Oolite Bulletins

I've updated the draft website with a few more changes. The big ones:
- a "what's new in 1.80" page
- OXP authors can now change their passwords (and probably should!)
- the front page has had a graphics and text update to try to address maik's points: I'm still not happy with it, so any alternative suggested intro paragraphs would be considered.

Have you considered reversing the order of the first three paragraphs of the front page? I think that the mentioning the possibility of earning "fame, wealth or glory" makes the 3rd paragraph a good one to open with.

cim wrote:

[*]A few more Oofic extracts would also be useful - as I said previously, I'm looking for "... ones that not only serve as an advert for the story but also as an introduction to the ambience of the Ooniverse and the situations which might turn up in a game of Oolite"

Just a thought, but perhaps some extracts from the "Tales from the spacelanes..." thread would be appropriate? Some of them are very well written, and the fact that it's from an ongoing forum thread (should someone decide to follow the link back to the original post) would really underscore the point that this really is the kind of thing you're likely to see in-game.

- Neelix

Neelix wrote:

cim wrote:

[*]A few more Oofic extracts would also be useful - as I said previously, I'm looking for "... ones that not only serve as an advert for the story but also as an introduction to the ambience of the Ooniverse and the situations which might turn up in a game of Oolite"

Just a thought, but perhaps some extracts from the "Tales from the spacelanes..." thread would be appropriate? Some of them are very well written, and the fact that it's from an ongoing forum thread (should someone decide to follow the link back to the original post) would really underscore the point that this really is the kind of thing you're likely to see in-game.

- Neelix

Gets a thumbs-up from me.. nice idea!

cim wrote:

I've updated the draft website with a few more changes.

Looks good..

In the "Getting started" guide, the 'dump cargo' key needs updating from 'd' to 'Shift-d'.

Congratulations - you've survived your first trip. Save the game, then start planning a second!

I'd suggest changing this to read " ... then start planning a second cargo run! (or perhaps "trading run")

cim wrote:

- a "what's new in 1.80" page

A full strength pirate pack can be well over ten fighters in addition to the command ship, as well as a couple of well-armed heavy fighters such as Asps or Fer-de-lances which split off from the main group, and do daring hit-and-run attacks on police and bounty hunter patrols to distract them from the business of intimidating traders into giving up their cargo.

This is kinda fractured, and almost reads like the police and bounty hunters are the ones doing the intimidation of traders..

It might read better as follows:
" ... hit-and-run attacks on police and bounty hunter patrols to distract them while the rest of the pack go about the business of intimidating traders into giving up their cargo."

No more "Hello, Commander Jameson37-backup-2" from NPCs

I'd suggest changing this to "No more "Hello, Commander Jameson37-backup-2" messages from NPCs

If you use a joystick, the configuration for deadzones and axis response has been significantly upgraded

I'd suggest using "If you use a joystick or other controller, the configuration for deadzones and axis response has been significantly upgraded"

Diziet Sma wrote:

It might read better as follows:
" ... hit-and-run attacks on police and bounty hunter patrols to distract them while the rest of the pack go about the business of intimidating traders into giving up their cargo."

I think it should be obvious why pirates might attack police and bounty hunter patrols, so we could simplify it further to

" ... hit-and-run attacks on police and bounty hunter patrols, while the rest of the pack go about the business of intimidating traders into giving up their cargo."

Agreed.

A few more suggested tweaks:

Homepage

The two thousand star systems of the Cooperative once enjoyed a golden age of peace and prosperity, and perhaps the wealthiest of them can still pretend to. The trade ships that once safely travelled between planets now have to be well armed and escorted to fend off pirate attacks, from small-time criminals desperate for their next meal, to powerful robber barons extracting tithes from everyone who passes through their space.

(avoiding repetition of "well-armed")

Getting started:

It can carry four missiles, each of which - if used carefully - might save your life.

Whatever direction you want your career to go in, though, you'll need to get some money to upgrade your ship a bit.

or perhaps just

Whatever career you want to pursue, though, you'll need to get some money to upgrade your ship a bit.

Pirates are after your cargo, so dumping a few cargo pods - press 'shift-D' - may get them to go after the cargo rather than you.

One minor layout thing: on the "Getting started" page, the first image partly obscures the right-hand menu on narrower windows.

