User:Aegidian

Our Heroic Helmsman!

Giles Williams, the original author of Oolite (on Mac OS X). His final version - 1.65 - debuted in 2007.

Aging enthusiast and father of three.

Fons et origo of all of this!.

See his web page.

Giles also designed these Ossuary Dice together with a lot of other natty stuff which can be seen here.

See Get Giles on his bike! for important events in 2016.

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His views in this thread on .oxz's are worth noting.

Post by aegidian » Thu Aug 07, 2014 9:19 am

I hesitate to post this, but I've been reminded recently of the value of candour, and I therefore ought to.

I have come to the conclusion I do not like the concept of OXZs.

Oolite's chief advantage has been that it is easy to mod and edit, ideally with the simplest of text editors and graphics editors. OXZs seem only to get in the way of doing that. I like the expansion manager, and appreciate the ease it allows new users to download mods, but in my opinion the OXZ format (in hiding information from users) hinders those new users who want to peek and poke behind the curtain - and they are our most important new users.

So my answer to the question posed in the Opinion Poll is a reluctant, but forthright, NO, OXZs are a mistep and should probably be quietly deprecated.

Sorry.

The expansion manager however, is a positive step, but should be rewritten to handle OXP folder hierarchies instead of OXZs, and check, mark and note when a managed folder has been changed (by consulting a checksum or hash) and warning the user in the manager that the OXP and its dependents may no longer work as intended, with the option of downloading and re-installing to fix any issue.

List of .oxp's

• Ringpod for the racing fraternity.
• Behemoth - the original Oolite battleship.
• Aegidian's Specials This expansion pack adds two ships: the Mussurana and the Asp Mk II.
• Aegidian's X-Ships adds three new ships: the Python ET Special, the prototype Cobra Mk II and the Taipan.
• Cobra 3.5 a fighter-interceptor.
• CompactHUD now incorporated into HUDSelector.
• Griffin Two (Oolite) - the ship from Frontier.
• LongWay OXP - an easy mission in Galaxy 1.
• Mega-Walnut Dashboard OXP for the luxurious Fer-de-Lance.
• Pelamis, an amphibious cargo carrier.
• Python Class Cruiser - larger and faster than the Python, preferred by some to the newer Boa.
• Weeviloid containing Weeviloid Scoutship & Weeviloid Hunter.
• Freaky Thargoids OXP examines shading effects.