Oolite Bulletins

another_commander wrote:

You might want to rein that snooty attitude in yourself a little bit. Trust me - Oolite has had these kind of debates before - and guess what it's still here.

Your initial imperious reaction got the ball rolling, sir.

another_commander wrote:

Don't whinge at developers who are trying to stay faithful to the feel of the original Elite and are working on this code for free in their own time because they won't implement a code change for you. If you want it that bad, download the source code, make the hack and release your own version of Oolite.

I'm not whining - I merely made a suggestion, was slapped down and reacted accordingly to be rebuffed like some peasant.

Looks like the feature might get added to the next version anyway - At least this pointless argument led to something.

another_commander wrote:

Feel free to make suggestions - but don't get all uppity if the developers (and a lot of the rest of the community) don't agree with you and immediately introduce your brilliant new idea.

There is no need to get all gurning and upset at my lack bowing and scraping. Of course I appreciate you (and the other developer's) hard work.

I enjoy the game and would only offer ideas I think are pretty much essential. And to be honest, Oolite is now very different from Braben's Elite.

I had no intentions of being unfriendly when I made my first post - But your attitude ended with us both arguing.

So, I apologise for shooting back. We both should have shown better qaulity.

curtsibling wrote:

So, I apologise for shooting back. We both should have shown better quality.

Well said, Sir. That's what I like about this Board. It's not the 'Friendliest board this side'...etc for nothing. Yes, of course sometimes tempers fray, but we're all grown-ups, and generally, as here, common sense, humility and civility win out.

Mis-attribution of quotes is confusing... especially this early.

curtsibling wrote:

another_commander wrote:

You might want to rein that snooty attitude in yourself a little bit. Trust me - Oolite has had these kind of debates before - and guess what it's still here.

Your initial imperious reaction got the ball rolling, sir.

another_commander wrote:

Don't whinge at developers who are trying to stay faithful to the feel of the original Elite and are working on this code for free in their own time because they won't implement a code change for you. If you want it that bad, download the source code, make the hack and release your own version of Oolite.

I'm not whining - I merely made a suggestion, was slapped down and reacted accordingly to be rebuffed like some peasant.

Looks like the feature might get added to the next version anyway - At least this pointless argument led to something.

another_commander wrote:

Feel free to make suggestions - but don't get all uppity if the developers (and a lot of the rest of the community) don't agree with you and immediately introduce your brilliant new idea.

There is no need to get all gurning and upset at my lack bowing and scraping. Of course I appreciate you (and the other developer's) hard work.

I enjoy the game and would only offer ideas I think are pretty much essential. And to be honest, Oolite is now very different from Braben's Elite.

I had no intentions of being unfriendly when I made my first post - But your attitude ended with us both arguing.

So, I apologise for shooting back. We both should have shown better qaulity.

I'm not a developer and I'm not Another_Commander (who is) - you've attributed my comments to him.

As with regards to the "feature" being added - I can't say - I know Screet has shown those who wish to build their own version of the trunk how to add what you think of as a fix - but it's not in the main code and without the consensus of the main development team it won't be.

Oddly enough, I am aware that Oolite is very different from B & B's Elite, but who knows what kind of game they'd have created had the technology of the time been up to their imagination, so a rather moot point.

Since turrets were originally poor quality point defence systems on big ships with lumbering turning circles (NPC ones at that) they were opened up to the player on the understanding that they would remain relatively poor weapons - this seems reasonable - otherwise you might as well install the killit.oxp and pretend that you're some glorious hot-shot pilot who can actually destroy everything that gets within firing range - rather than relying on the AI of the turrets being better than the AI of the attacking ships.

Smivs wrote:

curtsibling wrote:

So, I apologise for shooting back. We both should have shown better quality.

Well said, Sir. That's what I like about this Board. It's not the 'Friendliest board this side'...etc for nothing. Yes, of course sometimes tempers fray, but we're all grown-ups, and generally, as here, common sense, humility and civility win out.

My temper is far from frayed - but after more than five years on the board I've seen lots of foot stamping over these kind of "must have" and "essentials" - because for a large portion (majority?) of the users they're not essential. I would much rather the dev team spent their time locking down features so that Oolite reaches MNSR and can move on than introducing yet another feature request that makes Oolite progressively more like a "press button - I win" kind of game.

However, if Thargoid's sub-ent oxp fix works then everybody will be happy - the "must have's" can carry on racking up the kills without having to do anything and the dev's can ignore a request to drive the thin edge of the wedge (which started with giving player's turrets in the first place) further into the code.

I look forward to the screen shots from the Last Starfighter-esque death_blossom.oxp...

