Oolite Bulletins

Firstly, i find it quite funny how canon can provoke such varied responses. In examples like this, people don't like it, think it's stupid and restricting and want it changed to "improve" gameplay ~ quotes only used to signify that that aspect is a matter of opinion, not that i'm rubbishing it. on the other hand, mention a wish for a laser cooler - a perfectly sensible and logical upgrsde in my books, and one that appeared in the sequel games at that - and people are all over your ar$e saying it's not canon and learn to shoot etc.

having said that, i can actually see use for a "save anywhere" (or, to be really exact a "save at any dockable") addition to the game engine...to a point. i'd actually say that saving should only be done at a *station*, not a Hoopy's or a Rock Hermit, eg. that would open the game up a lot more for expandability. if i ever get my head around scripting, i wanted to do a huge linked-mission OXP regarding Isis Interstellar and something i hinted at in one of the ship write-ups : this would involve you having to be based at one of II's stations for a while, which would only really be doable w/ a save option as mentioned above.

regarding piracy. lives of crime and Anarchies, if this is amended in the game engine, i'd like the following :-
- introduction of an official Pirate Base : these would exist in say 80~90% of the Anarchies/Feudal/Multi-Govt systems, simply because (at the mo) i think having them everywhere would be slightly unrealistic. they'd be well away from the main station, to deter Vipers
- Amendment to the kills/reward procedure : i'd like for things to go back to canon in that your kills are transmitted by guncam and the reward allocated from that verification, which would also reintroduce the factor of you not being able to kill people w/ impunity if there's no cops in the area. this would tie in w/ the point below.
- amendment to the Status/bounty procedure : if you want to live a life of crime, you've got to take the bad w/ the good, and that means GalCop are going to make things hard for you. Firstly, as above, your kills are verified, and if you kill an innocent trader, it will be noted. Secondly, if you kill other pirates, you do NOT get a bounty : why should GalCop reward you when you're as bad or worse than the person you've just take out? Your kill would still count towards your Elite status, however. Thirdly, tying into the first point, the more people you kill, the worse your reputation gets, and that should start really racking up the number of bounty hunters that come for you, and the number of times cops harrass you : if you're a psychotic bad-ass and Vipers engage you, it should be logical that they'd immediately call reinforcements, so you get swarmed by them : they want you DEAD, or out their system at the very least. We could even introduce a special branch of the cops who are dedicated to ridding space of mass murderers : they'd travel in 4s at least and be flying iron ass way, way highly specced Vipers.

Killer Wolf wrote:

Firstly, as above, your kills are verified, and if you kill an innocent trader, it will be noted. Secondly, if you kill other pirates, you do NOT get a bounty : why should GalCop reward you when you're as bad or worse than the person you've just take out? Your kill would still count towards your Elite status, however.

Being that (in plain vanilla Oolite) there's absolutely no weight-of-karma chasing around the player for killing alone innocents...I am for all of this.
You do bad things, your ship rats you out.
Once fugitive, getting credits to continue your lawless existence should be harder.
Even if the only place you can semi-easily do savegames is at special anarchy stations, so be it.

I do however think that "piracy" should be far more likely at mid-to-high TL multi-government systems (where sides are covertly or openly attempting to eliminate the others...and their trade-supporters) than at low TL anarchies. As such, they should not be excluded for possible pirate bases...where a (fugitive?) player could savegame.

The Save Anywhere OXP almost reaches this point, but it's not picky where you can save -- just that you have to be able to dock there and maybe have to be able to go to the fuel and equipment menu.

This thread seems to be covering two subjects now...how are we supposed to keep up? Oh, well...

Re save-games.
I would like a save-anywhere feature - a real one so you could even hit the 'Save' button torus-jumping in towards the planet. This is for purely practical reasons - RL can't always wait for you to get to a station to save the game. If, like me, you've got kids situations arise where you just have to drop everything, right now! An Instant Save would be really useful. Yes I know it's not easy.

Re Pirates/anarchies etc.
Great idea all round. Pirating should be a career choice, and there should be some safe havens (I tend to favour the low-tech anarchies but am open minded on this) in addition to the main Galcop stations. There are many good ideas and sensible suggestions on this thread, and although they vary there seems to be enough common ground that a concensus should be reachable. I think this should be included in the game, rather than as OXP.

Smivs wrote:

Re save-games.
I would like a save-anywhere feature - a real one so you could even hit the 'Save' button torus-jumping in towards the planet. This is for purely practical reasons - RL can't always wait for you to get to a station to save the game. If, like me, you've got kids situations arise where you just have to drop everything, right now! An Instant Save would be really useful. Yes I know it's not easy.

