User:Commander McLane

Youth and early TV-existence

Commander McLane can look back to a long and successfull career in a German TV-series of the sixties, which brought him something like a cult-status among German SF-addicts. Serving in the Space Patrol ('Raumpatrouille') as captain of the fast cruiser 'Orion', he mastered many an adventure, technically sometimes way ahead of the crew of the USS Enterprise, whose escapades were aired at roughly the same time. The series was especially famous for the use of ordinary household items, like plastic beakers, electric irons, etc., as props on the ship's bridge.

Rebirth in the Ooniverse

Commander McLane came into being again at 2084004 under the pseudonym of 'Jameson', but quickly was restored to his original name. His famous ship, the 'Orion', however, had been lost in the maelstrom of time and was replaced with an ordinary Cobra III. So his quest for becoming famous again and regaining a decent ship started. Now, at currently 2085144, a little over three years later, he is a proud member of the Imperial Courier Owner's Club and can again look back on an impressive career with a killcount that just passed the 13000-mark and a comfortable financial cushion of twelve and three quarters of a million credits in the bank. Currently located in Galaxy 7, he has two major objectives. He is having fun with a lot of assassinations, while at the same time having fun with even more assassinations. For the future beyond these engagements, considering his financial and reputational background, he may be reflecting either one of two major options, namely an early retirement, continuing to fly his Imperial Courier only for leisure reasons, or starting another quest for Raxxla.

For the time being, however, his progress in any of his career activities is slowed down, mainly due to other activities that require a lot of his time and will be described in the next section.

Contributions to the commOonity

Commander McLane is also known as one of the major contributers of the Oolite Bulletin Boards (currently holding position 2(!) among the most prolific posters) and takes even a little pride in having been able to contribute some of his thoughts to the community. Among these are externalviews.oxp, that fixes some issues with the custom views of the ships of the original set and has been included in Oolite itself since version 1.70, and Anarchies.oxp (now in version 2.3).

He is working on some other OXPs, which are still very much work-in-progress, but one day hopefully will see the light of the world under the names of ghosts-from-the-past.oxp and equilibrium.oxp. Another work of his has now been released as his first mission OXP under the name of Cataclysm.oxp. There is also a yet secret project which will be spoken about in due time. Other than that, he has spent some thoughts on variations of the economy in the game which ultimately lead to BlOomberg Markets OXP, and on the lack of an in-flight-communication system in Oolite, which has led to the small interstellar_help.oxp, and is toyed with by other scripters closer to the code as well. Furthermore it is giving him great pleasure to meet other well-known commanders out there in the Ooniverse, and (sometimes) to prematurely end their careers. Tidbits of his scripting can also be found shattered around in the Ooniverse, in other peoples' OXPs. He also may be persuaded to develop small fixes for issues which pop up in other players games, like creating a more even distribution of police ships, making Q-bombs behave like it is written in the book, or enabling players to keep track of their reputation.

Other interests of his include, but are not limited to, bug-squashing activities in recent versions of Oolite, requesting ever more methods, keys and commands for scripting, and more complicated quests like Understanding commodities.plist or the more occult features of quaternions. One day even the new and improved version of the Thargoid Carrier may see the green light of interstellar space, so to speak.

A list of available OXPs made by him would have to include:

• Anarchies.oxp
• Auto Eject.oxp
• Cataclysm.oxp
• Display Reputation.oxp
• Flying Dutchman.oxp
• Generation Ships.oxp (overhauling Draco_Caeles' ground breaking OXP)
• Interstellar Help.oxp
• Killit.oxp
• Personalities.oxp
• Sell Equipment.oxp
• Status Quo Q-bomb.oxp
• Total Patrol.oxp