Oolite Bulletins

Posted: **Thu Sep 10, 2009 2:45 pm**

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:
You'll need to collect some basic upgrades before you're ready to take on the intergalactic scum on an even footing. A beam laser, ECM, energy unit, injectors, and a shield booster.

And load your launcher with better missiles. The HM-3s that came with your Cobby are cheap and pack a decent punch, but are too easily defeated by countermeasures. Load hardened missiles, or better, some of these oxp warheads:
Military missile - a breed of hardened missile that may go 'crazy ivan' when ECM'd and turn on the nearest pirate or Thargoid.
Nuclear torpedo - a hardened missile that had it's warhead replaced with a nuke. It's a slow missile, the thruster wasn't meant to handle the load, but it's a devastating weapon to use on pirate Pythons.
Missiles & Bombs Pack - A vast assortment of insane fireworks for your blow-em-up pleasure.

Joysticks: I used aftermarket Atari sticks when I played Elite on a C64, and now play Oolite with a multi-axis, multibutton flight controller. I love having every control available to me in an instant, right there on the stick, and to pull pitch/yaw/roll break combos never fails to put an aggressive pirate at a disadvantage. You'll pry my X52 from my cold dead hands, and will have to struggle to do so!

We've just bought two X52 Pros at work - what colour shall we use today, "Red? No. Blue? No. Green? Yes!"

(we're actually using them on a helicopter sim - with the thruster stick set up to behave like a collective - but I'm sure I can slip Oolite on to the same machine...)

Posted: **Thu Sep 10, 2009 2:56 pm**

DaddyHoggy wrote:
We've just bought two X52 Pros at work - what colour shall we use today, "Red? No. Blue? No. Green? Yes!" (we're actually using them on a helicopter sim - with the thruster stick set up to behave like a collective - but I'm sure I can slip Oolite on to the same machine...)

Oolite can be run off a thumbdrive, and nobody would be the wiser. (hint hint)

Posted: **Thu Sep 10, 2009 3:55 pm**

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:
DaddyHoggy wrote:
We've just bought two X52 Pros at work - what colour shall we use today, "Red? No. Blue? No. Green? Yes!" (we're actually using them on a helicopter sim - with the thruster stick set up to behave like a collective - but I'm sure I can slip Oolite on to the same machine...)
Oolite can be run off a thumbdrive, and nobody would be the wiser. (hint hint)

I keep hearing this on the boards - so if you don't install it how do you run it?

Posted: **Thu Sep 10, 2009 4:03 pm**

DaddyHoggy wrote:
Cmdr Wyvern wrote:

Oolite can be run off a thumbdrive, and nobody would be the wiser. (hint hint)
I keep hearing this on the boards - so if you don't install it how do you run it?

You install it on your home computer, copy the entire tree structure of the game to the thumbrive, then run the executable from the thumb drive on any computer you want. Oolite could easily be distributed as a zip file in its current state under Windows. However, we make an installer because it's much fancier

Posted: **Thu Sep 10, 2009 4:04 pm**

I keep hearing this on the boards - so if you don't install it how do you run it?

Oolite doesn't need anything registering centrally as such, because it's built in such a way that as long as you tell it where everything it depends on can be found, it'll use it. So if there are all of those things (eg GNUStep, SDL) on the memory card WITH oolite, it'll go off and find them and away you go. This assumes you've told Oolite to put the config files and save games somewhere on the stick and not on the HDD, which I assume can be done.

Lots of games in Windows for instance don't actually need "installing" as such once everything's unpacked... you could just copy the directory across to another PC or onto a stick and it would work. IF they didn't spend time putting arbitrary locks and hooks and dependencies onto the "installed" machine to prevent you from doing just that.

Ahruman will be here in a minute to explain it properly.

Posted: **Thu Sep 10, 2009 4:37 pm**

You can actually use the installer to put it straight onto the thumb drive too. Indeed with 1.73.3 I had some problems doing the install to HD/copy routine (although that used to work before, when we had a bat file etc).

Might be my set-up though, wouldn't be the first time.

Posted: **Thu Sep 10, 2009 4:45 pm**

@DH
Most of my playing right now is centered around testing SysRedux features and textures. Because of this, I did as stated above and just copied the Oolite 1.73.2 installation onto my thumb drive. Now, I can save my in-work textures to it, save them as PNGs into Oolite for testing, and can move between my work laptop and home computer all without having to fiddle around with anything. Just plug in the stick, and go... Really is great.

Posted: **Thu Sep 10, 2009 4:46 pm**

Thargoid wrote:
Indeed with 1.73.3 I had some problems doing the install to HD/copy routine (although that used to work before, when we had a bat file etc).

Might be my set-up though, wouldn't be the first time.

Interesting. After reading the above I went and gave it a try just to be sure and straight copy works fine. What problems did you encounter?

Posted: **Thu Sep 10, 2009 4:51 pm**

Should have said 1.73.2 rather than 1.73.3 - haven't updated to .3 yet. It ran (got the splash-screen up), but after that it just sat there for a minute or two and then closed itself without getting to the spinning cobra screen (cache never got written to).

I had copied logs and OXPs across at that point which might have been the issue. In the end I did an installer set-up with a vanilla install which then ran OK. Then I copied the AddOns folder across and all was well...

I should also add I actually run from an SD card sat in a PCMCIA adaptor, not strictly a thumb drive by USB.

Posted: **Thu Sep 10, 2009 11:03 pm**

Thanks guys - <wanders off to find old spare 512MB thumb drive>

Posted: **Sat Sep 12, 2009 8:10 am**

the interception missile (MissilesAndBombs.oxp) is only ¢heap & very good; it flies in a straight line + explodes

Posted: **Sat Sep 12, 2009 1:26 pm**

I prefer to control my ship with a joystick. I'm using a Logitech "Extreme 3D Pro". The only problem is the rudder/yaw control is pretty much on/off, which isn't precise enough for my satisfaction.

I can manually dock very well with this joystick while I use the keyboard < and > keys to control yaw.

The ability to use all your ships' manuvering ability helps avoid incoming fire and aids you in placing all your shots on target (thereby doing more damage before your laser over-heats).

Oolite Bulletins

Newbie checking in...and dying a lot.....

re. missiles