Oolite Bulletins

Zieman wrote:

Happy 25th ELITE!

E4 - Mix ELITE & SPACE ROGUE & FFE...

with a side order of Freelancer...

E4:

Beauty of Infinity, mixed with the playability of Oolite, mixed with FFE and Freelancer. Mixed with Oblivion for walking in cities and then done right (not a sort of collection of lousy minigames)

Oolite (flight model, expandability) + Infinity's graphics + Option for Private-Server Multi-Player.

I'd like to see it have a more diverse / engaging economic game, and a standardized mechanism for spec'ing ships. Oh, it's 5 PM... Nevermind on the rest of my thoughts.... It's time to go!!!!

Cmd. Cheyd wrote:

I'd like to see it have a more diverse / engaging economic game, and a standardized mechanism for spec'ing ships.

Oh yes: barter and auctions would add a great deal. And the ability to really customise your ship, inside and out. Plus there'd need to be exploration, with things to find.

Multiplayer I would see as just a sideshow – maybe a subsidiary online game where you can go and dogfight against other people. The real game, and the real opportunity, would be an ever-expandable single-player game.

No "realistic physics" (apart from the hyperspace, and the acceleration, and the fuel consumption, etc.), though: that's a killer.

I've been away from games for YEARS, until I found Oolite last year, and Quake Live last week. This might raise hackles, but I'd love to see a kind of combination of both.

You're docked at a station and do some trading on a galaxy-wide central commodity exchange. Refuel, re-arm, and launch into a sea of RL players if it's a busy system, or empty space and AI ships if it's a remote outpost. If it's busy, there could be a free-for-all dogfight going on, individually or in teams, or there could be a gargantuan cargo ship being protected and attacked by players; you choose to join one side or the other, or to snipe as a lone wolf, or just to fly past and hyperspace to a different environment to trade different instruments (local equities/govt bonds etc.), or find some pirate/bounty hunting opportunities in deep space, or do a built-in mission, etc. etc.

These days it seems it has to be multiplayer in some form, but that doesn't have to be central to the game.

Btw, I thought QL might be full of PWNED! and GAY! but haven't seen any of that, only good natured fun being had by all. Maybe it's a nice experience because it's free and browser-based.

Perhaps EVE or another game is already like this, I haven't looked, but from the criticism I've seen of it here, it can't have got it right, if it is.

"and launch into a sea of RL players"

if it's ends up being another of those online-only games, i'll not be buying it.

OK here is the central problem with oolite multi-player:

i hyperspace into isinor and make for the station. there are ai ships on my route, and i shoot them dead, now a minute behind me some other player has done the same- there aren't any ai ships because i have shot them all

you see, in oolite we have the freedom to do as we please- it is our responsibility. ai ships are present at systems according to the system type- yes a few of them hyperspace in and out wherever we are, but the AI by and large have limited lives.

successful multiplayer would mean every ai having a legend, a development path, and then to not make it predictable, a little free thought as well!!!

say there are 100 players, 10 ai ships per player, but it isnt so simple- you have to account for players moving arround, so lets square it to 100 ai's per player at any one time, and of course the appearance somewhere of a new ai ship when one gets killed

it would require a central computer governing the actions of 10000 ai ships at least at anyone time, and ai ships that have business to do in the game, eg- a sidewinder escort ai ship- when you kill his main ship, whats he gonna do? in multiplayer, the game would need to find an answer

and we are still back to the problem of landing somewhere 3 minutes after a superb player and finding no one to greet us

phonebook wrote:

OK here is the central problem with oolite multi-player:

While that is a real problem, the central problem with an oolite MMO is this:

Some (many?) people in online games play like dicks because there is no real consequence for their actions. People will find ways of inconveniencing other players, beyond just shooting their ship, because they derive satisfaction from annoying others. Because, despite the fact that they are sat at a P.C mashing the keys like some sort of homunculus mongoloid dick, they have the mentality of a three year old. The game ceases to have the atmosphere and consistent believeable behaviour of the different AI groups and instead becomes very abstract bordering on the surreal because people in game do not (usually) assume a role to play, unless the role is that of an utter dick.

Every system in an Oolite MMO would be an anarchy system.

Long may the fine stance of no-oolite MMO continue.

This problem could be an issue with an Oolite MP game, but, the difference between MP and an MMO is with the former you usually have more control over who you play with and you could actually have players taking on sensible roles that are consistent with the game. I would be happy to play an MP version of Oolite with likeminded friends, perhaps working as team with some folk flying fighter craft as escort to others flying big cargo ships. That approach to MP is tolerable to me.

tomsk wrote:

It said 'CLICK TO PLAY" and all I got was a video.

took me a split second to 'get' it.

