Oolite Bulletins

Would we be able to edit the thus-created pages?

We do have people writing material whose English spelling & grammar could benefit from help - and being read by others with similar issues.

If we can edit the material so that our readers or the automatic translators can at least translate accurately, then we are giving new players half a chance to understand the material on the wiki.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Sun May 02, 2021 10:40 am

Would we be able to edit the thus-created pages?

We do have people writing material whose English spelling & grammar could benefit from help - and being read by others with similar issues.

If we can edit the material so that our readers or the automatic translators can at least translate accurately, then we are giving new players half a chance to understand the material on the wiki.

Up to us (the oolite community) to define and implement what we need… in my opinion it would not work well if we cannot edit the created wiki content.

But: I’m just throwing out ideas, what could work based on my very personal experience. Other people will have different insights. And: I do not have the time to help with the implementation, so take it with a grain of salt. I’m happy to offer feedback anytime though

On the subject of authors documenting their OXPs, some attention to OXP licensing (and the lack of) is possibly needed.
I rather like Cheyd's "Dead Man's Switch" approach - a trifle complex, but something similar/adjusted might be useful.

The "Dead Man's Switch" Clause: if the Author is unresponsive to communication attempts through the official Oolite forums, via email, and all other reasonable attempts at communication for a period of 6 months following the final communication attempt, this OXP will transition to Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 US License and all rights and priviledges are awarded accordingly. [...] The "Dead Man's Switch" Clause within this license automatically and immediately becomes activated upon death of the Author.

Back to the graphics red-herring!

spara wrote: ↑Thu Apr 15, 2021 2:34 pm

Just to share my view of the game, since there is discussion here about the direction of Oolite. To me Oolite has always been a tinkerer's sandbox. A sandbox game like no other. I have spent oodles of time looking at creations of others, adding them to my game and tweaking them and playing for a while after which I have decided that something is missing and then modded that and so on and so on.

In _my_opinion_ the core game should be just a skeleton of a game to build on with ridiculous number of ways of changing it. Make your own space game experience. Hard to compete with that. Sure you can have shiny ships and all in your fancy commercial space game, but can you mod it to the core? I loved that and because of that I don't really see the point in adding OXP features to the core. If you can OXP something, then you can add it to the game, if you feel like it.

For example in _my_opinion_ the inclusion of Griff's beautiful ships to the core was an error, since there goes the motivation to create better looking ships .

I just came across this 2007 MacGameCenter review:

Oolite's graphics and audio are minimalistic. This is likely due to a lack of resources or volunteers, but it is an immediate turn-off (ya, I'm superficial - get over it). I wasn't expecting Eve Online, and the graphics are perhaps a retro-nod to the original Elite, but more detailed ship meshes, higher resolution textures, and a flashier HUD would do wonders for first impressions.

Now the chap had to spend time analysing Oolite since he was tasked with reviewing it and eventually concluded:

Conclusion
Oolite gets big props for being a top-notch Mac application and for deep, engrossing gameplay. The simple graphics and initial learning curve may turn off some users but those that stick with it will be rewarded with a fun and evolving experience.

+
Classic gameplay with generated worlds for unique experiences.
Great Mac OS X integration including iTunes, Spotlight and Growl support.
Freeware, with an active community and many add-ons available.

-
Simple graphics and sound.
Long learning curve with little in-game help.

I would have thought that we desperately need to keep our graphics up to snuff to persuade people not to drop the game the moment that they open it.

The appeal to modders will surely be there whatever? Or should we direct them to older versions of Oolite without all the Griffified models?

Or maybe we should have 4 choices on startup: vanilla, regular, easy & ugly! The one thing that Oolite does do is choice.



Review source: https://web.archive.org/web/20090302155 ... olite.html

Or maybe, just maybe, it should be made obvious that after installing you better install some fancy oxps to get you started with that "my game" feeling.

It's all about perspective and with these resources I find it quite futile to try to make a good looking game to compete with all those free-to-play bling-bling games out there. But that's just me, of course.

We may have different interpretations of a standard, and I see there are different ideas wich seem to me solutions for different problems.

1) Let's assume we create wiki pages from OXPs automatically. After some time people add content to the wiki. From that moment on we should never update the OXP documentation as we would loose all the community contributions. Would it not make sense to upload OXPs to github and allow the community to raise pull requests?

2) Poka yoke makes absolute sense to me. Although filling in the complete manifest in an online form could be error prone itself. Isn't the manifest a form in some way already? As long as it is a file it can also be version controlled. Today there seems no standardized and improvable way to validate the manifest information though.

