BGS

Visual & sound effects, etc.

Intro screen

New Jump sequence

Old Jump sequence

Misjump

Docking sequence

F6 screen's monitor and ship's bridge backdrop

Overview

BackGroundSet (BGS) comes with more than 130 sounds, images for all standard GUI-Screens and with visual effects for docking/launching & hyperjumping. It enhances the overall look and feel of the game and is expandable and configurable.

Oolite will never be the same. It feels like a whole new game.

(Not to be confused with HDBG which provides arrival screens on docking)

Features

Sounds

FX (Sound eFfeCTS) engine sounds for player ships.
FX when docked on standard GUI (General/Graphical User Interface) screens (eg the F2, F3, -- F8 screens).
Radio chatter when in the aegis of the main station or flagged secondary stations.
Timed countdowns to witchjump.
All natively supported sounds by Oolite.
Joystick throttle jitter handling. Some throttles jitter when "off", causing "engine-revving" sounds. This eliminates such sounds.

Visuals

Background images for all standard GUI screens.
Improved visual effects for docking/launching, witch-space jumps and exits (only if shader support available).

Configuration

OXPs can define their own engine sounds, countdowns, chatter and docking sequence textures.
Configurable by other OXPs (eg for missions!) through Library.

Compatible OXPs

BGS Soundset by P.A. Groove OXP

An alternative soundset for BackGroundSet. 30 Sounds and station music composed by the musician P.A. Groove (www.myspace.com/pagroovemusic).

Includes:

- new high pitched lasersound (just an alternative)

- new high pitched laserhit

new hit and hullbang sounds: Now being hit hurts!

new station music.

Config files and script so that the new soundset is ready to use.

Author: P.A. Groove
Version: 2.3
Required Oolite Version: v.1.79
License: This music is licensed by P.A. Groove to the Oolite community. Therefore it is not allowed to reproduce, remix, resample, rework, use bits this music, or to convert to other formats without permission from the author. It is not allowed to make use of this work in any commercial form or production or to place it at your website without permission of the author.
Download: Click here: File:BGS-Soundset Pagroove 2.3.oxz or through the in-game Expansions Manager.

Keeper's alternative images

BGS Soundset/Images by Keeper

Keeper produced his own set of 10 tailored images & 17 sounds for BGS.

"The screens have a bit of the "legend" icons showing the relative order of government and economy types, as well as a function key menu with English labels (the old menu from the previous BGS set but with text added by myself -- now blended over the new backgrounds nicely). Here's a 16:10 screenshot: http://www.keeper1st.com/Oolite/bgsexample.png

For the sounds, I replaced the "Item Sold" and "Item Bort" (?!) with nice little chimes (can't remember where they came from -- original Oolite?), changed things like "Ortopilot activated" into "Autopilot activated", trimmed some dead air (e.g. so instead of "missile......armed" it's "missile armed"), removed all instances of Majel Barrett from Star Trek (nothing against the late Ms Barrett or Star Trek; I just think the second voice is unnecessary), and greatly changed the extremely long and drawn-out game-over sound into a rather rapid explosion then sudden expulsion of air into silence, which is rather more shocking and realistic."

BGS-XMapping (Broken)
Notice the rather dim buttons on the right: toggle map, toggle areas, toggle lanes, cycle specials etc.

SWSoundset (for BGS-M) by Vincentz

Vincentz included a soundset pack for the now deprecated BGS-M oxp in his combo-pack together with 4 ships and a game-start choice oxp. There are 9 sounds (mostly combat related) and no license. There may be more details in one of his posts.

Halsis

Halsis provides a female voice for your on-board computer. See that page for the download. A good "old" .oxp which was updated to run on BGS.

Captain Berf Pilot

There is a version of Captain Berf Pilot for the 2010 version of BGS - Captain Berf Pilot_BGS.zip (207 KB) 2010-09-25
From the Crew Soundset BB thread.

BGS-XMapping

Another of Svengali's experiments from back in 2011 - a BGS capability and a projected .oxp (but he uploaded the picture opposite in 2013).

BGS-XMapping is a additional module for BGS (not available yet, but the support for it is already in BGS-A and BGS-M). It displays the named regions and spacelanes from ClymAngus maps via overlay on the Long Range Chart. The script checks the position of the cursor (red cross) against sets of inserted polys or lines. Supported are 4 different types of shapes (Rectangle, Circle, NPoly and Line). To speed up the processing inserted shapes are getting a bounding box internally.

BGS-XMapping.oxp will start the player with only 1 region (The old worlds) and 1 lane in G1. From time to time players will receive a update via Snoopers for the current galaxy and over time they have all regions and lanes together. OXPs can expand on that and insert own maps. Additionally there is functionality for 'special maps' (e.g. all Navy HQs) and OXPs can insert own overlays. The special maps are handled differently as there is no position check for them, but they can be activated by steering the cursor over the areas on the right side. The functionality can be controlled in the same way. The right side has areas for switching the mapping on/off, toggles for regions and lanes and three slots for special maps and cycling through the available special maps. If no maps are available in the current galaxy (right now) BGS disables the feature.

