A series of suggestions from a new player.

vede · Post by **vede** » Sun Dec 06, 2009 5:27 am

Well, greetings, Oolite community! I recently found Oolite looking for a good, free space combat trading game I could play on Linux (pining for some Flatspace, actually, but alas, it's Windows only). I've been having a lot of fun (despite my failure as yet to even upgrade any of my weapons or ship parts), but I, as is to be expected with any game, have some suggestions to make it better. For me, anyway.

One: Remove that autopackager stuff

I really don't like it when I download a game, and I end up having to adapt to a new installer program, or the game doesn't give me control of where it goes. I have a particular setup, and the autopackage creature that Oolite is packaged with only managed to make Oolite the only game on my computer which breaks form and isn't in the same directory as all my other games.

It would be far better for the game to be released as a simple .tar.gz or .zip than as an autopackager package thing. They're standard, they're simple, and everyone knows how to use them.

Two: Randomly generated galaxies

This is actually something I liked in particular about Flatspace. It generated the world from a seed (as Oolite does), but also allowed the player to specify their own seed from which to generate the play area. Such a feature for Oolite (even if it was only one galaxy, and not multiple, like we have currently) would be very nice, since I really like knowing that my game setting isn't the same as the last one I played, or even the one before that. A brief chat on IRC brought to my attention some hurdles, such as making sure that all sectors were reachable, and making sure that no sectors were in the same spot, and making sure that no sectors had... ahem... objectionable names, but each of these seems like a moderately easy obstacle to overcome.

Three: Some interface improvements

One thing I noted almost immediately upon entering the game was HOW IN THE FLARGBAMMIT DO I GET OUT OF THIS SCREEN. Of course, I guess it was totally my fault that I had no idea of any of the controls, seeing how I hadn't read a single readme or control reference, but the fact that navigating the station menu isn't naturally understandable is a bit of a flaw in the game's interface. I think a good (and easy, I suspect) way to avoid this problem would be to add some intuitive buttons to the top (or bottom, wherever) of the station screen. "Undock" "Market" "Job boards" et cetera. (As a corollary to this, I think a more unifying "Game Menu" should be implemented, such that pressing, say, Escape will bring up the standard Pause -> F2 menu, and that the F2 menu should be removed from the station menu.)

As a sort of sidenote, the mouse's double click seems very unresponsive, such that sometimes when I successfully double-click, I don't think I managed it, and try again, only to be greeted by the menu before I finish the new double-click.

End suggestions! Discussion goes down there! VVVVVVV

Post by **Cmdr James** » Sun Dec 06, 2009 10:41 am

I think the files are already available as a tar.gz, and are certainly available as source and a makefile, but Ill leave someone who plays on Ubuntu to talk about that.

The random seed is interesting, and would be easy to implement, but oolite attempts to recreate the elite universe, so this isnt going to happen (perhaps in Lesradeas fork though)

I dont know about interface changes, I quite like it the way it is, ad again this is faithful to our old friend elite. I guess there is no harm in buttons, but I never needed them. Perhaps having escape bring up context sensitive help might be a good idea.

At the end of the day you said it yourself, you didnt read anything and had no idea of the controls. There is only so far we can go in making things intuitive, I find it very easy to have all the options as the top row of buttons (numbers), and having played FFE again yesterday it felt clumsy using onscreen buttons.

Wiki pages · Post by **Thargoid** » Sun Dec 06, 2009 11:44 am

Or to quote the age-old mantra - RTFM.

There's a nice quick reference page in the distribution which details all of the keys Oolite uses, what they do and when they do it. Print that off and keep it beside your keyboard, or read, learn and inwardly digest.

As to the auto-package option, Linux I believe is designed to put things where they should be, and the AP will deal with required dependencies and other things like updates. If you look in the Linux forum here you can see how to install the trunk via auto-package (now working again thanks to Getafix) and how to build the thing from scratch. The former is one click (ok, a couple of clicks, but even an idiot like me can do it), the latter about half an hours work. And I believe actually the auto-packager is the ubuntu standard, although am willing to be proven wrong there.

I know which I prefer

vede · Post by **vede** » Sun Dec 06, 2009 8:00 pm

Thargoid wrote:
Or to quote the age-old mantra - RTFM.

There's a nice quick reference page in the distribution which details all of the keys Oolite uses, what they do and when they do it. Print that off and keep it beside your keyboard, or read, learn and inwardly digest.

