Doing an actual Oolite Manual

[Disembodied]

@ KZ9999: regarding quotes, you're more than welcome to extract any words of wisdom you like from Mr Gimlet. Usually the problem is getting him to shut up...

[Commander McLane]

If you want it in all it's beauty, it's none of these, but Her Imperial Majesty's Space Navy. And this is canonical, because it's the only way the Navy is addressed in the game itself (during the two built-in missions you are doing for the Navy). There is of course some confusion about what Empire and which Majesty the term refers to. It can't be the Duvallian empire, because this has only male lineage. It has to be GalCop's Navy, so this is for some reason its official title. As it is quite long, I think it is safe to assume that there are abbreviations as well. I think 'Galactic Navy' is fine as a short form.

My impression of the Constrictor mission was always that this was some local government that wanted my assistance. I never really played the abominations Frontier and first Encounters.

However I think this comes from Elite being British. H.M.S Hood for example, so the writer of the mission just threw in that organisation / fighting force, because continuity mattered little when Classical Elite was written.

Somebody (perhaps Selezen?; I forgot) gave me an explanation once when I asked what Empire is referred to. It's not pefect, but I sort of like it.

You actually are doing the Constrictor and Thargoid Plans missions for the Galactic Navy. Both are in the context of countering the Thargoid threat, so it is not likely to assume that a single planetary government would try to defeat the Thargoids all by itself.

We know that Lave is sort of the capital of GalCop, therefore the Galactic Navy may have its seat there as well, and many of its higher ranking officials may be Laveian. Lave is a Dictatorship, in game terms. Nows let's assume the head of state in Lave is an Empress. Then the old, proud, and a little arrogant officers in the Navy (they are from the main planet among the Old Worlds, something like the elite of GalCop; that should be more than enough reason for some pride and arrogance) would have got into the habit of calling the Navy Her Imperial Majesty's Space Navy. Certainly sounds better. Cadres from other planets would of course disagree; after all the Navy is anything else than a Laveian enterprise.

This however is a perfect opportunity to agree on something canonical, in regard to abbreviations for nameplates..

I never Understood the behemoth Designations

INB
INBO

I think this is because of another confusion. Some scripters thought of an Intergalactic Navy, instead of Galactic Navy. Personally I prefer Galactic Navy, though.

[KZ9999]

Just an update on the manual project.
Here are the terms so far that will be standardised through out the book

The Galactic Cooperative of Worlds is officially abbreviated to GCW but commonly called GalCop.

The military of the GCW is the Galatic Navy or Navy for short.

The police network is the GCW Police Network and officially abbreviated to GalPol.

Hyperspace was the official term for subspace travel due to the fact the manufacturers branded their tech with that name. Witchspace is the spacers term for subspace. The spacers' term is superseding the commercial term due common usage. The manual will use the term hyperspace for the older technology, star drives etc; witchspace for the newer tech, ie fuel injectors.

Each galactic region is called a Galaxy or Chart.

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The next question is the preferred terms for the following:

In-system jumping, which term is the best.
Cargo Pod or Cargo Canister.

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Could I some have nominations for example worlds for each type of political system in industrial , mainly indi/agro and agricultural worlds. I could pick some, but if you folks have some favourites I would love to hear.

More information as it develops.

[Disembodied]

In-system jumping: call it the Torus Jumpdrive, or just the Jumpdrive (it's activated by the "J" key, after all). The game makes reference to "hyperspeed mass-lock", but there's obviously the possibility for confusion between "hyperspeed" and "hyperspace".

Cargo pod or cargo cannister: call it whatever the game calls it when you target one (I can't remember offhand what gets used, and I'm at work just now and can't check it out...).

As for planetary descriptions, there are half a dozen in the Rough Guide to the Ooniverse: one Poor Ag Anarchy (Riedquat), one Rich Ag Dictatorship (Lave – which incidentally gives a possible explanation of the "Her Majesty" thing), one Poor Ag Dictatorship (Reorte), one Rich Industrial Corporate State (Zaonce), one Average Industrial Democracy (Tionisla) and one Poor Ag Confederacy (Isinor). You're free to take anything from this that you like. The planets were chosen to be immediately familiar to starting players – they're all within one or two jumps from Lave – rather than as examples of the different types of political systems or economies.

[Disembodied]

Cargo Pod or Cargo Canister.

The in-game text is "Cargo container".

