The expansion does not name Rock Hermits or Carriers such as Behemoths, as these are already named by the Random Ship Names OXZ. If you play with both naming OXZs installed, then every object in your game will be named. The two expansions are not dependent on each other and you can play with both, neither or just one installed as you wish.

The expansion does not change the behaviour of any other OXZ. Not all stations have complied with GalCop’s directive as some stations are operated by criminals. Some stations are secret and not shown on Galactic Maps as they are classified installations. These stations are named by the expansion, but they will not be shown on your Advanced Space Compass until you find a way of locating them, as intended by their creators.

Classified and Secret Stations will not be shown on the Galactic Almanac screen even once you have discovered them as GalCop does not disclose the locations of its Military Installations and Black Operations sites to the Spacefaring community in general. Similarly as GalCop does not know the locations of certain rebel organisations, resistance groups and criminal gangs, stations operated by these outlaws are not recorded in the Galactic Almanac.

In the unexpanded game Rock Hermits do not have beacons and so will not be listed in the Galactic Almanac. They will however be named if you have the Random Ship Names OXZ installed. If you also have the Rock Hermit Locator OXZ installed, then in your game Rock Hermits will have beacons. The Galactic Almanac OXZ will read this change made by Rock Hermit Locator and the names, distances and orbital positions of Rock Hermits in the local system will be listed in the Galactic Almanac.

Download Link

Version 1.0 by Commander LittleBear.

The OXZ is under Construction - Please Stand By - Not Available on the Expansion Pack Manager Yet!

This OXZ requires Version 1.90 or higher of Oolite.

Difficulty Rating

0-{{{2}}}

The expansion is an ambience expansion and therefore makes no changes to either the gameplay or difficulty of the game. Other than upgrading the Advanced Space Compass to add OXZ gas giants, planets and moons, the expansion makes no gameplay changes. As any OXZ celestial bodies which exist in your game will be visible to your Mark I Eyeball, adding them to the Advanced Space Compass does not change the difficulty of the game.

Main Features

Star Names and Classifications added to the ASC.

Gas Giants Planets and Moons are named, classified and added to the ASC.

Upon installing the OXZ you will receive the incomming message above from Her Imperial Majesty's Bureau of Records and the Galactic Almanac will be added to your Dockside Services Interface. If you press F4 whilst docked with any orbital or carrier or whilst landed on any planet or moon, you will be able to view the list of natural and artificial satellites in the local system together with their orbital positions and the distance each is from your current location.

The expansion will by default name all Stars, Gas Giants, Planets, Moons, Asteroids, Main Stations, Witchpoint Beacons and OXZ Stations. Each of these features can be individually turned on or off in the in game Settings Menu. You can also select the Units of Distance in which you would like the Almanac to display distances and select your preferred background graphics for the Galactic Almanac Screens.

All GalCop Main Stations are named and their names added to the ASC.

All OXZ Stations are named and their names added to the ASC.

The Galactic Almanac OXZ provides support for other OXZs in two ways. If you are writing a new Station OXZ or adding a planet or moon, you can chose whether your creation is named by the Galactic Almanac OXZ or not. New Stations will not be named by the expansion unless the author of the Station tells the Galactic Almanac to name it. This is done by setting a script info command in the Station’s shipdata.plist entry. If you chose one of the default styles then all stations your OXZ adds will be assigned unique and persistent names in the style you have selected.

If you are adding a new gas giant, planet or moon to the game the expansion will check to see if you have added a Display Name for your creation in your planetinfo.plist. If you have given the object a name then the Galactic Almanac will add your object to the Almanac and the Advanced Space Compass using the name you have specified. The object’s orbital position will also be added and classified as a Moon, Planet or Gas Giant depending on whether you added the object with the addMoon, addPlanet or isGasGiant command. If you do not specify a name, then the expansion will assign a unique and persistent name to the object and will classify it based on the class you gave it.

