Oolite Bulletins

Commander McLane wrote:

Honestly, if the developers wanted to remove yaw control with the next version, they'd have my vote.

They certainly wouldn't have mine! Seriously, I don't know how you guys can live with the standard set-up -- or even with cursor key flight controls, come to that. My Logitech Attack 3, set for pitch & yaw, turns me (geriatric reactions and all) into an awesome killing machine!

Anyway, to answer the question, Elite mattered to me because of the addictive nature of the game. I'm competitive by nature, and was determined to get that elusive 'Elite' rating. I played it for 18 months or so, as I recall, and have to admit I did find it rather 'samey' after a while, a problem that Oolite has done much to address with its vastly improved graphics and wealth of OXPs.

Albee wrote:

My Logitech Attack 3, set for pitch & yaw...

It's OK, we all know you're a bit weird Albee

(Truth is you have to be to fit-in here)

Multiple Genres is big selling point for me.

Want a shoot em up? , Maybe a sprawling RPG, What about a racing game where you have to out run your opponents ! or perhaps a Platform game where the object is to get to the next level . One game multiple boxes ticked.

So many subsequent games, with all their bells and whistles, mostly fall into one or rarely two of the above.

Almost in the same age as Asteroids and Galaga, Elite stands almost alone.

1st person perspective! ...in multiple senses of the word.
You were not tied to just moving a little ship on the screen left/right or rotating/thrusting.
You were IN the ship and the universe moved around it.
And that universe was unforgiving!
You could get attacked by pirates even in the "safest" system.
What was both routine and mundane, docking at a station, was in itself almost enough to prepare you for dogfighting. Most of us had to do trial-and-die/error learning how to do that well.
Any hyperspace jump carried the risk of a Thargoid ambush, the largest of which could tax the skills of even the best players due to the sheer numbers of Thargoids+Thargons you could end up facing. I don't recall ever beating such a fight "fairly", I always had to use the energy bomb, run away, and/or die. About 4 Thargoids was my max and then only if I got lucky.
As for the actual dogfighting, pitch + roll but no yaw was "limiting" for those of us who did play flight sims, but that limiting also forced us to work harder in dogfights. If you wanted to chase the enemy, you better be able to turn and roll with him! (Incidentally, the lack of yaw made side lasers almost useless to me in Elite.)
The different views was also an improvement on what came before. You could go past an asteroid and switch between front, side, and then rear view to get the feeling that it was receding in the distance.
Distance and speed mattered more than just range of your weapons. Against some ships, you could out-corner them and get inside their turn radius. Battles couldn't always be won because you could out-twitch the enemy. You had to manage your resources -- switching between lasers to keep their heat below max, maybe fire off a missile if you think they won't ECM it, keep your "best" shield towards the biggest threat, and keep moving or they'd (more quickly) shoot you to bits.

There was a hidden oxymoron and paradox.
Despite the menus when you docked at a station, you never really left the ship you piloted.
...yet it still felt like you were going PLACES.

Albee wrote:

I played it for 18 months or so, as I recall, and have to admit I did find it rather 'samey' after a while, a problem that Oolite has done much to address with its vastly improved graphics and wealth of OXPs.

I even feel that way about Oolite, and am struggling to add and modify various OXPs to give more diversity to the systems. I added many of the OXP stations, but modified their spawning conditions so they typically were exclusive events. There might be a Superhub, Sothis, Globe, or Nuit station in a system (along with the main station), but there was only ONE of those and it was the same one there the next time you visit. Each one of those has slightly different commodities market prices/amounts, to match their special roles.

My Switeck's Shipping OXP tries to give more complex behavior to the most common but least appreciated ships in the game: traders! It goes further and tries to do the same for pirates and Thargoids. Yet no new ships were added. You may never notice any of the changes unless you know where to look...or until one day it kills you!

My videogaming story is different. I come from PS3 and I just got tired of videogames that flatter me.You're always the hero, the coolest guy, the über-whatever... even in sandboxes. Here you're just a speck of metal among the stars.

That and OXPs, of course.

