Keys not working

[varsator]

Hi all, I'm very happy to have found Oolite and this board. Thanks to all that made Oolite possible.

I've been playing for 2 weeks and got to 651 - Dangerous, 25000 Cash.

I experience a bug (I think) with my keys. It seems that double F keys are not working. This means F3F3 or 33 for Ships for Sale, F5F5 or 55 for Ship's manifest, F8F8 or 88 for Carrier Market. Only F6F6 works for switching between Short Range chart and Galactic Chart.
I thought initially that these screens unlock at some point when I have enough money or a high combat rank, but discovered accidentally that I can get to the Carrier Market screen by pressing ? (SHIFT + /).

I also experienced some other bugs that didn't bother me much and also found they were already reported. I just list them here for confirmation:
- cargo space of 50 when I bought the Large Cargo Bay. It seemed to me that it disappeared when I bought the Fuel Scoop, leaving me with 50 tons of cargo in a 35 tons space.
- cargo canister firing back. I was shooting at a cargo canister that was ID recognized as Cobra Mark 3. Whenever I shot it my front shield got down, along with the sound of a hit to myself. No visual on the laser that shot me. Probably I was just shooting myself in the foot, or it was one of those High Reflective Mirror Cargo Canisters.
- missiles coming towards me, but not hitting, just circling on my tail. It seemed to me that those were missile of dead ships, but I don't know if it makes sense.

[Loxley]

First things first, welcome to the board.

The cargo bay thing is a known bug and will disappear when you reload your game. I believe it's fixed for 1.74.

Yes missiles can be a bit inaccurate against smaller craft, personally I use them for distraction purposes against heavy odds. You can improve accuracy in the game script (don't ask me how) but bear in mind this works for NPCs as well as you.

As for your other two questions I'm afraid you'll have to wait for someone brighter than me to come on line (don't worry there are plenty of them about.)

edited to add: I did once see a constore ID'd as a Cobra MK3 though, that was weird.

[Corny]

Hi all, I'm very happy to have found Oolite and this board. Thanks to all that made Oolite possible.

Hello and welcome to the friendliest board this side of Riedquat™!
I can't help you with most of your questions, thoguh...

- missiles coming towards me, but not hitting, just circling on my tail. It seemed to me that those were missile of dead ships, but I don't know if it makes sense.

As far as I know, missiles are randomly accurate (don't know if it's still that way in 1.7x), so you might just encountered a very inaccurate missile.
To get very accurate missiles, follow these steps. But be aware of the fact that all missiles will be deadly accurate then - both yours and NPC missiles.

[snork]

Hej varsator. Welcome.

The ship market and the carrier market - I think the game only starts calculating what to show when you actually press F8F8 or F3F3.

I am on a really slow computer and it always takes a moment before either shows up, particularly F8F8, that's just normal to me. The first time per station that is.

F5F5 and F6F6 work fast for me though.

Moreover, I have a cheap and really crappy Saitek keyboard, that easily bends away when I press buttons in the upper middle of the keyboard - maybe you have a similar effect from a similarly bad keyboard ?
(for me z, u, 7, 8, F6, F7, F8 are affected - see my signature^^) (the p is a different story)
----------------------------

- cargo canister firing back. I was shooting at a cargo canister that was ID recognized as Cobra Mark 3. Whenever I shot it my front shield got down, along with the sound of a hit to myself. No visual on the laser that shot me. Probably I was just shooting myself in the foot, or it was one of those High Reflective Mirror Cargo Canisters.

hehe, cool. I have not encountered such a thing myself.

I've been playing for 2 weeks and got to 651 - Dangerous, 25000 Cash.

Playing only for 2 weeks (already?) myself.
Nice to see how different the game can go / be played - I have 300 hits only, but 200,000 credits (and a top notch Cobra 3).

PS - anyone else having trouble to type Fx ? I tend to hit the actual F5 key in those moments where I want to write "F5". ^^

[varsator]

I experience a bug (I think) with my keys. It seems that double F keys are not working. This means F3F3 or 33 for Ships for Sale, F5F5 or 55 for Ship's manifest, F8F8 or 88 for Carrier Market. Only F6F6 works for switching between Short Range chart and Galactic Chart.
I thought initially that these screens unlock at some point when I have enough money or a high combat rank, but discovered accidentally that I can get to the Carrier Market screen by pressing ? (SHIFT + /).

I finally tracked this down. It seems it is not a bug, but an "undocumented feature".

At some point, when I started playing, I switched to "strict play" because I wanted no "easy stuff". I don't remember all the features in the original Elite, but it seems it didn't have the F3F3, F5F5, F8F8, the i in the short range chart and many of the items that you can buy for the ship.

To fix this I just removed the strict play flag from the save file, since it seems you can not switch back to unrestricted play and maintain your data.

Code: Select all

<key>strict</key>
    <true/>

I suppose what can be done is to make some notes in the wiki and the documentation about the features that are not available in the strict mode. Maybe there are others like me that do not remember exactly what the original features were. I may do it myself, just have to find in my backups the Z80 emulator and the Elite game.

TRIVIA:
In 1991-1992 I was playing Elite on a Z80 computer that was named COBRA, coming from "COmputers BRasov", where Brasov is a city in my country, Romania.

[Loxley]

Glad to hear you solved your problem. If you look at the strict mode poll in the discussion forum I believe Ahruman has posted a list of the differences between strict mode and the open game.

[Cmdr Wyvern]

As far as I know, missiles are randomly accurate (don't know if it's still that way in 1.7x), so you might just encountered a very inaccurate missile.
To get very accurate missiles, follow these steps. But be aware of the fact that all missiles will be deadly accurate then - both yours and NPC missiles.

Deadly accurate? No, not really. But certainly more dangerous. It's like taking missiles piloted by a nearsighted trumble, and giving the trumble a pair of glasses.

[Eric Walch]

Only F6F6 works for switching between Short Range chart and Galactic Chart.
I thought initially that these screens unlock at some point when I have enough money or a high combat rank, but discovered accidentally that I can get to the Carrier Market screen by pressing ? (SHIFT + /).

I don't remember all the features in the original Elite, but it seems it didn't have the F3F3, F5F5, F8F8, the i in the short range chart and many of the items that you can buy for the ship.

But that means than pressing the ? key in the long range chart is a bug. It would enable a strict player to still access the contract screen and accept contracts. With potentially other problems as other parts may not be prepared for a strict player to do contracts.

I just added a check for strict play when pressing the ? so it will be fixed in the next release.

Thanks for reporting back.

[varsator]

Thanks for reporting back.

I wasn't reporting that bug, so nothing to thank me for.

It would enable a strict player to still access the contract screen and accept contracts. With potentially other problems as other parts may not be prepared for a strict player to do contracts.

I actually did a contract, moving some computers from one place to another. No problems though.

[Commander McLane]

@ Eric: According to Ahruman only the passenger runs are disabled in strit mode. Which means that you still can do contracts, and that the "?"-key therefore should rightfully work.

[Eric Walch]

@ Eric: According to Ahruman only the passenger runs are disabled in strit mode. Which means that you still can do contracts, and that the "?"-key therefore should rightfully work.

Strict means strict: the same set-up as in original elite and that did no have contracts. And for accessing the contract page in the normal way with F8F8 there is a check for strict mode to prevent access to this page.