Oolite Bulletins

Star Gazer wrote:

I don't know, despite the problems, it is nice to see newer, younger bloods trying Oolite; it shouldn't become just some nostalgia fest for ageing gamers!

Definitely.

I should point out that that remark was not meant to be disparaging to, or age-ist about anyone - I am 64, so would easily be described as an 'ageing gamer'...!!

Star Gazer wrote:

I don't know, despite the problems, it is nice to see newer, younger bloods trying Oolite; it shouldn't become just some nostalgia fest for ageing gamers!

But newer, younger bloods do try Oolite, and we have several of them here on the boards.
The problem isn't so much age as temperament: some people simply won't play Oolite because they lack the patience and perseverance to perfect their docking skills, much less to aim for 6000+ kills on an otherwise nearly objectiveless game (OXP missions? Just side quests!); especially now that there's much more variety to choose from than back then.

Cmdr. Maegil wrote:

we have several of them here on the boards. ...
...The problem isn't so much age as temperament: some people simply won't play Oolite because they lack the patience and perseverance to perfect their docking skills, much less to aim for 6000+ kills...

Heh heheh! You now need to add 7 years to that age spread!! Although I'm sure there have been loads of young players join in that time.

Yep, that second point is the real nub of the matter, and there's no way round that, it's what the game intended. There used to be this really hilarious advert for Elite showing cartoons of different sorts of people and their Elite ranking, showing no obvious correlation between their apparent 'type' and the rank!

This still applies, though ...

One of them is on Rebecca's sig - "This girl is Dangerous".

I just think Oolite isn't the game for your brother and therefore Oolite should not be altered at all to suit him (or others like him).

As you say.

I don't know, despite the problems, it is nice to see newer, younger bloods trying Oolite; it shouldn't become just some nostalgia fest for ageing gamers!

That's all I'm saying. Oh, and by the way, my older brother is nearly 60 himself. He has been put through the gauntlet in the real world, and to blow people like him off because they don't have the same nostalgic interest in the game as yourself is a pretty cold, indifferent attitude. The real world holds more than enough challenges for any one person. Why the heck would you think that someone would want to up the ante in a game world. I've played a variety of shoot em' up games, and they all had ways of building up power, and resources as the need arose. I also have played a few that DIDN'T have those kinds of incentives, and I have noticed that they seem to have just kind of disappeared. As long as there are old Eliters around, able to upgrade the newer version to more eye appealing levels, then the game will obviously stand. I guess maybe that was what it was meant to do, just as Aurora slot cars are to those who first used them in the early 60s.

I like to play Oolite, and fly new ships, and battle them as well. I also like to do the trading side of the game, now that I understand the ins and outs, and have a Cobra III that can at least run away, if not able to fight off the bandits. I also know how to go out and get cheats, and am not afraid to do so. You can't do that in real world situations, for the most part. If someone walks up to you with a gun, on a dark night, with no one around to help you, you're pretty much screwed. Compare that to a person flying their first mission out of Lave, and the helpless feeling that accompanies being shot at by faster, much more heavily armed pirate ships, in numbers of five or more that seems to only want to kill you. You point out all of those sources of help for the game. How many people who stumble upon the game by sheer chance have any idea how to access those aides? Very few. I didn't. I continued on with the game out of being an ornery SOB, and searched out ways to improve my odds, so I could kick the butts of those that attacked me. That's a fairly natural reaction, IF you know how to access the tools.

I might be able to buy that those of you that started on Elite could go from the lowly Comdr. Jameson, up to unlimited heights, and so would those who are gamer savvy, or just down right mule headed (like me). Those who wander in, reading the words, and I quote "Question: What's the point of the game?
Answer: To fly from planet to planet, buying and selling goods, shooting pirates or committing acts of piracy. There's no goal other than perhaps to achieve the rank of ELITE." That was what I began the game expecting. What I wasn't expecting was that the pirates are all armed as well, or better than the beginner, and are all out to get you. It was more about survival than flying from planet to planet, buying and selling, and fighting pirates. I laugh at the "fighting pirates" bit, as it is more like fighting off pirates. Committing acts of piracy? It didn't even occur to me. Most people don't think in those terms, if they have any decency bread into them.