3) Yes, we are talking about volunteers that create an OXP and work hard to have it registered for the Expansion Manager. But I rate it as nearly impossible to create an OXP without any guidance. There are good articles in the wiki, and that is why there are so many fine OXPs already.
However today it seems there is little guidance on the documentation. That means, even if I were a developer eager to create documentation, I would not know where to put it. The variety of solutions that exists today shows the result of it and makes it impossible to evaluate the documentation in a structured way - reducing the effort of the engaged OXP developers who created documentation to nearly zero.

4) We are talking about humans. I would not shoot anyone for trying. But if Oolite wants to prosper some quality is required. There is a marvellous base system that can be extended so much. Likewise a standard will not hurt anyone not interested, but help those who want.

So we as one step for poka yoke we could enhance the registering process (maybe some refer to it as upload) with a quality rating. We would have to decide what to test for, and likely document how to achieve good results. Documentation-wise we could check for existence but it's quality would likely need some living creature.

spara wrote: ↑Sun May 02, 2021 12:40 pm

Or maybe, just maybe, it should be made obvious that after installing you better install some fancy oxps to get you started with that "my game" feeling.

Yes, that would also do it.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Sun May 02, 2021 1:06 pm

spara wrote: ↑Sun May 02, 2021 12:40 pm

Or maybe, just maybe, it should be made obvious that after installing you better install some fancy oxps to get you started with that "my game" feeling.

Yes, that would also do it.

To some degree that has happened. I think Norby created a collection of OXPs for novice users.
So all that might be missing is to either have these OXPs be part of the standard distribution, or a wizard running on first invocation suggesting to install them.

Graphics Red Herring continued

spara wrote: ↑Sun May 02, 2021 12:40 pm

Or maybe, just maybe, it should be made obvious that after installing you better install some fancy oxps to get you started with that "my game" feeling.

Yes, that would also do it.

With the plethora of choice out there, some of our stalwarts should be easily able to put together some very different flavours of Oolite: mercantile, militarised, etc. Then the Start menu could offer a range of options: vanilla, updated Norby, Stranger's World, SOTL, Galactic Navy, etc.

Or maybe direct people to a new category on the Expansions Manager - scenarios or whatever - with the appropriate set of relevant OXPs. But in either case we would need to be able to keep all the OXP's separate - and I'm not sure that we can.

Edited once as inspiration struck (missing Hiran en route)!

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Sun May 02, 2021 1:23 pm

With the plethora of choice out there, some of our stalwarts should be easily able to put together some very different flavours of Oolite: mercantile, militarised, etc. Then the Start menu could offer a range of options: vanilla, updated Norby, Stranger's World, SOTL, Galactic Navy, etc.

Or maybe direct people to a new category on the Expansions Manager - scenarios or whatever - with the appropriate set of relevant OXPs. But in either case we would need to be able to keep all the OXP's separate - and I'm not sure that we can.

Edited once as inspiration struck (missing Hiran en route)!

I am not against customizing the game with bias towards different targets. But is not one of the powers of the Elite/Oolite (back in the days as well as today) that you can choose your career type? You are not fixed, which means you can change as you feel like. How many have tried one or other way and then decided to stick with something?

Return of the Red Herring

hiran wrote: ↑Sun May 02, 2021 7:07 pm

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Sun May 02, 2021 1:23 pm

With the plethora of choice out there, some of our stalwarts should be easily able to put together some very different flavours of Oolite: mercantile, militarised, etc. Then the Start menu could offer a range of options: vanilla, updated Norby, Stranger's World, SOTL, Galactic Navy, etc.

Or maybe direct people to a new category on the Expansions Manager - scenarios or whatever - with the appropriate set of relevant OXPs. But in either case we would need to be able to keep all the OXP's separate - and I'm not sure that we can.

Edited once as inspiration struck (missing Hiran en route)!

I am not against customizing the game with bias towards different targets. But is not one of the powers of the Elite/Oolite (back in the days as well as today) that you can choose your career type? You are not fixed, which means you can change as you feel like. How many have tried one or other way and then decided to stick with something?

Absolutely. I could not agree more. The problem is time. How long does it take to master the game commands? How long does it take until you can play without looking everything up. And then once you have mastered the Vanilla game, how long to work your way through 700 OXZs on the Expansions Manager - and say another 300 OXPs floating around elsewhere? Who can be bothered? If you have not fallen in love with Oolite, how likely is it to happen?

I would argue that to give people some 4-6 prechosen Ooniverses makes a lot of sense. All that we are doing is adding to their choices. They can always fine-tune/tweak them once they know enough.

