Oolite Bulletins

Selezen wrote:

Well then, how about a hyperspace 'hop'? Use 0.2LY worth of fuel to initiate a small jump towards the sun (or another programmable point)?

Side note: the Sun is 8.5LM (Light Minutes) away from Earth. Which is aprox 0.000016LY. However, one might imagine that there could be a 'capital cost' for cycling the engine, regardless of distance.

We now return to the regularly scheduled program.

Selezen wrote:

Well then, how about a hyperspace 'hop'? Use 0.2LY worth of fuel to initiate a small jump towards the sun (or another programmable point)?

Only usable when no other ships are nearby, of course, because of some 'initiation instability' for such a short jump.

That's the sort of thing I'd like to see, but the Elite universe doesn't lend itself to that sort of thing, outside a single system.

Perhaps we could have it so it would jump some programmable distance in whatever direction you're facing at present. I don't see why you'd need to disallow it when other ships are about - you can witchspace out of a system during a fight, if you can survive the 15 second countdown.

I'd want to use it anytime also with ships around.

Say a one LY fuel cost for a insystem hop of a distance of twice a standard Cobra3 scanner range?

Using afterburners it takes a lot more fuel to get away from convoys or vipers inbound.
At least in a Python it does.

Maybe only allow jerkjumping towards certain marker buoys (like the WP-beacon)

It wouldn't be much of a timesaver with the 15seconds delay for every jerk though.

So two options here: a short warlock jump or an advanced J-jumping. (which might only be usable with afterburners installed or a tobe designed piece of hardware)

If the distances were to be increased, I'd vote for anything that got you to the sun faster *without* making it easier to avoid "encounters"...

How about this?

microjump enhancer upgrade for 10,000Cr available at your local tech8 planet.

Doubles microjump speed.


or as mentioned incrementally increases microjump-length.
(prone to random failure, returning the player to normal speed with a damaged enhancer and a standard jumpdrive.)


Wouldn't it be cool if hermits could potentially harbour a hightech mechanic?
One could find such a hermit and buy high tech goodies and even experimental (and potentially illegal!) ecuipment in even a tech1 anarchy system.

My first post: I've just rediscovered OoLite- the latest version is SO good.

I was also thinking about the possibility of witchpoint beacons located at various points within a solar system (with one of them being by the sun).
This led me to my ultimate fantasy - Oolite joins forces with Celestia!!
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/

Imagine a version of Oolite that is based in our galaxy and uses the same database as Celestia (and same surface textures for planets/stars). Trading could take place within a single solar system, or jumps to other systems up to around 20 L/Y would also be possible. J-jumping would need to be faster as would other top speeds. Pirates could lurk round asteroids or have bases on moons, imagine battling other ships by the rings of Saturn!! Then each "galaxy" in a galactic hyperdrive jump could just be a more distant sector of our own (i.e. maybe a jump of 10000 light years). A limited number of star systems (perhaps a lot less than found in Elite - especially since solar systems would have multiple planets) would have witchpoint beacons (famous Elite worlds like Lave, Diso etc. can still be used). Thargoids could perhaps come from another sector of the galaxy that a late-in-the-game mission could reveal. As with Celestia, it would be possible to enter atmospheres and maybe land on surfaces depending on your craft.
The possibilities are mind boggling - what do you think???

This comes up every now and again, and I love the idea, but the Oolite engine is pretty tightly bound to the Elite galaxy generation algorithm, and a 2D galaxy (ie stars only have x,y coordinates in the galactic plane.

You'd have to rewrite a seriously big part of Oolite to get this to happen. Yes, I keep getting tempted, but don't have the time.

I'm so glad that others like yourself have already contemplated and are in principle excited by the idea. And I can certainly appreciate that it would be a mammoth undertaking. But to get slightly back on topic, perhaps the way Celestia models solar systems with various planets (or perhaps in this case, just one planet per system in keeping with the Elite galaxy) orbiting around a star, plus the (basic) texturing for planets and stars - and the inclusion of more witchpoints, could help to inspire a far more realistic depiction of distances found in space between, as well as create great eye candy... stiil, i'm sure even that would be a massive undertaking. But one can only dream...

I think Celestia would be a lovely platform for a Frontier remake or clone, but I think the spirit and atmosphere of Elite would be lost.

Selezen wrote:

I think Celestia would be a lovely platform for a Frontier remake or clone, but I think the spirit and atmosphere of Elite would be lost.

I agree, make Oolite the best 'Elite' it can be.

Is that Elitest?

Cheers,

Drew.

I guess the different licences oolite and celestia use make them incompatible.

Putting the sun further away sounds like a good idea for me, but there should be some kind of time accelerator similiar to the one in Frontier, imo.

Btw, the time accelerator in Frontier wasn't "mass-locked". If you hit the accel button while pirates were there, well ...*blam*!

Although, with the new planet textures being worked on......the next step would be to be able to fly into the atmosphere and possibly land........you're starting to get closer to Frontier and moving away from Elite.

I like Frontier and I like Elite, Oolite is better than both of them! I think now we shouldn't worry about the 'proper' games and concentrate on making Oolite even better - if that's possible......oh and I say 'we,' except I haven't a clue about programming, I say we in the same sense as talking about 'we' when watching England play.

I don't think that there would be any problem with taking some of the best playability elements of Frontier and adding them to Oolite, since Giles has often described Oolite as Elite 1.5 (bridging the gap).

My only definite anti-Frontier thingy is the flight/combat system, which I am always going to find unplayable (Sorry, Winston). Planetary landings are cool, as are some of the mission things in Frontier, even though some are badly handled.

In Oolite, though, planetary landings could be a lot of work. First, the surface of the planet has to be mapped for a ship to be able to fly around it. Then a suitable transition from space sim to flight sim has to be implemented. Then planetary landing routines have to be worked out, involving a whole new world of physics and a new flight engine. Then each type of ship would need handling characteristics (for realism...).

Starglider 2 did it wonderfully, using surface tunnel entrances to allow underground access. Maybe something similar could be used to start with in Oolite, and over time, as Giles' calendar permitted, planetary starports could be designed by the user base...

I've never been tempted to add planetary landings to Oolite - the fiction makes it clear you're not allowed to land on worlds where there are GalCop stations, and I don't think it would add any significant playability or features that couldn't be had in space.

dajt wrote:

I've never been tempted to add planetary landings to Oolite - the fiction makes it clear you're not allowed to land on worlds where there are GalCop stations, and I don't think it would add any significant playability or features that couldn't be had in space.

I agree. The only caveat being that the original Elite manual does indicate that Adders and Morays are able to land planetside, so there is a reason for this.

Maybe they don't in Galcop controlled areas, but they do... somewhere.

Cheers,

Drew.