Oolite Bulletins

WOW!

51209

Oolite is going to be massive, and deserves to be.

Congratulations to all the developers

Surely, this is an anomaly?
it is by almost a factor of ten, the most downloaded project on Berlios!

more than 50 thousand downloads in ONE day? Naaaah....[/u]

Could it be a phantom figure created by the nightly builds?

There are no nightly builds for the Windows version.

Besides, nightly builds are only available from rsync.alioth.net so berlios isn't even aware of them.

But it just goes to show - despite the doubting Thomases on alt.fan.elite, Elite in general is certainly NOT only liked by a tiny hard core of enthusiasts

Hrm. 69794 downloads total, 59037 this week; top download in the past week (up from fourth), 23rd overall, up from 53rd since yesterday. I suspect we’ve been mentioned somewhere. :-)

Ahruman wrote:

59037 this week; t)

of which 51209 the last day.
I'm still not convinced this is 'real', because there is no crazily increased traffic elsewhere (this board, for instance)

More than 50k downloads in one day. Does that sound credible to you?

OTOH.... Maybe some BIG mag did a glowing review, and it has just hit the stands... But then the question is: what mag sell so much copy that it leads to >50k downloads?

It's probably something online on the order of Slashdot sized, and they are certainly linking directly to the file (which is a shame, because it won't be possible to tell who the referrer was). Since they are directly linking to the file it is unlikely that the downloaders are even aware of the forum. And I know from Frantic kvetching on alt.fan.elite on Friday, most people don't bother to read the README file which tells them simple things like how to quit, what keys to press, and how to switch in and out of full screen. (That's why the Linux version presents the README the first time it is run - it's the only way to stop the forums being clogged with 'How do I get out of full screen?' type questions).

Hmmm... A splashscreen w/ a pointer to Oolite@.... Aegidian or Alioth , Oosat 1 and 2 or whatever would be the best place to start out could be useful, then?

I think there is a lot of mileage in at least displaying the readme file the first time the game is run, and the things that should appear on the first page of the readme are:

- shortcut keys to Quit, in case of video fsckage (which is depressingly all too common with some of the crappy 3D cards that come with some PCs)
- shortcut keys for toggling full screen (for the same reason)
- URL to the forum
- URL for Oosat
- URL for the Wiki

In big writing. Unfortunately, there are probably a lot of confused Windows users out there right now because they never bothered to read the readme file.

Replace the file they’re downloading with a read-me file. :-) Direct links are teh evil.

It should be easy enough to give an option in the installer to display a readme, and there will be some way to display it the first time the program is run.

The tricky bit will be waiting for the user to close the readme before running the game... Windows hasn't got the same process query facilities as *NIX, at least in the "shell".

This site was mentioned on slashdot.org. There was a feature about an article naming the top 20 "network changing products". Elite was one of those products. One of the comments linked to the oolite web site. I downloaded it and am playing it now

Given that it was Winston doing the mentioning, I don’t think it’s the source of the sudden popularity, but it may lead to a surge in Linux downloads. :-)

I've been trawling the web but so far...

possible sources: ?

http://www.programas-gratis.net/php/pro ... grama=4717

http://ask.softonic.com/ie/49062/Oolite