Oolite Bulletins

another_commander wrote: ↑Thu Jul 31, 2025 7:41 am

And you can run the game with the -showversion parameter, which will display the game version on the startup screen as well.

That's another place to look which the yoof of tomorrow are going to go "huh?" over. "Wots a commandline? (to the tune of knuckles sparking off cobbles)

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Jul 30, 2025 4:25 pm

RockDoctor wrote: ↑Wed Jul 30, 2025 3:13 pm

Over to you. Let the spelunking commence.

How about the hidden cave system underneath the city of Threerivers in Paul O. Williams' The Fall of the Shell? Set in the aftermath of a nuclear war destroying the US, some refugees build cities along the Mississippi and hide away in them. Threerivers has hidden caves where the stone for the city above was carved from the bedrock and the hero Brudoer hides there for yonks, spying on those living above. Don't recall any super sonics, sorry!

Never heard of it, so I'll take your word for it.

Place 1 : Moonraker ; Wildblood ; no MBPs. Correction - in his list of Bondisms, Wildblood did include the MBP I had been thinking of - the sub-volcano cave (magma chamber? I shudder, geologically) in You Only Live Twice. He also took several other shows off the table (Thunderbirds, UFO) but not all of the other examples I'd been thinking of.
Place 2 : Cholmondely with "hidden cave system underneath the city of Threerivers in Paul O. Williams' The Fall of the Shell?"
Place 3 : TBA
Place 4 : TBA
Place 5 : TBA

Caves excavated for building stone? Well, it's not without precedent - volcanic tuffs under Rome (that's another city on a short fuse, along with Naples) ; Box stone mines just outside Bath (I got "tagged" by a sniper's laser down there; part of the complex is a military nuclear bunker. They probably weren't loaded, because I was on the "public" side of the tunnel full of razor wire, but it's a very effective "Fuck. Off. Now.")
It'd be a hell of a lot of effort for a just-post-apocalypse society though.

RockDoctor wrote: ↑Thu Jul 31, 2025 10:11 pm

That's another place to look which the yoof of tomorrow are going to go "huh?" over. "Wots a commandline? (to the tune of knuckles sparking off cobbles)

But with all their jobs taken by AI, they won't have any use for an education (not that education should need a use, it is a goal in its own right, without being a means for something else). Not that many of them will be capable of an education, the way they are degenerating.

Just get a certain member of our community to show you his "games" with AI... and then get ready for a heart attack and recurrent nightmares. And then worse in a few year's time.

this will push the definition of "cave"...

Caves of Steel Asimov 1953....

RockDoctor wrote: ↑Thu Jul 31, 2025 10:08 pm

MrFlibble wrote: ↑Thu Jul 31, 2025 7:35 am

At least on Linux *-test builds, the major version (e.g. 1.91) and build date appear in the window title. On dev builds, the full version name appears in the top of the screen.

Standard builds too.
I've never been tempted by the "dev" builds.

IIRC, dev is the same as test (has debug console support), but with the version showing on-screen.

spud42 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 02, 2025 4:03 pm

this will push the definition of "cave"...

Caves of Steel Asimov 1953....

Well, having recently reminisced about "caving" in the Box stone quarries near Bath, I think I can accept that stretch.
Oh, hang on, sequence check ... Yeah, that's good.

Place 1 : Moonraker ; Wildblood ; no MBPs. Correction - in his list of Bondisms, Wildblood did include the MBP I had been thinking of - the sub-volcano cave (magma chamber? I shudder, geologically) in You Only Live Twice. He also took several other shows off the table (Thunderbirds, UFO) but not all of the other examples I'd been thinking of.
Place 2 : Cholmondely with "hidden cave system underneath the city of Threerivers in Paul O. Williams' The Fall of the Shell?"
Place 3 : spud42 with Asimov's "Caves of Steel" (1955, or so, IIRC)
Place 4 : TBA
Place 5 : TBA

MrFlibble wrote: ↑Sat Aug 02, 2025 4:09 pm

RockDoctor wrote: ↑Thu Jul 31, 2025 10:08 pm

MrFlibble wrote: ↑Thu Jul 31, 2025 7:35 am

At least on Linux *-test builds, the major version (e.g. 1.91) and build date appear in the window title. On dev builds, the full version name appears in the top of the screen.

Standard builds too.
I've never been tempted by the "dev" builds.

IIRC, dev is the same as test (has debug console support), but with the version showing on-screen.

The regular edition has the version number in the window title ; I just wasn't registering it because I was looking in the screen display.

RockDoctor wrote: ↑Mon Aug 04, 2025 1:51 pm

spud42 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 02, 2025 4:03 pm

this will push the definition of "cave"...

Caves of Steel Asimov 1953....

Well, having recently reminisced about "caving" in the Box stone quarries near Bath, I think I can accept that stretch.
Oh, hang on, sequence check ... Yeah, that's good.

Place 1 : Moonraker ; Wildblood ; no MBPs. Correction - in his list of Bondisms, Wildblood did include the MBP I had been thinking of - the sub-volcano cave (magma chamber? I shudder, geologically) in You Only Live Twice. He also took several other shows off the table (Thunderbirds, UFO) but not all of the other examples I'd been thinking of.
Place 2 : Cholmondely with "hidden cave system underneath the city of Threerivers in Paul O. Williams' The Fall of the Shell?"
Place 3 : spud42 with Asimov's "Caves of Steel" (1955, or so, IIRC)
Place 4 : TBA
Place 5 : TBA

Do tunnels count as caves? If so, I just thought of very good example.