Neelix wrote:

Have you considered reversing the order of the first three paragraphs of the front page? I think that the mentioning the possibility of earning "fame, wealth or glory" makes the 3rd paragraph a good one to open with.

Yes, agreed - I like that better. The other suggested typo fixes and phrasing changes are also made, and the initial image on the getting started page has been narrowed.

Neelix wrote:

Just a thought, but perhaps some extracts from the "Tales from the spacelanes..." thread would be appropriate?

Very good idea - I'm busy with testing the release at the moment, so please have a look through the thread and nominate some good ones (the story can involve OXPs, but the sentence or two extracted from it shouldn't require them)

cim wrote:

... so please have a look through the thread and nominate some good ones...

<chortles> Only nigh on a thousand posts to skim through - enjoy!

cim wrote:

I've updated the draft website with a few more changes. The big ones:
- a "what's new in 1.80" page
- OXP authors can now change their passwords (and probably should!)
- the front page has had a graphics and text update to try to address maik's points: I'm still not happy with it, so any alternative suggested intro paragraphs would be considered.

I already like it much better. Don't know if it is too late for some larger changes, but here go my suggestions after looking through the whole site today:

• The What's New information does IMHO not deserve a top level entry, I'd place it as a link from the Download section (even though everyone involved can be really proud of what has been achieved since 1.77). Also, it will not be so new anymore after some time passed. As an alternative, you could call it Developer's Log, starting with the current information and adding to it as Oolite evolves further, maybe as a replacement to the progress thread here on the BB.
• I wouldn't use vanilla game graphics at all, especially the F-screens look rather old-fashioned. IMHO, the website should present Oolite in the best possible light, so I'd use BGS screens and in-game shots using nicer looking planets, nebulae, asteroids etc, just like every other game is being presented with highest details. You can still mention that Oolite also supports low-spec machines but that it will look different then. On the start page, the galaxy screen looks quite ok, the OXZ management page looks...uh...functional
• The Latest News section would become more lively if updates to OXZs were mentioned. Currently, the time between updates is between 6 weeks and 6 months.
• Not sure about the Getting Started section. I don't think I'd put it on the web page. I'd rather make your Ship's Library part of the core game (though I haven't actually installed it yet myself) and point players to the tutorial and/or Mr. Gimlet's advise. Bit late considering the code freeze... Also, on the [wiki]Oolite Instruction Manual[/wiki] wiki page, which is linked to from the Getting Started section, the OoliteRS.pdf link still points to berlios... and the vanilla game graphics...
• The Screenshots sections again should only use best-looking graphics, and the boxes should have the same size and rather resize pictures and make sure too much text doesn't grow it either. Overall it has a very boxy look (one box around the screenshot and another box around this box containing the text).
• The table on the Expansion Packs section looks very... basic... It should be sortable and I'm not sure I'd put an authors column in there but rather a short description as can be seen on the OXZ manager screen in-game. Maybe the description should be in a fixed position off to the side of the table so that OXZs will only need one line each and hovering over them displays their respective description blurb. This would also be the place to display author information then. I think I'd also get rid of the download column, it is probably redundant with the wiki. Speaking of which, should the whole list rather be on the wiki?

Now, I realise it is a lot of (hopefully constructive) criticism of a very good effort which doesn't really do it justice. I appreciate the work that went into it a lot, and hope that I don't sound too negative.

maik wrote:

[*]The What's New information does IMHO not deserve a top level entry

Possibly not, though we currently have few enough pages that making a second layer of navigation (and deciding how to style it) is probably not necessary yet. As you say it won't be "new" for very long either - it's intended to be removed later: I think we will try to keep the site as a whole up to date a bit more regularly than the current site.

What, if anything, replaces it probably depends on where we go after 1.80 is released and how soon it is before there's something interesting to talk about.

maik wrote:

[*]I wouldn't use vanilla game graphics at all, especially the F-screens look rather old-fashioned. IMHO, the website should present Oolite in the best possible light, so I'd use BGS screens and in-game shots using nicer looking planets, nebulae, asteroids etc, just like every other game is being presented with highest details. You can still mention that Oolite also supports low-spec machines but that it will look different then. On the start page, the galaxy screen looks quite ok, the OXZ management page looks...uh...functional

At the moment, that's all the OXZ management page can look like. Perhaps once BGS or another backgrounds OXP is updated for 1.80. (Quite a few changes in the new version have meant that BGS needs updating, though: the versions that worked well with 1.77.1 have less good behaviour with 1.80, especially with the sound files)

maik wrote:

[*]The Latest News section would become more lively if updates to OXZs were mentioned. Currently, the time between updates is between 6 weeks and 6 months.

