Oolite Bulletins

So, how long till 1.8 is out? (nag nag nag)

I assume that at some point the nature of OXZs vs OXPs are going to be covered in the Wiki, along with updates covering changes/additions in 1.8? Will there also be some kind of "cleanup" going on to make sure everything is current?

When 1.8 is out, are you planning any kind of (for lack of a better word) marketing campaign? Get the word out to game magazines, create a press release that shows off its new features? Offer interviews with game magazines talking about this shared development process, etc?

I know it's a free game and all, but the whole point is to share the love, right? And the beauty of 1.8 seems to be that it's more user-friendly than ever before. Tutorials for the noobs, and OXZs for those that want add ons but are intimidated by anything involving opening windows and manually shifting files around (hey, there are more than you think).

Heck, I'm sure there are those who did play it and left it for various reasons that might want to have a fresh look at it now (Actually I'm practically one of them... I think I checked out Oolite ages ago, but it was too basic then, a fun nostalgic trip back but it couldn't hold me. I wasn't aware of OXPs at the time)

If you do do a press release thing, that might be a key point to pitch - explain what makes 1.8 so different from the earlier versions, so people who might have come across it a few years ago have a reason to come back for a visit?

Some good ideas there..

Hell, maybe someone can talk to the Elite:Dangerous people about it? Maybe they can use their connections to get Oolite mentioned in various sources.

Promoting Oolite would only get more people interested in seeing what Elite:Dangerous is going to offer, after all. Win win.

No, please don’t do that.

Did I hit a nerve there?

mossfoot wrote:

Did I hit a nerve there?

Not exactly.. just a desire to avoid a potential Oolite-killing event.

Some past history.. before Oolite, there was  Christian Pinder's Elite - The New Kind. It was based on a reverse-engineering of the BBC Elite code, and implemented in C. It was ported to a number of platforms before some stupid twat took it upon themselves to release a version with a restrictive EULA.

Until this point, David Braben had ignored it, but he now insisted that E-TNK be withdrawn from circulation. It is now quite difficult to obtain. Almost as hard as it is to find out any specific details of just what happened, in fact. That event was also the spark that led to Aegidian starting work on Oolite.

This is the primary reason that Oolite is released under a strictly non-commercial license, as is all the fan fiction. We have good reason to believe that the moment anyone tried to make money off it, Frontier's lawyers would squash Oolite like a bug.

We are quite sure that Mr Braben and Frontier know of Oolite, after all, it has been mentioned on the E: D forums many times, but they seem content to ignore Oolite altogether. I also seem to recall hearing that someone once asked Mr Braben what he thought of Oolite, and he chose to ignore the question. That seems quite telling.

(incidentally, the other creator of Elite, Ian Bell, is even a member here. However, whilst his website has a number of Elite-related links on it, there is nothing regarding Oolite, which seems significant, given his own legal tangles with Mr Braben and Frontier.)

Whilst we don't know for sure, we suspect (hope?) that Mr Braben holds some small degree of fondness for Oolite, (we did, after all, help keep the dream alive all the years that Elite IV was considered vapourware), but that he chooses not to officially acknowledge our existence, since that might lead to a huge can of worms being opened, and lawyers getting involved.. Frontier is, after all, a company which has to answer to other people besides Mr Braben.

In short.. so long as Mr Braben sees fit to pretend we don't exist, we're quite happy to keep flying beneath the radar.

Ahhhh... got it. The legal world is a funny ol' thing.

However, since I have seen Oolite reviewed in online game magazines before, it wouldn't hurt to put the word out when 1.8 came out to them, would it?

mossfoot wrote:

...it wouldn't hurt to put the word out when 1.8 came out to them, would it?

Well, that's the whole point, it might.
And remember that good news has a way of travelling anyway. Oolite has grown as big as it has purely by word-of-mouth, and people stumbling upon it by chance, and will continue to do so. Oolite is probably the original viral phenomenon. People telling friends, telling friends.
So although it is tempting to shout it from the rooftops, letting nature take its course is the safest way of spreading the news, and the (probably) tens of thousnds of people already playing will steadily be joined by others.

I encountered Oolite in Debian packages first time which is an alternative way of growing. Please made one from 1.80 also after release.

Mossfoot: the correct version is not 1.8 but 1.80 due to 1.8 is less than 1.10 in numeric comparsions and Oolite is over 1.79. You can fix it in the topic title by editing the subject of the first post.

Norby wrote:

I encountered Oolite in Debian packages first time which is an alternative way of growing. Please made one from 1.80 also after release.

So far as I know, that's a matter of notifying the various Linux distro package maintainers that a new stable version has been released.

Smivs wrote:

mossfoot wrote:

...it wouldn't hurt to put the word out when 1.8 came out to them, would it?

Well, that's the whole point, it might.

More than that I would say that if there was a time when it was most likely to cause issues it would be now, with E:D coming soon. If Braben perceived that Oolite's popularity might be inhibiting sales of E:D...

- Neelix

Diziet Sma wrote:

More than that I would say that if there was a time when it was most likely to cause issues it would be now, with E:D coming soon.

I agree with this, now might not be the best time to call attention to oolite.

Smivs wrote:

And remember that good news has a way of travelling anyway. Oolite has grown as big as it has purely by word-of-mouth, and people stumbling upon it by chance, and will continue to do so.

Yes I found oolite in the linux universe, the 1.76 stable release is in my package manager, a repository for software that is available and approved for linux. I believe once 1.80 is released it will replace this. I never had a clue about oolite before that, never played Elite, but I might try E D if my box can handle it.

Neelix wrote:

Smivs wrote:

mossfoot wrote:

...it wouldn't hurt to put the word out when 1.8 came out to them, would it?

Well, that's the whole point, it might.

More than that I would say that if there was a time when it was most likely to cause issues it would be now, with E:D coming soon. If Braben perceived that Oolite's popularity might be inhibiting sales of E:D...

- Neelix

I suppose it's possible they'd think that, but if you ask me it's a foolish perception. Oolite cannot possibly compare to what Elite:Dangerous has to offer. It would be more of a promotion than anything. An updated nostalgic look to the past, which can only get you more excited for the future.

Realistically how many people who get sucked into Oolite are going to look at E:D and go "eh, it's pretty much the same thing". I know I'm not. I'm already trying to figure out how to get my desktop upgraded to run it

Stormrider wrote:

Diziet Sma wrote:

More than that I would say that if there was a time when it was most likely to cause issues it would be now, with E:D coming soon.

I agree with this, now might not be the best time to call attention to oolite.

I have no idea how you managed to get my name on Neelix's post..