Forgot to play? (a disscussion of OXPs)

[Ramen]

Hi there,

This isn't an OXP, but rather a dissucussion of a phenomenon.
For those who develop, have any of you ever found that you were developing Oolite OXPs (or Oolite, for the bigshots) so much that you forgot to play? I have recently. It's kind of odd.

[Cody]

This is not uncommon, and it is one of the main reasons why I've never let myself be drawn into making OXPs - the darkside consumes all!

[phkb]

I've certainly experienced that. Over the last two months I've been working on an OXP so much I had very little time to play. Just gotta fix that bug...

(Do you want that cookie? No? I'll have it if you don't want it...)

[Diziet Sma]

For those who develop, have any of you ever found that you were developing Oolite OXPs (or Oolite, for the bigshots) so much that you forgot to play? I have recently. It's kind of odd.

Congratulations! Now you know why we call it the Dark Side.

[SteveKing]

If we didn't have people who liked cookies and the lure of the dark side, the experience would be somewhat less... for us all.

Many thanks to all those that do. My long term advice - don't forget to play... sometimes.

[Layne]

Not even just making or tinkering with OXPs, but testing and tweaking them as well! This /always/ kills me, seeing new expansion packs, testing them out for a few days, deciding I either like them and want to experience them fully or don't and removing them from the game, finding new packs, new ways to polish the game...

This is a problem for me with any game like Oolite. It devoured Morrowind for me, I spent so much time playing with mods for that game that one day I realized it had been something like three months since I actually even played, I had been doing nothing but testing out mods the entire time. Oolite isn't /that/ obsessive... yet. (Fewer mods, believe it or not. There are literally /thousands/ for Morrowind.) But I get so involved in creating the 'perfect game experience' that I sometimes forget to just... play the game.

Really need to get out of that habit.

Right after I test some of those new ship packs Smivs was talking up.

Promise.

[Smivs]

...have any of you ever found that you were developing Oolite OXPs ... so much that you forgot to play?

Yes! It's probably been over two years for me

[phkb]

over two years for me

Yikes!

[Hastily tries to put back the cookies he had stashed under his shirt.]

[Norby]

Well, I never play more than short actions and tests at once due to reach my own Elite rank is not in my current goals.
OXP developing is an art in my eyes, like a car designer would like to make a good looking vehicle rather than win a race with the car what he made.

Moreover I have three sons who like the game and I enjoy watching their play, for example my youngest (3 years old) beta tester's usual phrase that he wants to dock into a "rock station". Btw he is able to do it using ILS ("the white dot help me").

[Cody]

Meanwhile, the real players play on - what care we for cookies! <grins>

[Smivs]

Well that's good - no point in us Darksiders doing all this stuff if nobody is going to play them.

[Cody]

Indeed - coders need end-users, and end-users need coders!

[cim]

have any of you ever found that you were developing Oolite OXPs (or Oolite, for the bigshots) so much that you forgot to play? I have recently. It's kind of odd.

It can certainly happen. I prefer working on stuff which requires a bit of flying around to test for that reason. I usually only have time to do one of "write Oolite", "write OXPs", "play Oolite", so anything which gives me the opportunity to combine two of them is great.