Oolite Bulletins

Not to get philosophical on everybody, but it is a valid question. I've spent quite a bit of money on space sims; Freespace, X3, Evochron, Freelancer, Vendetta, Eve to name a few. I've also messed around with several variants of open source variations. I always seem to come back to Oolite when I have some time to kill.

For me it's down to the freedom you have to just do what you want. It's like real life, but 1000 years in the future. With spaceships and big scary aliens.

It was the first game to give the player the freedom to take a flight of fancy, as I remember. No missions, no scoring, no bosses to defeat at the end of a level. No levels, in fact.

No other game (other than Oolite) has captured that essence of freedom.

I'll bite - to be honest, part of it is this very forum. The collective imagination adds wonders to the game. Being able to talk to you all, and in some ways, take the game seriously adds a lot to the overall experience.

One word - immersion...(I'll just leave that hanging there for now)

From a technical point of view, I'm over consoles and games with copy protection that require you to have a constant internet connection to play, or keep a CD/DVD inserted to verify you've paid for it. The lack of copy protection on Oolite is a big plus for me. Just install it, and away you go.

I love the feeling that I can play a part in the future direction of this game. Even if all I come up with is a growing list of suggestions that never (rarely) get implemented, I like to think that my suggestions at least have a small influence on the minds of those with the time and ability to make changes.

I like the fact that I can customise the pace of the game to my liking. There's been the uber vs balance debate in other threads. I think I voted 'balance' but in all honesty, there's something about having the power of a nova at your fingertips. The beauty is that my preferences have no negative impact on any of the other players.

I think it is the same mechanism as in turn-based "4X" strategy games. Instead of turns, you have the voyage between stations. Instead of clicking "Next turn" button, you decided to do only one... more... trip. And then the sun rises.

But seriously, having several objectives almost within the reach all the time (and naturally, when you reach them, there will be new ones instead!) is a powerful tool for addiction. Early on in Oolite it's the next rating, then it's new equipment for your ship, visiting that system, getting to the next galaxy, getting back to the first galaxy, completing the mission, etc.

I think a lot of it is due to the imagination factor.

Whether you play Oolite in "strict mode" vanilla or with a half ton of OXPs, there's a tendency to presume there's this vast Ooniverse that is culturally and technologically diverse. Elite tended to do that as well.

Years ago (in the early 90s) the topic of Elite came up at a party. We'd been talking about computer games and etc, and a few people had played Elite. But some of the things they remembered were odd, in that I'm fairly sure they didn't actually exist in any form of Elite. They'd all played it before, but I was making my first runs at that time. I'm not one of the people who played Elite when it first came out, I couldn't afford a computer then. I was playing the DOS version on a Radio Shack computer that was not quite as good as a 286. LOL

Anyway, one of them talked about how he'd often been boarded by "the vipers" and inspected for contraband. Some others agreed it sucked when that happened. One recalled, in some detail, a mission where he was carrying some special sort of missile and it malfunctioned while onboard his ship and had to be defused, which involved figuring out some sort of numeric code. Another recalled having gotten her engines and shields upgraded as a result of an encounter with friendly aliens. Alien ships flying in large geometric formations before they'd break to attack. An alien homeworld or secret base. Having a wingman/partner that flew along and occasionally advised. Emergency missions running a special load of vaccine to worlds having plagues. Struggling to avoid falling into a black hole. Intercepting messages that had to be decoded in some way. Seeing the wreckage of your own ship if you restarted and then later found exactly the same spot where you'd been shot down.

At the time, I wasn't far into the game, so all this sounded plausible enough. I just nodded and figured it was out there somewhere and I'd find it eventually. One thing they agreed on was that Elite was the greatest spacegame of all time, far better than others I'd played at that time, like Starflight or Wing Commander. Oh, the graphics and etc were "old school", but there was agreement that it was by far the best game.

