Manual Witchspace Alignment

Overview

This OXP seeks to add some interactivity to the witchspace jumping mechanic by requiring the player to manually align their ship with a jump target. Each possible local system destination will have a different target to align with. The jump countdown will only commence once the ship is aligned (with a margin for error). Additionally, if the target is blocked (occluded) by the sun, a planet, or a station, the countdown will be stopped until the player has a clear flight path to the target.

There are two distinct modes of operation, depending on your equipment and location.

No ASC or intergalactic space

If you do not have the Advanced Space Compass (ASC) installed, or if you are in intergalactic space, the following protocol will be in force:

When you initiate a witchspace jump, you will see the message "Align ship with hyperspace destination" appear on your console, followed by instructions on how to rotate/turn your ship to perform the alignment. In this example, the instructions are "Align: down and right (aft)", which means you must push the nose of your ship down, and yaw to the right to find the alignment beacon. The "(aft)" message indicates the beacon is behind you.

As your ship gets close to the alignment beacon, it should become visible on your viewscreen. There is some margin for error with alignment, meaning your ship does not need to be perfectly aligned in order to begin the jump countdown.

With ASC

When the Advanced Space Compass (ASC) is installed, the compass will show the location of the beacon.

Again, as your ship gets close to the alignment beacon, it should become visible on your viewscreen. There is some margin for error with alignment, meaning your ship does not need to be perfectly aligned in order to begin the jump countdown.

Jump occulsion

If there is a large space body between your ship and the jump beacon (eg, a station, planet, moon or sun), you will not be able to begin the jump.

In this instance, you must move your ship into a position so that any obstacles are not in the way.

Mis-jumps

You can still use the normal methods to force a mis-jump.

Nova systems

If the system you are in has gone nova, an emergency alignment protocol will engage, allowing you to enter witchspace without alignment, although some ship damage will likely occur when this takes place.

Jump Target Color Variation

It is possible to switch the color of the jump target on the HUD, if the Library OXP is installed. You can switch between the default blue, amber/orange, green, pink, purple and white. This can also be controlled through code.

As it is possible for 3rd party OXP's (like HUD's) to adjust the color of the jump target, if the user color preference has been set, a "User Override" value can be set to notify any 3rd party OXP that no color changes should take place.

Code to adjust the color of the jump target:

 if (worldScripts.ManualWitchspaceAlignment) {
   var mwa = worldScripts.ManualWitchspaceAlignment;
   if (mwa._userOverride === false) { // only do the change if the player hasn't told us not to
     mwa._color = 0; // 0 = blue, 1 = amber/orange, 2 = green, 3 = pink, 4 = purple, 5 = white
   }
 }

Deep Horizon Advanced Navigation Computer

The DH ANC is compatible with this OXP. If both are installed, but the ANC hasn't been purchased by the player, then the manual alignment method will be required. If the ANC has been purchased, the ANC's automatic alignment process will take place.

Acknowledgements

This work is quite heavily based on Cmdr. Cheyd and Phantor Gorth's "Deep Horizon Advanced Navigation Computer", and they have generously allowed me to include some of that code here. spara also helped by providing some code for checking if a point is behind a stellar body.

Download

Download ManualWitchspaceAlignment.oxz v2.4 (downloaded 240 times).

License

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

Part of this OXP uses code and models from the Deep Horizon Advanced Navigation Computer:

Navigation frame
Star textures and shaders
Code to spawn the navigation frame and star textures, as well as to realign them as the player ship moves.

The DH ANC has has the following licence amendments:

The files that make up "Deep Horizon - Advance Navigation Computer.oxp" shall be referred to in the rest of these terms as the "Work". The Authors are the authors of the Work. Any derivatives from this version of the Work will be referred to as a Derived Work. Historic Authors are all the authors (including the Original Authors unless this is the first version of the Work) that made ancestral versions of the code that go back to the original Work. The Original Authors are those that made the first version of this Work (i.e. Blake Deakins (Cmd. Cheyd), Phantor Gorth (Paul Cooper))

license: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license (Modified)
This is the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license as detailed at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ with the following additional terms and conditions:

1. These terms superseded any conflicting terms as found in the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.
2. The Work is provided on an "as is" basis and you possess and or use the Work entirely at your own risk. The Authors or Historic Authors are not liable for any damages or other consequences that arise from possession, use, or misuse of the Work.
3. You will not request support of any of the Historic Authors for issues with the Work. Any support is at the discretion of the Authors.
4. You will not criticise Historic Authors for issues with this Work if this Work is a derived work.
5. Derived Works must use a compatible license and contain these additional license terms and term descriptions that apply to the Release Version. The term Work will then refer to the Derived Work and any derived works of that new Work will become the Derived Work.
6. You will adhere to this license's terms and conditions fully up to the maximum allowed in your legal jurisdiction. Invalidation of any terms or conditions does not invalidate any or all of the remaining terms and conditions.

Version History

2.4

Alignment is now not required if a system has gone nova.

2.3

Fixed issue when escape pod is activated while visual effects are being displayed.

2.2

Tweaks to prevent JS code time-out conditions when cancelling the jump countdown due to misalignment.
Improved integration with BGS, particularly when starting a jump countdown when the ship is already aligned with the destination.
Improved integration with Countdown to Zero, to prevent timer garbage collection.
Code cleanup.

2.1

Added Purple and White color options, and tweaked the colors of the green and pink options (thanks to gsagostinho).
Added protection from out of bounds errors if color property is incorrectly set.

2.0

Added Amber/Orange, Green and Pink nav beacon variations, plus code to allow the color of the nav frame to be either selected by the user, or configured via script.
Fixed issue where selecting another ASC target would leave nav frame and star on the screen.
Code refactoring.

1.7

Starting docking computers will now correctly disengage the hyperspace countdown.

1.6

Jump is now cancelled if player starts a jump and then changes the destination system on the F6 chart before aligning with nav beacon.

1.5

Bug fixes.

1.4

Fixed issue where variable was not being set correctly when player ship is replaced.
Bug fixes.

1.3

Fixed JS error if Advanced Navigation Computer OXP is not installed.

1.2

Corrections to manifest.plist file.

1.1

Fixed issues in interstellar space where visual effects were not being removed if the hyperspace countdown was cancelled.
Fixed issues in normal space where quickly turning the hyperspace countdown on and off could lead to the visual effects not being removed.

1.0