Oolite Bulletins

Hi, I'm "only" 29 years old so I spent my youth playing elite2, not elite. And so I got used very much to the game interface offered by elite2. Later I learned that there are other versions, but neither elite nor elite3 could beat the comfort of playing I had in elite2.

So currently I'm stuck with playing elite2 under dosbox, whenever I'm in situation that I'd like to play elite2 once again.

I've found oolite some time ago, and graphics is very nice, etc. But I cannot play this game comfortably because it mimics the behaviour of elite, which is simply too strange for me - I'm not used to this.

Is there any oxp mod to "skin" oolite with elite2 behaviour? Otherwise I guess that I'm stuck with dosbox.

I believe what you are refering to is Newtronian Physics. This would require a serious oo-verhaul (lol!) of the game engine I'm mafraid and would in essense be another game entirely. There was another thread on this somewhere. (I'm sure someone can provide a link...)

aye, sorry, I should be more precise.

In fact the things I'm referring to are:
1. all F1..F10 keys are onscreen with little icons
2. a bit different keyboard keybindings
3. station services have a bulletin board, where I can search announcements for possible missions (kill someone, cargo/passanger delivery, army assignments)
4. the galaxy map is a little different, so it has a spiral shape, and contains sol systems coming from our real "milky way" (so you can find Sol&Earth&Mars, Beteleguese, Orion belt, etc...)
5. the ship steering controls have two options: roll/up-down (this oolite currently uses) or left-right/up-down (this one I prefer)
6. the military missions are getting more and more interesting as you climb the ladder, eventually they may give you an assignment to kill a president of enemy imperial empire, which is kind of interesting
7. less important: station services have human faces, it's nice, but I can live without it.

So In fact I don't care about newtoning physics. Most of this stuff is I belive related to interface, steering and galaxy map.

Oolite is a version of the original Elite, not of Elite 2/Frontier. Certain things are almost certainly not going to change (i.e. the galactic map, or the introduction of Newtonian physics to the flight model). Other things are (or might be) open to modification. For example:

From Oolite 1.68, yaw controls (swing right/left) were introduced, although the roll right/left controls remain as well.

Keyboard controls can be reconfigured. How you do this would depend on what version of the game you're running, on what sort of computer (I think: generally I try to steer clear of giving specific technical advice because I usually screw it up...).

A great many new missions, and mission generators, have been produced as OXPs for Oolite, including long-running, escalating ones like UPS, Assassins and Local Hero. Others, like Random Hits and Galactic Navy, produce an endless supply of missions, although without an overarching storyline. See the wiki for more details.

Oolite has a bulletin board, offering passenger and cargo contracts: press F8-F8 to bring it up. And Random Hits adds seedy Space Bars to Anarchy systems, where you can pick up bounty-hunting contracts.

The head-up display (HUD) can be modified, so if you wanted to you could make one that looked more like an Elite 2 HUD. I don't know if it would be possible to put functional icons on it, though -- i.e. ones that you could click with the mouse and which would then actually do something. Probably not, would be my guess.

Finally, not all station operatives have human faces! One example springs to mind...

Hi, cosurgi, Disembodied already pointed out the most important point, I'll just emphasize on it: Oolite is a remake of Elite, not of FFE or FE2. Those were completely different games. Some of us would even refuse to refer to Frontier as "Elite2", because the two are so little related.

Anyway, there are a couple of resemblances, and some things on your wishlist can be achieved easily in Oolite, or they are there anyway, but you just haven't yet stumbled across them.

One by one:

cosurgi wrote:

1. all F1..F10 keys are onscreen with little icons

This is indeed no feature of Oolite, and I don't think it's going to be one. So at this point you will have to get used to the keyboard controls, I'm afraid.

cosurgi wrote:

2. a bit different keyboard keybindings

This can be achieved easily, by editing a file named keyconfig.plist. A step-by-step info how to do this, depending on your OS, together with a complete list of all keyboard controls and their default values, is available in the Elite Wiki, on the page Oolite Keyboard Controls (just click the link).

cosurgi wrote:

3. station services have a bulletin board, where I can search announcements for possible missions (kill someone, cargo/passanger delivery, army assignments)

Station services in Oolite do have a bulletin board of this kind. The difference is that it is called "Mission Screen", and it pops up automatically as soon as you dock, but only if there is actually a mission to do. There are also the regular passenger- and cargo-contracts on the "Contract Market" mentioned by Disembodied (press F8 twice).

cosurgi wrote:

4. the galaxy map is a little different, so it has a spiral shape, and contains sol systems coming from our real "milky way" (so you can find Sol&Earth&Mars, Beteleguese, Orion belt, etc...)

Yes. Oolite is a remake of Elite, therefore it is located in Elite's galaxy, not in Frontier's. And those were, as mentioned above, two completely different games.

cosurgi wrote:

5. the ship steering controls have two options: roll/up-down (this oolite currently uses) or left-right/up-down (this one I prefer)

Although there are reasons why there was no left-right-movement (or yaw) in Elite, it was introduced to Oolite's flight controls as an experimental feature since version 1.68. The above-mentioned documentation of the keycontrols tells you what the default keys are. So you can actually have all three movements: pitch, yaw and roll. Note, however, that due to the experimental character of the yaw-support there is no guarantee that it will work in any future version. It could be removed again.

cosurgi wrote:

6. the military missions are getting more and more interesting as you climb the ladder, eventually they may give you an assignment to kill a president of enemy imperial empire, which is kind of interesting

The same is true for Elite/Oolite, although you have to fly around for quite a while (and kill a lot of other ships) until you trigger the first of the built-in missions. Later missions will also become more difficult.

The particularly nice touch of Oolite, however, is that you are not depending on the built-in missions, because Oolite is a very open project and can be expanded in every thinkable way by Oolite eXpansion Packs (OXPs). A list of those OXPs that offer missions, together with information on the starting points of the missions and prerequesits (like a specific number of kills), is available in the Wiki as well. There is also a list of all available OXPs.

cosurgi wrote:

7. less important: station services have human faces, it's nice, but I can live without it.

Another difference between Elite/Oolite and Frontier is that in Elite/Oolite space is populated with all sorts of weird species, not humans only. Disembodied already mentioned an example.

I hope you are satisfied with these answers. Have fun playing and discovering!

wow, many thanks for your very detailed reply.

I'm currently playing v.1.65 on debian linux. I just tried to compile 1.71 but encountered some problems with Entity.m:
probably something is not installed, even though dpkg-buildpackage thinks that all necessary packages are installed.

Anyway, I'll have a look at keyboard bindings in 1.65, thanks a lot again.

As per the wiki, try this post.

I'm only 31 (birthday was last week) and I played original Elite. What we you doing as a 7 year old that prevented you playing Elite?