Pitching 3 sheets to the wind & wrestling with Griff..

[Vibrator]

New to the game, impressed but have two niggles:

Control: I've seen some folk saying it's just a matter of practice but unfortunately my experience suggests otherwise; using keys (classic Beeb layout) i'm finding it's impossible to aim accurately (especially pitch - try zeroing on a star!). In Elite the briefest tap produces a small momentum, which can then be cancelled with a subsequent counter-tap, thus centering the axis. This must sound familiar to all the oldskool pilots out there.. it's like a controllable inertia effect, which when mastered allows one to quickly and accurately set sights on anything.

In Oolite however, the smallest taps possible send the sights careering past the target before one can counter-tap, and then the attempted counter-tap does likewise, net effect being broad, uncontrolled sweeps - you might get lucky with a beam weapon but with pulses? Forget it.

Just fired up BeebEm to confirm this.. maybe in the old days input synced to the framerate better or something.. but still, there must be a way to tweak the handling to make it more accurate - if only the pitch control (that's the one that really counts, roll's easier to deal with).. I've seen non-linear repeat rates mentioned elsewhere on the issue - any chance of something like this ever getting implemented? (and please don't anyone try to tell me to use mouse/joy instead!)


Second issue, how do i get the intro demo to only show Griff's models? I only want to see Griff's models in-game, as the standard ones now clash horribly (no disprespect to anyone but you know what i mean..). Visual consistency is an important aesthetic wrt immersiveness, so i'm hoping there might be a simple fix for this somewhere?

Many thanks..

V.

[Cody]

Hi V and welcome… I can’t help with keyboard control, as I’m a ’stick man (although I used to play Elite Plus with keyboard only). Are you using the Griff all-in-one shipset? That should override all the core ships in-game… it does in mine (I like visual consistency as well). As regards the demo parade, I don’t think you can remove the core ships from that, but you can have a Griff spinning Cobra at start-up. I’ve gotta hit the sack now, so more help and details later tomorrow, or sooner from someone more knowledgeable.

Meanwhile, enjoy this great game, which is a considerable improvement on the original Elite.

[Vibrator]

Cheers, saw the Cobra fix, was kind of hoping for the whole shebang but it looks like a case of editing umpteen files, hardly woth it.. it's just that first impressions moment, a Griffs-only parade would be that much more wow-factor. Just read that V2 will be officially Griffed tho so that sounds promising..

[Capt. Murphy]

Hi,

Not generally recommended to mess with the core games configuration files but of you navigate to C:\Oolite\oolite.app\Resources\Config\demoships.plist (in windows) and rename demoships.plist to demoships.old or similar that will stop the core ships appearing on the demo screen, without breaking anything else.

To make the griff cobra the default player ship (and therefore spinning on the screen at start-up) I suggest making your own little OXP.

In the AddOns folder make a folder called something like Default_Jameson_Griff_Cobra.oxp

In that make a folder called Config, and it that folder using something like Notepad++ for windows made a shipdata.plist containing the following code.

Code: Select all

{
"cobra3-player" =
	{
		like_ship = "griff_normalmapped_cobra_mkIII_player";
		forward_weapon_type = "WEAPON_PULSE_LASER";
		}
}

or for the scuffed version.

Code: Select all

{
"cobra3-player" =
	{
		like_ship = "griff_normalmapped_cobra_mkIII_scuffed_player";
		forward_weapon_type = "WEAPON_PULSE_LASER";
		}
}

re control: I couldn't get decent control on keyboard only either and now fly by mouse having become comfortable with it playing ArcElite, Hardwar and Freelancer over the years. Right mouse button centres pitch/roll which allows for precision aiming.

[Commander McLane]

Control: I've seen some folk saying it's just a matter of practice but unfortunately my experience suggests otherwise; using keys (classic Beeb layout) i'm finding it's impossible to aim accurately (especially pitch - try zeroing on a star!). In Elite the briefest tap produces a small momentum, which can then be cancelled with a subsequent counter-tap, thus centering the axis. This must sound familiar to all the oldskool pilots out there.. it's like a controllable inertia effect, which when mastered allows one to quickly and accurately set sights on anything.

