NPCs?

[Timothy Joseph]

Hi. I've been playing Orbiter for a while, but I just now registered
for the board.

One thing thats always bugged me was how lonely it can be flying around by myself. I realize multiplayer is pretty close to never gunna happen, but I was wondering if some kind of NPC system might be possible. I know absolutely nothing about addon development, but since there are already autopilot type addons, it seems like independent craft wouldn't be that much of a stretch. Even if they only went between bases on the same planet, it'd be nice to have some company.

 

[Donamy]

I agree, the only way now to fly with anyone, is a playback scenario, but they fly the same way all the time. Would be nice, to meet a random space vehicle somewhere, and blow it out of the solar system, if you need to. j/k

 

[Talon1]

Well Timothy Joseph, me being an add-on developer myself (but I'm not quiet yet) I do think that it would be possible to have NPCs on orbiter and I would like to help you out, but I only know how to make ships and repaint though, not MFDs or autopilots. But I'm sure someone else know how to make it work, but not me; sorry

 

[Arrowstar]

A scripting engine should be available in the next version of Orbiter. It may allow what you're looking for, depending on the level of complexity the script author decides to put into the script and the exact boundaries what what the engine will allow.

 

[Woo482]

the new orbiter beta has Lua scripting And has a few auto pilots built in

 

[silent_protagonist]

I often use [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=3172"]Lola MFD[/ame] to replicate something like NPC traffic. Although only a few of it's programs are functional, there's enough functionality to do a fair number of different tasks, all completely autonomously once you get them going. Just the addition of a few rocket buses buzzing around Clavius Base adds an amazing amount of immersion to the simulation. It's a real shame that LazyD wasn't able to finish it. (Of course, loosing LazyD himself was far worse than loosing his work.)

 

[TSPenguin]

I realize multiplayer is pretty close to never gunna happen

to the forum!

And multiplayer is developed as we speak! The project is called OMP (who would have guessed ) and is beeing developed at sourceforge. They have a forum here.
There is also a very old playback on OH from a previous version.

Happy Orbiting