shuttle launching framework

Lisense and copyright information:

Copyright (C) 2002 Evan Light (aka "sleight42")

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307, USA.

The author will at no point provide any technical support for this product.  
This product has been released under GPL so that the general public may 
support/evolve this product as they see fit.




Instructions and credits:
Launching Framework 051102b

by Evan Light aka sleight42
email: [email protected]

All rights reserved

This package and it's contents may not be redistributed without the explicit permission of the author.


INSTALLATION
------------
** BE SURE TO MAKE A BACKUP OF scripts/LoadBridge.py FROM YOUR BRIDGE COMMANDER INSTALL PRIOR TO INSTALLATION
** AND THEN DELETE scripts/LoadBridge.py 
Unzip the contents of the ZIP file into your Bridge Commander install's directory.
Rock on

USAGE
-----
In SP and QB, there are two more buttons off of Miguel's Science menu:

"Launch"
"<ship class>: <ship quanitity>

The second button displays the currently selected ship class and how many are aboard.
The first button launches one ship of that class from the first shuttle bay found on the player ship

That simple!

FOR MODDERS
-----------
The Carrier class may be subclassed to suit any class of ship with a shuttle bay.  Also, a Carrier
can carry any type of ship (including of it's own type) in any variety and quantity.  Loadouts are
now accomplished through the Launcher instances which, in turn, can optionally be grouped within
LauncherGroup instances.  See "Dauntless.py" and "Sovreign.py" for examples

CHANGE LIST
-----------
050102:
- Added Launcher, LauncherGroup, and LauncherManager
- Carriers now contain Launchers and/or LauncherGroups instead of containing "ships"
- LauncherGroups contain arbitrary sets of Launchers.
- Launchers require *TWO* hardpoints (important for future releases):
	-> an ObjectEmitterProperty named "<launcher name> OEP"
	-> a HullSubsystem named "<launcher name>"
	NOTE: It would be wise to have both subsystems colocated at the same XYZ coordinate on the ship
- For each Launcher/LauncherGroup, a "Launcher #" and "Type: #" button pair is generated in the GUI

050502a:
- User-definable AIs may be specified on a per ship type basis
- Launched objects are optionally commandable on a per ship type basis

051102a:
- Carriers are now "plugins" defined in /scripts/Custom/Carriers.
  See the included /scripts/Custom/Carriers/Dauntless.py for an example.  There have been some changes to Carrier
  modules since 050502a.

051102b:
- Fixed a bug introduced in 051102a where a Launcher can launch more ships than it contains.

KNOWN BUGS
----------
- Assigning a QuickBattle FriendlyAI seems to raise an error.  This is ignored for now but needs to be dealth with.
- Not compatable with MP (yet)
- Switching from a Carrier vessel to a non-Carrier results in the Launch buttons still being displayed
  on the Science Menu (working on this one right now...)

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