For information and discussion about Oolite.
https://bb.oolite.space/
No! I'd like the BGS tunnel, with enhanced SOTL steering incorporated (progress and steering bars curved), added to the core game.Cholmondely wrote: ↑Tue Jan 11, 2022 2:53 pmI'd have thought that the improved SOTL steering would make more sense as a new oxp, no?
Oh that's lovely!Cholmondely wrote: ↑Fri Feb 04, 2022 1:09 pmJust to let you know: key to missile icons on HUD is now available here!
I concur, #3 is lovely.Option 3 please, original bgs with steering
1) Starhopper, have you tried out Arquebus's music .oxp? It needs Library.oxp (not Cabal Common Library)...Starhopper wrote: ↑Thu Apr 07, 2022 4:54 pmI concur, #3 is lovely.Option 3 please, original bgs with steering
@Arquebus I've watched nearly all of your vids now, thanks for making such an entertaining series, it's been awesome!
P.S your voice reminds me somewhat of Bruce Campbell.
Oolite is a great game not just for the sake of nostalgia, but for many other reasons.arquebus wrote: ↑Mon Jan 10, 2022 6:31 pmI would probably nuance my argument here, as I've had some time to think about it, because there is a valid critique to be made that "Oolite is supposed to be what it is, the audience knows that."Cholmondely wrote: ↑Mon Jan 10, 2022 11:11 amArqubus is saying that this charm does not exist for new players who never encountered Elite. They compare Oolite with E:D and all the other modern games, and Oolite loses out, despite being free. The vanilla game is not a modern game and does not compare.
I'd argue that there are two types of players of Oolite (or of any retro or retro-adjacent game, really):
1) The ones who remember the original, want the original experience, want the feel of the original experience and enjoy living in an environment that gives them the feeling they had when they were kids/younger.
2) Everyone else.
And I put #2 that way quite deliberately. The number of people in the #1 bucket is tiny. Not just for Oolite - for any game of any size that is meant as a callback to an earlier/original game. *Everyone else* is literally *everyone else* who might want to play a game of this sort. And they do not have that experience of nostalgia, they do not feel the "charm" of the style of the interface, and so on.
If Oolite exists to serve the interests and needs of #1, great! Let's leave it as it is. We've got our audience, we have our player base, that's what we're after and we've got it solid.
But here's my thing: Oolite is *too good* of a game to limit ourselves to #1. But #2 is just *not* going to tolerate some of the base game quirks. If we have any interest in expanding the player base outside the #1 bucket (and perhaps a few #2 bucket people who are just really, really tenacious), then we need to think seriously about how the game presents itself to new NEW new new players, not just new-but-used-to-play-it-as-a-kid players.
I agree, but I am convinced that the inaccessibility tolerance threshold (for any game) is lower for people who aren't motivated by nostalgia. There are so many affordances that more modern games provide that have become standard not just because they're new but because they're obvious improvements. Something as simple as providing more data in the trade screen - no modern game, no matter how bare-bones, is going to convince players it's fine to not show the differential from average price. We exist in the age of the Internet. If the game doesn't let us do something as trivial as this, which we as regular human beings living in a digitally interconnected world can do for real world prices with about 3 seconds of searching across two or three tabs in Chrome, non-nostalgia-driven players are going to be annoyed.Cmdr Wyvern wrote: ↑Fri Apr 29, 2022 5:05 pmOolite is a great game not just for the sake of nostalgia, but for many other reasons.
I wonder what savmass's comments "savmass: 4 months ago
Interesting video thanks for the detailed explanations. I'm wondering though, why would you opt to play this over Elite Dangerous, it seems pretty old graphics and playability wise (I tried it last year for a bit and uninstalled)? Is it the freedom of mods? Also, you mentioned in the video that if you increase the asteroid density to high, that it would slow it down. Is this a game engine limitation or your hardware?
