Oolite Bulletins

Smivs wrote:

So I think a choice should be available - players should be able to select between the proposed new ships and the original set.

JensAyton wrote:

OXPs are the choice mechanism. Putting a switch in the core game isn’t a solution to anything, it’s an abdication of design responsibility.

OK, so a 'strict mode' type switch for the original model set is not an option.

cim wrote:

It can be considered if the textures are there, though someone would need to volunteer to produce that set - I certainly don't have the texturing skills for it. How such a choice was presented would need some consideration: by far the easiest way to provide alternative models/textures is by OXP.

I would certainly consider taking this on, probably following the brief I detailed above. I would be interested to know the team's view on how this might be presented though. Assuming that quality and specification standards are met, would the 'Classic' ships set be included in the main game download, presented in OXP format, as a built-in way to give players easy direct access to the 'Elite' models/textures should they want them, or would this be viewed as another 'regular' OXP to be posted/hosted by the developer independent of the main game?

The last question was already answered by cim above:

Smivs wrote:

the 'Classic' ships set be included in the main game download … as a built-in way to give players OXPers easy direct access to the 'Elite' models/textures should they want because existing OXPs rely on them

Disabling the griffified set and enabling the classic set would then be the task of an OXP.

I think there is a mis-understanding here.
It was proposed that the original models and textures were kept in the 'resources' folder as some OXPs still rely on them, which is sensible and necessary.
I strongly feel that the classic ships (with improved graphics) should be a 'core game' option for the players who want them, and that an easy way to facilitate this was to include an OXP in the official game download that a player could simply move over into AddOns to action this. I am not proposing and do not favour yet another re-texture OXP - there are enough of those already.
My personal view is that the 'Elite' style ships are such an important part of our heritage that they should be retained as a core-game feature, as an alternative to the new Griffified ships. I believe I am not alone in thinking this - conventional wisdom has it that most players are still playing the game without any OXPs, and are therefore quite happy with the old ships (even with the basic graphics they currently have), and the popularity of OXPs to retexture the original ships suggests that many people like them enough to want improved versions, even though Griff's and other more detailed sets are available.

Whilst I see what Smivs has said and agree in some parts, I am concerned that some new players just download the game and run it to see what is like, then get put off by the old graphics. They then just don't bother to look further, and see what OXPs are available.

I would like to see us presenting the game in its best possible light, straight away, out of the box as it were.

Maybe there is a case for presenting downloads of different "builds" of the game, set up in different ways.

Exactly.
My proposal would address all these points. The game will come with the Griffified shipset as default which is what everybody agrees is the best way forward. However, by including the original models with improved textures, not only are OXP dependancies catered for, but players wishing to use the classic style ships would simply need to move the supplied 'Classic Ships OXP' (which would probably just need to be a couple of plists) into AddOns. Because this would be an integral part of the download everybody would know it is there, and nobody has to go searching for anything.

Smivs wrote:

Because this would be an integral part of the download everybody would know it is there, and nobody has to go searching for anything.

Many people simply download the game and run it, without looking at any other contents of the package.
Even the reference sheet PDF is often overlooked by many new players.

My take on this is that I assume an underlying consensus that we do want to improve the game graphically. And Griff isn't called "Oolite 2 Art Director" by accident. His ships were meant to be the basic set for Oolite 2. Even though this project has become defunct, it's clear that with all the huge steps forward that cim is currently undertaking in developing Oolite 1.79, the direction we're heading in is still basically the same as with the now defunct development goal.

In this context I see the wish to retain the Oolite 1.65 ships as understandable from an Oolite-1.65-era-nostalgia point of view, but not more than that. And this nostalgia can be satisfied by making them available as the core set by OXP. I'm absolutely positive that someone is going to write this OXP as soon as Oolite 1.79 is out.

But clinging to the Oolite 1.65 ship design no matter what strikes me as not really reasonable.

By the way: we had a long debate about which ship we want to represent the game on http://www.oolite.org, and we ultimately went for a Griff version of the Cobra III, not for the core version. This decision only made and makes sense in the context of moving Oolite's core ship design towards griffication, and the only reasons why this wasn't done already are the ones stated in the previous posts. If the 1.65-design would remain the core set indefinitely, then we have to immediately put an 1.65-design Cobra III on the game website, because then the website would not represent the game looks, and would be deliberately misleading. This is what we show to players who are interested in and want to download the game, and therefore this is what they should get.

