Astrobe wrote: ↑Tue Jun 22, 2021 6:05 pm
Cholmondely wrote: ↑Tue Jun 22, 2021 6:45 am
Astrobe wrote: ↑Wed Aug 17, 2016 5:21 pm
5) Every ship is multi-role, and most of them are terrible at it. Freighters like the Python and Boa are basically just much bigger versions of the Mamba or Sidewinder - they fly about the same, they're just slightly tougher (and not even that much tougher). Compare with something like Tie Fighter or Freespace where a freighter is very definitely not a slightly bigger fighter.
I'm happy to edit stuff about this if told what to do. But what do our Admirals and Montana05 say? Or others with a good feel for the ships? Will we also need to make changes in the Vanilla game? And... why were they changed in the first place? Surely people knew what they were doing?
This apparently is me quoting someone else, cause I've never been in a Tie or played Freespace. Maybe I was agreeing with the quoted element at that time. Today it seems to me a bit of an exaggeration ; a Sidewinder with no cargo doesn't play the same, and the turn rates, max speed etc. do make a difference.
Apologies Astrobe, I'd completely missed your post...
I believe it was cim but may well be wrong.
Astrobe wrote: ↑Tue Jun 22, 2021 6:05 pm
The paradox is that, as I mentioned, when you start piling mods, you are actually making a game (with its own internal consistency etc.). And when you have a game, you cannot add just any mod anymore, because it will often destroy the internal consistency of the game. This is when you start to see (sub)game-specific mods, and it is exactly what is happening in Minetest. In Oolite, there's certainly mods from a same author that are designed to work well together. This is the prototype of a "subgame".
Well, kinda... Certainly I've made mods that attempt to order or work with other mods but there are a lot of set piece mods for oolite. Commies, Black Monks, Hoopy Casinos, Tardis etc. etc. It's the mechanics altering oxps that really change the game (and yes, carelessly installed UBER-ships that shift the difficulty dramatically in either direction or simply destabilise it).
In truth, I think it was there from the start. Why is the viper interceptor so much faster than the asp? It's not even close. Could aegidian have been anticipating oxp player ships that would inevitably be faster than the asp? i suspect so...
Astrobe wrote: ↑Tue Jun 22, 2021 6:05 pm
The paradox is, the stronger your game is the more trivial and the less significant (i.e. they don't affect the game in significant ways) the serious mods become.
Another one!
Again, it depends I think. However, perhaps there's a larger point here (desperately grasps for larger point...)
This dynamic tension between "strength" and elasticity is arguably what makes a game. If you lose either then it's essentially a book or an empty box. The core of a moddable game is often a bare bones but fun skeleton that people seek to flesh out but there will always be disagreement in the how to do so.
1984. wireframe elite, imaginatons run wild as to what the ships might look like between those wireframes. A year or two later we see them filled in with flat colours on some machines and some imaginations feel cheated, others delighted.
Astrobe wrote: ↑Tue Jun 22, 2021 6:05 pm
I think the player base would generally agree on not to go the "subgame" way, even though it is often said that "you make your own game with Oolite". This is a gentle lie. One likely prefers to benefit from the synergies created by a player base that play essentially the same game, not thousands of different games. Certainly one game that can be played in different ways is preferable.
Thus the argument to keep the wiki primarily about the core game (or at least to make clear the distinction). The easiest way to do so likely being not to pollute core game pages unneccessarily with oxp details as if they were 'canonical' or intrinsic (e.g. rattle cutter reference on viper page).
I think oolite can still be played in many ways and actually it's the myriad of which that has confused things (paradoxical as you point out). The way to appreciate the core game is to install too many oxps. The way to appreciate oxps is to install none. Choice is both a boon and a curse but with a little discretion (and likely a lot of trial and error) it becomes much more the former than the latter.
Astrobe wrote: ↑Tue Jun 22, 2021 6:05 pm
But if one agrees on "let's have a stronger core game", who can guarantee it will go in the direction *I* want ? This is perhaps the unspoken dilemma.
Even adopting Griff's shipset as core ruffled a few feathers, so one could argue it's been voiced a few times. I think you're dead right though but it doesn't have to be a problem as long as there are simple mods that address each of the main 'weaknesses'. Like the screenshots page on the oolite website, it can highlight all kinds of things that aren't in the game by default. Likewise the screenshots page on these boards.
Dilemma/paradox/dynamic tension/balance. as long as it lies in different places for different players then i don't think you can truly get it 'right'; what you can do however is plan for it to be both easily adjustable and to have a clear default setting to return too if you get lost.
hiran wrote: ↑Tue Jun 22, 2021 8:13 pm
My feeling is that interpreting the .dat files should not be too difficult
another_commander wrote: ↑Wed Jun 23, 2021 12:00 pm
The vector components you get from the bounding box are its dimensions.
Speaking of which, the Dat2Obj.py file doesn't seem to work with ooilte_shuttle.dat (Griff's model) whereas it does so just fine with the much simpler shuttle_redux.dat model.
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Alien Systems