Arquebus X: 4 months ago
Regarding the asteroid density - it's mostly a game engine or mod limitation; my hardware is a few years old but Oolite is designed to work with some pretty low end machines. I think the mod just taxes the game in a way that it wasn't meant to be taxed.
As for Elite Dangerous... well, I have played ED, for about 80 hours, and I found it incredibly dull. Yes, it's graphically superior and the flight model is better (though not as good as Evochron Legacy), but travel times are ridiculously long, trading is tedious (with an unnecessarily complex UI) and the grind is more annoying. Most of the gameplay loops in Oolite are the same as in ED, but they're compressed into shorter scales of time and distance. (The first time I ran into a 20 minute real world travel time between stars in ED was the last time I really tried to play the game.) And the availability of hundreds of mods in Oolite is also a plus, since it means the variety of things I can see, do and buy in the game are considerably greater than in ED.
savmass
4 months ago
@Arquebus X Thanks for the reply. Elite's notorious grind is also what turned me off of it. One more question (sorry), do any of the mods give some sort or a storyline/campaign or is it totally sandbox?
Arquebus X
4 months ago
@savmass I'd say it's 95% sandbox. But there are some mods that create long mission chains that do have story elements to them. I can't speak to how detailed they are (I haven't encountered the mission starts yet) but you can see what's available in the Expansion Manager under the Missions category. They should all have descriptions about what they involve (or they point you to the wiki entry about the mod).
savmass
4 months ago
@Arquebus X will do. Thanks again
Who cares?Cholmondely wrote: ↑Fri Jun 24, 2022 11:17 amI wonder what savmass's comments "Ooliteseems pretty old graphics and playability wise" actually refer to?
I care.szaumix wrote: ↑Fri Jun 24, 2022 1:31 pmWho cares?Cholmondely wrote: ↑Fri Jun 24, 2022 11:17 amI wonder what savmass's comments "Ooliteseems pretty old graphics and playability wise" actually refer to?
I went on a 10 year campaign to find video games that were a mix of fun, interesting, challenging -- but not elitist or WCG level challenging -- well balanced and (frankly) not "stupid". I had a wallet full of cash I was ready to throw at any company who could offer me what I was looking for, and in the end I only paid for a few games and I hated every one of them. Then I went back to DOS games and back to modding old 90s games until they fit and was right at home.
The current generation of gamers have very different values than those I grew up with. Oolite is what it is and if the zoomers don't like it they're missing out.
Well that I get. I lost all the years between finding Oolite (thinking it was just Elite with an engine polish) and realizing it was actually super cool when it's decked out with mods... because I was unaware of the fact. Like most games with a heavy mod community, Oolite does have an abundance of information that is difficult to parse.Cholmondely wrote: ↑Fri Jun 24, 2022 2:41 pmI'm curious whether it is an old grumble about something which a_c_ has already fixed (my guess), something irrelevant, something I've not noticed which could be improved (maybe even easily!)...
I walked right into that, didn't I?
Hence my work on the wiki. The amount of information is wonderful! But it needs categorization to give newcomers half a chance of working out what's what. What I found truly fascinating about Arquebus was that he couldn't be bothered. That probably says more about me than it does about him!szaumix wrote: ↑Fri Jun 24, 2022 4:27 pmWell that I get. I lost all the years between finding Oolite (thinking it was just Elite with an engine polish) and realizing it was actually super cool when it's decked out with mods... because I was unaware of the fact. Like most games with a heavy mod community, Oolite does have an abundance of information that is difficult to parse.
Which old grumble?Cholmondely wrote: ↑Fri Jun 24, 2022 2:41 pm
I'm curious whether it is an old grumble about something which a_c_ has already fixed (my guess), something irrelevant, something I've not noticed which could be improved (maybe even easily!)...
. Elite's notorious grind is also what turned me off of it. One more question (sorry), do any of the mods give some sort or a storyline/campaign or is it totally sandbox?