Oolite Bulletins

Cody wrote: ↑Sun Jun 28, 2020 2:14 pm

Are you aware of Roolite

No, I wasn't.. and honestly - I coudn't care less About 20 years ago I may have needed it, but now I prefer the original.. Same goes not only for video-games but also for the movies, books and so on.

Cody wrote: ↑Sun Jun 28, 2020 2:14 pm

and welcome aboard!

Well, thank you!

Welcome, evelblade!

roolite.org has outdated main page and activity in Russian sector of Ooniverse is not high, but I hope you can find some interesting content in our forum.

Just to say a hearty "Thank You" to those intrepid experts in matters computational who have enriched the dreaded lockdown period for me. I encountered Elite back in the late 80's on the BBC Micro. I stumbled across Oolite last year but never really looked into it. Now with a bit more time on my hands ....
Over the past month I've been very impressed by your game, the OXPs which transcend the Elite experience and the good-hearted humour evident in the advice on this bulletin board.
I hope that you have all found a similar silver lining in the current restrictive moment.

Cholmondeley

Welcome aboard, Commander!

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Tue Jul 07, 2020 4:25 pm

Just to say a hearty "Thank You" to those intrepid experts in matters computational who have enriched the dreaded lockdown.

<buffs nails on behalf of the boffins responsible for matters computational>


Disclaimer: I ain't no boffin, I'm merely responsible for matters janitorial.

Milo wrote: ↑Mon Sep 17, 2018 10:11 pm

Cody wrote: ↑Mon Sep 17, 2018 9:29 pm

The basic compass does switch from the planet to the station when close enough, but it doesn't change to a square - it remains as a circle.

Aha. I see this now. That is very non-intuitive! Maybe worth changing for newcomers. It won't really affect veterans with ASC anyway.

I've proposed specific code changes to make the basic compass display a station square instead of the planet circle when it targets the station, which happens automatically (current core behavior) while you are inside the planetary aegis (or the aegis of the main station, if it's not fully contained by the planetary aegis).

May I offer all of those involved a big thank you for all the hardwork that has gone into the Oolite Universe.

Salutes

Welcome back, commander!

Hi everyone! I'm joining the party from Hungary (TL10 Mainly Agricultural democracy as someone here described it, though I'm not exactly sure about any part of the description), from a little, well, place outside even villages. But we have electricity and 'net and it's all that matters, we can get drinking water with an electric pump after all

I'm not that new in oolite anymore though I''ve certainly a lot to learn. It was just today that I figured out a flying pattern that helps me survive indefinitely after hopelessly crowded arrivals in a dreaded isolated anarchy. Okay, I've heard about 'spiraling' but I needed to learn how to stabilize my direction to actually get somewhere. I haven't reached the station yet, btw, my patience got in the way At least I killed a few assassins of the 24 or so before I got shot (I know I can do better!) before I died...

I played a lot with vanilla oolite (like several hours per day in the last 2 months...? It's really addictive...), getting used to the difference between this new game and Elite that I started playing again this spring.

Oh, Elite. Yes, I had played it a lot in my earlier years. I used to have an 8-bit micro back in my elementary school days, one you've probably never head of, but someone made an Elite port for that one too. It's called Videoton TVC and this version of the game surely isn't listed at Ian Bell's download page Probably a descendant of the ZX spectrum version, both machines being Z80 based, but with the higher resolution and color depth, and the slightly lower CPU clock it was even slower. Actually, it was painfully slow. Today I can't even understand how I could play with it but I certainly did, a lot.

Then, on PC, it got better. Today I have a large variety of vintage parts I can fire up to play Elite and my 286/20 is great at Elite Plus, it runs it fluent, except in the face of a sun, but I don't really care. It starts to get laggy on slower 286s and the older PC Elite is just a bit better, being well playable on slower 286s but still horrible on basically any 8088.