Multiplayer combat is only fun if it's done in a limited, arcade-y style game (i.e. one where, if you die, it's no big deal: just respawn and keep on blasting, which is the sole point of the game). Even there, it's not much fun if it's full of damaged individuals soothing the pain of their existence on the newbies. If you want an immersive game, like Oo/Elite, then you can't let the snickering nitwits in. If you want multiplayer, you would have to construct the game in such a way that, except in designated areas (badlands and the like), PvP was either impossible or at the very least a catastrophically bad, and short-lived, idea.

You could do this, with a bit of heavy-handed plot-mangling, for example – except then you would have to wonder what the point would be in having multiplayer. There is a market for single-player games: a very big market, too, if you look at, say, Grand Theft Auto. There could be online social areas, perhaps station-based, where players could interact, trade, swap stories etc. – like a fancy forum, really – but not attack each other.

One of the things I like about space games, oddly enough, is the loneliness. I want it big, I want it vast, I want light-years of nothing all around me, me as a single solitary microscopic dot of consciousness in the middle of endless emptiness ... perhaps because I live above a pub. Which isn't to say that meeting with other ships, and fighting and trading, is a bad thing – but the sense of scale is something I'd want. That's one more gripe I have about the X series, to be honest: too damn crowded.

Disembodied wrote:

Multiplayer combat is only fun if it's done in a limited, arcade-y style game (i.e. one where, if you die, it's no big deal: just respawn and keep on blasting, which is the sole point of the game). Even there, it's not much fun if it's full of damaged individuals soothing the pain of their existence on the newbies. If you want an immersive game, like Oo/Elite, then you can't let the snickering nitwits in. If you want multiplayer, you would have to construct the game in such a way that, except in designated areas (badlands and the like), PvP was either impossible or at the very least a catastrophically bad, and short-lived, idea.

You could do this, with a bit of heavy-handed plot-mangling, for example – except then you would have to wonder what the point would be in having multiplayer. There is a market for single-player games: a very big market, too, if you look at, say, Grand Theft Auto. There could be online social areas, perhaps station-based, where players could interact, trade, swap stories etc. – like a fancy forum, really – but not attack each other.

One of the things I like about space games, oddly enough, is the loneliness. I want it big, I want it vast, I want light-years of nothing all around me, me as a single solitary microscopic dot of consciousness in the middle of endless emptiness ... perhaps because I live above a pub. Which isn't to say that meeting with other ships, and fighting and trading, is a bad thing – but the sense of scale is something I'd want. That's one more gripe I have about the X series, to be honest: too damn crowded.

As ever, eloquently put.

(I did think some time ago - a few choice anarchies linked via some clever MP system where pilots came to battle against each other would be an interesting diversion - you could bet on your own success having paid a fee to do battle - but in the last year or so the ever increasing number of uber or near-uber ships and weapons means that I, the traditionalist, in his Cobra MkIII no matter how Iron Assed would have it handed to me on a platter or I'd be forced to fall back to e-bombs and q-mines unless they were disabled for the duration of the battle...)

I realise it is an inevitable consequence of MP in the modern gaming era, but I do find it depressing that the first focus of discussion on MP is on PvP rather than co-operative play.

I'm a co-op gamer at heart. I want to work with others towards a common goal rather than just pew pew people into atoms.

I'm not interested in PvP, or even co-op necessarily. I'd just like to have a random chance to encounter Captain Hesperus and the 'Dubious Profit', or Frame, or Griff in a Griff Boa, or DH in a Cobby III...

Hell, I'd probably be happy with an in-game IRC client.

To veer back towards the original topic...

25 years! It's been that long?

And then to the multiplayer mysteries...

I vote no to MMO-only approach, but I would not mind seeing a couple of familiar faces now and again in the universe with me - would make the universe seem more alive. But there would have to be some way to stop it from succumbing to the "gimme, gimme, gimme!" syndrome that afflicts most MMOs out there (newbies demanding stuff and playing the game "out of character").

Worm - That's why I'd like the option for private-server MP, not MMO. If you want to host a server and have 12 of your closest internet friends in there with you, yeah, it'd be cool. Again, would need an in-game IRC client though just for player-to-player chat. Private-server MP also means there is a much lower AI overhead. You're not talking having 800 active worlds.