Oolite Bulletins

I WAS going to mention my turreted manoeuvres, but decided that such a discussion wouldn't be fair considering that turrets are expensive kits and fairly pointless to talk about in the early game O_o

Well, I'm 20, and not what one would say old-fashioned (I never listen to any music earlier than the 90s, for one), but I don't see the controls as being dated, merely as being a different way of playing

Sometimes you can come up with your own techniques - when flying heavier ships I find a fun way to play is to ram-fire - either all of your lasers hit (any return laser fire won't be half as effective since your ship IS heavier) - or you ram them -> pow! Cross your fingers and hope no equipment got damaged...

Surely, the whole point is that Oolite is not and never has been merely a shoot 'em up.

I don't know how anything in this thread gave you that impression.

If you're meeting traffic outside the main lane, then you have something loaded which puts that traffic there - vanilla Oolite doesn't.

Again, I do not have any oxps that puts traffic outside the main lanes.

punkbohemian wrote:

That "there will be no further improvements to it" bit is a little disheartening. It's like saying, "we know there's some room for improvement, but we're not going to do anything about it."
...
But, I'm not bagging on the project. People have fond memories of the original game. I'm the same way (with other games, obviously). While I would love to see someone make an updated Privateer (that works on Linux), I would also appreciate a restored version of the original (that actually works, and hasn't been over-tweaked by over-creative devs), despite the fact that the original game had some room for improvement (as any game does). With that in mind, it would be nice for a dev to say, "Hey, we remade Oolite, mission accomplished. Enjoy. Now we'll move on to Oolite 2, and kick it up a notch with the design."

You know, you are right. it does sound a bit harsh and my apologies for this. Of course we always aim to improve and of course what I stated earlier is my opinion only. It does not mean that none of the other devs might want to have a go at it. It's just that personally, I feel that we are good at what the flight model is like now and do not see a reason to spend effort on this particular sector at this time. I do not have any generic objections going for that little extra that will add more to the gameplay either. But maybe not before the next stable release. We are not yet at the point where we can say "Hey we remade Oolite". So I can probably readjust my statement to something like "In my opinion, improvements in flight model cannot be considered before the next stable release". Yeah, I think that's a bit better.

another_commander wrote:

It's just that personally, I feel that we are good at what the flight model is like now and do not see a reason to spend effort on this particular sector at this time.

I guess that flight model changes could very much come with different ship setups...like ships which can pitch/roll much better than yaw or such, like aircraft...

When it comes to collisions, I myself believe that there should be improvements made:

1) Collisions don't take a ship's energy into account - I've tried myself to change that, but only got strange results so far. My idea was to make it possible to kill ships low on energy where the collision normally would destroy both (or the player only).
2) Collisions send a ship spinning, however, that's still the case after I do use injectors to push against the power my ship received, thus it begins to drift again after I stop using the injectors. I think that's a bug.
3) It's true that the velocity needs to be accounted when hitting something, as well as the mass. However, very massive objects kill instantly even on the lowest of speeds. I think that's also a bug and should be reworked at some time. Still I miss the idea for a better formula myself...

Screet

punkbohemian wrote:

What graphics card do you have?

NVIDIA. I wish I could tell you more than that, but Linux doesn't have dxdiag and I've yet to figure out how to get the specs of my video card (other hardware, no problem, but not my video card).

You're probably using nVidia-supplied taintware (closed-source kernel modules). For reasons related to said taintware, I anti-recommend nVidia graphics hardware, preferring instead ATI Radeon X1nnn or lower (using the open-source drivers) or Intel GMA950 or better (for which you need Mesa 7.2 or later else some things will be slow).

lspci gives me:
and glxinfo | grep OpenGL gives me:
so yeah, I guess I do have NVIDIA running. Now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure I did this on purpose so something else might run smoother...maybe it was Compiz...I can't remember off the top of my head, though.

You know, you are right. it does sound a bit harsh and my apologies for this.