Albee wrote:

Anyway, to answer the question...

Except that I didn't, did I? Elite still matters to me because of the freedom it offers w.r.t. career choice. Playing the game as a trader doing his best to stay out of trouble feels very different to a slaughter-the-whole-damn-lot-of-'em pirate, though both can be very satisfying. And then there are the OXPs, offering further possibilities.

Smivs wrote:

Albee wrote:

My Logitech Attack 3, set for pitch & yaw...

It's OK, we all know you're a bit weird Albee

More than a bit, truth to tell but regarding choice of main flight control it seems I'm the only sane one here! I know there's pleasure to be had from taking a hard thing and doing it well, but deliberately choosing to use pitch/roll cursor keys smacks of masochism to me.

If you enjoy a challenge, why not write an OXP that reverses the cursor keys every few seconds, whilst randomly assigning the laser fire button to one of half a dozen different keys? Think how much fun you'd have then!

Switeck wrote:

My Switeck's Shipping OXP tries to give more complex behavior to the most common but least appreciated ships in the game: traders! It goes further and tries to do the same for pirates and Thargoids.

I must confess I haven't looked at this OXP yet. I'll check it out asap.

Albee wrote:

I know there's pleasure to be had from taking a hard thing and doing it well, but deliberately choosing to use pitch/roll cursor keys smacks of masochism to me.

Why is it masochism to play Elite/Oolite the way everybody (= millions of players) played it from 1984 to 2007 (when yaw was first introduced in Oolite 1.67)? It's the normal thing to do. Are you telling me that I (and everybody else) did it all wrong? Elite cannot possibly be played the way I (and millions of others) have been playing it for 28 years now? That strikes me as a little odd.

Zptr wrote:

So, to start, why does Elite still matter?

Want a reason? Read these http://www.wagar.org.uk/?page_id=20

For me, and many people I guess, the original was released at the perfect time to become an enduring classic. It is the original enduring classic after all. I was all of 10 years old, hugely into sci-fi and fantasy, and the concept of having a computer in the home was still only a few years old. Most games were pretty basic and then suddenly 'Wow' - Elite - this clearly was the future! I played it on the Acorn Electron for a good 2-3 years as a youngster, and bought the Amstrad version when I got that computer. As an adult I tinkered with Braben's sequels but they never floated my boat, and again got rehooked when Elite TNK and it's derivatives were about. Oolite is my third maybe fourth relapse, and with it's flexibility and modability has rekindled that early excitement. The only other game that has really caught my imagination in the same way over all these years is Hardwar (another title where the authors credited Elite as a major inspiration).

Albee wrote:

More than a bit, truth to tell but regarding choice of main flight control it seems I'm the only sane one here! I know there's pleasure to be had from taking a hard thing and doing it well, but deliberately choosing to use pitch/roll cursor keys smacks of masochism to me.

I use pitch and roll on the mouse....what does that make me? To be honest I don't think I could fly any other way - it seems completely natural. I do quite frequently use a touch of keyboard yaw though, mainly for last second docking approach corrections and rear/side lasers.

Commander McLane wrote:

Albee wrote:

I know there's pleasure to be had from taking a hard thing and doing it well, but deliberately choosing to use pitch/roll cursor keys smacks of masochism to me.

Why is it masochism to play Elite/Oolite the way everybody (= millions of players) played it from 1984 to 2007 (when yaw was first introduced in Oolite 1.67)? It's the normal thing to do. Are you telling me that I (and everybody else) did it all wrong? Elite cannot possibly be played the way I (and millions of others) have been playing it for 28 years now? That strikes me as a little odd.

Sorry, Commander; I wasn't trying to insult you or anyone else. It would certainly be masochism if I decided to play that way, however, as I'm so utterly useless with the cursor keys.

