User:CommonSenseOTB

In the spring of 2011, a new user joined the oolite community with the single purpose of making oolite a better experience by developing oxps through a process of thinking creatively "outside-the-box" to bring near impossible/extremely difficult ideas that have been talked about for a long time from wish to actual fact, and of course to make really long sentences that cannot be finished on one breath.

His belief is that nothing is impossible but simply takes the will to sit down and figure out how to do it, rather than just talk about it, and talk about it, over and over and over for years, wishing someone would do it.

He has no formal computer education and has never done programming commercially. He has been absent from even using computers since the Amiga went under and only got back into things in November of 2009 with an acer netbook. After playing Oolite for a year he started back into scripting in november of 2010 and after many months decided he would like to contribute and joined the oolite community as a member in May 2011 under the name CommonSenseOTB. The name was chosen to reflect the combination of reason combined with outside-the-box creativity. It fits him and his personality as well as a name could and gives an indication of what part he wants to play in the development of oxps for oolite.

Shortly after joining and with no idea as to how he would like to contribute, he stumbled onto some old conversations about types of HUD displays people would like to see(in this case pie chart gauges) and after sitting down and thinking about how he would try to create such a display, it just suddenly came to him. From that point on it became obvious that there are a lot of things that can be done in the area of HUDS and other related areas and it was at this point he sort of just ended up specializing in this area as each thing he discovers leads to more discoveries and eureka moments.

The current progression of discoveries is as follows: pie chart gauges==>numeric gauges==>zoomable sniper camera==>gauge morphing==>curved animated bar gauges==>custom missile displays==>compass as target tracker==>multiple forward lasers on player ships==>aimbots==>grey or flashing lines made from status indicator lights==>?

As of Apr 21, 2012 he is working on:

• a more advanced chupacabraHUD and pieHUDs.
• an external missiles HUD (long-term workaround project for equipment added missile slots externally/internally for the player).
• a music oxp which reacts to various conditions and combat to play specific music which reflects the mood of what is going on in the game.
• sporadic work on many secret side projects.
• needleHUDs and buttonHUDs which are on the backburner but still there.

Creativity cannot be scheduled however, and new works will be posted as they progress.

Links

HUDs

• Pie Chart Style HUDs current version 2 (May 20, 2011)
• Numeric Style HUDs current version 3 (April 21, 2012)
• Sniper Camera System HUD current version 1.1 (July 30, 2011)
• ChupacabraHUD current version 1 (October 15, 2011)

Equipment

• Custom Shields awards shields to NPCs and gives useful ambient signals in dogfights.
• Shield Equalizer+Capacitors current version 1.3 (July 3, 2011)
• Q-Charger current version 1.2 (July 25, 2011)
• MFLPS (Multiple Forward Laser Player Ships) current version 1 (October 19, 2011)
• SniperLock current version 1 (December 17, 2011)

Viewtopics of interest

• ExternalMissilesHUD long-term work-in-progress

• Animated HUD gauge requests ideas for HUDs and HUD gauges can be posted here

• NeedleHUD long-term work-in-progress

• Pylon Icons tips on creating missile and compass icons

Flickr site with some super Oolite snaps

• Flickr