Oolite Bulletins

Do you yourself use the Renegade.oxp? Im trying to work out if its worth installing everything I see, or being picky.

Yeah, but I wrote it and I've made Elite!

The idea to the OXP is that you can make a living doing things other than trading, but you won't encounter renegages unless you go to Anachy systems to seek them out.

Of course you could just go to Galaxy 7 and make a much better living as a killer for hire with Assassins.oxp!

Ah you wrote it. Very nice.
I'm just trying to figure out what setups people have. BEcause it is a little overwelming trying to see what to install and what not to etc.

Sorry, didn't mean to sound big-headed!

It's really a question of what you want out of Oolite! Giles wrote the game to be OXPed. I played the game though from Harmless to Elite, with all the OXPs installed and then wrote two OXPs to add to (I hope) the fun!

Each OXP adds somthing to the Ooniverse. I started playing about a year ago and installed every OXP. Renegades gives you the chance to be a bounty hunter and earn serious money if your ship can take it, assassins gives you the chance to become a killer for hire, lovecats gives you the chance to help love-sick felines in their difficulties, Miliraty gives you the chance to help the Navy out of a tight spot, Ionics gives you the chance to help a rebel movement, Deposeded gives you the chance to get involved in the politics of a system etc etc. BUT with all OXPs, it is your choice as the player to decide what you do. All OXPs remain faithfull to the Elite style open ended game.

Personally, I think Oolite is best played with all the OXPs installed. This gives you maxium variety and if you don't want to do somthing, then you don't. No OXP you install will ever make you do somthing, they all just give you options....

Ah thats the answer I was looking for. Cheers I have a few OXPs to install yet that I havent installed. Will proceed to just install everything.

Those Deposed craft are hard! lol Its awesome.

On a side note: Maybe there should be a poll for "Would you pay a subscription fee if there was an Oolite MMORPG?"

I know I would. Also I know there are a lot of people who would whine about paying $10 a month (4 Big macs?) for a great game.

morigen wrote:

Will proceed to just install everything.

One the other hand, I'm having loads of fun with the 'basic' game and when I\ve got so used to it that I want something new to spice it up I'll have loads to choose from. If you get everything right at the start what will you do next?

morigen wrote:

Also I know there are a lot of people who would whine about paying $10 a month (4 Big macs?) for a great game.

But would it be $10 a month? Something like that has costs associated with it, the cost of the server for example, that needs to be split between the number of people using it. How much it would cost all depends on how many people are using it and would have to be monitored. Somebody would have to take on the role of accountant and marketing manager in order to make sure that there was enough money coming in to pay for the server... unless it was really popular in which case of making sure that the server didn't get overloaded (bigger more expensive server) and that the bandwidth was being paid for (account administation too).

I also have my doubts about whether it can be done with a fast action game like Oolite. The delay you experience when accessing a server at the other side of the world will make a big difference in a dogfight.

Probabley the speed woudn't be a problem (if it was a Deathmatch type game limited to say 16 ships at once - Doom / Halo style), but a true Multi-player game, where that blip on the scanner might be a computer generated ship or another player would be I think beyond the capacity of any normal computer system. Oolite only "populates" the system the player is actually in. But with multi-player Oolite would have to populate and keep track of all 2,000 systems as players could be anywhere. Maybe in a few years...

Keeping track of what was for sale on 2000 systems wouldn't be a problem and could be set up on an SQL database with scripts on the server to alter what was available as things were being manufactured and used up on the various systems. The effects of players moving things from one place to another could then be taken into consideration such that, for example, you might find it more lucrative to move products around the systems on the fringes where there is not so much traffic.

The tricky bit as I see it would be in communicating the position of ships in any given system between the players using computers dotted around the real world, especially when for example, half a dozen players met up to work as a team.

You'd only need a few bytes of data to describe the current position (z,y,z) of each ship and the direction/speed of travel but the inevitable delays in getting that data accross the Internet would probably make the system unworkable and lets face it, THAT is the kind of interaction that has the appeal, not the setting up of a Ooniversal economy.

It would be really cool to have missions that required players to work together to complete them. Eg a cargo haul mission where one player will have to be in an Annaconda to move the cargo and the others are going to need to escort him. A second part of the same mission being offered to other players, but their mission is to prevent the cargo getting there.

