Oolite Bulletins

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

what is Taipan?

Nice name for a ship though, wasn't it one in ArcEalite

I've edited the previous post, check it out.

'Tai Pan' is chinese for something like 'great lord' or more freely,'Big Cheese' - 'Elite', if you rather.

Hope I'm not inciting a war of words here - and perhaps this argument shouldn't even be in this thread, but picking up on what a previous poster said about the original Elite.

The original is legendary - most notably for all the additional info Rob Holdstock put into the manual and TDW. I spent years looking for space dredgers and generation ships (I also spent years looking for suns in the Acorn Electron version not realsing that it was an edited version of the game heh heh).

Oolite, as I've previously said has exapanded on the universe that was given to us by Bell and Braben.

The OXPs are great - have just had a great experience - left the Coriolis station and it was surrounded by Orbs. Looked around - all of a sudden combat from other vessels - didn't know whether to get involved or not then lots of Q-Mines detonated and game over. As my ship exploded in a myriad of dust, cargo cannisters and alloys I thought I love this game...

And I fully agree with you. Cheers for Elite, Hoorrah for Oolite!

Cmdr. Maegil wrote:

And I fully agree with you. Cheers for Elite, Hoorrah for Oolite!

If Elite is the hoary old monarch, then Oolite is his/her/it's valiant young offspring, growing in strength, depth and majesty to one day stand if not equal, then slightly in the shadow of it's predecessor, impressing us with it's uniqueness while drawing our minds back to the glories of what came before.

Captain Hesperus
"I remember when all this was starfields....."

Oolite cannot equal ELITE by reason of nostalgia. We will always remain in the shadow of the glorious forebear that came before us.

ELITE was great because of it's groundbreaking (percieved) complexity compared to it's piers...most games then were (as now) more flash than code.

ELITE in it's day was what the online games of Warcraft and FinalFantasy are today to many: an all absorbing obsession that will forever (scar) remain with them as a formative influence.
It is no cooincidence that these online games have several things in common with ELITE.
1- massive world, semi randomly generated to explore.
2- legends about what there can be found in far off regions.
3- some scripted missions, to keep those dreams alive.
4- drudging XP to get to that ultimate level of excellence.

What is new is : nowadays legends are no more, easter eggs are exposed faster than can be coded. Extra background litterature is a barebones manual if you are lucky. Interaction with PCs.

The beaty of ELITE is like that of a grain of sand: a small crystal. pure, simple and yet fractally intricate and seemingly an unending source of random complexity.

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

The beaty of ELITE is like that of a grain of sand: a small crystal. pure, simple and yet fractally intricate and seemingly an unending source of random complexity.

Barman, top his glass up and I'll have a bucket of what he's drinking.

But I do agree, Elite is (and IMO, will always be) the archetypal space trader/sim, just as Middle-Earth and the creations of Tolkien shall always be emulated by more contemporary sources, but never truely emerging from the shadow of the original concept.

While there are space sim games to play and gamers to play them, Elite will always live on.

Long Live Elite! LOong Live Oolite.

Captain Hesperus

"BBC Elite = 32K. MissionText for Assassins.oxp (IE Just the text that appears on screens to tell you what your missions are) = 52K. The beauty of the Elite code was cramming such a detailed universe into the space of a moden 1 page Word document!"

one of the quotes from Braben i like was him saying the entire game code fitted into <30K ~ and that's less that the size of an Elite desktop icon nowadays!

makes you think - all these games needing gigabytes of space - how much of it is actually NECESSARY and how much has ballooned through lazy programming?

<ahem> ...all of it?

Back on the original topic. . . Not that I do not feel eternally idebted to B & B.

8: Abolitionists sack the government on XXX causing the price of slaves to plummet

10: Constitutional amendment instituting prohibition passed on planet XXX liquor/wine prices plummet (canthey become illegal goods?) Hey, both are based on history here.

If prices and availability can be overridden by plist, why not the illegal goods?

Easy enough to change the illegal_goods.plist file,
the tricky bit will be making sure these changes only apply when and where you desire.
Probably causing all sorts of headaches for the urangatan.

...
I'll put it on the wishlist.

Another one (and quite topical)

Worldwide smoking ban finally passed narcotics price plummet

Econony runs hot!

Every teen want's a boyracer.

deliver <special mission cargo> shipment.

Gareth3377 wrote:

Worldwide smoking ban finally passed narcotics price plummet

Given that this would put cigarettes into the illegal narcotics category (as opposed to luxuries), that’d increase demand for narcotics…

I think he meant the opposite (because narcs already are banned):

smoking ban lifted,
(certain types of) narcotics no longer considdered narcotics but luxuries instead.
Price of the average narcotic plummets as cargoes need to be reassigned to systems with better profit margins.

Exactly - if smoking was banned there no tobacco could be imported (although there is scope for black market trading - another kettle of fish eh?)

It could work either way really - smoking ban - prices rise for demand/or fall due to no demand (this is, of course, very simplistic). It's and either/or really

Additionally - I always thought that tobacco would be found under narcotics rather than a luxuary - thought Arcturuan Megaweed was really Golden Virginia in another guise heh heh.