Oolite Bulletins

Edit : Individual chapters no longer available, but you can download the complete version here

This my 'zap kapow' chapter. I've never written a space battle before. Hopefully I've pulled it off with a bit of panache. It's a space trading/combat game after all!

Feedback welcome as always!

Cheers,

Drew.

Really enjoying this, Drew Though now I'm starting to feel guilty about all those traders I've lasered into oblivion...!

One tiny niggle: "Lay on Macduff, little sister" sounds odd (since Macbeth was addressing Macduff) - I'd just have "Lay on, Macduff," Red replied.

(Actually, most people would probably say "Lead on, Macduff", meaning "Let's go", but maybe Red is a Shakespeare buff!)

Dammit, I can't help it once I've got started! One more thing to note for the future - you occasionally make an error called the comma splice. But then so do most writers (and subeditors)...

Okay, *two* more things! Consider using hyphens for compound expressions/adjectives preceding a noun:

"long, drawn-out route"
"tech-mad Tionisla"
"seven-light-year jumps"
etc

I'll stop now God, that felt good!

Roberto wrote:

One tiny niggle: "Lay on Macduff, little sister" sounds odd (since Macbeth was addressing Macduff) - I'd just have "Lay on, Macduff," Red replied.

(Actually, most people would probably say "Lead on, Macduff", meaning "Let's go", but maybe Red is a Shakespeare buff!)

I actually thought that Drew was using 'lay on Macduff' as a corruption of an archaic phrase (which, let's face it, most of our speech would be to a 32nd century bod). In a thousand years, 'lead on, MacDuff' could become 'lay on Macduff' quite easily, the same way some twentieth century words and phrases are contractions or corruptions, for example the term OK.

Nice Chapter - I'm going to use a quote from it on Oolite's website in future!

I like it. Also I agree - missquoting is a lot more realistic.

To be honest, it wouldn't suprise me if by the time this is set Shakespere hasn't been re-translated to "Modern speak" - like the Bible.

"Lay on, Macduff" is the actual quote from Macbeth; "Lead on..." is the corruption! But yes, by the 32nd century, people could be saying "Lay on" again - especially since (regardless of how the language has evolved) they would undoubtedly still have access to the (fixed) Shakespeare text.

Anyway, this is getting over-analytical Roll on chapter five...

I guess in an age dominated by spaceflight, the phrase "lay in a course" could result in "lay on" being used as "go ahead", "lead on"

A fews second of uncontrolled spin after side collision shouldn't be hard to implement, why not?

But why didn't Jim destroy the Courier after collision? Its shields should be weakened so it could not stand a good blow of military laser..

One discrepancy with Oolite: you *do* scoop escapepods, at least since 1.65 one can do that. If they're pirates it gets you bounty for capturing them; civilians you get paid by insurance....

So that part jars a bit with the Ooniverse we've come to know...

To loosely quote Giles: even NPC ships go out of their way to scoop escapepods, with the new A.I. ....

Great stuff, other than that.

Rxke wrote:

One discrepancy with Oolite: you *do* scoop escapepods, at least since 1.65 one can do that. If they're pirates it gets you bounty for capturing them; civilians you get paid by insurance....

So that part jars a bit with the Ooniverse we've come to know...

To loosely quote Giles: even NPC ships go out of their way to scoop escapepods, with the new A.I. ....

Great stuff, other than that.

I guess scooping escape pods became common practice later..

Comma Splice - Guilty as charged, I prefer it as a style though.
Never liked hyphens much. Had a girlfriend with a hyphenated name long ago, never recovered!

As for the 'Lay on, MacDuff'... All of your explanations are much better than mine, choose one of the above!

Which quote btw, Aegidian? Look forward to seeing that!

I only just upgraded my copy of Oolite yesterday and discovered the pod scooping business in 1.65. This is obviously a result of the 'great pod scooping caper' that happened during the holiday season of 3141, way after the events being portrayed....

Would be interested in seeing some collision 'shake, rattle and roll'. It could be interesting!

Cheers,

Drew.

Comma Splice - Guilty as charged, I prefer it as a style though.

It pains me, because it's just, well, wrong, and running two sentences together usually makes things worse for the reader (unless, as in the example on Wikipedia, the sentences are v short and alike). But hey, no one seems to care about grammar these days - well, outside the publishing world, anyway.

Never liked hyphens much. Had a girlfriend with a hyphenated name long ago, never recovered!

This is more understandable

Fair enough. I'm getting more partial to the good old semicolon, so will put that to good use instead!

Cheers,

Drew.