Iron Ass OXP

The original Iron Ass Heavy Metal Dark Retro promotional teaser poster, at one time seen just about everywhere.

The Iron Ass OXP, or fully styled Iron Ass Heavy Metal Dark Retro OXP, is a ship retexture set expansion package by Murgh, utilising the original Aegidian models. When applied to the game, it will suppress most of the current native Oolite ships in favour of a dark, colourless, metallic monotone and primitive ship set.

Its name does mean to imply that these ships are excessively loaded with weaponry as the spacer slang term would suggest, but rather to signify that texturally this OXP is metal overkill.

Overview

This OXP is a derivative work of which nearly all ship models are the original datFile models of our august founder Aegidian, dating back fto from 2004–05, with inspiration and *lore* inserts drawn from the text and images from Holdstock’s Elite Space Trader’s Flight Manual “Observer’s Guide to Ships in Service”, and the classic OXPs of Smivs who carried the Oolite retro low poly style (let’s call it RELOPy) to the next level.

The usual media hysteria: Here the cover of What Spaceship?

This OXP aims at a different direction of “retextured core ships”, and tries to emphasise the tactile aspects of raw, gritty metal and an expression largely stripped of colour, a bit in the Soviet tradition, It adds a more primitive set of subentities, and tries to look further back to the feel of the Elite Manual as it inserts as many textual clues from the source as possible –to the extent of spoon-feeding– so one may be less dependent on the use of the ID scanner.

Ships here adhere to the laws a mandatory all-out grayscale iron look, no fancy painted decoration –only what can be scraped into the metal. Colours are reserved for compulsory red-green signal lights, and any neglect in keeping on the traffic flashers is an admission of a criminal intent.

Converse as this is to the trends of smooth design and intricate detail, this OXP is certainly not intended as any protest or revolt against the cutting edge progressive high poly work (let’s call it PROHIPy) of Griff and peers (Old Murgh is an avid fan). But sometimes, when the Ooniverse is partially populated with exquisite objects, the more ordinary ones tend to suffer in comparison, and sometimes, we need ugly.

Those open to a more simple, uniform, anaemic and dystopic Oolite experience may consider running this OXP.

Details

The splendid Oolite native Thargoid ships, stations, hermitage, buoy, splinter, missile, cargo pod and such elements all remain undisturbed. From the main Aegidian fleet, two ships have been replaced: the the Fer-de-Lance (too fat), and the Asp Mk.II (too long and upside down), in line with the aim to stay close to the original Elite shapes. The Aegidian ships do still appear however, as infrequent bonus ships under a "Prototype A" label.

Volume 1

*Actual ship sightings may appear darker in the game.

Coming volumes

Acknowledgements

• Nearly all the core ships are from Aegidian original models from 2004–2005, with only minor additions of protruding engine barrels and weapons nozzles.

• The shipset formats of Smivs, Smivs' ShipSet and The Classic Ships were very instructive, and some of his tireless pList legwork in plotting flashers, along with the very idea of having mandatory ship lights (for lawful space denizens anyway), have been gratefully appropriated into this OXP.

• Griff's lovely medical Moray symbol "the space physician's star", is also used here.

Download

• Iron Ass vol.1 OXP beta 1, 1024px version, Feb. 2022

License

As a derivative work of the original Aegidian models, this work continues to be licensed under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) To view a copy of this license, go here or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Fransisco, California, 94105, USA.

Hence, one is free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material, under the conditions of – Attribution, giving appropriate credit, – NonCommercial use, — ShareAlike, If you remix, transform, or build upon, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.