[Commander McLane]

And the next issue would be Escape Pod vs Escape Capsule. The game sort of uses both terms:

Code: Select all

	<array>
		<integer>6</integer>
		<integer>10000</integer>
		<string>Escape Pod</string>
		<string>EQ_ESCAPE_POD</string>
		<string>A simple emergency capsule with a life-support system, purchase includes comprehensive insurance for your ship and systems.</string>
	</array>

[wackyman465]

Actually, isn't it HIMS?

[KZ9999]

In-system jumping: call it the Torus Jumpdrive, or just the Jumpdrive (it's activated by the "J" key, after all).

Torus strikes me as the name of the orginal designer or research group. Technically the engine would be an interplanetary jump drive, the predecessor of the interstellar jumpdrive sic hyperdrive/witchdrive. I'll mix the terms of Torus Interplanetary Jumpdrive and jumpdrive.

Cargo Container it is as the game text itself is canon above all else. I'll use Escape Capsule as the formal term, and Escape Pod as the spacer term.

As for planetary descriptions, there are half a dozen in the Rough Guide to the Ooniverse

Thanks for the pointer. I'll use that as the starting point of the text.

One of the things that I am avoiding is the use of any material that is still someone intellectual copyright. Unless it's public domain, Creative Commons, or GPL licenced, I can't use it in the manual. Case in point, even though there are various copies of the original Robert Holdstock manual floating around on the net, that still remains his creative copyright till 70 years after his death. Unless someone can point me to documentation to say it's part of the public domain, using any of its contents is a big no no.

I'll be honest, by the time this manual is done, I think there's going to be a half a page devoted to acknowledging the sources of the material and the people who created it. <sigh>

I'll have the sections covering the equipment, upgrade process, repairing damage and buy/sell ships finished by next week have it check by my willing victims <cough> volunteers.

[KZ9999]

For those who are interested in the saga of the Oolite manual.

I'll have to push back the first section upload to who knows when. Having downloaded several hundred pages of matereal and screaming very loudly at the 'free wheeling' structure of the wiki, this is becoming a very big task.

To create the material, I have to write several hundred words to cover the simplest thing, then edit it to make a concise entry in the manual. Combined with the fact that some of the Ooniverse's physics go beyond handwavium in to insanium territory, the Torus drive creating a 'ring of gravity' springs to mind.

Robert Holdstock had it easy as far as I can see, he was 'god' and what he said goes. I'm more the chairman of committee, walk a consistent line between some very differing opinions.

Still, I like a challenge.
Mabey after this I fix the wiki too. <said in rye tone.>

I'll return this thread, or create a new one, when the first section is completed.

[CptnEcho]

"With the work you've done so far, I'd wager you've earned a rye", I said in a wry tone.

[Disembodied]

I wouldn't worry too much about creating single canonical explanations to cover everything: apart from the difficulty of getting general agreement, Oolite's a pretty freewheeling game. Everybody will have their own ideas, not to mention OXP sets and custom setups. The main fuction of the manual should be to give new players a quick and easy introduction to the basics, and to the general overall feel of the core game – descriptive rather than definitive.

The engines are a good example: rather than trying to work out an explanation that everyone will agree on for the underlying technobabble physics, it would probably be best to stick to a description of what the ships do in-game – i.e. how they handle in space (pitch/roll as the principal manouevre, the difference between cruising and the torus jumpdrive, what a mass-lock means, the need to put some distance between you and the station before you make a hyperspace jump, the fact the the glowing blue spheres are other ships' wormholes, etc.).

[Commander McLane]

I agree with Disembodied. Though it certainly is tempting to create an 'Oolite-Bible', it would be (1) far beyond the scope of a manual and (2) doomed anyway. Because of the freewheeling open source nature of Oolite there simply is a lot of diverging and even contradicting background information. I don't see how it all could be reconciled.

Therefore a manual should focus on the things Disembodied mentioned: Brief explanations on what the player actually is seeing in-game. Of course you can always drop a hint that there is deeper and more convoluted information available for those who are interested; but to integrate it all in a manual would be an overwhelming task. For both writer and reader. The newbie Ooliteer will certainly appreciate a 5-to-10-page manual. I doubt that he would read a 200-to-400-page contains-everything before even firing up the game.