The question with this is which OXZs? We have enough of them that a news item of every single release of every single OXP is far too many: being more selective requires criteria to be selective with and I don't feel it's my place to be setting those criteria. If the community wants to come up with some guidance for this I'm happy to mention suitably significant OXP updates in that space, though.

The same question comes up with the graphics, of course - which is the "best" shipset to use for graphics, for instance? (On that note, does anyone have a recent and pretty Smivs/Neolite/etc. shipset pic for the screenshots page?) I'm trying to keep the OXP usage relatively low or subtle in the screenshots rather than recommend particular OXPs over others - we've, what, five shipsets, four planet texture packs, four asteroid OXPs, one star/nebula replacement, and three sun modifying OXPs?

(Which is not to say I haven't done some tweaking of display settings on some screenshots and even the occasional OXP to show off the best the core can do)

maik wrote:

[*] Also, on the [wiki]Oolite Instruction Manual[/wiki] wiki page, which is linked to from the Getting Started section, the OoliteRS.pdf link still points to berlios... and the vanilla game graphics...

I've fixed the reference sheet link to point to a working URL. ... given that the first screenshot on Pilot's Reference Manual is from 2006 (so Oolite 1.65ish), I think the community probably has quite a bit of work to do there.

maik wrote:

[*]The Screenshots sections again should only use best-looking graphics, and the boxes should have the same size and rather resize pictures and make sure too much text doesn't grow it either. Overall it has a very boxy look (one box around the screenshot and another box around this box containing the text).

That's odd - there's only supposed to be one box around the text+graphics. Which browser is this? - I may have missed a style rule. Box height probably needs adjusting very slightly, you're right.

Best graphics is a bit subjective but I'm happy to replace images with better ones if people submit them. The thumbnails are a standard 250x200 size (and then scale down with the browser window if needed)

maik wrote:

[*]The table on the Expansion Packs section looks very... basic... It should be sortable and I'm not sure I'd put an authors column in there but rather a short description as can be seen on the OXZ manager screen in-game.

Even a "short" description is far too long for that table - I tried it. Doing something like the hover, or an expandable box, or something like that with Javascript is on my list: maybe if not too many bugs come up in the freeze I'll have time. Sortable likewise (well, the headings are clickable to sort already, but JS could be faster for users)

maik wrote:

Speaking of which, should the whole list rather be on the wiki?

Probably also, yes. Given how big a part OXPs are of Oolite for many people, listing them on the main site I think is good too. The main site has the manifests database because it needs to for the OXP downloader, so generating a table off that is then easy: auto-updating the wiki from it is harder, but if you can suggest a way to do it I can give you an API in any reasonable format to use.

cim wrote:

The same question comes up with the graphics, of course - which is the "best" shipset to use for graphics, for instance? (On that note, does anyone have a recent and pretty Smivs/Neolite/etc. shipset pic for the screenshots page?) I'm trying to keep the OXP usage relatively low or subtle in the screenshots rather than recommend particular OXPs over others - we've, what, five shipsets, four planet texture packs, four asteroid OXPs, one star/nebula replacement, and three sun modifying OXPs?

I think if we look at full shader usage there is only one--Griff's. All others, as far as I can tell, target lower spec graphics cards.

Edit to add:

cim wrote:

That's odd - there's only supposed to be one box around the text+graphics. Which browser is this? - I may have missed a style rule. Box height probably needs adjusting very slightly, you're right.

I use IE9 (work laptop, can't upgrade). There, the screen shot of the equipment screen is too big and distorts the box, while the box for the tutorial screenshot seems a pixel or two too short.

cim wrote:

maik wrote:

[*]The Latest News section would become more lively if updates to OXZs were mentioned. Currently, the time between updates is between 6 weeks and 6 months.

