Oolite Bulletins

iMac if that makes a difference.

Rumour in another thread has it doable on a ship-by-ship basis, I'd prefer a simple, easy way to do it in-game but I guess that's a bit much to ask. I'm fairly certain I'm not the first person to think about this, though.

EDIT: found some more threads on this same issue. Logitech Attack 3 and all that - available for $15.00 or less via eBay. I just hate spending cash on something that should be fairly simple.

Yes, I cheat and pause the game to slow the TAF, but that's a pain in the... with several key presses. I suppose a macro that would automatically slow the game to 0.50 speed on the first press and return to 1.00 on the second press would work.

As for "tapping" the keyboard that works, but not half as well as it should imho - try hitting a Krait at 10km in the aft crosshairs - you can see it, but you just can't stabilize the crosshairs on it enough to hit it.

Oathbreaker, I have used an Attack 3 for a long time. It's a good 'stick and I don't think you'll do better for the price. Personally I wouldn't consider playing without a 'stick...it just sort of brings the game to life. It's so much more instinctive than using a keyboard only.

Sounds great, but let's not develop the game solely for people who invest in hardware that the average person with a laptop and a mouse won't have, imho.

It's fine to have secrets and semi-hidden little things that make the game easier to play in the game manual or wiki list of keyboard controls, but nowhere on the http://www.oolite.org/ main page does it have the disclaimer:

"This game is currently fairly difficult to play with just a keyboard and/or a mouse and you might have to open up a Config textfile and teach yourself how to manually edit keyboard controls, or you can just buy a $15 joystick and learn how to configure those controls."

The game should be fairly simple and easily accessible for the average non-Elite player 'out of the box' - unless you want to keep this exclusive and only for a fringe audience of people who like to tinker with complicated things and spend hours searching on the internet for how to edit things.

I think Oolite has always been quite keyboard-friendly, and indeed some of our esteemed members would never consider playing with anything other than keyboard.
I suppose my love of the 'stick really stems from my days on the C64...I've never really played without one, except for the couple of weeks after I discovered/installed Oolite, and remembering the old C64 days, just had to get a 'stick as for me that was how I remembered Elite.

Oathbreaker wrote:

Sounds great, but let's not develop the game solely for people who invest in hardware that the average person with a laptop and a mouse won't have, imho.

Speaking as the lead developer, I’ve played Oolite with a game pad for about fifteen minutes while integrating Mac support for it only a few months ago. Other than that, I generally play with a mouse, which is obviously and undeniably the best way to play, but regularly use the keyboard during testing and find it adequate. The original developer only played by keyboard.

I play Oolite with a Keyboard, Joystick and my Logitech rumblePad 2 (preferred), all depending on where I am and what I have available. The only control method I'm not comfortable with is the mouse.
Used to play Elite with a joystick on the C64 and the PC (Elite+), but the feeling I had at that time never returned with Oolite. (Might have to try some other sticks), so I ended up with using my Rumblepad for those big battles. For the keyboard I use the Oolite vanilla configuration, and have found it to be very good (after they fixed fast docking). All in all, after having struggled for some time with dead zones and it's like I find that Oolite's support for game-pads and joysticks is very good, and strongly recommend that players try a joystick or a game-pad (borrow/steal from your children or your neighbour if you have to).

Can it really be that hard to push a button on the keyboard and make the controlling a little more easy on the keyboard?
Say... three modes. The normal - one that goes with half speed for the cursor (rotates and pitches with half speed) and one that moves pixel by pixel.

I have not yet started (seriously) with this oxp-thing yet, but... is there any posibillity to change the values of roll and pitch when you are using the ship?
And.. is there any chance to save such changes?

Ahruman wrote:

regularly use the keyboard during testing and find it adequate. The original developer only played by keyboard.

"[A]dequate" for what?

Docking - excellent.
Travel - excellent.
1v1 fighting - tolerable, esp. if you don't mind pressing a button, pressing two more, pressing another and having a bunch of numbers cluttering your view so you can know what your TAF is set at.
"Furball" fighting - hopeless.

As for mouse steering - you'd better have a mouse set up with adjustable sensitivity, or have it hardset on your system specifically for Oolite, or is there something I'm missing?

All I'm saying is that the amount of people having issues with keyboard sensitivity of basic controls leads me to believe that the root problem is not the skill of the new players, the crux of it is rather with the lack of customization within the game of control sensitivity as well as fairly miserable default placement of the yaw and other keyboard commands plus the lack of an in-game key config graphical user interface. The latter which would also conveniently serve as a list of possible commands for a newbie who can surely be forgiven for not having a clue that there's a way to plot fastest in-game-time and fewest-jump routes on the galaxy chart or a way to simply plot positions of passenger cargo mission target systems.

