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

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

The Volume 1 OXP is a derivative work of which nearly all ship models are the original datFile models of our august founder Aegidian, dating back to 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.

This series of OXPs 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.

Volume 1

Details

Titled Volume 1: The Aegidian Shipset, it nearly does what it says on the tin. However, 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.

Gallery

*Actual ship sightings may appear darker in the game.

The less original Iron Ass Heavy Metal Dark Retro teaser poster of Volume 2.

Volume 2

Details

Pretentiously titled Volume 2: Inception Cameos, the name attempts to convey that herein lies ships that were present practically since the beginning, but for whatever reasons were given smaller roles in the history and lore of Elite ships. This is of course just a superficial concept since they are hardly unknown, but they were never featured in the glorious manuals, and their lot was to be destined to various degrees of supporting cast obscurity. Quite a few of them are however, in the opinion of some, very cool ships.

The 10 included ships in this package are the Bushmaster Miner, Chameleon, Cougar, Ghavial, Gnat, Iguana, Monitor, Ophidian, Salamander and the Wolf Mk.II. The original ship designs are believed to be by Warren Burch & Clive Gingras behind the Bushmaster which appeared in Archimedes Elite, by Ian Bell for the Cougar AKA Cat and the Gnat, and the rest by Angus Duggan author of Elite-A for the Chameleon, Ghavial, Iguana, Monitor, Ophidian, Salamander (not an official name), and by Rob Nicholson for the Wolf Mk. II, initially featured in MSX Elite.

The models were transcribed when possible thanks to the model collection of John Mackay (mackayj.doosh.net), and estimated by eye when no source was available. In the case of Elite-A, its Encyclopedia Galactica provided some of the shipyard names used in this OXP, but in other cases names have been tied to established names by reasoning and style similarities.

Young Murgh made the OXPs Wolf Mk II in 2005 and Old Ships in 2006, starting a long relationship with several of these ships and their unique shapes. They have also since been widely interpreted by many skilled modders, but with this Old Murgh closes his loop.

These very same models (except for the Gnat which is brand new to this author) are the basis of this OXP, however the textural treatment is quite another, and a result of techniques and tools that were (to this author at least) unavailable in 2006. Here the desire is to have more homogenously tesxtured ships fit seamlessly with the Aegidian Shipset in the Iron Ass style, in way maybe a little like most ships did a bit more when Elite was young.

As unaltered as possible from their RELOPy roots, only protruding weapons and engine barrels have been added to the 2005-06 models. Most of the ships are available for player ownership, except for the Gnat and the Bushmaster Miner which are uniquely NPC ships, due to their lack of galactic hyperdrives.

Gallery

Coming volumes

Acknowledgements

• Nearly all the core ships are from Aegidian original models from 2004–2005 (closely following the original designs of Ian Bell and David Braben), 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.

• The Inception Cameos ships are believed to be closely shaped after designs by Warren Burch & Clive Gingras, Ian Bell, Angus Duggan and Rob Nicholson.

Download

• Iron Ass vol.1 OXP v1.0, 1024px replacement version, March. 2022
• Iron Ass vol.1 OXP v1.0, 1024px addition version, March. 2022
• Iron Ass vol.2 OXP] TBA

Oolite BB thread

• Iron Ass OXP BB thread, for questions, bug reporting or otherwise putting it to Old Murgh

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.