Oolite Bulletins

If it would be useful to fiction authors and OXP authors - I suggest an effort to produce a searchable index of OOlite canon . The way I imagine it - a graph style structure linking pages/sections of oofiction to Systems / Objects / Individuals / Ships. This is a methodology I have observed writers and directors using when cutting video/film , lots of coloured yarn linking concepts on a storyboard.

It would allow the curious to for example ;
and find the relevant passages of oofiction which point to this particular Object, relationships to other things like individuals (Hesperus, Rus , et al). Alternately , beginning from 'Dirien' or 'Lave' - branch out to mentions of it in various sources.

I would anticipate consuming ebooks and wiki at the very least.

Thoughts please.

Edit : I am not seeking to define or bless anything in particular as canon, but to federate things which _might_ be considered such into a format which would be useful for those trying to fit their stories into the ooniverse (s) - as a reference aid.

While I'm wary of setting up any piece or pieces of oofic as being "canon", I think this could be useful, or at the very least interesting. I think though we might need to stress that the ooniverse is both deep and broad, and that any story is just that: a story. It's not as if all the characters involved are tremendously reliable, either ...

Disembodied wrote:

It's not as if all the characters involved are tremendously reliable, either ...

Perhaps if a self-publish was allowed - the community could vote on the veracity of any given resource. I would vote 'Status Quo' , 'Mutabilis' , 'Incursio' , 'Finis' as veracity 10/10 - since I consider them 'state-of-the-art' with regard to oolite story. Let the chips fall where they may. I'm keen to have a bash at this - simply because my information retrieval and relation skills are going to waste @w**k currently. Oh - and because I'm totally enthused and trapped by this community

I see problems deciding what is and what isn't canon (which is a mutable thing, it seems).

Cody wrote:

I see problems deciding what is and what isn't canon (which is a mutable thing, it seems).

For certain. Would it be useful to federate everything and make it searchable . Such preferences like what the individual considers to be canon could be added as a filter.

I can see this being both useful, and a can of worms!
The problem of course is how we define 'canon'. If we take Oolite as being Elite for today, then only Elite canon is acceptable, and there is precious little of that - basically just the Elite Manual and the information contained therein.
Taking fiction and assuming it to be canon is unwise in my opinion. There is so much of it, and some may be contradictory, so the decision would have to be 'What fiction is acceptable as canon and what isn't?' And of course fiction is the product of a single person's imagination, and as so much of the game relies upon the imagination of the player there will always be differences, conflicts and disagreements.
Even The Dark Wheel (the Novella which accompanied Elite) is considered by many to be non-canon.
The other issue is whether other games (eg Frontier) and their history can be considered canon, even if they appear to touch on Elite/Oolite.
So in a nutshell the problem is an all or nothing one. If we want strict Elite canon, the Elite Manual is the only source, otherwise it's anything goes even if that involves contradictions and inconsistences, and the inclusion of much material that many would find un-acceptable.

Still, this would be useful to have, and if it is done right you could still have different takes on one and the same subject side by side
Some authors could even add if and why they decided to ignore other things for their Ooniverse... if they are so inclined.
Being not aware of it is the one thing such an index could maybe help to change a bit.

Smivs wrote:

I can see this being both useful, and a can of worms!

Yep - i know, it's in my nature to stir up trouble! Consider if you're researching that you might choose to filter on groups of data, eg: only include in my results ; Elite original material , Elite fictions ; Oolite fictions by author ; Oolite Wiki . Or any subset -etc.

You could call it the Oolite Canorganiser! To be honest, I don't see why you shouldn't do it, if you want to: that's pretty much the only rule. It's not like you'd be binding people to any one idea of canon, even without filtering. I wouldn't bother rating things by veracity, either: everyone's ooniverse is their own, regardless of how a voting majority on the forum might feel at one particular point in time. But it could be a useful way in to "the game in the head" for people new to the whole idea.

Take the word Canon out of the equation and this is a very good idea.
I don't think it's worth trying to define Oolite Canon, as I think that is contrary to the concept of a game that is inherently modifiable.
But that should not stop a good idea, all for it.

Smivs wrote:

If we want strict Elite canon, the Elite Manual is the only source

I think that's probably overstating its reliability.

The Elite Manual contradicts in places facts observable during play in the original game, asserts a few other things as facts which I personally find impossible to reconcile with the universe presented by the original game (though it's quite possible I may be the only person they bother...), and has a few more contradictions if used as Oolite canon caused by differences between Elite and Oolite.

submersible wrote:

If it would be useful to fiction authors and OXP authors - I suggest an effort to produce a searchable index of OOlite canon

Sounds an interesting idea. Would you include OXP content as fiction/canon too? The conflicts of various interpretations of canon are much more obvious there, but on the other hand a lot of OXP content has made its way into fiction one way or another, the occasional piece of fiction makes its way into OXPs, and then you have ones like Snoopers which stomp all over the concept of a dividing line between "OXP" and "fiction".

I think this would be a good idea.

Cannon is probably the wrong thing to call it but a searchable database of OXP & fiction content would be great. It's definitely something I would have used or would use while writing. The motivation behind OOliteInfo was so I could easily look at planet data while writing. I suppose if the database was available, it wouldn't be too hard to tack on to OOLiteInfo to search for the planet name in the combined fiction.
Keeping that database up to date though, could prove a little more tricky. For simplicity to start with, it could just search the Wiki but that would mean putting the full text of fiction and any OXP readme files in there.

Can of worms successfully opened.

!m!

Gimi wrote:

Take the word Canon out of the equation and this is a very good idea.

Maybe that's the problem, yes - don't refer to canon at all, just call it an Oofic Organiser. It's entirely possible that someone might come across what seems to be an apparent mismatch between one piece of fiction/OXP backstory and another, which inspires someone to create something new in the space in between. But applying any sort of measure of "canonicity" would probably be counterproductive: you could easily get something that only one person regards as "canon", but which that one person is passionately committed to as a central plank of their private ooniverse. I think there's plenty of room for multiple persepctives: for a real-world example, there are people who are convinced that the world is 6,000 years old, give or take, and there are others who know that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden, and others who just know that the Saucer People faked the moon landings to cover up their involvement with the Reverse Vampires ... Looking to set an objective, canonical truth which everyone is happy with is fraught with difficulty. "Let one hundred flowers bloom and one hundred schools of thought compete", said Chairman Mao, before nicely illustrating the problem of a strict canon by murdering all those who disagreed with him.

cim wrote:

The Elite Manual contradicts in places facts observable during play in the original game, asserts a few other things as facts which I personally find impossible to reconcile with the universe presented by the original game (though it's quite possible I may be the only person they bother...), and has a few more contradictions if used as Oolite canon caused by differences between Elite and Oolite.

They bother me too, as does much of TDW (which I chose to ignore a long time ago) - even Drew's fiction doesn't fit with Oolite the game.

Maybe this is best treated a a non-canon exercise, particularly as what little canon there is seems to be not entirely right!
Certainly a fiction/OXP index or database could be useful for all sorts of reasons, not least amongst them being that it might even help to achieve some sort of consistancy around the fiction and OXPs.