Tionisla Orbital Graveyard

From the original OXP credits.txt file:

Created By
----------
Rik Declercq (Rxke) - plist initialisation, geography, testing, Mac coding/tweaking
Arnoud van Marion (Arexack_Heretic)	- object modelling, textures
Dave Hughes (Selezen) - geography, data files, plist coding, model conversion, PC coding

The Tionisla Orbital Graveyard was originally created by Robert Holdstock in the novella The Dark Wheel, produced in accompaniment with Elite.

The TOG development team would like to extend their thanks to all those abovementioned for creating the universe we are helping to expand, and special thanks to Giles "Aegidian" Williams for the hundred or so questions we bombarded him with during the development.

More discusion about the oxp at: http://aegidian.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=617

-------------------------------------------------------
Extract from The Dark Wheel, Chapter 3

The best way to see the wreckplace at Tionisla is to approach it from the Sun (a reasonably safe thing to do since Tionisla, being a Democracy has few pirates in its system). Tionisla itself is a bright yellow world, and the cemetery is always between the planet and its star. As you fly close, the whole strange graveyard seems to be expanding from the circle of the world behind. 

The first thing you see is a shimmering, silver disc, a double spiral of tiny bright points. It slowly turns: it's a galaxy in miniature, with the same intense blur of light at its centre, because here is where the biggest tombs are to be found. 

Come closer and soon you can see that the stars in this galaxy are markers, great lumps of metal, heavily inscribed with the words and symbols of a thousand religions. The cemetery is a bizarre and moving sight. The markers are rarely less than a thousand feet across. There are chrome-alloy crosses, titanium 
Stars of David, duralium henges, and all the strange symbolic shapes of the worlds, and the minds and the faiths that have come to die in this Star traveller's special place. 

Tethered below this vast, rotating mausoleum is the dodecahedral shape of a 'Dodo' class space station, the home of the Cemetery Authorites. Here you go through security checks and get your visitor's visa. And as you stand in the queue, staring up through the translucent ceiling of the Customs Hall, you can see the battered, broken ships of many of the dead, still attached to the silent tomb that contains the body. 

It's a good enough reason to come to Tionisla. There are pickings aplenty among the wrecks. The treasures of centuries might be revealed by pressing the right panel on the right cube of black, alien metal as it floats silently by. 

Or maybe not treasure, just the tomb's defences... 

A pit with a laser. 

A robot guardian with knives where its hands should be. 

A hyperspace vacuum that sucks you in and throws you out into another time. 

You tread carefully among the wrecks in orbit about Tionisla. The creatures buried here - human and alien - had money enough to buy these prized resting places, and more than enough wealth to protect their property after death from the mercenary fingers of bounty hunters. 

-------------------------------------------------------
Version 2.7

TOGY Main - Changed beacon definition to be unpiloted.

Version 2.6

TOGY Main - Changed template for "togy_basic_monuments_template" to be class "CLASS_CARGO", instead of "CLASS_ROCK".
TOGY Monuments - Changed scanClass for some monuments to "CLASS_CARGO".

Version 2.5

TOGY Main - Added beacon to Graveyard Dodo station. Tweaked name generation code to reduce the size of the code base.

Version 2.4

TOGY Main - updated texture for Dodo station with adjusted colours and gloss property added. Updated other ship models with new gloss property. Added some additional special monument names.

Version 2.3

TOGY Main - Corrected some shader texture reference errors, and updated the Krait texture.

Version 2.2

TOGY Main - Added some additional special monument names.

Version 2.1

TOGY Main - added missing alpha channel to Krait model.

Version 2.0

Update by Nick Rogers (phkb)

TOGY Main: Replaced population routine to use systemWillPopulate JS function. Replaced Dodc station model with Neolite Dodec from SFEP pack. Replaced Krait Patrol ship with Griff Krait, replaced Lancet with Griff/gsagostinho Fer-de-Lance, replaced tourist ship with Griff Shuttle. Put the application of the scanner colour into shipdata rather than using shipSpawned.

All monuments will now have details of who the monument is for, accessed via a Broadcast Comms MFD message "Query monument info".

TOGY Monuments: No changes to models, changed XML-style plist files to OpenStep format, added manifest.plist file.

TOGY Shipwrecks: Created rusty models of most core ships (including Anaconda, Python, Boa and Boa Class Cruiser), plus added possibility of having normally coloured ships added as graveships, with the idea being that these are new.

Version 1.1

Update by Eric Walch, based on original files from Selezen.

There has changed a lot in Oolite since the original version of the graveyard was released. Many things that were wanted, but never possible in the original release, became possible now. Oolite can now also handle large numbers of objects better. Before Oolite 1.65, every object had to be distance checked against every other object. This requires exponentially growing numbers of calculations with increasing entities in the system. And the graveyard tripled the average number of entities in a system! But as said, this is improved with Oolite 1.65.

Then there is the problem that there exists two different "original" versions.
- One "original" contains mainly rusty adders. This one was meant as a test version only with the adders as temporarily placeholders. Unlucky enough, it was this version that was linked to from all sites and is the version that most people know as "the original".
- The real "original" only contained simple objects and only a few complex monuments for maximum performance on old hardware. On high end computers there is no real speed difference noticeable between rendering a field with only simple objects and one full with the more complex models.

To give the player a choice, the oxp is split in 3 parts. 
- TOGY_Main. This is the main module with all the scripts in it. The module only contains simple monuments for maximum performance on old hardware.
- TOGY_Monuments pack. This oxp only holds additional, complex monuments. When added together with the main oxp, it will replace part of the simple monuments by the more complex ones. Leave it uninstalled when every thing slows down while flying through the graveyard.
- TOGY_Shipwreck pack. This oxp holds only rusty ships. It does the same as the Monument pack, but now replacing the simple monuments by rusty ships. Add this pack when you like the wrecks, but be aware that the rusty ships were never intended to be in a release version. Putting it in a separate pack is a bit of a compromise.

Be aware that this oxp adds over 200 extra objects in the Tionisla system. This has an effect on the FPS rate when flying in the Tionisla system. However on fast computers this FPS drop will not be noticeable to the player. Any speed difference between the packs will not be noticeable when the player is not near the monuments, as they are only drawn when the player is within the draw distance. For any speed effect between the installed packs you must approach the graveyard. When you are not in the Tionisla system, this oxp has no performance hit at all.

Changes in v 1.1
- At regular intervals there are tourist shuttle launches from the main station.
- Broadcasts of ships are no longer silenced by the many objects, but always reach the player.
- Removed all the rusty adders and put them together with new rusts in a separate pack.
- Changed the colour of the monuments on the scanner from white to a more appropriate colour for a graveyard.
- Updated all AI files.
- Added a 1.75 ship-key that makes that killing a monument no longer count as a kill. (No longer boosting your score by q-bombing the graveyard on Oolite 1.75+)
- Added several ship scripts for better fine-tuning all kind of behavior.

License
-------
This OXP is released under the Creative Commons Attribution - Non-Commercial - Share Alike 3.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

Thanks to Svengali and Disembodied for their PhraseGen tool.

Infinity image from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Infinity_in_circle.svg, public domain.
Omega image from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Code2000_Greek_omega.svg, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.
Ankh image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ankh.svg, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.