While there might have been some alcohol-inspired exaggeration in some cases, I don't think they were trying to intentionally BS me so much as that they actually *did* remember the game that way. In some cases, I think it likely they mis-remembered features of other games as being somewhere in Elite. In other cases, I think that the universe and adventures that they imagined, the "game in the head", superseded reality and they recalled the game as being much more than it actually was.

That's one of the qualities of a legend though, isn't it? When a thing is remembered as perhaps greater and more wonderful than it actually was. Not many other games result in as many "tall tales" as Elite.

One thing they agreed on, though, was that it wasn't like most other games. You could just get in your ship and go.. and keep going. There was nothing you *had* to do or accomplish, and you could just go forever, bumming along through space and seeing what wonders you could find. Kind of a "Holy Grail" of games, the game that never had to end. So I'm pretty sure they actually played it and weren't just BS-ing. For all the odd things that aren't in the game that some of them were sure they remembered, not a one of them ever claimed to see a "game over" other than in the personal sense of "press space".

But anyway, Oolite has some of that same odd quality, where it always feels like the systems and worlds stretch on into infinity. Oolite also has the OXPs. While they maybe aren't a required part of the game, they open up even more possibilities one can explore.

So what makes Oolite addicting? I would call it an imagination factor.. Or maybe dementia. LOL In any case, Elite had it, and Oolite has it maybe to an even greater degree. In Oolite, even if that wild/crazy/cool thing that one imagines might be out there doesn't actually exist in the game, someone may write an OXP to put it there.

Ganelon wrote:

Anyway, one of them talked about how he'd often been boarded by "the vipers" and inspected for contraband. Some others agreed it sucked when that happened. One recalled, in some detail, a mission where he was carrying some special sort of missile and it malfunctioned while onboard his ship and had to be defused, which involved figuring out some sort of numeric code. Another recalled having gotten her engines and shields upgraded as a result of an encounter with friendly aliens. Alien ships flying in large geometric formations before they'd break to attack. An alien homeworld or secret base. Having a wingman/partner that flew along and occasionally advised. Emergency missions running a special load of vaccine to worlds having plagues. Struggling to avoid falling into a black hole. Intercepting messages that had to be decoded in some way. Seeing the wreckage of your own ship if you restarted and then later found exactly the same spot where you'd been shot down.

The inescapable conclusion is that Elite is addictive because it attracts insane people, like moths to a flame.

Ahruman wrote:

The inescapable conclusion is that Elite is addictive because it attracts insane people, like moths to a flame.

Nail on the head there...

I dunno about anyone else, but I reminisce long and loud to anyone who'll listen about the heady days of GalCop. When you knew what to expect from the galaxy, whether it be a thargoid witchspace incursion, a group of Sidewinders wanting a piece of your cargo or a lone Python heading out of the system to god knows where. Simple days. Fill the hold, point your ship at a star and hit the hyperspace controls. Just you and your ship. None of these other pilots who chatter inanely across the ThruSpace or people chucking missions at you all the time or saying "to do this you must and together with more than two ship". Darn it, it's a solitary universe out there! If I wanted to be SOCIAL then I wouldn't lock myself in a durallium hull for nine days out of ten!! Everything's gotta be online these days, since they sorted out the broadband comms. Why? If I wanna chat to people then I'll head over to that place the other side of Reidquat.

Not like now, with The Man breathing down your neck all the time, debts to pay and no time to just jump in your ship and go. Sometimes I dust off the badge and look at it and just...remember...



Sorry, character took over for a minute there. Imagination is everything in this game, and to be honest I think a lot of the reason Elite fired the imagination was that the dear departed Commander Holdstock created a taste of something deeper when he wrote the Elite manual and Dark Wheel novella. He gave everyone a taste of what lay behind the screen - just enough to make you wonder what else was going on...