Welcome from here as well!

I am also an old school pilot, and have never used anything else but the keyboard. For me it works in Oolite just as you describe, I can counter any movement with the appropriate counter tap.

It gets difficult with low frame rates, though. So I'm wondering how many FPS you have. You can check this by pressing SHIFT-F. Also it would be good to know which system you have (computer, OS and graphics card).

[maik]

Control: I've seen some folk saying it's just a matter of practice but unfortunately my experience suggests otherwise; using keys (classic Beeb layout) i'm finding it's impossible to aim accurately (especially pitch - try zeroing on a star!). In Elite the briefest tap produces a small momentum, which can then be cancelled with a subsequent counter-tap, thus centering the axis. This must sound familiar to all the oldskool pilots out there.. it's like a controllable inertia effect, which when mastered allows one to quickly and accurately set sights on anything.

In Oolite however, the smallest taps possible send the sights careering past the target before one can counter-tap, and then the attempted counter-tap does likewise, net effect being broad, uncontrolled sweeps - you might get lucky with a beam weapon but with pulses? Forget it.

Hi Vibrator, welcome to the boards!

I've been using the keyboard for almost 6000 kills now, so it is possible. I find it difficult to yaw precisely, so I pitch below my target and then roll to line it up. Obviously, the further I pitch away the more precisely I can do that. Then I pitch back up again. Sometimes I need a few attempts until I get the pitching just right, but this does become better with practice. Nowadays I can shoot Thargoid robots from 10000+ away or shoot the side lasers off an Imperial Courier before he even knows he is being attacked.

Cheers,
-Maik

[Vibrator]

excellenté, thx everyone, got it set up nicely now with Griff's and Neolite. Re. mouse, i could cope with yaw instead of roll (a la Frontier), but only ever played ArcElite emulated and find it too hard to adapt to..! Guess i'll just get by with the keyboard for now..

oh and fwiw: i get a solid 60fps (presumably due to vsync - dunno how to turn it off) - Phenom X6 1990T, 4gb Corsair DDR3 2000MHz, GTX470 and Matrox double Triplehead (3840x2048), main OS: XP32/DX9. Might try it on a lower-end system over the w/e, maybe it'll feel more familiar at a lower framerate.. heh and anyway my reactions probably ain't half what they were back then..

[another_commander]

Re. mouse, i could cope with yaw instead of roll (a la Frontier), but only ever played ArcElite emulated and find it too hard to adapt to..! Guess i'll just get by with the keyboard for now..

If you press Shift+Ctrl+M instead of Shift+M to activate mouse control, you will have yaw instead of roll on the x-axis.

[DaddyHoggy]

excellenté, thx everyone, got it set up nicely now with Griff's and Neolite. Re. mouse, i could cope with yaw instead of roll (a la Frontier), but only ever played ArcElite emulated and find it too hard to adapt to..! Guess i'll just get by with the keyboard for now..

oh and fwiw: i get a solid 60fps (presumably due to vsync - dunno how to turn it off) - Phenom X6 1990T, 4gb Corsair DDR3 2000MHz, GTX470 and Matrox double Triplehead (3840x2048), main OS: XP32/DX9. Might try it on a lower-end system over the w/e, maybe it'll feel more familiar at a lower framerate.. heh and anyway my reactions probably ain't half what they were back then..

That's a fantastic screen set up you've got there!

We use TH2Gs at work for some of our flight simulators - although having bought some XFX Black Edition Radeon 5950s which natively do three outputs allowing 3 different defined viewports rather than just a stretched single screen we may be ditching th TH2Gs.

(we have also had loan of a Quadroplex box from Nvidia - now that was an amazing if incredibly expensive box!)

