Oolite Bulletins

Thank you for my new obsession, I thought I shook this one off back in college in 1988!
Got hooked again via the pocket PC version of Elite on my phone and then found my way here.
Good work chaps.

Gadget wrote:

Thank you for my new obsession, I thought I shook this one off back in college in 1988!
Got hooked again via the pocket PC version of Elite on my phone and then found my way here.
Good work chaps.

Now the title of your topic is really not befitting this board. After all we have to maintain the reputation we have built up, so without further ado.

Welcome To The Friendliest Board This Side Of Riedquat!!
™Maegil Intellectual Properties Ltd.


Captain Hesperus

Thanks for the welcome committee, and sorry again for the content free first post... just needed a first post so I could ask a Q with hyperlinks on the PC board.... foiled by the spamproofing.

Got 5k credits and a clean record doing the milk runs... time to start pimping my ride and get medieval on some Thargoid/pirate/poor sucker ass!

Just gotta wean meself off the keyboard and get to grips (see what I did there) with my shiny new joystick.
(whilst ignoring the missus muttering "childish nonsense" under her breath)

i'm sure your missus has many fine qualities, evaluating games is obviously not one of them!

My missus has the same fault, she called me 'sad' when she saw me reading the current issue of retro gamer which has Elite all over the cover

Hoopy wrote:

My missus has the same fault, she called me 'sad' when she saw me reading the current issue of retro gamer which has Elite all over the cover

Oh really?!? Does it mention oolite at all?

The article carries an A to Z of Elite. O is for "Oolite -- Excellent homage to Elite that started off life as an OpenGL Mac OSX title. It was created by Giles Williams".

Disembodied wrote:

The article carries an A to Z of Elite. O is for "Oolite -- Excellent homage to Elite that started off life as an OpenGL Mac OSX title. It was created by Giles Williams".

Is that it?

It's almost as underwhelming as,

Earth:
Harmless.



Captain Hesperus

Yup, that's it. Still, better than a poke in the eye... and the magazine is about retro stuff, and Oolite is very current.

The most revealing bit in the article, I think -- and one that has repercussions for Elite IV if it ever appears -- is where Braben talks about the switch to Newtonian physics in Frontier:

"It was less fun," he admits, but the physics did make for a far more realistic experience.

Yes, David, much more realistic, apart from the wormholes... why not make it more realistic yet, and force players to fill out Customs declarations and do their tax returns? And it's a game. Games are supposed to be fun. What sort of games designer deliberately makes something that he knows to be "less fun"?

...David Braben...?

Disembodied wrote:

Yes, David, much more realistic, apart from the wormholes... why not make it more realistic yet, and force players to fill out Customs declarations and do their tax returns? And it's a game. Games are supposed to be fun. What sort of games designer deliberately makes something that he knows to be "less fun"?

+1

Don't get me started on frontiers Newtonian physics.

At the very heart of Elite is good old fasioned WWI style dogfighting. Take that away and I'm not interested (why I'm not interested in eve online).

YOU LISTENING TO ME BRABEN?!?

i didn't find the physics model used made much difference to gameplay. I understand that it was very counter-intuitive to those not of a maths/physics background but I don't think it damaged the game at all.

In the same way that we describe Oolite as a reinterpretation of Elite, so it has a very similar feel etc, frontier was a sequel to Elite so it's allowed and intended to be different.

Hoopy wrote:

i didn't find the physics model used made much difference to gameplay. I understand that it was very counter-intuitive to those not of a maths/physics background but I don't think it damaged the game at all.

Funnily enough I was doing my Physics degree when Frontier came out and spent some time playing that instead of studying.

I guess the beauty of games like Elite and Frontier is the many different was you can play it. I spose if you're into exploration and trading then having a tedious boring combat model isn't going to bother you so much. If however you enjoy skillfully dispatching a hoard of pirates and living to tell the tale, then what amounts to nothing more than a 3D game of asteroids just isn't gonna cut it.

For me the proof was in the pudding. Elite had me gripped for years though my teens and still has me hooked now (in it's much souped up oolite form). If I'm being generous then Frontier held my attention for around 6 weeks or so, before my irritation with its poor implementation made me loose interest.

But one thing I learned during my time at uni was, once you look past populist "Brief history of time/discovery channel" type whiz bang, and actually delve into the nuts and bolts, for me physics was a tediously boring subject. And funnily enough it made for tediously boring gameplay too.

[apologies to any physicists out there who enjoy their work ]

Admittedly my grasp of mechanical physics (?or physical mechanics) did sort of slide to a halt with the understanding that objects -- specifically, little wheeled trucks -- will accelerate under gravity down a slope until the bit of ticker-tape they tow behind them gets caught in the ticker machine; whereupon they will come to an immediate stop, until the ticker machine chews through the tape. The truck and tape will now begin to move again, but the distracting smell of burning from the now-hysterical ticker machine will severely hinder further observation and measurement...

Anyway, my ignorance aside, and leaving over there in a large pile my fear of mathematics, my problem wasn't that combat in Frontier was counter-intuitive: it's that it was dull. Point at enemy; lock auto-pilot on to enemy; fly under auto-pilot towards enemy; start firing at 8km; at 2km break off, and shoot on past; rinse; repeat. Even worse, once I'd persevered long enough to get myself an Imperial Courier (I was desperate to find a game I liked in there), you didn't even need to start shooting, most of the time. Just plough on over the top and watch the shields dip by a few per cent.

For me, the whole Frontier experience was a huge disappointment. Pretty much everything else was fine, or better -- just spoiled horribly by Braben's own personal interest in orbital mechanics. If the Frontier universe had Elite's flight characteristics, I'd be playing it yet.

you can fight with the auto pilot turned off if you want fun

Although I'll admit to playing Elite (for the BBC B on an emulator on the PC) during lunchtimes when revisign for my end of degree exams - which happened to be a Masters in Physics! So obviously I find physics more interesting than most

Ah, the age old Elite vs Frontier. Both have memories, but Elite was the superior one really. Another thing that bugged me in Frontier was the lack of Aliens.

That bothered me.

Still does.

Oh, and let's not go down the route of First Encounters...