The question with this is which OXZs? We have enough of them that a news item of every single release of every single OXP is far too many: being more selective requires criteria to be selective with and I don't feel it's my place to be setting those criteria. If the community wants to come up with some guidance for this I'm happy to mention suitably significant OXP updates in that space, though.

I don't think being selective is the answer somehow. How doing it as a weekly digest? One news item detailing which OXPs have been updated that week. Could such a digest be automatically generated?

maik wrote:

cim wrote:

The same question comes up with the graphics, of course - which is the "best" shipset to use for graphics, for instance? (On that note, does anyone have a recent and pretty Smivs/Neolite/etc. shipset pic for the screenshots page?) I'm trying to keep the OXP usage relatively low or subtle in the screenshots rather than recommend particular OXPs over others - we've, what, five shipsets, four planet texture packs, four asteroid OXPs, one star/nebula replacement, and three sun modifying OXPs?

I think if we look at full shader usage there is only one--Griff's. All others, as far as I can tell, target lower spec graphics cards.

I think it's not a good idea to show *only* the highest spec graphics possible. Not every system is capable of that and if people see one thing on the site and then that turns out that game fails to deliver that they'll be disappointed, and may well go off the game and bad-mouth it to their friends for false advertising, regardless of the fact that the limitation is with their own machine.

Likewise, I think the core vanilla graphics should be the ones showcased as the main game graphics, with the BGS graphics specifically showcased as being what's possible with extensions for essentially the same reason.

cim wrote:

Neelix wrote:

Just a thought, but perhaps some extracts from the "Tales from the spacelanes..." thread would be appropriate?

Very good idea - I'm busy with testing the release at the moment, so please have a look through the thread and nominate some good ones (the story can involve OXPs, but the sentence or two extracted from it shouldn't require them)

I'm not sure I'm the best judge. *wry smile*

That said, I've gone back and looked through several pages of that thread now and have picked out some things that jumped out at me.

What do you think of these?

-----

"We're safe," I told him. "We're clear of out Oronceri, out of witchspace, and are en route to Veusar station."

"Veusar"? he repeated. "A Level 5 Anarchy? This seems to be a new definition of the word 'safe' that I wasn't previously aware of."

Ranthe - https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f= ... 00#p215170

-----

Xevera is in close proximity to a number of pretty lawless systems, and so makes a decent base for my lifestyle. I like to keep my nose clean and my lasers hot, and I'm sure the cops in those Anarchies have grown to recognize my paintwork. But sometimes one needs a little variety, that isn't always, strictly speaking, completely legal.

Mad Dan Eccles - https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f= ... 25#p206597

-----

On arrival at Edbeis it was mayhem all the way in. I found myself shadowing a couple of lone traders, so I helped fend off the local predators. But then the Thargoids showed up, and briefly everyone actually pulled together. It didn't last of course. I headed over to investigate some laser fire, and found three pilots with clean records fighting amongst themselves. That's what the clean living guys do for fun around these parts? I left them to it.

JD - https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f= ... 50#p202964

-----

A ship glints in the darkness up ahead. For once I'm actually hoping I run into a pirate. Maybe then I can slip away while the cops have a bigger fish to catch. But the blip that pops up on my scanner is another purple. Reinforcements?! This just isn't fair; I'm barely staying alive as it is. I've already got my eye on a huge asteroid up ahead. If it's a Rock Hermit, I can give them the slip by ducking in there, or at least buy time to recharge my shields.

rayner - https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f= ... 20#p197636

-----


- Neelix

Neelix wrote:

I don't think being selective is the answer somehow. How doing it as a weekly digest? One news item detailing which OXPs have been updated that week.

Good suggestion!

Neelix wrote:

I think it's not a good idea to show *only* the highest spec graphics possible. Not every system is capable of that and if people see one thing on the site and then that turns out that game fails to deliver that they'll be disappointed, and may well go off the game and bad-mouth it to their friends for false advertising, regardless of the fact that the limitation is with their own machine.

I think that nowadays people expect that promotional screenshots of a game show it the way it looks best and know that if they don't have a high spec machine they will have to dial it down. Oolite still stands out in this regard because it does not require the latest and greatest CPU and graphics card combination even with all the fanciest OXPs installed and can even be played on really low-spec hardware with more basic OXPs.