Wildeblood wrote: ↑Mon Aug 04, 2025 4:11 pm

Do tunnels count as caves? If so, I just thought of very good example.

Well since in terms of plot devices

What is this board's coding for a "spoiler"? Well, you have been warned ; spoiler for Asimov's "Caves of Steel" (1955, thereabouts) :

Spoiler

Asimov's main plot device in terms of landscape would be more about open fields than the caves themselves

though they (R.Daneel and Elijah) did do significant exposition going to-and-fro in the old road tunnels ... yeah, tunnels would be perfectly fine. After all, most caves are tunnels ; chambers are a minority, at least in terms of travel time.

RockDoctor wrote: ↑Sat Aug 09, 2025 10:25 pm

What is this board's coding for a "spoiler"? Well, you have been warned ; spoiler for Asimov's "Caves of Steel" (1955, thereabouts) :

For my personal reference, it's lsquare( spoiler rsquare) blah blah blah lsquare( /spoiler rsquare) Just stick that into the HTML editor ...

Since you're grumpy with me for "spoiling" UFO, might I suggest:

Battle Beneath the Earth (1967)
The Greatest Adventure on Earth...Is Under It!

Quoting from IMDB: "A Chinese general goes berserk and has a system of tunnels dug all the way from China to USA, under the Pacific Ocean. The man who has discovered this is locked up because they think he is insane. US Navy soldiers go underground to repel the invaders."

Who are "they"? But more importantly, what's causing the rash of landslides, then later, what are the commies up to, and who will save us?

That task falls to Ed Bishop.

User reviews on IMDB score it an amazingly bad 4.5/10, but their main complaints seem to be that it wasn't made in America, and that it was obviously made in 1967. (I think kids today should revise the dross Hollywood was churning out in the 1960s, and get some perspective. Having said that, it is bad.)

But none of that matters. It's got an impractical tunnelling megaproject, it's got lasers (in 1967), it's got nukes (lots of 'em), it's got paranoia, and it's got Ed Bishop.

Wildeblood wrote: ↑Sun Aug 10, 2025 5:31 am

Since you're grumpy with me for "spoiling" UFO, might I suggest:

Battle Beneath the Earth (1967)
The Greatest Adventure on Earth...Is Under It!

Spoiler

Quoting from IMDB: "A Chinese general goes berserk and has a system of tunnels dug all the way from China to USA, under the Pacific Ocean. The man who has discovered this is locked up because they think he is insane. US Navy soldiers go underground to repel the invaders."

Who are "they"? But more importantly, what's causing the rash of landslides, then later, what are the commies up to, and who will save us?

That task falls to Ed Bishop.

User reviews on IMDB score it an amazingly bad 4.5/10, but their main complaints seem to be that it wasn't made in America, and that it was obviously made in 1967. (I think kids today should revise the dross Hollywood was churning out in the 1960s, and get some perspective. Having said that, it is bad.)

But none of that matters. It's got an impractical tunnelling megaproject, it's got lasers (in 1967), it's got nukes (lots of 'em), it's got paranoia, and it's got Ed Bishop.

I remember it - and it was hilariously dire!
Hmmm, Thinking about it, it's more in the "reds under the ..." genre than SF. Well, very strong elements of that. But since Godzilla and an awful lot of the whole UFO paranoia was sublimated "reds under the beds" fear, that's less a disqualification than a quibble.

Place 1 : Moonraker ; Wildblood ; no MBPs. Correction - in his list of Bondisms, Wildblood did include the MBP I had been thinking of - the sub-volcano cave (magma chamber? I shudder, geologically) in You Only Live Twice. He also took several other shows off the table (Thunderbirds, UFO) but not all of the other examples I'd been thinking of.
Place 2 : Cholmondely with "hidden cave system underneath the city of Threerivers in Paul O. Williams' The Fall of the Shell?"
Place 3 : spud42 with Asimov's "Caves of Steel" (1955, or so, IIRC)
Place 4 : Wildeblood with "Battle Beneath the Earth"
Place 5 : TBA

Chalice alert!

RockDoctor wrote: ↑Thu Aug 14, 2025 10:21 pm

Place 5 : TBA

Chalice alert!

Is this thing on ? ... {howl round}

RockDoctor wrote: ↑Thu Aug 14, 2025 10:21 pm

Place 1 : Moonraker ; Wildblood ; no MBPs. Correction - in his list of Bondisms, Wildblood did include the MBP I had been thinking of - the sub-volcano cave (magma chamber? I shudder, geologically) in You Only Live Twice. He also took several other shows off the table (Thunderbirds, UFO) but not all of the other examples I'd been thinking of.
Place 2 : Cholmondely with "hidden cave system underneath the city of Threerivers in Paul O. Williams' The Fall of the Shell?"
Place 3 : spud42 with Asimov's "Caves of Steel" (1955, or so, IIRC)
Place 4 : Wildeblood with "Battle Beneath the Earth"
Place 5 : TBA

Come in, Number 5, your time is up!

RockDoctor wrote: ↑Thu Aug 28, 2025 10:30 am

Come in, Number 5, your time is up!

They're all too busy hiding in the tunnels!