Oolite Bulletins

I don't think that story telling will work very well in Oolite without using graphics/scenes + sounds/music, etc. Place on screens is limited and displaying lots of pages with text only would be pretty boring, so you will need support by graphics to give the players brain something to work with. At least if you want to tell a tale. The art of creating such scenes is probably to leave out details to keep the game in the head.

And no need to be worried that Oolite could be turned in a first-person ego-shooter. The video demonstrates cutscenes to describe specific situations and to give them more depth. It's a support mechanism for storylike OXPs, not more, not less .-) Read some of the stories in the Fiction forum and start thinking about a way to recreate them as OXP - and you'll see what I mean.

I don't know if you got me right here.
I'm by no means against graphics.

For me, there should be nothing on the player's screen in Oolite which is not also displayed on the commander's display in the ship. Events in the station should be only showed as perceived through the ship's cameras, micros and communiaton system.

This, of course, may include graphics as well as text. If the guy/gal/thing on the other end is sending his/her/it's message not through teletyper but via videophone, that's much better. You could even include action sequences. He nervousely begs your help, then you hear a shot, blood spatters all about the camera, some other guy steps forward, tells you to forget about this and hangs up. You could oversee something going on in the hangar through your "normal" ship cameras.

By the way, I've thought about video messeges before (not only in stations, but also in flight). Never knew if animated graphics are even possible.

Big Bene wrote:

For me, there should be nothing on the player's screen in Oolite which is not also displayed on the commander's display in the ship. Events in the station should be only showed as perceived through the ship's cameras, micros and communiaton system.

Oh, I think I understood it right. My point was more that story driven OXPs may need at some point that the player leaves the ship if only for a short moment and then it needs support mechanisms. I absolutely agree that in most cases it is not necessary, but some story elements will need another approach. It all boils down to what the story needs. I'm currently experimenting with cutscenes and the mixture of static images and animated models looks very promising.

Big Bene wrote:

By the way, I've thought about video messeges before (not only in stations, but also in flight). Never knew if animated graphics are even possible.

A lot of things are possible .-) For the Vector I'm using static inflight overlays via shader. It would be possible to animate them too, but at the cost of a performance hit and it's probably better to use animations only when docked. The alternative way of using missionscreens inflight is - for me - a absolute no-go and it's also not possible to use models on missionscreens then.

Or take a look at the docking bay of buoyRepair. One of the screens uses a small looped animation. Same goes for Griffs stations (e.g. Seedy Space Bars and ConStores) or ADCKs bulk hauler.