I did use pitch & roll with a very crude joystick (a stick with a knob on top and 2 big red fire buttons on the base) when I played Elite on my Spectrum, but never was entirely happy with it. When X-Wing came along and offered me pitch & yaw -- I believe that was the default, but wouldn't swear to it -- it came as something of a revelation, to be honest. I just find it so much easier to get kills this way. With pitch & roll I'm obliged to get on someone's tail and match their moves as best I can; with pitch & yaw I can pretty well kill them on any vector. I know some of you relish the 'dogfighting' style of combat, but I find it frustrating, due mainly to the fact that I'm not very good at it, probably.

As with choice of ship, career and destination, it's the fact that we do have a choice that makes Oolite such a great game, IMO.

Albee wrote:

regarding choice of main flight control it seems I'm the only sane one here! I know there's pleasure to be had from taking a hard thing and doing it well, but deliberately choosing to use pitch/roll cursor keys smacks of masochism to me.

Don't worry mate.. you're not the only "sane" one here! Despite playing Elite obsessively when it came out in my mid 20's (I'm really dating myself now!) I now very much like having yaw, even if I mostly use it for refuelling stations/docking, and whilst I can still use the keyboard proficiently enough, (old skills never die) I love my Cyborg Evo stick!. (And when it comes to yaw in combat, my attitude is, any manoeuvre you can use to shake that S.O.B. off your tail is a good one!)

As for why Elite still matters.. what they all said above!

Oooooh, my first rant on the Oolite board

**Rant Mode Engaged**

Why does Elite still matter?

Or perhaps another pertinent question. Why Elite is the last best hope in gaming and beyond?

The question raises another matter in my mind and it concerns the whole of the space gaming genre. Back in the 70s and 80s lots of cool kids were into sci-fi. You had the big budget movies in the cinema, the moon landings were still fresh in everyone's memory, the shuttle was making regular flights, Russia and America were busy doing launches with space probes.

With all this going on in the background, kids eyes were firmly focused on the stars and there was a great need to be part of that. Elite (and all the other games that followed it) gave an outlet to that need. Which is good, because the dreams of kids can later on, sometimes become reality when they grow up. Basically the world needs more space pilots and everything that supports them, not more sing-a-long/dance-a-long X-Factor or mass killing super soldier wannabes.

Kids have stopped looking up at the stars and that worries me. I don't want a future filled with endless manufactured pop music and sure as hell don't want anymore useless wars.

How many of you in this forum who have kids, have tried and struggled to get them into Oolite? Its a sad sign of the times we live in where that focus on space is nearly all but lost in the young, but it's more important than ever for games like Oolite to keep the fire burning, because that same fire can light up the imaginations of the young, shape it, create a desire to learn more about space and perhaps for a few later on life, seek to get involved in the real thing. Elite is more than a game, it's an idea and ideas can shape the future.

**Rant Mode Disengaged**

It's all about our future and that is why Elite (in all it's forms) still matters

Most of the posters here are 'original Eliters' (me included). The game did in fact have that indefinable WOW! factor (in spade loads). But this does not answers the OP's question as to why it's important. One word - immersion. The only other way to experience anything remotely similar was to join the military, who had some £multi-million simulators. Aviator on the BBC 'B' was the first flight simulator available to the general public. It had no purpose other than to show it could be done (well OK, you could fly under the bridge etc and score points). This was NOT the point, as a kid you could fly (and crash!) an aeroplane (still love Flight sims for this)! Elite added Game play to the mix and the result was intoxicating. However, you didn't have to stretch you're imagination very far to see the technology that *should* have come next. Wrap around 3d glasses, sensor gloves etc. Why are we still playing with joy sticks? Anyone working on a WII version? This version would change the way you interact with the environment - the possibilities are endless, so not so much of a 'port' as a rethink, it would enhance the immersion side of things. So, for me, the important thing is not that it was epoch making (although it was), not that it has addictive game play (which it does) but that it allows your imagination to run riot (at any age), the more immersed you are the more you interact with it.

BTW IIRC yaw boosters were awarded for completing one of the mission in the original.

Geraldine wrote:

Oooooh, my first rant on the Oolite board

It's all about our future and that is why Elite (in all it's forms) still matters

You answer can be applied to all space games, not just Elite. In fact you had me thinking what a great sales pitch your answer would make be for SpaceChem.

For science!