DaddyHoggy wrote:

… than introducing yet another feature request that makes Oolite progressively more like a "press button - I win" kind of game.

I think that’s a bit unfair. As far as I can see, this is a problem in the other direction: adding complexity and steepening the learning curve for an obscure special case.

Really, both points against this switch I cannot understand:

1) If turrets make the game easier, then it's upon the specific player to decide wether to fly a ship with turrets and to use the switch or add other ships of similar strength for NPCs to balance this out. Everyone could hack ship stats anyway, which is giving more power than such a switch. Using this argument sounds like "I don't want turrets to be comfortable for you" to me (even though it surely is not meant that way).

2) Yes, more keys are requiring more things to learn. However, players who won't fly ships with turrets never need to learn that key and players who came far enough in the game to buy such a ship without hacking a save file or the cost of the ship surely know well enough about the other keys. It's similar to the cloaking device - one never needs to know about that key unless they found the device (which in my eyes is more powerful than turrets and MASC and all such things) and want to use it.

What I can understand as arguments against is
- possibility of speed loss
- complexity of code increase
That's why I did post the code required to do such changes - so those who like it can add it themselves and those who worry about the speed/complexity of code can have a look.

If anyone wants to try this out but is unable to adjust the code/build from trunk, I can make my own build available - but in that are a few more changes and it's still based upon trunk, not the latest release version, thus it might not be the best choice to play with (although I do that).

Screet

Phantom Hoover wrote:

Especially if you add little hatches over the spaces they'd be in. Auto-retracting turrets!

For the Vortex I was planning on just swapping the active (initialised) turret sub-ent with an identical modelled one but without the intialisation (basically a dummy model). But your way (either by just removing the sub-ent completely, or by swapping it for something else like a hatch image) would also be quite possible yes.

It would depend somewhat on the model of the main ship itself, and also the graphics skills of the author involved (which when it's me ain't a lot ).

The combination of the new 1.75 abilities to restore sub-ents and also the ability to use the new "equipment keyboard activation" assignment opens up a whole lot of nice new possibilities.

curtsibling wrote:

Varied content and fun features are the things that will keep Oolite alive.

Restriction ... will kill it quickly.

I think I respectfully disagree. Restriction makes sense, because in every game rules make sense. Sure, every rule takes away some of the player's freedom, but without any rules there wouldn't be a game in the first place. Example: in the game of Chess the king is severely restricted in its movements. Perhaps there have been long debates about lifting those restrictions. But they certainly haven't managed to kill the game, not even in millennia.

At its core Oolite still is Elite. Yes, it has developed over time, and it wasn't a 100% carbon copy to begin with, but at the core of it it's clearly and recognizably still Elite. The bulk of development-away-from-Elite comes through OXPs, not through the trunk.

Personally, I was of the opinion at the time, and still am of the opinion that it was a mistake to introduce turrets to player ships. For me Elite/Oolite is not the type of game where the player can fly around in a capital ship (which is the type of ship where a turret belongs). There are other games around which allow you to do so. Therefore I see no need to turn Oolite into another one of those games, especially when I see nothing wrong with the scope of Elite/Oolite, which is flying through a vast universe in a rather insignificant trade ship. If a player doesn't want this type of game, they are free to play another game. But what about the players who want to play exactly this type of game? Why take it away from them by turning Oolite into something else?

This is my personal point of view. I am interested in refining Elite/Oolite. I am not at all interested in turning the game into something which isn't Elite/Oolite. (And of course I am aware that this is often a very thin and blurry line, and there are differing opinions and much debate. Sometimes I will be happy with new developments, sometimes I won't. But that's okay, as long as I still recognize Oolite.)

Here comes the obvious disclaimer: all this is nothing but my personal 0.2 cr.

Put far more eloquently than I managed - but says what I wanted to say without slipping into slightly deranged mode... (there's been a lot of spam today - I'm clearly a bit hyper!)

Well - I am glad that no-one was hurt in this interstellar clash of the titan-egos!

All I can say is that if the next version of Oolite can add this one tiny button control for we people that are not coders, that would be most welcome.

Believe it or not, "foot-stompers" like myself are really appreciative of the hard-working developers and in awe of the great game they have crafted.

Would we make such a fuss if we did not love Oolite?

Just adding my .2 Cr worth:
it seems extremely unlikely we'll do anything turret related this side of MNSR (developer's we, as per a_c's usage).

However, if we were to find the time to make changes in this area, I'd personally prefer to invest the time in making sure that hitting a ship with any oxp-only weapon would stop the kill from counting towards elite status

Still, Screet's build & OE should be exactly what cs is looking for, so hopefully OE will be released once we have a Stable Release!