Well, the instant pause is almost as good, and it is perfectly available at any time in open flight. Simply pause the game, attend to your kids or whoever/whatever is disturbing you, and return to the game when you have finished your RL-business.

Commander McLane wrote:

Smivs wrote:

Re save-games.
I would like a save-anywhere feature - a real one so you could even hit the 'Save' button torus-jumping in towards the planet. This is for purely practical reasons - RL can't always wait for you to get to a station to save the game. If, like me, you've got kids situations arise where you just have to drop everything, right now! An Instant Save would be really useful. Yes I know it's not easy.

Well, the instant pause is almost as good, and it is perfectly available at any time in open flight. Simply pause the game, attend to your kids or whoever/whatever is disturbing you, and return to the game when you have finished your RL-business.

The only problem here is that it seems to sieze-up after a while. I've left the game paused for maybe an hour, and when I come back to it everything seems slow, jerky and un-playable. I don't know why this is - whether it's a glitch in the game or maybe something to do with my computer - but it's not helpful.
Pause is a very useful feature, but it's not the solution to the RL related problems that sometimes crop up.

Some of Killer Wolf's ideas are already implemented in Anarchies.oxp. For instance, if your bounty is high enough, there will be bounty hunters on your tail.

I do see the point of making-piraty-a-viable-career-path, and in fact, Anarchies.oxp was created out of a similar debate, in order to give some sort of framework which could facilitate such a career path. It does create extra stations where you are welcome as a criminal, and will be able to make a nice extra profit. It also makes a fugitive-status last longer, so that you will likely become some sort of career criminal. And it gives you new means to clear your record (for cash). This part of the OXP was specifically integrated to get around the save-only-at-main-stations limitation. The main idea is that you get on with your pirating business as long as you want to, and if you feel the need to visit a main station and save your game, you invest some of your earnings in getting rid of your legal record and getting into a main station whilst slipping under GalCop's radar, so to speak.

It is a workaround, yes, but at least one that works with the limitations of Oolite. If you like an analogy: every once in a while the great pirate captain has the need to do some business in Cartagena. So of course he will not sail into its port with a high rising pirate flag, but will disguise his ship and himself as well as he can, in order to slip in unnoticed. That's what clearing your record before docking on a main station does.

Smivs wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

Smivs wrote:

Re save-games.
I would like a save-anywhere feature - a real one so you could even hit the 'Save' button torus-jumping in towards the planet. This is for purely practical reasons - RL can't always wait for you to get to a station to save the game. If, like me, you've got kids situations arise where you just have to drop everything, right now! An Instant Save would be really useful. Yes I know it's not easy.

Well, the instant pause is almost as good, and it is perfectly available at any time in open flight. Simply pause the game, attend to your kids or whoever/whatever is disturbing you, and return to the game when you have finished your RL-business.

The only problem here is that it seems to sieze-up after a while. I've left the game paused for maybe an hour, and when I come back to it everything seems slow, jerky and un-playable. I don't know why this is - whether it's a glitch in the game or maybe something to do with my computer - but it's not helpful.
Pause is a very useful feature, but it's not the solution to the RL related problems that sometimes crop up.

That's not good, of course, and probably indicative of some bug. Personally I have left Oolite paused and its window hidden for hours on end, and I think that I could always resume the game.

Probably it helps to close other applications, so that Oolite gets allocated enough resources again to run smoothly?

For me the save game thing is simply one of practicality. I have been suffering from crashes in Oolite that may be Linux kernel related but not easy to diagnose. It is quite frustrating that rather than resume from the last con store, I might have to replay from several systems back.

I realise that this is difficult to implement, but I would ask that it not be completely dropped and forgotten about.

i've had that jerky thing w/ other games/apps in the past, and i put it down to memory use : i dunno if Windows starts putting all the memory into other stuff as you use it and then is slow in reallocating it when you start the game up again? not had the problem on my newer machines though, that have >2gig RAM each.

Killer Wolf wrote:

i've had that jerky thing w/ other games/apps in the past, and i put it down to memory use : i dunno if Windows starts putting all the memory into other stuff as you use it and then is slow in reallocating it when you start the game up again? not had the problem on my newer machines though, that have >2gig RAM each.

I use Ubuntu, and have a quad core processor and 8gig of RAM. I don't think its a system problem, and it certainly isn't Windows flakyness.