Well, I didn't mean to turn this into a suggestion thread (I apologize for that). And, I'm certainly not suggesting that Oolite should get jazzed up for the sake of jazzing up. I was just thinking that there have been many old video games that have been remade or just developed through sequels, each incarnation kicking it up a notch over the previous. If someone wanted to flat-out clone the old Elite to run on modern computers, I'm cool with that. I still emu old NES games now and again, despite the fact that all the games are so old school and out of touch with the contemporary scene.

My thinking is that it's been 25 years since the original. A lot has changed with the space trading/fighting genre, not just in technology, but also artistry. There is a lot of great inspiration out there from which to draw in order to make contemporary Elite (or Oolite) an enduring contender in the genre, as opposed to just a classic.

punkbohemian wrote:

What graphics card do you have?

NVIDIA. I wish I could tell you more than that, but Linux doesn't have dxdiag and I've yet to figure out how to get the specs of my video card (other hardware, no problem, but not my video card).

Well, one surefire method to find out is to reboot your computer.. that way, the monitor is all warmed up so you won't miss what is a very brief message about your graphics card.. if you Ctrl-Alt-Del (twice) the moment it disappears, you can make it pop up several times to be sure to catch it all..

Here is what I see in the upper left corner of my screen when it starts up:

GeForce FX 5200 BIOS
Version 4.34.20.18.00
Copyright etc nVidia
128.0MB RAM

As I said, it's only there for a second, you've gotta be quick to see it. The first and fourth lines are the important ones. Write them down somewhere...

The next thing you should do once your system is up and you're logged in, is to fire up whatever is your software package manager of choice and do a search on the term 'nvidia'. That will list all packages for nVidia, both those installed and those available for installation. This is a good opportunity to also check if you have the latest driver package available installed, although that should be the case anyway, if you keep your system up to date.

On the other hand, it's entirely possible that the drivers for your card are not installed yet, as, being closed-source, many Linux fans don't like non-open-source code in their machines, so they are not installed by default. (See other comments made above by _ds_ about "taintware".) No disrespect intended to _ds_ but to be honest, that is something only open-source purists really worry about.. most ordinary users simply want to be able to use their computers to their full capacity. Since you already have the card, my suggestion is to go with the closed-source nVidia drivers. Despite anything you may hear to the contrary, the sky will not fall on your head, nor will your PC burst into flames....

However, the main thing you are looking for in this list is a package called "nvidia-settings" with some numbers after it. This is a tool for configuring your nVidia card. Install it. Log out and back in again, and now it will be listed in your menu. (In Kubuntu it's under 'Applications>System>NVIDIA X Server Settings', but where Gnome puts it in Ubuntu I couldn't say... Should you not have nVidia drivers installed yet, adding this package will cause the correct drivers for your card to be installed at the same time. If this is the case, you will need to re-boot to enable the drivers.

Once everything is in and running happily, you should fire up the nVidia X server Settings control panel and see what settings you can play with for your particular card. One thing you definitely will want to adjust is the Gamma correction of your screen. From the menu on the LH side, under "X Screen 0" you will see an entry labeled "X Server Color Correction" Clicking on that will bring up slider controls for Brightness, Contrast and Gamma. Make sure the Active Color Channel is set to "All Channels" and tweak the Gamma up a bit brighter.. Mine is set to 1.85, but this is very much a matter of personal preference... Don't go overboard, but don't be afraid to go a little beyond what seems appropriate, either. experimentation is the key here.

Start up Oolite and see what difference it makes in-game.. If you've got the balance right, space will still be black, but the ships will be considerably easier to see against the background.

punkbohemian wrote:

and glxinfo | grep OpenGL gives me:

Code: Select all

OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce 8400M GS/PCI/SSE2
OpenGL version string: 2.1.2 NVIDIA 169.12
OpenGL extensions:

so yeah, I guess I do have NVIDIA running. Now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure I did this on purpose so something else might run smoother...maybe it was Compiz...I can't remember off the top of my head, though.

Looking at the above, there's a darn good chance there are more up-to-date drivers available for your card... my results for glxinfo | grep OpenGL are: I'm pretty sure my card is older than yours, and it has 173.14.16 drivers, so I'd be surprised if you can't get something later than the 169.12 drivers you currently have installed. 180.44 seems the best available at the moment, although you may not be able to use those.. the 173 series is the best my ancient card can cope with.. see what you can find...

