Oolite Bulletins

Ok so I haven't been following the OSS world for quite some time. Every now and then, I used to check if an Elite clone was being worked on, and the last software I tried was Vegastrike, back when it was sort of beta-ish, and I was disappointed. I also seem to remember an open-source Elite clone that was being worked on some years ago, that David Braben killed with legal threats iirc (the web page disappeared and was replaced by some legalese). So all in all, no good news for years, and I had sort of given up on my hopes of ever playing Elite natively.

To my surprise, I was browsing around 3 days ago and read about Oolite. I thought, probably some project that's just started, or some Elite clone that won't even look like Elite, if I ever get it to compile... but anyway, I checked the Debian archive just in case and oh-oh, there's a .deb for it. Obviously not a project in its infancy, so I had to check it out.

2 minutes later, Oolite was installed and... wasn't working right, because my stupid nVidia card was giving me a lot of grief. But I'd seen enough, I just *had* to play that game. So I spent the whole of yesterday and today making my video card work (that's how much I wanted to play Oolite), and FINALLY it all works! YES!

I'm just out of an 8-hour Oolite session, I can't see straight anymore and it's 3am, but, ferchrissake, it's exactly like the real thing! it even plays the Blue Danube when it's docking, like all good space games should!! and to top it off, save for a couple of harmless GL messages on stdout, it's bug free!!!

No more emulator, Elite is born again and it's looking damn good. I feel like falling on my knees and thanking whichever God gave Gile the idea of doing this project, because I've been waiting for that moment since 1986.

I've spent almost three days trying to get it to work, and once I suceed I'll be in the same state of nostalgic nirvana as you. I know how you feel.

Hey Geekspeak....2 things...what kind of computer do u have and what is your problem..i may be able to use some of my limited knowledge of this game to help you

I use a seven-year-old HP Pavilion 5566C with a 25GB HD and 128 MB of RAM. I have downloaded the installer and installed the game, but every time I try to start the game it says "out of environment space" three times and shuts off. The bug report file thingy says "unable to determine current user name". The readme is essentially garbage on the troubleshooting front, and contains no mention of my problem (or any troubleshooting info at all, for that matter). Any ideas on what could be wrong?

From what I can tell, this sort of error pops up in Windows 98 with Oolite. I was trying to get it to run on an old laptop to show some friends with no luck... One of these days I'll get Slackware on it.

geekspeek wrote:

I use a seven-year-old HP Pavilion 5566C with a 25GB HD and 128 MB of RAM. I have downloaded the installer and installed the game, but every time I try to start the game it says "out of environment space" three times and shuts off. The bug report file thingy says "unable to determine current user name". The readme is essentially garbage on the troubleshooting front, and contains no mention of my problem (or any troubleshooting info at all, for that matter). Any ideas on what could be wrong?

Feel free to add to the readme and send it back to me if you feel it is lacking. This is open source and everyone is welcome to contribute.

What OS are you running? If it is Win95/98 then we don't think Oolite is compatible with it because no-one has managed to get it running.

If it is WinXP you must have a lot of env vars set for that to happen... I've never seen it run out of env space before.

Anyway, let me know and if you have WinXP we can dig deeper into it. Do a "set" in the command line window and paste the output in a reply (as long as there isn't anything sensitive in there).

Damn. I use Win98. I refuse to use any system with WinXP on it because I am a hardcore DOS man and any system without the ability to run in pure DOS mode is lower than dirt in my opinion. Oh, well. Feel free to e-mail me if you ever get it to work under Win98. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll ever be able to go back to playing old Elite - what you've put together makes even ArcElite look downright crappy. One question, before I give up - is there any possibility that it could run under Windows 3.1? I still have a system with 3.1 on it because I like the old version of AutoCAD better. Has anyone tried before?

(edited once to correct a typo)

Wouldn't it be easier just to install Linux on the system? If you have the HD space, that is.

Could he use a linux boot cd, download the linux binaries and run them from his win98 partition?

Saves changing anything.

Cheers,

Drew.

LoL...im out classed....i use a Mac anyways(heathen Windows users...just another reason why i hate them) so no help from me!*grumbles about windows STILL being crappy

geekspeek wrote:

Damn. I use Win98. I refuse to use any system with WinXP on it because I am a hardcore DOS man and any system without the ability to run in pure DOS mode is lower than dirt in my opinion. Oh, well. Feel free to e-mail me if you ever get it to work under Win98. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll ever be able to go back to playing old Elite - what you've put together makes even ArcElite look downright crappy. One question, before I give up - is there any possibility that it could run under Windows 3.1? I still have a system with 3.1 on it because I like the old version of AutoCAD better. Has anyone tried before?

(edited once to correct a typo)

Fairly sertain there is no chance in hell of it working on 3.1 (OpenGL needed!).

If you do not have the HD space then get yourself a LiveCD Linux distro - like the free one on the front of Linux User & Developer this month. Then it runs from the CD and not the computer. Mind you, that may fail as it uses a load of RAM to emulate it being installed.

Your best bet is to Dual Boot so you have Win98/Whatever and Linux.

Running a Linux live session *and* Oolite on only 128 Mb RAM... I'd be pessimistic about performance, verily...