There are two factors to be considered here: canon and gameplay. They are of course linked: canon (insofar as there is an agreed-on canon for Oolite) is what enables "gameplay-in-the-head", allowing us to imagine the larger, richer universe around us. However, the gameplay itself is what is ultimately important. When canon and gameplay collide, gameplay has to win every time. When a canon starts to dictate what you can do, no matter how much fun it might be, then it stops being a game and starts becoming a cult.

When people object to things like laser coolers, it's not (I don't think) because such devices are not canon: it's because they will have a negative effect on gameplay, in this case by making it too easy. Witchdrive injectors weren't canon, either, but they enhance gameplay by giving players (and NPCs) more options, with an attached cost – so nobody objects. All the benefits of a laser cooler, though – being able to shoot for longer – could be got simply from learning to play the game better and becoming a better shot.

The current setup, where players can only save in main system stations that are controlled and patrolled by GalCop, has been inherited from the original 32K game, and there are no doubt strong program-architecture reasons for keeping things this way. The problem, from a gameplay point of view, is that this doesn't allow for the best player experience of a criminal lifestyle, as DH has pointed out.

An optimum solution (if we assume that work gets magically done for no cost ... ) would be to alter the program to allow players to save anywhere, or at least in any station. Then all sorts of new stations and in-game lifestyles can crop up.

An acceptable (to me, anyway – not that I'd use it) kludge, though, would be to make certain systems friendly to players with criminal rankings. The obvious candidates for this would be Anarchy systems. I firmly believe that it is possible (especially if we include alien societies) to have peaceful, even idyllic, anarchy worlds: however, we're looking for a quick fix here, not a political thesis , and the easiest way to bend the canon to fit would be to assume that yes, Anarchy systems used to be part of the Co-operative, back when it was running relatively smoothly, but now with the Thargoid threat pressing ever harder, things are breaking down. The Co-operative needs its member planets to co-operate. The Anarchy worlds, lacking any form of central government, aren't providing any support to the crews in the station. The Viper pilots and station personnel have not been paid for months, and the other Co-op worlds are refusing to bail them out. Eventually things reach a tipping point and the co-op structure collapses in the Anarchies. It's not that the stations all fall into pirate hands, it's just that Co-op control has ended. There's nobody to fly or even maintain the Vipers, and nobody to check the ships coming in or going out. Maybe it's a sign of things to come for the Co-operative ...

As I say, this is a quick fix which could allow criminal players a more immersive experience. The reason for doing it would be to enhance gameplay. If it does, then it's easy to rewrite the canon a bit, for those that want to play this way.

Just a quick thought...would it be possible to Save at Rock Hermits? No real change to canon, and they already have most of the pertinant features of Main Stations.

To me Canon is about story and the ooniverse, not about technical details such as shaders, keymapping, save/load interface and where and how you can save.

I object to saving inflight as I think it changes the nature of the game, but I dont object to saving anywhere docked. There is a separate concern about the technology of saving ie who is going to write it, and is this something the dev team commit to supporting on an ongoing basis. None of these, to my mind, relates in any way to canon.

Cmdr James wrote:

To me Canon is about story and the ooniverse, not about technical details such as shaders, keymapping, save/load interface and where and how you can save.

I object to saving inflight as I think it changes the nature of the game, but I dont object to saving anywhere docked. There is a separate concern about the technology of saving ie who is going to write it, and is this something the dev team commit to supporting on an ongoing basis. None of these, to my mind, relates in any way to canon.

Absolutely. Being able to save only in main stations isn't canon, it's an inherited limitation from the original 8-bit Elite. And even if it was canon, if the devs were able to introduce a built-in save-anywhere feature, this would be a prime example of where canon should shuffle politely aside and let gameplay do its thing ...

A compromise proposal:

Introduce a new property for stations: 'canPlayerSave' (or some named equivalent) that includes a Javascript read/write Boolean. By allowing the authors to define this for their creations, we (OXP authors) can be the ones to determine if the universe outside the station needs to be preserved in some sense, or the game can simply spawn the station during next load and be done. If the save-station's OXP is removed, the game can fall back to launching the player from the main station. It's not ideal, but if someone's going to exploit that as a way to safely dock somewhere, they can just as easily alter a save-game file.

I would further suggest it be incompatible with 'is_carrier' so you cannot save on a Behemoth in the middle of a giant thargoid battle in interstellar space or some other strange scenario.

With this approach, I think it'd be possible to save at Main Stations, FTZ's, Seedy Space Bars, Navy Stations, etc without causing a massive impact on difficulty, and without imposing too great a burden on the dev's.

Opinions? Comments? Short stories? Anecdotes?