Some people are happy to just play the game and be part of it, and the Oolite community is (IMO) the best and most diverse community for gaming. It has everything that was missing from the times that Elite was released but stops short of making it restrictive or "less fun". (The creative commons and GPL stuff needed to be done to stop certain arguments and bad feeling, but that's a minor issue from long ago and the important thing is that the community was strong enough to overcome that without changing! Which really proves the point!). Other people want to immerse themselves in it, and from that has come a battery of really really good fan fiction that kicks the ass of most of the tripe that comes out of official publishing houses (yes, I'm looking at you, Wagar). Others (like me) are into the techy stuff and the wider universe and others want to create more things to look at and do, increasing the freedom and choice that made the original concept so successful.

I realise I'm going on and on, and this was only meant to be a short post...sorry.

What Bugbear and Ganelon said, pretty much sums it all up!

Ganelon wrote:

Emergency missions running a special load of vaccine to worlds having plagues.

This could actually have been either the first or last mission in ArcElite...

I never played any variation of Elite, Oolite is really my first space game. I have played Age of Empires, but it just isn't like Oolite. I prefer to fly about shooting pirates rather then stone age to iron age civilization. I'm a space guy at heart, and I love open source. So Oolite brings my passions together nicely.
And of course, the Oolite community is awesome.

Mauiby de Fug wrote:

What Bugbear and Ganelon said, pretty much sums it all up!

Ganelon wrote:

Emergency missions running a special load of vaccine to worlds having plagues.

This could actually have been either the first or last mission in ArcElite...

It's also one of the scripted missions in First Encounters, assuming I'm allowed to mention that game

Oolite is like an old friend. You could go out and play some other games but when you get back to Oolite it feels good. I played Elite on an Acorn Electron. Back then the game managed to create a vast world with only wireframe graphics.

What I find amazing is that even with the computing power we have today no game has actually managed to be as addictive as Oolite. And I've tried the following games:

Frontier I and II
X-wing
X-wing vs Tie Fighter
X-wing Alliance
Freelancer (still play this one with the Discovery Mod)
X
X2
X Terran Conflict
Pioneer
Ad Astra
Galaxy On Fire (IOS)
Galaxy on Fire 2 (IOS= I still play this one its great)
Elite Frontier I and II
Pioneer

While some games seem to have very good graphics (X Terran Conflict) or very lively worlds (Freelancer and Galaxy on Fire 2) they still seem confined in one area.

For example the area's X'series or in Galaxy on Fire are is in fact a boxspaces. Yes I know Oolite is also centered around one sun, a spacelane and a planet but at least you can fly around in the system while Pioneer, while, gorgeous is still bound to the unworkable Newtonian flight.

So for me Oolite strikes perfect balance between all sorts of space games. And the community is the best.

Confined... is a good description. I was thinking of the "lack of life", myself. In my opinion, Evochron is probably the second best flight sim available as I still play that one. Even with the amazing graphics and ship configurations, there is still a lack of personality in a lot of games. The entertainment factor is definitely where Oolite shines.

XB7 wrote:

Confined... is a good description. I was thinking of the "lack of life", myself. In my opinion, Evochron is probably the second best flight sim available as I still play that one. Even with the amazing graphics and ship configurations, there is still a lack of personality in a lot of games. The entertainment factor is definitely where Oolite shines.

Yes it is a very entertaining game plus the fact that you can play it both short and long. You can play it casual style (one hop per evening) or play it all night long and in both cases its epic due to the best randomness seen to date. Sometimes the system generator create memorable systems. Sometimes I wish that you can save the state of a random generated system. Yesterday Oolite generated a Communist system with around 10 astrofarms baking in the sunlight. It was a pretty sight. The next time you return to that same system it is different of course. In my imagination it is the orbit of the objects that take them out of reach.

What ISN'T addictive about Oolite?

I was never addicted to Elite!
Just had to be Elite. There was no addiction to it.

When my younger brother sent the web site to Oolite 65 (more that 20 years later) with the words;

"Don't loose your heed inside this game like you did with Elite"

I said,

"Of course not"

Oops.

Oolite is not addictive.
It's your own imagination that is.

Even the best players and writers of the game know it is a game.
Ergo the fun talking about Oo. in the BB about what is the game.

To remind any player;

Why it is addictive;

Your own imagination.

That is the addiction.