Later I "built" another PC for Oolite too (really it's just a PSU+m/b on my desk with a spare keyboard and mouse...), one that I can play at a low energy consumption. Funny enough it's from AMD's infamously power hungry "Bulldozer" clade, the Piledriver->Richland branch more specifically (and A4-6300 most specifically), yet it plays most of the game under and around 30W, and gives me 60fps in 1080p/extra detail everywhere except for close-ups of the planet where I don't fight anyway so that 30fps loss can't hurt anything. It's a neat tiny board with an old but silent cooler and a small SSD sitting on the top of a 80+ gold PSU, certainly not that power hungry, but very humble and made entirely of e-waste

When I first tried Oolite I found it somewhat vexing and hard to played in comparison but got used to it and I find the extensions to the old frames really nice. The passenger/parcel system is something I really enjoy, after trading for a while and iron assing my mk3 (flies under the name of Coffin II btw, as I died really fast in its predecessor, and still die in it time to time ). I still trade along the way, visit Rock Hermits (another nice addition), fight pirates and assassins, laugh at their messages (some comms OXP, a later addition), and sometimes even mine.

This was that got me to download my first oxp this week. It's ore processor which turns asteroids into chocolate calendars bringing some more fun into boring industrial-to-industrial trips where I usually resort to mining. Then came some infotainment, like logs and a trophy list, and just after this all I got into changing the visuals which, as my girlfriend noted, is somewhat lame for the age and resolution.

So, enter Elite Dangerous HUD. Visually very pleasing at the first sight, and quite functional, not even that heavy on the hardware, the little A4 can still maintain the same frame rates. But something was very, very wrong. Ah, yes, the cockpit blocked much of the view, being annoying at fight and mining and aiming. The screen simulating rear view with those big fake pixels, even worse in a sense. Well, here comes some reading and realizing that the cockpit can be turned of. Hell yeah, the author thought of everything! Well, not entirely. Or, perhaps we just think differently. The stained glass stayed, together with its vignetting which is the worst of the package...

So, enter OXP editing. I'm not in OXP editing up to my upper arm, no. But at least I cleared glass.png's opacity so I got my clear view back in "glass mode". The cockpit is just an eye candy that I don't really use. Perhaps I need to make a whole reduced version...? Someone may benefit from it. And there may be one similar thing around in the wild, I don't even know, the OXP manager's long list makes me dizzy and I don't want to try everything (on my online Xeon then transfer it to the offline FM2 A4)

Ummm... oh, I know what I forgot about. Someone mentioned feline commanders in the ship's cat topic. Well, I haven't tried that OXP as I count myself a feline commander. That's the thing. I don't know the exact Elite-ish specifics, but certainly feline. A Siamese in color, smaller than a human but bigger than a house cat, I can stand on two feet for extended periods of time, this is how I give their parcels to my clients. And, being 2020 in real life, I'm wearing a mask and gloves while doing so

OK, I think it's enough for my first post. May the god of goat soup bless everyone.

A nice intro! Welcome aboard, Commander!

Good morning to all from a wild and windy West Wales. I have been silently browsing these boards for several weeks; seeking information and help with this great game. I have always found threads that provided me with the assistance I was looking for. whilst being impressed by the friendly wit and expertise of the principal posters. I thank you all for a wonderful, collaborative creation. I am a dusty traveller with unpolished social skills: as such I would probably have remained hidden within the little known swatchways of galaxy seven had Cholmondely not sent me a kind and welcoming PM. Realising that the paucity of my credentials were preventing me from offering a courteous reply; I heave myself to to the tables top to dance the dance of self introduction. To Cholmondely; I will reply when the necessary permissions have been granted. Fair winds and plenty of booty to you all.

Robbybach

Welcome aboard, commander!

Hello, my name is Caleb and I pilot a Cobra Mk III (or Cobbie as we tend to call it) named "Iron Ass Miner". The name suggests that mining is my main profession. On the Earth ads often lie but if you saw the "strike it rich" ad for an ore processor, trust it and buy one. You WILL strike it rich. There is a lot of money in the rock when you have this nifty kit in your belly. That is how I managed to turn my "basic Cobra Mk III" into a fearsome beast that tends to turn even Carrier Fugitive Barons into "pet food orbiting around whatever world they had the misfortune to meet me and shoot at me".

Just meeting me isn't enough to make me a shooting madman. I usually don't "kill for a few credits". Even 900 Cr is "a few credits" for me. Just don't shoot. Don't even do anything that will make you turn red on my scanner. Because if you do, my killer instinct will kick in and you are pretty much spacedust now. Even fuel injectors won't get you out of trouble.