Some imagery on my box.net account here: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7637

And Oolite running on a 65" Plasma and a TH2G can be found in this album here: http://s292.photobucket.com/albums/mm21 ... e_screens/

[Vibrator]

Re. mouse, i could cope with yaw instead of roll (a la Frontier), but only ever played ArcElite emulated and find it too hard to adapt to..! Guess i'll just get by with the keyboard for now..

If you press Shift+Ctrl+M instead of Shift+M to activate mouse control, you will have yaw instead of roll on the x-axis.

Ah but of course... if i could only tear myself away from playing for 30mins* i might even RTFM...

(*same reason i ain't replied here in weeks)

Cheers,

V

[Vibrator]

excellenté, thx everyone, got it set up nicely now with Griff's and Neolite. Re. mouse, i could cope with yaw instead of roll (a la Frontier), but only ever played ArcElite emulated and find it too hard to adapt to..! Guess i'll just get by with the keyboard for now..

oh and fwiw: i get a solid 60fps (presumably due to vsync - dunno how to turn it off) - Phenom X6 1990T, 4gb Corsair DDR3 2000MHz, GTX470 and Matrox double Triplehead (3840x2048), main OS: XP32/DX9. Might try it on a lower-end system over the w/e, maybe it'll feel more familiar at a lower framerate.. heh and anyway my reactions probably ain't half what they were back then..

That's a fantastic screen set up you've got there!

We use TH2Gs at work for some of our flight simulators - although having bought some XFX Black Edition Radeon 5950s which natively do three outputs allowing 3 different defined viewports rather than just a stretched single screen we may be ditching th TH2Gs.

(we have also had loan of a Quadroplex box from Nvidia - now that was an amazing if incredibly expensive box!)

Some imagery on my box.net account here: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7637

And Oolite running on a 65" Plasma and a TH2G can be found in this album here: http://s292.photobucket.com/albums/mm21 ... e_screens/

Nice screenies... funnilly enough it only just occured to me last night to try single triplehead mode, and was impressed to see it scaled correctly - so many games producers these days complain that they can't implement triplehead support but it's surely just a case of using the correct scaling algorithm, as Oolite seems to demonstrate admirably - i get perfect circles on 6 screens or 3, with no warping towards the edges. There's just two slight flaws however:

The in-game options screen only offers resolutions up to 3072x1536 - to get the full 3840x2048 i had to edit .GNEstepDefaults. Not a problem, just noting it here for posterity..

Also, the FOV isn't optimal. That is, if i switch from 1280x1024 windowed to 3840x1024 full screen, the spinning Cobra at startup (and likewise thus everything thereon) appears significantly zoomed in. I get the impression i'm seeing maybe 60 degrees FOV at triplehead resoultion. Compared to say GTA IV (currently gathering dust since i installed Oolite of course) i'm guessing that must calculate the FOV based only on the vertical size? While Oolite's also factoring the width, perhaps unnecessarilly, and thus zooming in too far?

I obviously don't know much about this sort of thing hence all the handwaving, but the GTA IV example is the best reference point i can think of - in fact i've even tried it in double triplehead horizontal span (7680 x 1024) and i swear the game doesn't care what resolution you throw at it, it just stretches the visible width to match the same 1024 vertical pixels with no change in height or zoom of the viewfield. And it knows nothing at all about 'dedicated triplehead support' or any such nonsense...

If anyone knows how to tweak the FOV that'd be perfect, but if Oolite were able to implement the same scaling algorithm as GTA that'd be the icing on the cake..

[Vibrator]

..Oh and regarding keyboard accuracy - it's fine... i soon discovered the time rate control anyway (no doubt many a commander's dirty little secret heh)... but don't consider it cheating cos i live LIFE in bullet time baby, yeah, i'm like <snap> there, in the zone, in yer face, blink and you're dead MF. Slowing things down a bit just gives my keyboard time to keep up, is all...

So yeah, it's all good.