Oolite Bulletins

This sort of thing takes me back. Ahh, the days of typing in code... heh. Anybody else here remember those old Usborne books with the adventures in, or even INPUT magazine? Eeh, those were the days, when you had 32K if you were lucky. (Luxury. I had 3.5K, a cartridge port, a joystick and a tape deck an' ah were bloody glad of it, etc.)

There was a game for the Arc which this thread reminded me of, called - hey, no calling out at the back, I know you know it! - Karma. In concept it was similar to Elite, in that the player flew around space in a ship, shot things and such, but it played in real time. No, in real real time. The first thing the game did when it was run, in theory, was to update itself. So if you said you'd meet someone at such a time, you had to be there or you'd miss them... It was huge, galaxy-spanning and epic in scope. Sadly, IIRC one of the coders was killed in a motorbike accident and it was abandoned.

I'm not sure how the X Universe keeps track of these things. There must be a way. Mind you, with the processing power of modern-day PCs I wouldn't have thought that keeping track of a 130-sector universe would be too much of a problem. From what I can see, there's generally at most 30 stations (in the biggest sectors), a similar number of ships, asteroids (which just sit there) and some gates. I suspect that the way the game functions is as follows:

* Is the player looking over here? If so, draw; if not, skip.
* Is this NPC in the player's sector? If so, animate/move/deduce consequences, etc., visibly. Ships dock, undock, fight, get bits blown off, etc.
* If the NPC isn't in the player's sector, then do it all seamlessly. Not having to display the graphics would be a start. If there's a fight, roll dice to resolve it. (That's something I don't ever recall seeing: exiting a jumpgate into the middle of a firefight.) Handle the docking, etc. of ships, transfer of cargo...

That's only my take on things. It seems to work reasonably well, or did in X2 (I haven't tried X3 yet), although it has its limitations: for example, all the asteroids at the start of the game remained asteroids and weren't made into mines by NPCs, as you might expect.

But I'll shut up now.

For real real time, try the game Journey to Alpha Centauri described in Terry Pratchett’s book Only You Can Save Mankind. It draws a starfield. After a century or so, the star in the middle starts getting bigger…

Draco_Caeles wrote:

If there's a fight, roll dice to resolve it.

I think it is a bit more complex than that in Oolite, since you can see fights from far away.

Lucidor wrote:

I think it is a bit more complex than that in Oolite, since you can see fights from far away.

In Oolite, the AI resolves things in the same way whether you can see them or not (it makes game design much simpler if there's only one way AI is done). The added bonus is that you don't need special code to draw distant flashes from explosions of fights resolved by 'dice rolls' - because the AI is behaving precisely as it would if they player was close by, it just gets drawn because it happens. This does come at a cost of CPU time, but I don't think Oolite's AI is particularly burdensome on the CPU anyway.

But only the flashes are drawn, right?

Only because the ships are too far away to be seen. But that would be the case whether they were fighting or not. But it boils down to the AI doesn't care - it keeps running regardless of what the player is going (and that in turn ends up as a MUCH better player experience AND a simpler game design - a double-win). An AI that keeps running regardless of what the player does means that you can stumble into all sorts of unplanned situations.

Definitely. I remember the first time I saw this in action... I stumbled across a group of pirates and galcops who had joined forces to fend off a thargoid. It really brought a smile to my face.

Of course, I had to help them... then slaughter the pirates so I wouldn't have to share.

Last time there were pirates and Thargons together the bloody pirates attacked me!

Ok, what Draco_Caeles explains with x-tension is a bit different than what you are speaking of in oolite. I explain :

In hardwar, you have 1 place. Everything exists all the time, all fights or movement or collisions are resolved in the same way wether you close or not.

In the X-series there are 1 or 2 hundred systems. (a bit like oolite). Everything happening in a system, is done in the same way has in hardwar : they exist, and are resolved in the same way wether the player is close or not. Things happening in other systems are resolved through dice rolls.