Shoot, I would have been happy if I at least could have had a chance to out run the pirates. Then I could at least have had the chance to actually fly from planet to planet, buying and selling, and building up enough credits to buy other tools necessary to move up in the game. Enough said. I really did not mean to go on like this, but just point out what it is like to be a beginner. Sorry if I stepped on any toes, but that's kind of what I do best.

snork wrote:

And I think to remember that at some point in Oolite history, Lave Academy (and maybe also another beginner-friendly oxp, I forget, maybe Traffic Control ?) had been included in the (trunk?) download - which I found to be a good idea per se, but maybe it is against some distribution policy (no oxps in the vanilla download or such ?) ?

Just to clear up any possible misunderstandings - and with advance apologies for the off-topic, this is not correct. Neither of the two OXPs mentioned was ever included in the official game distribution. What snork refers to is probably the Docking Clearance Protocol feature, which is indeed in the core code and disabled by default, but it is not the same as the Traffic Control OXP.

The only OXP ever included within the Oolite test release distributions is the Basic-debug.oxp, which is used to connect the game to the debug console and has to be up to date with the game's version in order to function correctly.

Now we return back to our program.

mandoman wrote:

just point out what it is like to be a beginner

While I fully understand what you're saying, I may remind you that just about everybody on this forum underwent this initiation.
Also, most of us did it on harder versions back when there was no internet from which to ask for help or advice (at most we relied on the tips and cheats sections of magazines like "Your Sinclair" or "Crash").

As I said, Elite does not suffer fools and has a stiff learning curve, so it's not a game for everybody... then again, not everybody likes the Command and Conquer or Warcraft franchises, and that doesn't mean they don't have huge fan bases.

mandoman, your brother's experience and your points are valuable insight. I can imagine that for many of us, the beginnings and beginner's frustrations with Oolite or even Elite are only a distant memory. While there is a lot of information for beginners available, it is not easy (enough) to find.

And, as far as I am aware, there is nothing that sets expectations about contemporary games straight: You have to be pretty bone-headed to make it through the early stages of Oolite. Today's games cater more and more for a less hard-core gaming audience than the games of the 80s like Elite. Oolite naturally follows Elite in this respect and I can understand it feels wrong to someone who doesn't want to spend all that energy that is necessary to get into it.

mandoman wrote:

How many people who stumble upon the game by sheer chance have any idea how to access those aides? Very few.

Sorry, I have to point out to you that you are completely wrong here. When you install Oolite, inside the root folder of your installation you will find the following documents:
- AdviceForNewCommanders.pdf: Written by Disembodied, it is a very light, entertaining monologue, supposedly given by the Lave-1 Dockmaster, where every little single tip and trick in the game is given, at the same time maintaining the atmosphere normally seen in Oolite Fiction. Go ahead and read it whenever you get a chance, I am sure you will enjoy it.
- OoliteReadMe.pdf: Generic information about the game.
- OoliteRS.pdf: This is the Oolite Reference Sheet, the Evangelion of Oolite. Anything you may ever want to check is there: Controls, game options, descriptions of the scanner elements, Observer's Guide to Ships in Service, trading tips, Elite rankings, what is legal and what is illegal in Oolite, links to this forum and the wiki and more.

All this is right there in front of anyone who installs the game, right there from the start. The aides can't be more accessible than what they are already. The sad truth is simply that nobody cares to read them. Which is a pity, given all the work that has gone into making them.

How about putting the documentation on a "Help" folder, and a help option on the main screen, linked to the folder? This way, people who usually only cares about which .exe runs the game will end up directed to, and reading, the documentation, and using the links.

If people can't be bothered to read documentation in the root folder of their game (also accessible from the Start menu), personally I can't be bothered coding links to it in any game screen, sorry. Too much work to be worth it.

I feel your pain...

Some sort of link to where the documentation is from the title screen would be an excellent plan. I'm the sort of person who will read read-me files, but when I installed Oolite I didn't need to find a root directory to launch it, the oolite icon just came up with the rest of my applications. Only later, after looking at the wiki and the forums did I find the files hidden away in some obscure part of my hard disk that I never have any reason to look at. (Mostly I think I just remembered the basic controls from ArcElite, and experimented for those I forgot.)

If it makes a difference I'm on Ubuntu.