Now. You, Hiran, stated that you took a very different approach. Tell me, what happened? What you have said so far is that you downloaded all 700 OXZs, that there were issues with your keyboard, and, I would guess, you got so bamboozled coping with the game that the recondite mysteries of MFD manipulation escaped you (hardly surprising!). So ... what happened?

Let me tell you my story. It will not be typical. I discovered Oolite properly last Spring. I realised that it was worth spending time on, so I printed out all the background material to read (Reference sheets, Mr Gimlet, the old Pilot's Manual from Elite & the one from this wiki). I read it all (and marked up the Reference sheets for the key-commands which I kept forgetting), and some of the fiction. I started discovering the gems hidden away on this bulletin board. I don't have e-mail so I bamboozled a chum to get me onto this bulletin board and then slowly got into editing the wiki. I managed to spend enough time on it that my ability to bore people rigid about it is now probably second to none. My programming skills are negligible, my combat skills are a joke, I dropped my character who had to leave Galaxy One on the Constrictor Mission and my other characters waltz around in Galaxy 1 Ooniverses with bizarre mixtures of Weapon Laws, Smugglers, Diplomancy, Stranger's World & Redspear/Spara's Extra planets. Maybe 200 oxp's - all the lore, lots of dockables, ambience, equipment, Spara's trade-related ones. Some to help my crummy combat. No superweapons (unless Vimana laser counts). No real ship oxp's except those coming with Commies, Dictators etc.

If I can ever improve my combat, I want to try Redspear's experimental ones. At some stage I want to try Reval's trading ones. I'd love to write a halfways decent oxp for Digebiti. And to manage some success in putting those stories in OXZ format for Ship's Library. Along the way I had a few minor issues which the goodly people here helped me sort out. And Stranger released SWEconomies at a time when I was getting increasingly unhappy with the trade system and nailed almost all my major complaints.

There, I've pretty much laid my soul bare! Your turn. Confess!

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Sun May 02, 2021 7:55 pm

Absolutely. I could not agree more. The problem is time. How long does it take to master the game commands? How long does it take until you can play without looking everything up. And then once you have mastered the Vanilla game, how long to work your way through 700 OXZs on the Expansions Manager - and say another 300 OXPs floating around elsewhere? Who can be bothered? If you have not fallen in love with Oolite, how likely is it to happen?

The first few steps have to be on solid ground. Then people are more likely to fall in love.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Sun May 02, 2021 7:55 pm

I would argue that to give people some 4-6 prechosen Ooniverses makes a lot of sense. All that we are doing is adding to their choices. They can always fine-tune/tweak them once they know enough.

If that ability stays I am all for it.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Sun May 02, 2021 7:55 pm

Now. You, Hiran, stated that you took a very different approach. Tell me, what happened? What you have said so far is that you downloaded all 700 OXZs, that there were issues with your keyboard, and, I would guess, you got so bamboozled coping with the game that the recondite mysteries of MFD manipulation escaped you (hardly surprising!). So ... what happened?

My story is way shorter and less honorable than a lot of people might think.

I had seen elite on the C64 a long time back, but never owned it. When I now stumbled over Oolite I had an idea of the gameplay and the such but no real experience. After installing the game I started flying around and lost my life. Many times. More experiments later I tried to trade goods. The routes I found were not really worth spending the fuel, and if they were I got ambushed by pirates. Due to my fighting skills (and maybe limitation of keyboard commands) this never went to my advantage. Without fighting there was no point in a military or pirate career, and going for missions would require longer lasting travel which my credits did not allow.

To some degree frustrated I started using the skills that I had: Look at the savegames, look at OXPs and other stuff. My installation covers only 140 OXPs and is far from 700. Having found the Imperial Star Destroyer gives me some confidence I can now travel the galaxy. Pirates rarely attack now. I tried some missions but was not successful there. Finding a planet 3LYs west of something just reveals nothing for me. The deliveries I chose either were delivered too late or something else is wrong here (I was not able to deliver the parcel although I docked - as I remember on time). And some other things seem to not work out: The shuttle takes sometimes ages to dock. Landing on planets never works (would that anyhow with star destroyers?) This all may be related to the fact that I am not flying a standard ship.

So ultimately I ended up looking for further interesting equipment and even more how to take advantage of it. But equipment per se is not documented. It would take endless time to get where I want to be. And that's where we are back to falling in love...