Oolite looks a bit the same as X-series, (2 hundred systems, except that you have one more level of complexity with 8 galaxies. So overal it is more 2 thousand systems). As in both other game, when you are in a system everything exist and is resolved in the same way wether the player is close or not. The big difference with x-tension is that nothing is done with the other systems. There is not track of what is happening there, and systems are randomly generated every time you enter them.

So could oolite be done as in the X-series ?

-I'd say no. Because the world is too big. 2000 systems, count 15 ships per system, that's 30 000 ships to monitor, even if you monitor with die rolls, that's probably too much. And too big to be really fun (except that people like big numbers. Your action will never change much with so many ships around. But well, that's oolite, not hardwar...)

-However, a concept I was thinking of a few years earlier, was to have a limited number of ships which would persistantly exists (which means travel from system to system). They would be controlled through die roll, depending on the characteristics of the system in which they are (random encounter wiht pirates, streng of them...). In return the action of these ships will change the characteristics of the systems.
With this system, the universe is more dynamic. And to make it more interresting for the player, it is possible to send sometime some info about what a "pilote ship" did somewhere, and how it changes the world (press release, or during a mission, the player gets a way to track a ship).

To know how to handle these "pilote ships" when they are in the same system as the player, they may be seen in 2 different ways :
- A unique powership (for exemple a spy, a very big marchant). So this ship is effectively created when the player is in the system. If the player destroys, or helps it; the outcome of the fights will have the same concequences has the die roll when it occurs in a system not occupied by the player.
-The personification of a cast (for exemple traders). Which means that it is not really a ship, be more a artefcat created to simulate trade in the galaxy. In that case, it does not really needs to be created for real when the player is in a system : killing one small trader (the "pilote ship' that the player would have met by chance), over 10 other randomly created ships, should not ruin the local market... Maybe you could consider that this ship is in fact the average of all traders in the systems (If you kill all traders in the systems, it is the same as very bad dice rol for the "pilot ship"
- Finally, the player could be considered as a "pilot ship". That is, its actions have an impact on the characteristics of the system.


But these considerations of a dynamic world bring us very far from the original elite idea : It was a very big world to explore, in which the player is tiny. So its actions have no or little impact on it. This system would would bring a way to alter the world. Is it the idea of Oolite ? How to weight it to keep the good feel of it ?

I remember when Ian Martin showed up.

I also remember when it was clear he had left again.


I really wish something like Oolite would happen to Hardwar.....it is a great game with a lot of interesting things going on behind the scenes.


Harvester

The idea why your actions do not affect local market is simple: have a look on local planet's gross productivity. The goods we see on free market is relatively small amount compared to planet production and even single cargo contract! It's just a GalCop station. Can buying out a local grocery store ruin major city's economy?

I've been thinking about dipping my toes into the water that is Hardwar but the learning curve seems a bit much and its not as intuitive as some games. Combine that with the fact that there are all these hacks around and youre not sure where to start.

It seems that because the Hardwar world is complex tho that every effect of the hacks have a countereffect somewhere else. Its interesting to read about because most games do not work like this.

I've just (re)discovered Orbiter and it looks like a good base for an FE2/FFE clone, if someone figures out a way to make "hyperspace" work in it.

The visuals are awesome, and the models are damned good. I'm going to play with converting the simpler ones to Oolite format for kicks, when I have time.

It has planetary landings, space station docking/landing, customisable control panels and new instruments, pretty much everything you want. It also has the flight model you FE2/FFE people like.

The downside is you need to be a C++ coder to make new ships with anything other than default behaviour and control panels.

The author has server-based multiplayer on his todo list.

All up it is mighty impressive.

Ok, when will we get graphics like that in Oolite?

I know we are retroing here, but retroing with graphics like that would be that much better!

Wolfwood wrote:

Ok, when will we get graphics like that in Oolite? :)

For the ship and space station models, the primary difference is better smooth shading with specular highlights, followed by self-shadowing, and harsher lighting. Smooth shading and specular highlights are on my official to-do list. Self-shadowing is on my unofficial to-do list. The engine effects aren’t all that complex. The planet and atmosphere rendering… well, that’s on my very unofficial to-do list. :-) Realistically, though, my contributions are coming pretty damn slowly. I strongly advise against the holding of breath.