When Elite first showed up it came in a nice shiny box with a slick-looking manual that was easy to look for controls in. Players then were used to looking through manuals. Players now are a bit more spoiled with tutorials and starting zones and probably won't even look for a Read_me.txt file in the unzipped folder unless you tell them to do so in-game. I want this game to be a mainstream success, and that means making it accessible to new players. It doesn't mean you have to dumb it down and make a little "kiddie pool galaxy" - but putting a button or a list of hotkeys on the side of the screen when visiting a station would be a start.

greenseng wrote:

Can it really be that hard to push a button on the keyboard and make the controlling a little more easy on the keyboard?
Say... three modes. The normal - one that goes with half speed for the cursor (rotates and pitches with half speed) and one that moves pixel by pixel.

I have not yet started (seriously) with this oxp-thing yet, but... is there any posibillity to change the values of roll and pitch when you are using the ship?
And.. is there any chance to save such changes?

There are apparently values for each ship that can be independently changed somehow, but that would require a bit more computer skill than I currently possess. I have a hard enough time getting a keyconfig.plist done right. No word on a general across-the-board sensitivity setting.

Oathbreaker wrote:

"[A]dequate" for what?

My most common test is to launch from the station, shoot up the nav beacon and kill Vipers until they stop coming. I can quite reliably do this with a keyboard, but it’s more fun with a mouse. (Pro tip: use your missiles to make the vipers or station fire ECM.)

Oathbreaker wrote:

As for mouse steering - you'd better have a mouse set up with adjustable sensitivity, or have it hardset on your system specifically for Oolite, or is there something I'm missing?

Just a cheap mouse, set to high acceleration for general use.

You may be missing that right-click recentres the “virtual joystick”. I don’t use that much in combat, though.

greenseng wrote:

Can it really be that hard to push a button on the keyboard and make the controlling a little more easy on the keyboard?

No, it wouldn’t be hard. In fact, it would be the easy way out. The correct way to approach problems like this is always to try every other option before adding a separate control (or rather, meta-control) – in this case, adjusting the response curve of the keyboard controls seems like the best place to start.

In any case, we’re in a feature freeze at the moment.

I have absolutely no problem with mouse controlled combat, flight etc. No adjustments made to its sensitivity - it is at it's windows driver defaults. 5 year old £5 optical number from Wilco's.

I use right click to kill pitch/roll quite a lot though....

The only thing I've done is enabled mouse control for windowed play as per http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Hidden ... _in_Oolite

My first play of Elite was on the C64 and I used a basic suction cup fighter type joystick stuck to the table and since then I just can't imagine NOT using a stick. Using a keyboard for primary control is an immersion breaker for me. Besides, how many airplanes that the pilot sits in are controlled by a mouse or keys for primary flight controls? None that I'm aware of. Maybe has something to do with making the aircraft like a part of your body and you can feel what is happening and react instinctively by moving in a way that logically ties to the movement of the aircraft in the same way. If you want to add anything add built in dead zone adjustability and forcefeedback capability. If the controls resisted or pushed back based on conditions like trying to force the ship past its' peak performance it would be so much fun and be a big way to create immersion. Not even sure if they sell controllers like that but man would that be cool!

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

Using a keyboard for primary control is an immersion breaker for me.

It's lovely that we can all agree to disagree.

I can't think of a lot of games that have a great degree of adjustability as to what the keys do in navigation. Mouse, yeah, other controllers like a joystick, yeah.

I've played this game with keyboard, and while it's not totally easy to do everything possible, one can certainly do as well as pretty much any other game where one might use keys (like Elite, for example). Oathbreaker, from what I can tell, apparently you're annoyed that some aspects of the game may be easier if someone adds some extra gear. That's usually rather the point to adding anything, whether it's a joystick or other controller, a graphics card, speaker system, a particular size or type of monitor.. Anything you add in the way of gear *may* make some games you play more enjoyable or even a bit "easier".

A couple years ago (I wasn't playing Oolite yet, it was another spacegame), I found out that I was missing out on some of the work that had gone into a game I liked because I didn't have a good enough graphics card. The on-the-mommy-board one I had was good enough for most things, but it didn't do shaders and it used system ram for video ram and as such the game was not only not as pretty, it was harder to play. (Try docking sometime with a frame rate of like 4 FPS when you get real close to large detailed objects like space stations.) Fine, I ended up buying a video card. It didn't cost a lot, and I've never regretted it. But my machine had been well within listed "minimum specs" and yeah, I was a bit annoyed that it took extra gear to make the game actually playable at a comfortable level. That made the game very difficult, though, it wasn't just something that made longshots harder to line up.