As to the auto-package option, Linux I believe is designed to put things where they should be, and the AP will deal with required dependencies and other things like updates. If you look in the Linux forum here you can see how to install the trunk via auto-package (now working again thanks to Getafix) and how to build the thing from scratch. The former is one click (ok, a couple of clicks, but even an idiot like me can do it), the latter about half an hours work. And I believe actually the auto-packager is the ubuntu standard, although am willing to be proven wrong there.

I know which I prefer ;)

I have the controls pretty much down now (and have for a while, went to RTFM after I couldn't figure out how to get out of the station screen), but having to navigate the station menus with the keyboard is still an annoyance for me. I don't think the keyboard navigation buttons should be removed, but I do think that some buttons should be added. Even after a number of plays, I'm finding myself fumbling around on my row of number keys looking for the screen I want. I understand that you're trying to make an experience similar to Elite, but really, I don't see the need to remake it exactly as it was. And if you're trying to do that, then you've already gone too far. As far as I see it, remaking a game is a chance to fix what it did wrong, and a needlessly unintuitive interface is a mistake in my book.

As for autopackager and dependencies, I already have all the dependencies, and even though Ubuntu does have a package manager, I don't ever use it for games, and rarely use it for applications. I have a specific place I like my games to go (I have a second hard drive for all my games, music, movies, etc.), and every single game I have on my computer went there when I downloaded it. Except for Oolite. Getting Oolite there after using autopackager is just unneeded hassle.

And I don't think autopackager is the standard for Ubuntu, since Oolite is the first time I've ever seen a .package file. Generally applications (and generally only applications) are released in .deb files and use... I think... Synaptic? I dunno, I rarely use it in the first place.

Post by **another_commander** » Sun Dec 06, 2009 9:07 pm

The thing is, we don't support only Ubuntu, nor we are making what's standard exclusively for it. Autopackage is the only way to have one installer that works for all Linux distributions. If you want an Ubuntu deb package, feel free to browse http://debs.oolite.org.

aegidian · Post by **aegidian** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 3:06 pm

It would be nice to have a handy reference strip that we could place either next to or under the clear plastic strip that's above the function keys.

Post by **another_commander** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 3:37 pm

What we really need is an intro screen that serves also as a reminder. If the player choses No, game exits immediately, yes proceeds with the rotating Cobra:

Post by **Kaks** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 3:42 pm

A_C, I'm disappointed: in trunk you can change 'Mission Information' to 'RTFM Police'!

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 3:53 pm

aegidian wrote:
It would be nice to have a handy reference strip that we could place either next to or under the clear plastic strip that's above the function keys.

We should talk to these guys.

ClymAngus · Post by **ClymAngus** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 4:30 pm

Ahruman wrote:
aegidian wrote:
It would be nice to have a handy reference strip that we could place either next to or under the clear plastic strip that's above the function keys.
We should talk to these guys.

Oh how quickly the high and mighty forget, the subtle arts of Clym:

Post by **Kaks** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 4:34 pm

The original post also had a link to a pdf too, if I'm not too mistaken...

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 4:36 pm

In Xanadu did Clymla Khan
A mighty pleasure-keyboard decree…

Post by **another_commander** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 4:36 pm

Kaks wrote:
A_C, I'm disappointed: in trunk you can change 'Mission Information' to 'RTFM Police'!

Sorry for the delay in fixing this, had to RTFM on how to do it first

ClymAngus · Post by **ClymAngus** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 4:42 pm

Ahruman wrote:
In Xanadu did Clymla Khan
A mighty pleasure-keyboard decree…

Where oolite, the sacred rapture, ran
Through servers measureless to man
Down to each desktop, see?

Post by **Kaks** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 5:02 pm

another_commander wrote:
Sorry for the delay in fixing this, had to RTFM on how to do it first

Seriously, a 'mission screen' (or two) that can be shown instead of 'load saved commander Y/N' if the save-game directory is empty wouldn't be too bad an idea.

We could have a very much pared down version of the readme, something like:

arrow keys: control craft
a: fire laser
w: go faster
s: go slower

1: leave the station, start flying!
2: save / load game, game settings

5-8: special screens, press twice to see more

shift-q: leave game

You can only save your game inside main stations, look at ReadMe.doc for much more info.