Meanwhile though I downloaded all the ~700 plugins, but not for gameplay. When trying to extract OXP data I simply started off with the OXP list used by the Expansion Manager, and the code I created automatically downloads all those files into a separate folder. After all, some of them will not work together, as I found out myself (Imperial Star Destroyer vs ILS)

hiran wrote: ↑Sun May 02, 2021 8:51 pm

I had seen elite on the C64 a long time back, but never owned it. When I now stumbled over Oolite I had an idea of the gameplay and the such but no real experience. After installing the game I started flying around and lost my life. Many times. More experiments later I tried to trade goods. The routes I found were not really worth spending the fuel, and if they were I got ambushed by pirates. Due to my fighting skills (and maybe limitation of keyboard commands) this never went to my advantage. Without fighting there was no point in a military or pirate career, and going for missions would require longer lasting travel which my credits did not allow.

To some degree frustrated I started using the skills that I had: Look at the savegames, look at OXPs and other stuff. My installation covers only 140 OXPs and is far from 700. Having found the Imperial Star Destroyer gives me some confidence I can now travel the galaxy. Pirates rarely attack now. I tried some missions but was not successful there. Finding a planet 3LYs west of something just reveals nothing for me. The deliveries I chose either were delivered too late or something else is wrong here (I was not able to deliver the parcel although I docked - as I remember on time). And some other things seem to not work out: The shuttle takes sometimes ages to dock. Landing on planets never works (would that anyhow with star destroyers?) This all may be related to the fact that I am not flying a standard ship.

So... I've only ever used the Cobra III. I started with the tutorial. Made sure I understood the basic controls, manoeuvering and docking. I could not dodge the asteroids, so I didn't bother. As for the combat - don't even think about the mess I made of it!

I started with the easy start at Zaonce (safer than Lave) and traded between Tionisla & Isinor. Move laser from front to back (I only ever run!) using Phkb's Laser Arrangement.oxp. Buy computers & machinery (& luxuries too when I've the spare cash) at industrial Zaonce and then whizz over to Isinor. On arriving at Witchpoint - flee! Turn right and head away on Torus Drive for 15-20 secs, perpendicular to the planet. Then turn to face planet and approach until the square for the station comes up. Head to station, target it, request permission to dock and then dock. (Lots of advice on docking on wiki - and on cim's Ship's Manual in the library). If there are others at the witchpoint, head away from them first. Then checking where planet is, go back to running at 90 degrees. for 15-20 secs.

Sell the goodies at Isinor and buy furs & wines (and cheap gems/gold/platinum when I have the spare cash). Return to Tionisla (shorter distance - so more fuel for when I have witchfuel injectors to run from pirates). Rinse and repeat.

Purchases. Buy phkb's Fast Target Selector (10₢) and link it to a fast-priming button for offensive use. Only good for missiles (which are best as defence against pirate's missiles, this defensive use of missiles does not need FTS). Buy HUD selector (10₢) so I can have my favourite Vimana HUD up (I'm used to the dials and find the warnings crucially helpful). Buy Dybal's Barrel Roll (30₢ - good for defence when I remember to use it - I'm usually in too much of a state of blue funk).

Then if I'm feeling lucky, splurge on expanding the cargo hold. But when I started, bought the Witchdrive Fuel Injectors (great for fleeing - and the Tionisla-Isinor milk run is short enough that there is always spare fuel. Then buy ECM. And work up from there. I always by the defensive stuff first: Extra Energy Unit, Lone Wolf's Naval Energy Grid's cheap civilian version, and then upgrade my lasers. I cannot recommend Smiv Industries teamaker. Their Fragrant Broken Orange Pekoe tastes like mud.

Once I've got Shield Boosters I can start to think about more lucrative and more dangerous routes. Some such are in the space lanes. Space compass lets me find Rock Hermits and buy dirt cheap gems/gold/platinum (these can be pirate infested). Docking computers let me dock and sell them to Liners (who also give me better profits on furs, luxuries & wines) - Liners often attract pirates. I can get alloys for virtually nothing at Deep Space Dredgers and sell them food at a massive profit. Thargoid's Tracker OXP lets me tag them when I have a full hold - and come back and sell them food later. I can also start visiting Qutiri and Ensoreus (often with a fuel scoop sun skim at Bemeara). Ensoreus to Ararus is very lucrative but very dangerous. With Stranger's World running, I can make oodles of dosh visiting the various orbital stations and rock hermits.

Once I've got military lasers & sniperlock I can start to nobble the pirates myself (except in communist systems, naturally). I don't bother with contracts, but I understand that they are a good way to become filthy rich.

Of course, now that Redspear has so helpfully written Paddling Pool OXP, one can more safely do the same on the other side of Lave - the Diso-Leesti milkrun.

See http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Milkrun for some maps. The Isinor to Ensoreus milk run is dangerous (nearly 7ly - uses up almost a full tank of fuel, so nothing left for witchfuel injectors at the other end if you get scragged!) - hence my Bemeara stop overs.

