Oolite Bulletins

Lucidor wrote:

Is it that fights can occur between AI's as well?

Oh yes. Yes they can.

I know they can. :^) I just wondered if that was what he meant with that the game is not player centric.

I'm not that much of an old timer! ok maybe i am, i WAS that lad that spent hours typing on the ZX80 and ZX81 computers to get a text adventure. Can you remember the programming books that you used to get that were 60 pages long for each adventure or game, and a SINGLE error used to crash the whole thing without any hope of debgging other than re reading the whole book!! Anyway back to the point ( there was one?!?) I'm not against progress, just that Oolite has been the FIRST elite game to give people a choice as to how THEY want the game developed. The chance to personalise Elite has NEVER been available before, and rather parts of FFE of FFE2 being a standard in Oolite, they would best be suited as an OXP to allow people the choice. What we are privilaged to have in Oolite is Elite how we all want it, apart from being an exceptional piece of programming by Giles, It gives us all the chance to add our own signature to it, it gives us the chance to do this, argue about which way to expand, as it does just that, GIVES us the choice on how to expand. I can't think of many other popular games that do this...Oh by the way Lucidor, i still think Elite beats FFE hands down LOL!!!

The OXP's seem to be a bit too limited for such expansion at the moment, otherwise I agree.

I don't agree that Elite beats Frontier hands down though. :^) (Never liked FFE.) But I'd really like to have the advanced flight computer in a potential future Frontier.

I think your looking for Foolite mate!

milinks wrote:

Can you remember the programming books that you used to get that were 60 pages long for each adventure or game, and a SINGLE error used to crash the whole thing without any hope of debgging other than re reading the whole book!!

Oh boy! you have just rekindled all those recurring nightmares. I spent hundreds of hours doing that, these young whippersnappers just have no idea do they!

Oh yes. Can't get enough of it. *Crunch crunch crunch* :^)

Nice bouquet, must be a real vintage here.

Hey, some of us have to manage without even a book.

Ahruman Posted

Hey, some of us have to manage without even a book.

I've been bowing in the "I'm not worthy prose" for the last half hour but i can't find an emoticon to cover it

The thing is where Ah and others are concerned here i definately "AM NOT WORTHY"

They're the reason why i can play till death o clock in the morning and finish, still feeling "it'll be the next bit that does it " mood

Lucidor wrote:

I don't quite understand what you mean when you say that we're not the centre of the action. Is it that fights can occur between AI's as well?

It's two pronged really. In Oolite you get battles between AI ships. I've once or twice stumbled upon battles that can only be described as "epic" - traders, Police, pirates, bounty hunters - all in this great tumultous fight - missles flying, ECMs going off, ships blowing up. And you just happen across this. All you have to do is pick a side and hope it was the right one! (In my book, picking the right side means picking the winning side. I couldn' care less whether it's the pirates, traders, bounty hunters or Police, just so long as it's the winning side).

The other bit about not being the centre of the universe is something you wouldn't notice unless you looked at the code. In original Elite (with the probable exception of Arc Elite - the only other Elite that had AI vs AI battles) you literally were the centre of the universe and the world literally revolved around you. You were glued to cartesian coordinates (0,0,0) and you didn't move - the planet came to you - i.e. the flight model was entirely player centric. Changing view from say front to left view flipped the entire universe - logically you were still looking in the same direction, it's just the universe rotated for your pleasure.

FE:2 and FFE weren't like that though. However, FE:2 and FFE still didn't feature AI to AI battles (although there was a way to get the AI shoot at a ship you were not piloting - it involved leaving your ship in an escape pod and a few other things - so FE:2 and FFE were certainly *capable* of allowing it - however, it simply wasn't programmed in. (And according to John Jordan, even when you meet a group of AI ships, they aren't really a formation at all - they are just a bunch of independent ships who happen to be grouped together).

FFE also had a scripting language. From what John Jordan has found out though, it was a complete abortion.

If FFE had been allowed to be completed, it's possible it would have had 3rd party scripting and AI to AI combat - but this was not to be. Instead it was rushed out, incomplete.

I don't see how it is important if the player revolves in the universe or the universe revolves around the player. Visually it's the same, isn't it?

AI interaction maybe can be expanded to involve trading? Maybe a Boa could suck up everything worth trading at a particular planet and leaving the player to either go back with an empty cargo bay or wait two weeks for the stock to refill.

Are there other ways to interact with AI other than Fighting and trading?

Lucidor wrote:

I don't see how it is important if the player revolves in the universe or the universe revolves around the player. Visually it's the same, isn't it?

Visually it's the same, yes. But if the physics is 'player centric' like BBC Micro (etc) Elite, it makes it harder to have non-player centric things happening - such as AI-AI interaction (and effectively rules out multiplayer possibilities). It would also be much more difficult to have the kind of scripting we have in OXPs (such as absolute positioning of ships) - you'd have to do a lot more mathematical gyrating to make things work right (which takes up CPU and causes lower frame rates).

AI interaction maybe can be expanded to involve trading? Maybe a Boa could suck up everything worth trading at a particular planet and leaving the player to either go back with an empty cargo bay or wait two weeks for the stock to refill.

Are there other ways to interact with AI other than Fighting and trading?

Several ways. Missions for one (especially ones that can involve co-operation). What could be done is essentially limitless given limitless CPU time and limitless developer time

An exemple of not player centric game :
Lets have a look at hardwar, a game a bit like elite, but base on Titan. There is a limited number of places to go (you fly between 6 craters, there are 200 buildings, and 50 AI. When one AI dies, an other respawns.

The economy is real economy (the buildings are the factories, the traders do really bring goods to factories to be transformed).

Whe you spot a pirate, it is a ship which really killed ship.
When a pirate kills a traders, and for some reason loses the goods : the goods are really destroyed. Which means that if there are too many pirates, the production chain for missiles will be broken and they will become terribly expensive.
When you kill a cop, he will not be able to kill other pirates, and then the trade will be disrupted.
When you have your own factory, you can sell a huge amont of goods, and the economy does really collapse.

Basically : when you, or an AI, is doing something, it might have an impact on the world. In this exemple, the world is small enough for you to see the consequences of you actions.

So plenty of things might happend, but they are not random events triggered byt some conditions. There is a logical reason for them to happend.

This is not possible in a world revolving around the player (everything is created when the player arrives at a plce, and disappears when he leaves the system).

The X series is the same kind but in a much bigger world, so you're actions dilutes. Also if the world is too big you might have a huge number of ships to simulate all time (100, 1000 ? ...) this might be very CPU intensive. So this solution is not for all games.

Ah Hardwar, a game that has also seen a hive of extension activity with the return of one of the original coders and refuses to die.

Well, more precisely a game which ahd a hive of extension activity since the company which released this game got bankrupt.

At first we have been hacking and upgrading things whithout any help of the developper. It is true that last year an original developper showed up and released an updated version. This one is the new basis for further hacking development.

But since lets say, 6 month, it is very quite down there. The developer (Ian Martin) has not showed up again, and most hackers (including me) have stopped all development.

I still find the idea of that small, closed, but detailed world very interesting. So who knows what might occur later...