The insertion is not documented, simply because BGS-X is not finished yet and we won't get it out before christmas...

(Svengali (2011))

See BGS Doc for a less penetrable description. The description was removed in the later 2016 version (BGS2 Doc) after Oolite v.1.82 was published (the newly resizeable F6 page clobbered the fixed-size templates which BGS-XMapping was based on). And this is the reason behind the GNN broadcasts about naming regions and spacelanes - these would show up on BSS-X after the broadcast!

If you try out Oolite v.1.77 you will find that it all works very nicely (and you can play the otherwise broken Vector mission too!). Oolite v.1.77.1 can be downloaded from GitHub. The older BGS is linked in "downloads" below.

Configuring BGS

With Library OXP loaded: while docked, press the 4/F4 key and select the Config for AddOns heading.

Select list settings, and then select BGS. You will be able to switch the flags on and off, and alter the values:

Flags:
  Sounds (7): chatter, countdown, engine, engine ambient, jump, Q-mine, chatter expand.
  Shader visual effects (3): hyperspace jump, launch (exit), & dock. You can thus reduce shader use for graphically challenged computers!
  Tsoj's newest version of BGS gives an 11th choice: Old Hyperspace which replaces the new Hyperspace sequence with the older spiderweb version

Values:
  • Joystick jitter
  • Offset for witchjump spoken countdown timing
  • Station chatter pause

With the older oxpconfig.oxp loaded: While docked, press the 2/F2 key and select "Game Options" - after a pause Step to System Data Screen: F7 should flash up at the bottom of the screen. Select "Configure Supported OXPs" and then select BGS from the list (which may run on for several pages!).

Note that the BB-link in the "infobox" below contains hints about adding your own sounds and other tweaks.

For more detail press here ---->

On the F4 Ship:Systems interfaces screen select Config for AddOns

Select BGS

Flags are On/Off options, Values give a numerical range

Flags (Old Hyperspace is added by Tsoj's newest version of BGS)

Values (D is the default setting, R shows the range)

Older versions

BGS originally came in chunks (back in 2010):

The packs:

BGS-A was the all-inclusive version to get a consistent pack. It included BGS-C, BGS-I and BGS-M.

The following single packs had been released:

BGS-C was a modified version of Aegidians customsounds.oxp, based on Oolite's customsounds.plist.

BGS-I was a set of background images, based on Oolite's screenbackgrounds.plist.

BGS-M was a script controlling ambient music and ambient sounds plus a few special sound effects.

Tweaks

For Oolite v.1.91

There is an error in the bgs_hyper.fragment shader, which was always there but it now becomes obvious in the 1.91 version due to the new renderer.

Fix:

Open the bgs_hyper.fragment shader of the oxp in a text editor.

Go down to the very end, locate the line gl_FragColor = endColor;

Add the following just below that line:

gl_FragColor.a = 1.0;

Save the shader, run the game, all good. Original note here. By Another commander (2023)

Adding more audio

See Diziet Sma (2014)

Reference

How to tweak OXZ's

ID

identifier = "oolite.oxp.Svengali.BGS";

Requirements

Latest version needs Oolite v1.88.
Library 1.7.1 is needed for BGS v.2.5.1; Cabal Common Library is needed instead by BGS v.1.10.9. Library seems to clash with Cabal Common Library, suppressing the impact of BGS v.1.10.9 on the F2-F8 pages. But see Keeper's "BGS Soundset/Images", above.

F5 backdrop from older BGS (v.1.10.9)

Download

BGS 2.5.4.oxz Latest version including the option to use the old spiderweb hyperspace shader.
BGS 2.5.1.oxz (2018, oxz, 9.4 MB): honeycomb witch-space tunnel
BGS 1.10.9.oxz (2015, oxz, 12.1MB): spiderweb witch-space tunnel (this older version needs CCL instead of Library)
The older version with BGS X-mapping only works on pre-v.1.79 versions of Oolite. It is found here.

Soundsets

BGS Soundset PaGroove 2.3 .oxz for download
Downloads for the other soundsets are included in their descriptions above.

Documentation

Documentation for OXP-developers.

Links

Whichspace? (2009) - early discussion on improving witchspace tunnels & launch sequences
A better, more modern, user interface... (2009) - early discussion on improving the F# screens
Docking/UnDocking Effect Alteration? (2013) - the introduction of the BGS Docking/Launching sequences
Svengali's OXPs - Maintainers needed (2014) Discussion of BGS etc regarding the lack of interest in them by other Dark Arts devotees...
(BGS Curiosity) What voice is used? (2017)