List of OXPs:
Vital: There is a lot of information in Oolite. These vital OXPs help give you access to the information you need to play/enjoy the game
XenonUI: vital reminders of what the numerous keyboard options are for the various GUI screens (F5/F6/F7/F8)
Ship's Library OXP: comes with a top-notch in-game readable ship's manual
GalCop Galactic Registry: vital database of the galaxy you are currently in
MarketObserver: provides vital comparison information for commodity prices on the F8 screen to help profit on trades
Navigation MFD: (Cody's addition: most of this detail also provided by the Vimana HUD's Travel module)

Ambience: These help bring the universe around you to life:
BGS & BGS Soundset: enhances docking/witchspace travel etc
Communications Pack A: NPCs come to life
Death Comms: dying NPCs come to life!
Engine Sound
GNN: News about the universe
Home System: invest in a solar system and become famous there!
Randomshipnames OXP
Random Station Names
And these give the solar systems a bit more variety
Solar Flares
System Features Rings
System Features Sunspots
These add bit of Oolite lore
Famous Planets: expanded descriptions for the F7 screen
Galaxy Names OXP: places galaxy name at top of F6 screen
Tionisla Orbital Graveyard, Monuments & Wrecks, Chronicle Array: bring Tionisla to life with a marvellous cemetery

Dockside Services: Whoops! Just discovered ... this does nothing!

Dockables
Deep Space Dredgers (may need tweaking to allow use of docking computer - you need them or ILS to dock)
Lave Academy: has training courses in combat, docking & ship-handling
Liners
Superhub: adds variety - and an easy dock
Torus station: adds variety

Equipment
Deep Horizon Advanced Navigation Computer: enhances witchspace travel
Email System: reminder of when I bought what!
Equipment Aide: a realistic OXP: how long F3 equipment fitting work takes
Fast Target Selector OXP: helps target missiles
Fuel Tank: an emergency fuel tank in case of need (many others also available)
Laser Arrangement: makes moving lasers much easier when docked
Naval Grid Next: another defensive OXP (buy it to strengthen shields)
Police IFF Scanner Upgrade: advance warning about (some) pirates
Repair Bots: fixes broken equipment in flight
SniperLock: for targeting lasers - vital if your aim is as lousy as mine!
Welcome Mat: warning if the system is currently pirate or Thargoid infested!
phkb's experimental: MaintenanceTuneUp.oxz (what you would expect in reality)

HUDs
Vimana HUD - vital warning systems if altitude/energy/shields are too low etc. Target module v. useful.

Mechanics
AutoRefuel
BlOomberg Markets creates market fluctuations which are announced on GNN news
Illegal Goods Tweak solves issues with rescuing slaves
Reverse Y Control helps when navigating looking at the F2 aft viewscreen
Traffic Lights OXP helps docking (at main orbital station only)

Miscellaneous
LogEvents: helps track down problems if you need to ask for help
Montanas Resource Pack 01: adds ambience and quirium crystal commodity

Retextures
Oolite v1.88 Base Shipset Normal and Specular/Gloss Maps: better textures for ships etc.
Or: Griff's shady ships (Spara's preference)

Systems: These give these systems much individual colour. If you can handle it, add Anarchies too!
Commies
Dictators OXP
Feudal States

Optional - for my difficulties with Combat
Barrel Roll OXP
Paddling Pool
Vimana Ship Overrides: extra cargo space, energy banks, missile bays

Edited to include Cody's Navigation MFD; re-edited to include Spara's Griff's shady ships.

Commentary: ILS referenced above in dockables is much cheaper than the Docking Computers. It is more fun. It is also absolutely lethal, if you do not pay attention and are moving too fast. There is no "on-off switch" and ILS locks onto anything & everything suitable in its field of view as the target for docking (the sun, other asteroids, ships etc)! So when ILS starts to manoeuver you into line to dock, and something else enters its field of view... ! Press space, Commander!
You can adjust for this, but you need to be constantly on guard. Note that as you start to improve your shields you can start to survive docking mistakes at higher speeds.

I cannot recommend Smiv Industries teamaker

<cachinnates>

almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea

I'd add spara's Navigation MFD to your "Vital" section.

Opinion on retextures. Griff's shady ships are good for variation vs Base Shipset Normal and Specular/Gloss Maps showcase the latest graphical additions. Personally I prefer Griff's shady ships.

It's tremendously difficult to find consensus on what would be a good starter set . Norby tried that with their meta packs and found a lot of opposition from the forum members at that time. It might be easier now, when it's a bit quiet around here.