As far as 'fixing the wiki' is concerned, I don't want to discourage you, but I don't think it's even possible. The very nature of a wiki means that everybody else at any point can 're-fix' your fixtures again. On top of that it is a living, growing knowledge base. New articles are added all the time, and they may not adhere to the 'canonic' knowledge, contradict it intentionally or because the author doesn't care or doesn't know. Do we want an editor who censors new articles? Certainly not.

Bottom line is: We simply will have to live with a certain vagueness and certain oddities. The Ooniverse is not Middle Earth, which was carefully designed by one man only who had full control over it all the time (and even he managed to build in some contradictions, simply because his own ideas changed and developed over the course of decades).

[Disembodied]

Of course, there's nothing to stop you just making up stuff yourself and sticking it in the manual. As long as it doesn't contradict what actually happens in the game, it's all up for grabs. There are some pieces of background which a lot of people here have sort of accepted, to an extent (e.g. The Dark Wheel, Drew's fiction, Selezen's timeline), but an imaginary reality should be flexible enough to accommodate a range of opinion. You're more likely to achieve something approaching canonicity through the gradual spread of a really cool idea than by getting an agreement on the forum, among a small number of self-selecting enthusiasts (i.e. us), as to which piece of pretend science is best. Have you ever herded cats? Cats with short attention spans, in a room full of shiny dangly things?

If people like your idea, they'll absorb it into their own concept of what the Ooniverse is really like. If they don't, they won't. Some people like the idea that the universe of Elite/Oolite is the same thing as the universe of Frontier – others don't, and there's no adequate way to change their minds. Some people are perfectly happy to see TIE fighters and X-wings duking it out with Constitution-class starships, somewhere over Riedquat – others won't have any ships in the game at all but the original Elite set, in their original shapes.

If the manual is useful, then it'll be used. If it contains cool ideas, then they'll probably be used too. Do your own thing. If it grossly contradicts any kind of concept or idea that anybody has set their heart on, I'm sure they'll let you know, and you can accommodate them, or not, as you see fit.

[DaddyHoggy]

I agree with Disembodied. Though it certainly is tempting to create an 'Oolite-Bible', it would be (1) far beyond the scope of a manual and (2) doomed anyway. Because of the freewheeling open source nature of Oolite there simply is a lot of diverging and even contradicting background information. I don't see how it all could be reconciled.

Therefore a manual should focus on the things Disembodied mentioned: Brief explanations on what the player actually is seeing in-game. Of course you can always drop a hint that there is deeper and more convoluted information available for those who are interested; but to integrate it all in a manual would be an overwhelming task. For both writer and reader. The newbie Ooliteer will certainly appreciate a 5-to-10-page manual. I doubt that he would read a 200-to-400-page contains-everything before even firing up the game.

As far as 'fixing the wiki' is concerned, I don't want to discourage you, but I don't think it's even possible. The very nature of a wiki means that everybody else at any point can 're-fix' your fixtures again. On top of that it is a living, growing knowledge base. New articles are added all the time, and they may not adhere to the 'canonic' knowledge, contradict it intentionally or because the author doesn't care or doesn't know. Do we want an editor who censors new articles? Certainly not.

Bottom line is: We simply will have to live with a certain vagueness and certain oddities. The Ooniverse is not Middle Earth, which was carefully designed by one man only who had full control over it all the time (and even he managed to build in some contradictions, simply because his own ideas changed and developed over the course of decades).

Babylon 5 is a good example JMS had it all planned out in advance the whole story arc - only spoilt a bit when the Network told him (initially) there would be no Season 5.

Regards Middle Earth - Christopher Tolkien seems to be prepared to publish every single scrap of paper his father noted down - as much of this was early ideas of Middle Earth much of it is replaced by the more definitive form of something like the Silmarillion and a lot of it is just plain contradictory - but nevertheless Christopher Tolkien keeps knocking the stuff out - and he's not selling it to me - because I've given up trying to ignore the contradictions.

[Commander McLane]

Regards Middle Earth - Christopher Tolkien seems to be prepared to publish every single scrap of paper his father noted down - as much of this was early ideas of Middle Earth much of it is replaced by the more definitive form of something like the Silmarillion and a lot of it is just plain contradictory - but nevertheless Christopher Tolkien keeps knocking the stuff out - and he's not selling it to me - because I've given up trying to ignore the contradictions.

I like at least some of it—simply as an 'how it could also have been'.

(As an aside: isn't it marvellous how we manage to derail each and every thread? )