People teaming up as pirates, others as bounty hunters....

But I guess it would be the keeping track of everybody that would be a problem.

But what if you shrink the Ooniverse from 2000 systems to just a couple around Lave? And then say there can't be more than 16 players at the same time?

Other massively multiplayer space sims have been developed. SubSpace and XPilot come to mind. And didn't Freelancer have some multiplayer abilities?

The trick will be to split things up by system. What do you care about some loser off at Rexxla when you're cruising the Tionisla Orbital Graveyard? You don't care. Splitting the users by system and only sending them data about each other will help to keep traffic low. There will probably be a longer delay when you exit witchspace, as the server recalculates who should be getting your data and sends you information about the system you're in.

The other problem is synching up random numbers. For instance, if we keep asteroids in the game, then when you shoot one it might produce boulders. I could keep the entire system on the server and send everybody information about the asteroid blowing up, then send more information for each boulder.

Or, I could make sure everybody is using the same random number generator. Then I just send the initial system data and the fact that you're firing. Every individual player's computer figures out that you've destroyed the asteroid, and they all get the same die roll for whether or not boulders are left behind. Then they all roll the same numbers for where the boulders are created and how fast they're moving.

While that sounds like an ideal solution, it has three problems: it's open to cheating (hiss!), if you make even a single mistake things get out of sync, and trying to figure out the right random number generator for somebody who jumps into the system in the middle of everything can be challenging.

Sorry. I'm letting my inner programmer loose in the middle of a discussion forum. I'll lure him back in with pizza and pr0n.

Here, boy! Back to the computer! Come on! I've installed an arcade emmmmulaaatoooor....

I think you're going off at a tangent with the random number thing because while it might work for thing like asteroids it can't work for anything that's being controlled by players.

The server would have to know the position of everything in the Ooniverse. HOWEVER each player would only need to know the positions of objects within a given radius of where they were - a relatively small amount of data to transmit.

I believe however that the problem, and I keep going back to this, is the time taken to transmit the data. Wherever you are in the world, locate a server at the other side of the world and ping it. A ping is a very small amount of data but it takes a measurable amount of time to get to the server and back again. What's more, the time taken varies according to what else the various machines inbetween are doing.

Limiting the number of players in a system does not help. If for example the Oolite server was in London England and you are in Sydney Australia, your communications with it will take longer than somebody in Paris France. If you are dogfighting with that person they have an advantage because it takes less time for their instructions to get to the server and less time for them to see the results.

For people that are concerned over the lag associated with 'keeping track of 2000 systems with 300 ships in each system flying around": DONT BE! Its been done before, and there are ways, as somene pointed out, to make the game cellular and only inform the vicinity of the details. Global things are handled very differently, and this is not a new thing in MMORPGs at all!

DO not worry about servers in USA and Europe having a lag. There are ways well documented to handle these things. Also there is no need to limit worlds to 16 or so players. A real MMORPG is very possible with todays technology , servers, software techniques, and even slow internet connections.

There is a game (forget the name now) similar to Oolite that is a MMORPG, and there arent any problems withg keeping the world real time with (virtually) unlimited player connections. When I remember the name, I shall post it here.

My point: It is very possible. It just takes a team and a lot of time to get it up and running. This equates to money and financial support.

I don't see a problem with the lags. After all, you can very well play UT2004, or Quake online, which are very fast-paced games. Ok, a problem might be location, like US vs EU, so maybe there'd have to be a EU server and a US server, with no connection (which would again be a bit sad).

And when players aren't in a fight, you'd only have to transmit their speed, and maybe sometimes a roll/pitch event, or something like that, which is just a few bytes, really.

A bigger problem is game design, and how it would be interesting with multiple players at all (i.e. what interactions would there be, except for chat while in radar range, and fighting against each other/together? probably there should be bigger missions, like war, with dozens of ships, but that would really tax those servers...). Especially game time vs real time. When you hyperjump, time has to adjust because of relativity. Of course you could make time absolute in multi-player mode, so that a jump only takes 10 seconds, and then you're at the next planet... Not sure about that.

Plus I think without anybody developing the game (instead of the OXPs) ATM, there isn't really much of a point in discussing this, even though I'd like the idea.

young blood!
So ambitious.

But what about shayders and instinct based AI?