Oolite Bulletins

hijong park wrote: ↑Tue Jun 18, 2019 1:05 pm

Hi, I'm Hijong Park who is having a hard time to enjoy Oolite. I like space and spaceships, so I want to like oolite, but simply can't. everything feels tedious and frustrating...

Hi Hijong Park.

I may have some good news for you: if you don't know it already there are likely oxps that can reduce both the tedium and difficulty significantly.

For example if the game is too hard, try phkb's population control mod. It's still being tested I think but it makes the 'safe' systems much safer and is great for getting started in the game - stick to the safe systems until you can afford a few upgrades and it should really help.

As for tedium, a personal bugbear of mine is the traffic masslocks that can take quite a long time to navigate through, and so I made the masslock compensator mod to require the player to spend less time escaping uneventful masslocks (and Norby has done similar with his  VariableMasslock oxp).

There are other oxps that make things simpler and/or easier (e.g. docking). Or, if there isn't an appropriate oxp then someone might even be inspired to write one for you.

In any case, thanks for posting and welcome.

Hello Commanders.

I have recently been getting back into this game. I forgot how truly fantastic it is. I'm really enjoying it.

I was wondering, though...

I used to do some coding (C++, C#, etc) for work and there are some mods that I would like to see. So, I was thinking rather than just wait for it, do something about it...

So, does anybody have any suggestions of where to start? Is there a good 'hello world' type of guide for modding this game?

Thanks.

Greg

Welcome aboard Commander.

As for your journey to the Dark Side the best place to start is with the Oolite wiki. There are lots of pages there on how to create your own OXZs. The best place to start though is HERE. Once you have the basics down and want to move on to the even Darker Side of things with JavaScript then you can head HERE. Any other needed info beyond that is easily found from the two pages referenced above. Spend a bunch of time studying what others have already done and it should not take you long to get into the swing of things. My starting frame of reference coding wise was much less than yours. It did not take me long to figure things out, although tweaking the work of others is still more my speed as opposed to creating OXZs from scratch.

Fly Safe and Dock Straight Commander.

Hello

I found out about this game while looking up open source games and found it interesting. While I personally enjoy Pioneer a bit more (easier for me to figure out) I've really been enjoying my time playing Oolite. I'm interested in trying to port the game over to a new engine, I'll post something in the forum when I have more to show or if I need help.

Hi skyace65, welcome to the boards! Feel free to ask for any help and advice if you need it - it's the friendliest place this side of Riedquat, or your pizza is free …

Hi skyace65,

Sounds interesting, which engine do you have in mind? And what improvements are you planning with the engine switch?

Welcome to the BB!

maik wrote: ↑Sun Aug 25, 2019 4:35 pm

Hi skyace65,

Sounds interesting, which engine do you have in mind? And what improvements are you planning with the engine switch?

Welcome to the BB!

Godot, it's an open source engine that uses the MIT license, and it's fairly popular with a lot of people contributing to the engines development.

There's a few improvements. Art assets could use PBR textures. The engine has VR support which would be great for a game like this. The lead engine developer is also working on Vulkan support which should be added with version 4.0 in a year or two.

I also think development could be sped up and more contributors could join the project. Artists would have an easier time contributing since they'd be using an interface to add assets instead of just code. And artists who use a modern PBR workflow could contribute. Additionally if anyone wanted to learn how the engine works to contribute they'd have all the documentation and community resources of Godot to learn from. And last but not least it wouldn't be just the Oolite team making improvements to the engine, the project would benefit from improvements anymore makes to Godot, which has a large number of contributors. That also means there's potential for bigger features to be added to the game, I'm sure everyone has thought of something they wanted but knew the project didn't have the manpower to get it done. With Godot some of that stuff might be attainable.

That said it would take a lot of time and effort to port everything over, and I know I can't do it on my own. I also know this will be a hard sell for the community since add on compatibility would be broken. But when it's done I think it will be worth it.

Good luck with that!

skyace65 wrote: ↑Mon Aug 26, 2019 6:19 pm

Godot[...]