To be honest, a joystick can make some things a bit harder too. You'd think it would be better for docking, but it's not until you have a fair bit of practice in. If I'm getting some visitor to try Oolite for a little bit at my house, I always recommend they use the keys at first for docking. It's just easier. I haven't tried every possible controller, but I suspect each of them has their plus and minus sides.

If you actually want "precision steering", then a joystick is better than a keyboard even without using the precision/regular toggle, because it is an analog style input. Instead of full on/off, it gives everything in between in a relatively smooth spectrum. It's just different, and that's kind of to be expected if you hook up a different controller.

I guess my main point is that I'm kind of surprised that you seem to be saying that people who do get a joystick or a graphics card or a bigger monitor or whatever should gain no advantage from that.. That's kind of the while point of tricking out your system and adding accessories if desired, whether it's for games or work. But the game does work with keyboard, and considering the number of people who prefer keyboard control, I'd say it must work pretty darn well so far as keyboard control goes. Some of them could probably make me and my joystick and other controllers look like a monkey, because they've just put in more hours than I have.

Ok, my daughter is an artist. She has a graphics pad she bought (considerably costlier than any of my joysticks) and uses for drawing. We use the same machine much of the time, and the same software (Gimp). I can't do with arrow keys what she can do with a graphics pad and that doesn't seem odd to me. I don't figure it's the software's fault, it's just the way it is. Why shouldn't the software also support her gear and allow people who opted for that additional expense to do more than I could do with arrow keys?

Oh, and 15 isn't bad for a joystick, but the ones I use most were 2-3$ each from second-hand stores. Some folks buy newer fancier ones with functions I don't pretend to understand for far more as well. For me personally, Oolite is a space-fighter sort of game, so the joystick feels natural *to me* for it. I don't use it so much for longshots, since I'm more of an up close dogfighter style player. I get on the NPC's tail and it's pretty much all over. No matter how they twist and turn, I will stay on their tail just avoiding any possible rear laser line of sight and cut them apart. Most of my kills were made at less than one km while dodging fire from the target's buddies. For me, the joystick is more intuitive for that sort of action, though I *can* fight without one. I almost never work from longshots. As soon as I ID the target, I'm on my way in fast.

All that being said, I don't think there'd be anything wrong with keyboard control also having a normal/precision toggle.. I just don't think it's anywhere near the "magic" some people assume it would be. It's no miracle cure, and I think it's mostly there because there can be a lot of variation in joystick sensitivity and not all joysticks are easy to reset sensitivity on. But hey, you want to view something that was likely remedial for an optional controller as being something "denied" to a player running vanilla gear, that's your biz. Oolite is a single player customizable game, so "unfair advantage" isn't a consideration, really. It sounds to me, though, that precision for the keyboard would be useful mainly for sniping. But if this was a multiplayer game, the keyboard control where every turn is "full hard" would make the player a much harder target to hit in a fight. All "precision" does is make the turns slower. With some ships and joysticks, that is not an advantage at all, much less a necessity. It can make fighting pretty much suicide, since you can't turn fast enough to get in a shot before the NPC spins and tags you, and you can't stay on their tail well enough to keep them on the defensive. An odd thing for anyone to envy. LOL

Ok.

Just a few questions here.

Is it possible, with an oxp, to change the behaviour of a key? Let us say F9.
Is it possible to press it and suddenly the ship rotates with half the speed and likewise with the pitch?
And if you press F9 one more time it just rotates one pixel or pitches one pixel.
And when you press F9 again everything is back to normal. It can also be if you do shift + F9.

Does an oxp-writer have that type of control?

And how much control has an oxp-writer over the ram?
Can one read from a position in the ram?
Can one write?

If so would be, is there any list with useful addresses?

The reason for these questions is that I am thinking about testing "oxp-ing" but... it must not be too limitid.

greenseng wrote:

Just a few questions here.

Is it possible, with an oxp, to change the behaviour of a key? Let us say F9.

No.

greenseng wrote:

Is it possible to press it and suddenly the ship rotates with half the speed and likewise with the pitch?

No.

greenseng wrote:

And if you press F9 one more time it just rotates one pixel or pitches one pixel.

No.

greenseng wrote:

And when you press F9 again everything is back to normal. It can also be if you do shift + F9.

No.

greenseng wrote:

Does an oxp-writer have that type of control?

No.

greenseng wrote:

And how much control has an oxp-writer over the ram?
Can one read from a position in the ram?
Can one write?

So very, very no that it’s as no as a very no thing.