But I am also nice. I might let you run away and forget your offence if you ask for mercy nicely. Just remember to use the magic word. "Please" is the magic word.

There is one exception: Thargoids. True, these bugs shoot on sight but they usually don't meet me. Unless I get bloodthirsty. Or whatever-fluid-thargoids-use-as-blood-thirsty to be exact. But I don't care about these exacting scientists and their language crapola so let's simply say that Thargoids have blood from now on.

I have more combat stories to tell. Like how I hunt Thargoids. Or how the Carrier Fugitive Barons turn into "pet food orbiting around Isveve" (as my flight instructor said before stamping my flight license) and why I nickname them Carrier Fugitive Idiots. Or some funny encounters with pirates whose last thought was "yet another miner we get to rob, look at all these minerals" before things got very, very screwy very, very fast for them.

Tell me if you want to hear them and whether I post them here or better make their own thread for them. Right now I think a dedicated thread is going to be better as there is a lot of stories.

And last thing. I have a mental issue that prevent me from using a mouse efficiently when writing. So my posts will tend to be very plain-texty like this.

And now, some little about myself here on Earth. My name in this universe is Jozef, I am from Slovakia and I first got to play Elite on my university when someone left a cracked copy of Elite Plus on the harddrive. The crack did not only remove the password screen "copy protection" check but also the ability of NPCs to damage the equipment of the player ship. I went from a harmless outsider all the way to Elite and did a few missions but eventually wanted to redo the game from the scratch as I wanted more weapons, different ships, better trading screen ... Yes, I am a programmer.

Then more pressing matters took hold and my Elite dream went dormant ...

... until I found oolite. I don't remember the fateful Google search query that brought it to my attention but there it was. a redevelopment of Elite. My first impression was that this version is much harder as now allowing your shields to fail in a skirmish cuts into your profits drastically and I had to change my habit of "fighting hard until the final energy bank is tapped, then break off".

But, eventually I learned enough combat tricks to not only survive the skirmishes but also keep my bank account intact. Now I can appreciate the fine work the developers did on this. Like, being able to see the main space station from the witchpoint. Or the asteroid finding trick: go to the sun and then watching for moving things as I am coming back.

Or, how the NPCs here feel like they are piloted by real humans (or other animals) with real imperfections. In the original Elite, dodging didn't have a lot of effect. When I played the game, I felt like the ships were piloted by mindless robots with perfect aim. Maybe that was the reason why the frustrated player that had the copy before, hexedited the equipment damage out. With a bunch of perfect robot fighters there is no hope of avoiding to be bogged down by repair bills and the game feels extremely unfair.

But with the fine grained NPC AI of oolite, dodging finally works and the NPCs can have an awfully hard time landing a shot on you that stings. Now it is actually possible to rely on your real shields for your protection rather than the emergency hull shields that drain their energy directly from the banks.

And, then I found the BGS OXP. Svengali, what you did to the hyperspace sequence is absolutely fabulous. I remember the first day after installing this I just kept reloading the game and redoing the hyperspace jump that I had prepared there just for the sake of the experience. Until I realized there was a parcel transport contract with a destination that was quite a number of jumps from my current system and my skirmish skills and combat kit were both complete enough to have a reasonable chance of survival without losses.

Now, as my previous post shows (which I wrote from the point of view of the avatar I have in my ooniverse) I am a killing machine with a rather screwed hobby of misjumping into the interstellar space to hand the ass to the bugs, reaping a fat bounty in the process (my last spree netted over 4k with 100+ ships dead). In the system pairs where I operate I sometimes leave a derelict Carrier sitting helplessly when a Fugitive Idiot thinks the firepower is so uber that he can pick on a Cobra even though its name advertizes that it is an "Iron Ass".

Welcome aboard, Commander... nice intro!

I have more combat stories to tell Tell me if you want to hear them and whether I post them here or better make their own thread for them.

Tales from the spacelanes are always welcome.

Welcome Caleb to the Ooniverse!

Thank you for your positive review. You have good story telling skill, more will be warmly welcomed in the Tales from the spacelanes topic. Exactly as our fast-welcomer Cody said.
Happy bug-hunting!