Oolite Bulletins

Uncle Reno wrote:

If it makes you feel better, I've been playing for quite sometime with the Oolite standard keys and I've just tried shooting up a spacestation rather than increasing speed towards it!

well i don't know about Derek, but that makes me feel better for accidentally jettisoning cargo when i'm trying to dock or decelerate :)

marianne wrote:

Uncle Reno wrote:

If it makes you feel better, I've been playing for quite sometime with the Oolite standard keys and I've just tried shooting up a spacestation rather than increasing speed towards it!

well i don't know about Derek, but that makes me feel better for accidentally jettisoning cargo when i'm trying to dock or decelerate

Pity poor DaddyHoggy (Hope the little Hogglet comes soon!) with his alt-tab E-bomb disasters!

Captain Hesperus

Captain Hesperus wrote:

Pity poor DaddyHoggy (Hope the little Hogglet comes soon!) with his alt-tab E-bomb disasters!

The worst bit it is the unexpected explosion makes you jump out of your seat!!!!!!

First played on my brother's BBC A with 5.25 floppy (hyperspace was accompanied with the buzz of the drive).
Tried newer versions (frontier, etc) but couldn't get the hang of the "realistic" flying.
Now I've acquired a Mac Mini, and remembered reading about Oolite, so gave it a go. It's wonderful, especially the expandability! Might have a go at creating some OXPs if I can understand it...

First played Elite on the BBC Model B almost the moment it came out. A friend was lucky enough to get a copy.

My first home computer was the ZX Spectrum 48k, so mostly played Elite on that, most of my school mates had them too, so it wasn't long before we got the cracked versions and the save game editors (infinite missiles, cloaking device etc). Never liked FFE much though for some reason.

Got into Frontier quite a lot much later on using a 386 PC, (quite liked it, unlike most folks - I liked realistic physics, as I'm an astro-nut)

Also played CGA,EGA,Elite Plus and TNK intermittently.

Oolite is the only choice now - though I'd play good money to have the PalmOS port available

Cheers,

Drew.

drew wrote:

though I'd play good money to have the PalmOS port available

Shhhhhh that's what got TNK pulled by the breadbin!

Commodore 64 for me....

however, no hermits in that game...

but appearently an elusive stealth ship...

C64!


Later I played Frontier:


Marco

Hi, Marco!

Welcome to the board! And nice screenshots you have posted here!

I think this image (or something similar) stole all our hearts in the 80's and ruined the world of space combat/trading-sims forever. Nice screenies and welcome to the boards.

Captain Hesperus

Absolutely, Captain Hesp.
i recall seeing it demoing in a shop, and was like "wow, pretty good.....hang on...that's got hidden-line removal!!" - and i stood for minutes just watching that ship spin, trying to work out how it was done. it was literally entrancing.

Killer Wolf wrote:

.....hang on...that's got hidden-line removal!!" -

Well, I didn't think quite like that. My thinking was 'Cool, a spaceships game that doesn't involve trying to land on a planet before your fuel runs out and you explode."

Captain Hesperus

Wow! ...it's just as interesting to discover how different aspects of the game grabbed different people, as to which machine they first played it on!!

I was sucked in the first time I tried to dock at a coriolis station - mesmerised by a 3D rotating object that had a defined axis with which you had to intereact correctly!! ..and that was it... ...days and nights lost playing until I finally got that -ELITE- on my status page!!

Me too with the manual docking at a coriolis, and I also liked the fact that it was not just a shootemup, but it involved cerebral activity in the form of strategy and trading etc as opposed to split second timing, joystick control crash start all over again from scratch.

Once I got into space traveling and watching the scanner and interacting with other craft, I was and still am hooked. You don't just play this you live it!


<pinches arm, must remember it is only a game>

I loved the depth of manual - it really added flavour to the game. Also remember reading the novella The Dark Wheel and thinking - cool this game comes with a story. The whole package was ace - a wall chart, a keystrip to go across the top of my Elk - wonderful.

I remember the very first version for the Elk - it had a bug which made the IGH inoperable and therefore you'd be stuck in galaxy one for ever. It soon got fixed though.

I also liked the Speccy version - never made it to Elite, but played through three missions - Supernova, Thargoids taking over the space station and cloaking device.

Awesome times (repeated now thank goodness).