The Galactic Almanac OXZ also contains an inbuilt Procedural Name Generator which can be used by other authors to generate custom names for their creations. The Generator can be turned on in the Settings Menu. When enabled the generator will write 256 procedurally generated names to your Latest Log file in a format ready to copy and paste into a script file each time you make a hyperspace jump in game. You can set the word lists you wish the generator to combine in order to create customised names. Instructions on how to use the generator to create custom name lists for new OXZ stations are set out on The Galactic Almanac User Manual page.

If you have an Advanced Space Compass, you will receive a free software update from Her Imperial Majesty's Bureau of Records adding the names of all space stations to the ASC display. In the unexpanded game, only stations with beacons, the main planet and the local star are shown on the ASC. The expansion updates the ASC to add the locations and display the names and classifications of all OXZ gas giants, planets and moons in the system. The names and Classifications of stars are also added. The expansion reads changes made by other OXZs such as Distant Suns. Stars are classified by their Stella Class and also by their size and colour. The smallest and largest stars in the game are classified as Dwarfs and Giants respectively. If you have Distant Suns (or any other OXZ which changes star colours) installed stars will be classified as Red Dwarfs, Blue Giants and so on as appropriate. The expansion supports OXZs such as Lave OXP and the Tianve Pulsar which add unique celestial objects to the game. Special Objects are named correctly and classified with their non-standard classifications.

The expansion adds one item of purchasable equipment. A Galactic Almanac MFD Unit can be purchased from any world of Tech Level 8 or higher for 350 Credits. This MFD is an upgrade to the Advanced Space Compass and therefore you must purchase an Advanced Space Compass before the MFD will be offered for sale in the Shipyard. In combination with an Advanced Space Compass, the MFD allows you to view the Galactic Almanac entry for the local system whilst in flight. When active, the MFD will show the name, classification and current distance from you of the selected gas giant, planet, moon or space station in a transparent MFD display on your HUD.

The Galactic News Agencies keep a close eye on the new software system.

If you have the GNN News OXZ installed, the expansion also adds 15 News Broadcasts to your News Feed. Over time a series of incidents and difficulties with the new software will emerge and be reported upon by the galactic news agencies. You will also receive software updates from Her Imperial Majesty's Bureau of Records, fixing these difficulties with the new system. These updates are naturally purely for flavour. As with all OXZs any actual bugs in the expansion will only be fixed when I release the next version of the OXZ.

Landed at an unusual religious colony on the surface of the moon Ramsau III in the Galaxy 7 system Zaed.

If you have the Planet Fall OXZ installed, then in addition to naming Space Stations, Gas Giants, Planets, Moons and Asteroids the Galactic Almanac OXZ will also name all Landing Sites in the game. Rather than showing your status as Docked, the OXZ will show your status as Landed. The Galactic Almanac Screen will also show which planet or moon you have landed on, together with the name of the Space Port you have landed at. If you make a rough landing on a moon or in an open area of a planet, the expansion will also give you a short texted based description of your location. Please note that whilst the Almanac will correctly describe your landing site, Her Imperial Majesty's Bureau of Records accepts no responsibility for unpleasant consequences which may befall Commanders who land without permission on private property.

The Galactic Almanac OXZ is compatible with all other OXZs. It will automatically read changes made by other OXZs and implement them. It is specifically designed to be compatible with the Distant Suns and Planetary Compass OXZs. The moon names from Thargoid’s Moon Packs will be assigned first to moons. When these have all been assigned, moons will be named using the names lists from the Galactic Almanac OXZ.

Compatibility with Distant Suns is achieved by the option to turn the Galactic Almanac naming features on and off. If you have Distant Suns (or any other OXZ which names stars) installed, then the stars will be named using the names from the Galactic Almanac OXZ if you turn Star Naming on in the Settings Menu and all other features of Distant Suns will remain unchanged. If you turn Star Naming off in the Settings Menu then all stars will be named by Distant Suns.

Installing and Playing

To play the OXZ, download and install the OXZ from the in game Expansion Pack Manager. The OXZ has no dependencies or requirements. Once it is installed all of its features are automatically implemented.

Bug Reporting

Since the expansion is a pure ambience OXZ which only changes the display names of game objects, it is not really capable of introducing any game breaking bugs. The worst it can do if it goes wrong is either fail to name an object it should have done or add a name which is a duplication of name used by another object in another system. Before release I have visited 516 systems across the eight galaxies and not found any howlers in the naming system.