Welcome to the forum skyace65!

Here's a bit of Godot inspiration, if needed

A GLSL textured planet in the editor window:


Runtime navigation for the above scene:


As a side note, if there would be the slightest chance to easily integrate a JavaScript runtime/library to support all the OXPs in the OOniverse, without recompiling Godot, I'd bet somebody would have started to build you a statue somewhere, already

Good luck!

After all the years of waiting, he's finally turned up, has he?

Cody wrote: ↑Tue Aug 27, 2019 12:14 pm

After all the years of waiting, he's finally turned up, has he?

Hello Commanders : )

Am I new or old, well I first played Elite 25 years ago .... then have never played since!
Long story short:

The other night I dreamed of the rotating docking station and woke thinking "I know that" so I searched for old space games and eventually found an image of the game I had dreamed of .... so a quick look later and I found Oolite Very Happy

I have only ever played Elite (from 25 years ago) along with Desent and Duke Nuken 3D .... then life changed and I never played anything again.

Now I am in my middle 50's and am hooked again .... OMG what a fantastic job all of you have done .... I can't believe it <huge smiles> and so many thanks.

Right now I am at 'Above Average' which is great .... many hours of fun lol

Never had a problem with docking as that is what I recall and I am nothing if not intent of purpose lol
Of course I have struggled to build up cash and also the old reactions arn't what they were .... but I will spend much time on 'milk runs' so the money does come in.

For other newbies a great milk run, to build some credits and have fun getting your ranking up, is between Laenin and Xexedi which are a 14 Tech and a 2 Agricultural so computers then furs.

How many runs I have done between these I have no idea .... but lets say that I just spent 47K on shields and have much everything else lol.

I do feel that I cheat though?
I will use the sniper and kill from a far (I only ever shoot at fugitives or worst ) and once I killed ten by using a cascade mine .... is that cheating? I do also go hand to hand if it is 1-3 .... any more and my current skill is not enough (using a keyboard but will get a joystick....which I recall I did wayback when).


So a question .... I got the bounty hunter pack and all the required extras as I tend more to that side of the game and am currently sat outside of a station with my target system trained on the docking bay.
I have the sun at my back and am 4km away.
The 'bad boy' is inside and (in game time) will leave in 2 hours along with his other ships. The bounty is over 6000Cr

Each ship that goes in or out gets ID locked by me lol and I am waiting for him.

I do not expect to win this but it is great training .... will this take now 1 hour 58 mins before he comes out?

Anyway .... brilliant to find this again and thank you all for the work you do (which I would like to get in to as well .... I write php so many I can learn the ways of the Ooverse)

Cheers

Edit to add a quick image of me waiting lol :




Edit again to add:

Damn it .... sodded up. Was reading and found that to get paid the full bounty I needed a Warrant Scanner and to scan the perp!
So I popped back in to the station and bought one then left again .... the time all changed and he had left already....

bloody hell .... my bad, I never really cared about the time (have done a few passenger trips and parcels but always just went and done them)

Learning curve lol

Welcome aboard, Commander!

As I think you've just discovered, docking and launching takes time, as do most things stationside - installing kit, for example.

Cody wrote: ↑Wed Sep 04, 2019 7:47 pm

Welcome aboard, Commander!

As I think you've just discovered, docking and launching takes time, as do most things stationside - installing kit, for example.

Hi Commander Cody .... wish that this could be a voip chat within the game when I am docked?

I knew that things took time but never really cared just wanted to build my baby up to strength!

I think that I read a post from yourself stating that docking time via the docking computer was 20 mins and you are of course correct.
So stupidly I thought 20 in .... buy the warrant scanner .... 20 out?
I had about 90 mins to play with but of course didn't consider that there would be a wait to leave!!

Learning curve lol

Have you a thread which will lead me to a greater comprehension of the construction of oxz?

Nice to be a part of this .... and again thanks for all the work you guys have done

The  Wiki is a good place to start.