Oolite Bulletins

Just joined up and thought I'd say Hi.

I started playing Elite on the C=64 back about 20 years ago after a BBS buddy let me borrow a copy of his disk. I'm not much of a game player, but this game - for some reason - has always had an attraction for me. I tried downloading a hacked version several years ago, but it sucked, and then I happened to find Oolite when I Googled Elite last week.

I'll admit it's been long enough to not remember the details of the older Elite, but this seems close enough, and perhaps better

Bill

Old Commanders never die, they just lurk of the fringes of oblivion!

Welcome, windrider, to the friendliest forum this side of Riedquat... if you're not a spammer, that is!
(If you are indeed a spammer, welcome anyway - you just might find our board not as friendly...</me feels Katana's hilt>)

You'll find playing Oolite is like getting back together with the girl you went out with when you were a teenager, except now she's grown up, matured and become someone even more witty and gorgeous than you had ever imagined she could. And she never forgot you either.

Hello and welcome to you, windrider!

Good to see you found this excellent game inspired by Elite - enjoy! It's the same old thrill, with better graphics, and loads of extras available - missions, ships, and more.

Do peruse the wiki, it's full of useful gems, and the entry point for most of the downloadable extras.

Nope,not a spammer Cmdr Maegil.

I have already noted some of the differences from what I remember on the old Elite...and some of the same (Trumbles - yeah, I got fooled....ONCE).

My wife was laughing as she remembers how many nights she lost me to the game.

I have looked at the Wiki and am thinking of looking at some of the OXPs,

Thanks all.

Hi, windrider, and welcome to the boards and of course to this great game!

Yes, it's so nice to refresh the memories of old Elite, and to play a game that so beautifully expands it as well.

Feel free to read through the boards and to contribute anything you like, as well as reading the wiki and experimenting with OXPs!

Have fun!

Greetings, Windrider! You're not the only one who earned their wings on the C64 version, and later (for me) on the C128. I never played the "original" BBC micro version; that platform never made it over to this side of the pond (as far as I know). I'd love to add one to my informal classic computer collection.

FWIW, I think that the C-128 version of Elite was one of the first Elite variants that featured fully-rendered (e.g. surface-filled) ships/objects rather than simple vector graphics. Even so, the "simple" vector graphics and 3-d representation that the original Elite supported were revolutionary at the time; I recall no other game for common 8-bit platforms that preceded Elite providing a fully-realized 3-D "world".

Hi widrider, if you want to try the old wireframe models, there is an option to play Oolite in "strict mode", which will reunite you to the original Elite gameplay, but of course once you've samples smoked salmon you won't want to go back to fishcakes will you

Huh? Oolite strict doesn't do wireframes does it?

I decided that going to strict play was like removing the furnishing and insulation from my house to 'reconnect to colonial living'.

No thank you.

One thing after playing the game for a few hours this past weekend.....I am a service rep and spend a lot of time driving. After just a few hours on I-95, I was really wishing for a forward military laser in my van.

Is there a reason I haven't been able to connect to the forum the past few nights (about 11pm, US-EDT). It says it's unable to connect to the database.

Like you, I also played Elite way back. I didn't get beyond "Dangerous" or maybe "deadly", and am also "not much of a game player". I only play Oolite, and "fruit storm on my mobile!

I went through a long search for something that equalled Elite: Cholo (also on the BBC - wow, there's a remake of it... probably as confusing as it was back then for me!), a dalliance with StarGlider on Atari ST: too difficult (I could never hit anything!) and not the same scope as Elite, then it was Windows 3.0 Reversi, while fellow students got to Elite in a few lunchtimes on the IBM PS2 version, a download of Frontier onto a Celeron only persuaded me never to try to fly a real spaceship, Jack of All Trades was an interesting kind of "2D Elite" but I got to the end (almost), then the acquisition of a Mac and the discovery of Oolite! Hooray!!
Are there a lot of Oolite purists on this board, or do you all play lots of different games? Might make an interesting survey?
*cat

I'm a gamer - grew up on the Speccy (aaah Elite on the 128K..), moved onto PC. Have a full library of latest and greatest games, Oblivion, Stalker, FEAR, Thief etc etc........

Find myself coming back to Oolite more and more - the simplicity , the pureness of the gameplay, the ability to add OXPs as desired....

The original thought was to use Oolite as a way to learn the programming language - spend far far too much time just playing the game instead...

I am determined to try out all the current OXP missions before I go away and try to make one myself - and if that means i play the game solidly for a few days (months) then all the better...

The only other thing that gets in the way is a bit of online Poker....

I am not much of a game player. I think the last game I played was Wild Tangent's "Dark Orbit" - mostly because my grandson liked playing it with me.

I used to run a BBS on the 64...a bunch of the BBS users and other BBS sysops got together for a party and one of the sysops brought the game over to play. I was hooked.

Well, I do tend to waste a lot of time play a lot of games... although as I get older I suppose my tastes become more refined. To be honest of late -- chess, etc. aside -- I've not played anything except Oolite. After two decades and more of waiting for a proper successor to the original, there's a lot of wasted time to be made up for!

Some other games have given me my space-fix over the years... Escape Velocity, for example; another 2D variant on Elite's theme, but a goody for all that (and eminently moddable). And Master of Orion II. Oh, and there was Damocles, on the old Amiga... that was fun, just zooming around a nicely-realised (albeit utterly depopulated) solar system. And a bit more recently, Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space. What can I say? Space travel's in my blood...

have to admit to getting very hooked on Freelancer when it came out - almost (but not quite) the Elite fix I was after......

Oolite of course, has the potential to blow all other space games out the water....