Diziet Sma wrote:

OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20 NVIDIA via Cg compiler

Interesting comparison...unless the other card does not support shaders, it's driver is so old that it apparantly has no support for them.

Thus, if the card supports shaders, a newer driver will give a much better graphics experience!

Screet

Interesting comparison...unless the other card does not support shaders, it's driver is so old that it apparantly has no support for them.

I suspected this might happen. Ubuntu does auto update for most packages, but because NVIDIA isn't officially supported, I'm starting to think I have to do it manually. How did you do it? Thanks.

A quick check on the nVidia downloads website to see what are the latest drivers for your card reveals it to be Version 185.18.14. The ones available through your package manager will not be quite so up to date, but it does provide a far simpler installation method than following the directions supplied at nVidia..

(however, by all means have a look at the second link I gave above, you may want to give it a try.) Note: near the bottom of the page you will see the following:

NVIDIA now provides a utility to assist you with configuration of your X server configuration file. Please see Chapter 3 of the README or run 'man nvidia-xconfig' for details on usage.

(This stuff in the readme is NOT OPTIONAL. It's complex and you will want to read it all first and maybe print it out before starting)

The drivers available through the package manager will still be more than enough to get far better performance from your card.

Since I use Kubuntu 9.04 and you use Ubuntu (unknown release) there are enough differences between our systems that I cannot give you precise step-by-step directions, but general principles still apply.. Firstly, as a general overview, I refer you to my post above, detailing installing the nVidia X Server Settings tool. Start up whatever package manager you use on your system and do a search on the term 'nvidia' (without the quotes). This should list all packages available (and installed) for nVidia cards.

When I do the above on my system I see a range of packages with numbers from 71.XX to 180.XX. There are several packages with "nvidia-glx-180 - 180.44" as part of the name. This appears to be the latest drivers currently available through the package manager (highest numbers). Looking through the detailed description for one of the 180.44 driver packages I see GeForce 8400M GS listed, so I know it will work with your card. You may see a later driver available.. if so, get it instead of the version I give in this example.

Select the nvidia-glx-180 - 180.44 etc Binary Xorg driver for installation. While you are at it, choose the nvidia-settings package at the same time. If there are any other packages (dependencies) needed, the package manager will take care of fetching them for you.

Click on Apply to download and install the updated drivers. You will need to log out or maybe reboot to use the new drivers. The system should inform you if this is necessary.

Run glxinfo | grep OpenGL again, and post the results here!..

Refer again to my post above on using the nVidia X server Settings control panel to set screen gamma, then start up Oolite. Once in game, press F2, toggle down to "Game Options" and hit the Enter key. Toggle down to "Shader Effects:" and change the setting to "Full"

Prepare to be amazed by how much prettier Oolite now looks! You may want to go back and tweak the Gamma again, as enabling shaders seems to make things a little darker overall.

Best of luck!

I always feel like a doof asking for Linux advice because the answer ends up being really simple. Go to package manager, search for NVIDIA, install latest drivers. I blame all those years I use windows.

Anyway, it seems to be working properly. The latest I had was 173, not 180, but it is still better than what I had before.
Thanks again for the help.

As I tell people, there are no dumb questions.. if you don't ask, you won't learn...

Good to hear you had no problems!

It's interesting to note that there are still no shaders mentioned in your new listing. Do you now have shader support? You can check by trying to enable shaders in-game, as I described before... if you don't, the option will be greyed-out so you can't select it.

Also, were you able to install an nVidia X server Settings panel?

As I tell people, there are no dumb questions.. if you don't ask, you won't learn...

Granted, but with Linux, it's like I'm starting from scratch with computers. Don't get me wrong, though, it is definitely worth it to be rid of Vista.

Do you now have shader support?

I assume I do. I have the option in the in-game config menu. I assume they're working, as everything looks all nice and 3d.

Also, were you able to install an nVidia X server Settings panel?

Yup, I got that up and running. I gave my gamma a little boost and it helped. Thanks again for all the help.