Commander McLane wrote:

This is what we show to players who are interested in and want to download the game...

It really should be a Griff Cobra III in action though - not inactive, as it is currently. I agree with McLane's thinking, btw.

Commander McLane wrote:

In this context I see the wish to retain the Oolite 1.65 ships as understandable from an Oolite-1.65-era-nostalgia point of view, but not more than that. And this nostalgia can be satisfied by making them available as the core set by OXP. I'm absolutely positive that someone is going to write this OXP as soon as Oolite 1.79 is out.

But clinging to the Oolite 1.65 ship design no matter what strikes me as not really reasonable.

I think this is more 'Elite' nostalgia. Certainly for me when I used to play Elite back in the day I loved the game, but my one dream was for the wireframes to actually look a bit like spaceships. Oolite gave me that. Now I can play 'Elite' with it looking just the way I felt it should have done way back then. I could have updated to 'better' ships at any point, but I chose not to.
Maybe I'm the only person who thinks this, but I suspect not, so I think the desire to stay with the classic 'Elite' ships (as an option) is entirely reasonable.
As I've pointed out this could be achieved very simply without any compromise to the proposed upgrade, and without putting those who feel like me in the position of having to somehow find out they could do this, then having to go and find all the stuff they need to do it.

Smivs wrote:

Maybe I'm the only person who thinks this, but I suspect not, so I think the desire to stay with the classic 'Elite' ships (as an option) is entirely reasonable.

The existing core Oolite ships are not unmodified Elite ships, and I don’t think one can objectively say they’re “more like” the original Elite ships interpreted on a modern display than Griff’s are.

Ha, well, I seem to be a minority of one in feeling this way, so It's probably best if I just shut up!
<shuts up>

The station models are now in (coriolis, dodec, ico, hermit). Again, many thanks to Griff and CaptSolo for all their work on this. Griff has also updated the ship models so that they don't require subentities to work, and there's a new missile model.

Now, a question...

As currently committed, I haven't applied the Griff shipset roll settings to the models, so the hermit is stationary, and the other three rotate at the traditional speed. My personal opinion is that the improvements in appearance and sense of scale for making the main stations rotate more slowly are more important than the slight increase in ease of docking that results; conversely, rotating the hermit will help it fit in better with the tumbling asteroids around it. On the other hand, the current main station roll rate goes back to Elite, and the challenge of docking is a famous part of the game. What do people think?

I definitely think the larger stations (Dodo and Ico) should rotate slower - but I have mixed feelings about the more common Coriolis. Slower rotation looks better, for sure, but learning to dock at traditional rotation speed is a useful skill. Personally, I have Griff's three stations rotating at different speeds - and the hermit should also rotate.

If I go all Arthur C. Clarke on you the rotation should be lower for larger stations because the rotation is obstensibly to induce artificial gravity. A larger station will have higher velocity at the circumference inducing a larger velocity vector from the centrifugal force. Smaller stations should therefore rotate faster . . .

Let the artificial gravity flame war begin . . .

Firstly, some context for my opinion...

I played Elite on the Speccy in the 80s and I remember my early flights struggling towards Zaonce (I bought slaves in those days ), feeling the thrill of getting to the station, heading past it towards the planet, only to smash into the front of the thing as I made what I thought was a careful approach...

Yes, there was a thrill to my first successful dock but the disappointment that accompanied my early, numerous and time consuming attempts was tempered by there being perhaps no other game out there with anything even close to the same scope or appeal. I would argue that is no longer the case: the game that may have created the genre now has plenty of company. Besides, we were prepared to wait 5 minutes just to load the thing in those days and then struggle to get past that fiddley LensLok thingy as well...

If we wanted to be be really faithful to Elite we could remove the docking buoy. That's what made it difficult for me all those years ago: not the rotation, the lining up. However, I'm not suggeting that we do that.

For me, the only appeal to keeping the higher rotation would be to give beginners that same thrill I had way back when, however, it would be in a different climate now and I suspect that the reward to frustration ratio would have shifted significantly...

I vote for slowing them down. We don't do real scale in Oolite for good reason but anything that adds to the illusion of it is likely a good thing in my book.
For hermits, I'm not sure if I prefer them being stationary; maybe a very slow rotation for them

I mean, it's not like we're giving players a free docking computer or anything

Very much liking what I'm reading so far about the new changes. thanks cim & team