The Quest To Spew

Hi Mdvalley,

I changed your user status at the site to 'Editor' so you should be able to upload files now.

“Torn Stars Spewer Operations� is now on the downloads page on the site. See how ya like it.

Looks good mdvalley. I am trying it out now. As the first 'mod' for Torn Stars, maybe I should give 'Torn Stars Spewer Operations' its own little page, with a description, install instructions etc...what do you think?

Installation is basically dropping in the pkg files. If you want to make a little page, be my guest. Have screencaps or something.

It looks a lot better in action though. Get a 20-pod freighter, load it up, head to the destination. Sell everything and immediately buy 20 more pods. (You do not have to wait for everything to undock; it is smart enough to know that the space will be available. It will even hold off spewing until the actual dock port is open!) The ballet of 40 pods back and forth is beautiful. All nice and synchronized.

Okay Mdvalley, I added a page for your Spewer Operations mod. The first mod for Torn Stars!

I’ve started putting some effort into megatrucking (working name). I still have yet to observe a megafreighter load pods, which makes me wonder if PS gave up on that bit.

I discovered that the little pods inside the big pods do not exist unless the player can see them (i.e., when the pod’s closed, the little pods are culled). I can see how this works to make the simulation more efficient, but it adds yet another layer of complexity.

I am considering stopping trying to discern how PS handled the megapods and simply re-write the whole thing. I noticed that the mini-pods sit in the megapods backwards! Good thing, too. I have no clue how to order a pod to fly in reverse to “dock� to the megapods, short of cheating with the Sim package.

Here’s how I imagine megapod loading:

Megapod door opens.
Pod flies out to waypoint outside of megapod.
Pod flies to waypoint within megapod (might have to turn off collision avoidance).
Pod becomes childed to megapod.
If no more pods to this one, door closes. Pods not culled unless I really have to write it in.

Easy, no? Unloading’s the tricky part. Megapods hold their loot in a 2x2x2 array, so a pod to be sold might be trapped behind another pod. That’s a routine to see if that’s true, and another to do something about it!

Door opens.
Pod checks to see if trapped. If so, then some complicated stuff to extricate it.
Pod unchilded and shot backwards out.
Pod ordered to station.
Door closes when done.

Did I mention that this method makes the megapod death script NOT spit out pods on death? I have to re-write that, too!

Also, there are no indicators of WHERE in the megapod the mini-pods sit (as in coordinates). Some careful measuring indicates that they sit at ±30 meters X and Y, but the Z value needs checking. If it is too close to the bottom, they show through at a distance, so I need to find out how close to bottom I can get away with (where’s that imaging module when I need it?)

To top it off, the wingman cargo commands, the save/load routines, and tSpewerOps will have to be changed to accommodate my weird system.