Oolite Bulletins

Luckily when I got the game, A friend who beat me to it by about 2 or 3 weeks, said "make sure you read The Dark Wheel first before you start playing". Now I used to be a bit gung ho when it came to following instructions, and would normally just dive in, but for some reason I heeded his advice and was I glad I did, it is so well written in and it really gives you the feel and flavour of what it is like when you are living in the game. Brilliant.

TGHC wrote:

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>

hehe for some reason (in oolite) i feel bad if i see explosions off in the distance and don't rush in to try help whatever poor trader is being picked on by pirates...

marianne wrote:

hehe for some reason (in oolite) i feel bad if i see explosions off in the distance and don't rush in to try help whatever poor trader is being picked on by pirates...

As well you should. If Not You, Who Else?

Ahruman wrote:

If Not You, Who Else?

Terry Pratchett strikes again!

Captain Hesperus

thing about that is that if *i* get in trouble i can't do a distress signal that others might respond to...i mentioned in another thread about helping out my tanker, which subsequently buggered off w/ her Asps, leaving me scrapping w/ pirates >:-\

ooh, OXP/improvement idea - say you help out a trader (getting the usual "Thanks!" messages etc, which would let the code know you'd helped) - what if, as a thankyou, the saved trader jettisons a cargo container or two for you to scoop?

Ah Elite on our old Spectrum in the 1980s. My older brother got hold of it and obsessively fought his way up to Deadly but I myself never got past Dangerous. Not bad for a lad of nine years old though.

Hi there, everyone.

I was teaching in secondary school (high school to some of you...) when I first got my hands on Elite. The only joystick game I encouraged in the school computer room. Made it through to Elite before any of the pupils, though I did have the advantage of evenings and weekends.

right here, right now. you are witnessing the beginning! =D especially now that i've learned how to dock, and better yet, a bit about how to fight, i might actually get somewhere in the game!

A friend's BBC Micro gave me my first flight, but most of my original piloting was done on a 48K Spectrum. I still carry the mental scars induced by the *&%|! LensLok -- I ended up pirating a game I had bought, just to be able to play it without enduring multiple 6-minute reloads every time I failed to see the access code (part of the problem may have been that I was using a vast, elderly and slightly smelly black-and-white TV set). Odd thing: if you fought past the copy-protection and played the game, you got *either* Adders *or* Kraits, along with the other usual ships, each time you played. On the hacked version, which avoided the bloody awful plastic lens, you were stuck with just Kraits. Mind you, I heard that the game used chunks of the printer buffer just to run, so these little oddities shouldn't be surprising...

I first saw it running on a BBC-B but never got the chance to play it, so when it came out for the speccy I bought it on day of release and then spent nearly 2 hours trying to get lens-lok (or whatever it was called) to work on my rather crap tv. A few weeks later I got hold of a de-lensloked version (which I thought I was entitled to having purchased the original). Many, many months were lost to that game, even in later years on a Speccy emulator.

Elite has always been the yardstick by which other space fight/trade games have been measured, and none have come close. Until now.
The only other similar game I ever really enjoyed was Privateer 2: The Darkening.

First played it on the BBC (casette version), having got it for Christmas 1984. When we upgraded the Beeb to the disc version I played it on that, reaching Elite. I was amazingly excited about getting the Constrictor mission, because at that time I didn't know there were missions in Elite. I've played ArcElite and Elite A extensively too, but have hardly ever touched the other versions (FFE doesn't count). I've only started playing around with Oolite last week, despite downloading it ages ago. It was only a chance discovery that the controls could be changed that made me give it a proper go. I might have tried earlier had I known about mouse control too, even though I'd prefer the ArcElite mouse method (can it be changed too?), but the cursor keys are such a hideously bad choice I was put off too much at first.

Spectrum first. I thought there was a version on Oric because I had an Atmos at the same time but I might be wrong. I even remember the thick manual of the Elite game, the smell of it. I spent days reading it and even showed it to friend of mine at the university.
Then Amstrad 464. In 86, I was in the army, IT assistant for the council officer, we had a CPC 6128 in the office we used it for a database for job offers, social references of the soldiers etc... I remembered to play Elite days and days and initiated the captain to Elite. A nice guy.
Then I started to work and bought an Atari 520ST. Got Elite as well.

Dreamcatcher, I did enjoy as well privateer 2 but no way to make it work on my present pc because of sound card I guess. I also love Space Rangers 2, but I already said it many time...

Ah, I remember I played it on my Acorn Electron first. I remember waiting for it to load and being so excited. And when the 3D Cobra Mk.3. appeared I nearly fell off my chair. I couldn't believe the Electron was doing that. Oh my god, brilliant.

BBC B, tape version was my first. Soon graduated to the BBC Master disc version when my old primary school got rid of its stock of BBC Master 128s. Tried ArcElite and hated it (never could get the hang of the mouse controls, and keyboard, while still an option, just wasn't manoeuverable enough).

I first played it on the BBC Model B.

I bought it in 1984 and absolutely loved it. I'd never seen a game like it, it was so far ahead of anything else around. I even sent off the postcard with my rating details on it but didnt hear anything back