However, the OXP uses both long lists of real names and procedurally generated names. It is possible therefore that I have created my own Fabled Planet Arse in Latin, Hindi, Russian, Arabic, Ancient Sumerian or one of the other languages the generator uses as a base. The OXZ also features long lists of proper names from all Real Life Earth cultures. It is possible therefore that a name which sounds cool and exotic to my English ear is the equivalent of coming across a planet named Dave to a native speaker. The third type of bug which could occur is a name is used by two stations or planets in different systems.

As you play the game you will receive a news broadcast from GNN reporting that GalCop is offering a 1,000 Credit reward to any Commander reporting errors in the Galactic Almanac. This is a genuine offer, although you will have to wait for me to release the next version of the OXZ to receive your in game reward. Please post any bug reports on the Oolite Bulletin Boards Galactic Almanac Development Thread.

If you have poked around the OXZ’s code, then you’ll be aware that the OXZ is essentially two text files containing several million words. Due to the magic of search and replace, this makes any mistakes easy to correct. If you are reported a bug therefore, please post the name exactly as it appears in game. If you are reporting a misspelt name please post the correct spelling if you know it. If you are reporting a weird or duplicated name and would like to rename the station or planet, then please feel free to post a new name for the object.

If you would like to receive your reward in the next version, then please post your Commander’s Name (exactly as it appears in your save file). If you would like to add a news broadcast reporting on the assistance your Commander rendered to Her Imperial Majesty's Bureau of Records, then please post the texts of your broadcast. All players of the game will see the broadcast in the next version of the OXZ. Only you will receive a message from the Chief Cartographer and your 1,000 Credit reward.

Credits

This Section is under construction - Please Stand By

Version History and Updates

Version 1.0 - Not released yet!

Summary Table of Naming Styles

In order to ensure backwards compatibility, all existing stations are assigned custom naming styles as set out in the table below. The expansion also reads the player’s planetinfo file and uses different naming styles depending on the type of government, inhabitants and tech level. Changes made by other OXZs to systems are therefore automatically read and implemented. All 256 Systems of Galaxy One have custom names assigned to all stations and planets appearing in them, reflecting the lore relating to the system. All systems in all galaxies listed on the Powers and Organisations Page and all systems featuring in native and OXZ missions are also custom named. The standard naming keys added by the OXZ also read the description of each system and adjust the naming style accordingly. Any future OXZs which use the Galactic Almanac naming styles will therefore have names assigned which reflect the type of system the station appears at.

The Galactic Almanac OXZ will name an infinite number of stations and celestial objects. It will also detect changes made by other OXZs. For example, the Bank of the Black Monks OXZ normally adds a single station to about 20 systems in each Galaxy. If however another OXZ were to add 256 Black Monk Stations to a system, the expansion would assign all the additional stations with unique and persistent names. The 257th station to appear would however have the same name as the first, since the expansion would have deployed all of the names it has for this station type. In the table below the number in the Pool Size column refers to the maximum number of each station type that can be added before the expansion will loop the code. This is set vastly higher than the number of stations which appear in game in order to future proof the Galactic Almanac.

Table of Naming Styles is under constuction. Please Stand By

Station Type	Pool Size	Example Names
Main Stations	2,048	Clear Air Turbulence, Rule of Law, Slanted Moonbeam, Bearded Devil, Accompaniment of Shadows, Corporate Agenda, Prince of Ravens, Poetic Licence.
Witchpoint Beacons	2,048	An Alphanumeric Code is shown on all beacons indicating the system’s spatial co-ordinates. ZF1-007, LW2-046, QI3-009.
Black Monk Monasteries	256	Rosary of Debt, Flail of Repayment, Papal Currency, Deacon of Doom, Tome of Default, Chant of Foreclosure, Credit Control, Graven Image.
Con Store Stations	256	Happy Shopper, Bargain Basement, Sale of the Century, Thrift Store, Monroeville Mall, Frontier Pharmacist, Consume and Obey, Raw Deal.
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