Oolite Bulletins

Can you make it possible to reduce the pitch/yaw sensitivity by pressing or holding a key?
After playing this for a few days now and editing the controls so I have the ability to yaw.. the one thing I'm still having trouble with is the sensitivity.
It's nice to be able to turn about quickly however it does make lining the cross-hair over a target quite tricky.
I found myself on a few occasions now where I've been head to head with a hostile where he's been happily chipping away at my forward shields and I've been tapping the cursor keys up and down as lightly as possible to centre them over the little blighter.
Until they're very close.. it's more likely that the cross-hairs will jump slightly too high or slightly too low.

If I knew enough about how this game worked I'd do it myself as I'm pretty certain all you need to do is to reduce the values for the crafts manoeuvrability when you press a key once (the 0 key on the numpad would be ideal) and then have them return to their previous values when pressed again.

Unless of course there's a way of already doing this..
Wow, this post turned out to be a lot longer than it really needed to be. sorry!

Moonlight Fox wrote:

Can you make it possible to reduce the pitch/yaw sensitivity by pressing or holding a key?
After playing this for a few days now and editing the controls so I have the ability to yaw.. the one thing I'm still having trouble with is the sensitivity.
It's nice to be able to turn about quickly however it does make lining the cross-hair over a target quite tricky.
I found myself on a few occasions now where I've been head to head with a hostile where he's been happily chipping away at my forward shields and I've been tapping the cursor keys up and down as lightly as possible to centre them over the little blighter.
Until they're very close.. it's more likely that the cross-hairs will jump slightly too high or slightly too low.

If I knew enough about how this game worked I'd do it myself as I'm pretty certain all you need to do is to reduce the values for the crafts manoeuvrability when you press a key once (the 0 key on the numpad would be ideal) and then have them return to their previous values when pressed again.

Unless of course there's a way of already doing this..
Wow, this post turned out to be a lot longer than it really needed to be. sorry!

I think the sensitivity is ship specific... as in if you are steering an anaconda, it steers and flies like an asteroid... and should be cause of its size...

but you can open shipdata.plist file, and locate the relevant entries for each ship, it is just a value you have to alter... if memory is serving me corret...

the shipdata.plist file is located in oolite.app/resources/config
and also for OXP ships, in AddOns/OXPNAME/config/

There is alot of editing you will have todo, but you will soon enough find, how balancing these values is actually a tad harder, than you would think at first...

Yeah, I don't really want to 'break' the game by permanently changing how the craft handles. I just want to cripple it temporarily in order to increase aiming sensitivity at certain times. (such as my example..and also during docking)

Would it be possible to add in a second set of values to the ship list and have it switch to those values once a key is pressed...and then switch back when it's pressed again?

I think the sensitivity toggle is only available to Joystick users.

Mouse control is available to Mac users.

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EDIT
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Make that PC users too!
When did that happen?

Anyways, only works in fullscreen mode
Shift M to turn on mouse control
Use the mouse as if it is the top of a joystick, mouse up=pitch down, mouse down=pitch up, mouse right=roll right, mouse left=roll left
Right click re-centres mouse

Moonlight Fox wrote:

Can you make it possible to reduce the pitch/yaw sensitivity by pressing or holding a key?
After playing this for a few days now and editing the controls so I have the ability to yaw.. the one thing I'm still having trouble with is the sensitivity.
It's nice to be able to turn about quickly however it does make lining the cross-hair over a target quite tricky.
I found myself on a few occasions now where I've been head to head with a hostile where he's been happily chipping away at my forward shields and I've been tapping the cursor keys up and down as lightly as possible to centre them over the little blighter.
Until they're very close.. it's more likely that the cross-hairs will jump slightly too high or slightly too low.

If I knew enough about how this game worked I'd do it myself as I'm pretty certain all you need to do is to reduce the values for the crafts manoeuvrability when you press a key once (the 0 key on the numpad would be ideal) and then have them return to their previous values when pressed again.

Unless of course there's a way of already doing this..
Wow, this post turned out to be a lot longer than it really needed to be. sorry!

With the keyboard it is not possible. The only thing you can do is - like Frame said - to adjust the manoeuverability-values of your ship, to make it generally react slower. As you probably don't want that, the only advice I can give you is: training, training, training!

In all my years of playing different incarnations of Elite I have never used anything else than my keyboard, and I can tell you: With a little (or make that a little more ) training you can steer with any precision you want, provided your framerate is at an acceptable level (there is no chance at all with 4 fps (that made my first enounter with Oolite on my old iBook a very brief one and was one of the reasons for me to replace the seven-year-old, perfectly working, laptop )).

Commander McLane wrote:

In all my years of playing different incarnations of Elite I have never used anything else than my keyboard, and I can tell you: With a little (or make that a little more ) training you can steer with any precision you Want.

I would tend to agree. All the way from the Beeb, through C64, Amiga I used the keyboard and took pride in being Elite, pouring scorn on my friend who used a joystick (I think that was with the AtariST version, can't remember).
However, I just couldn't get on with the keyboard in Oolite, and I tried really. There is just something a bit squidgy about it compared to Elite.
However, I have never been as good a pilot in Oolite as in Elite, the best I have managed is Dangerous without getting killed.

Reading this post and the fact that the joystick sensitivity toggle is borked inspired me to try playing with the keyboard again.
I re-mapped the keys to the classic ones and started a new commander after yet another one ate vacuum and you know what?
Even though it is squidgy compared to Elite it is still better than with the joystick, plus I feel like a proper Cobra mkIII Pilot again.
Thanks for the inspiration Commander McLane.
E.

Once upon a time, I played a lot of flight sims. I started with the keyboard, because that’s how you played games on a Real Computer. Then I progressed to the mouse, overcame the wild gyrations that occur when you’re just starting out with mouse control, and never looked back. A few years later I got a joystick, tried to use it for a couple of months, then gave up and switched back to the mouse.

It’s the same in Oolite: mouse control is vastly, enormously more precise than keyboard or joystick control. Really.

To enable mouse control, press Shift-M in full-screen mode. Right-clicking recentres the virtual joystick instantaneously.

I suspect both keyboard and joystick control could be improved by using a non-linear response curve, though.

Ahruman wrote:

It’s the same in Oolite: mouse control is vastly, enormously more precise than keyboard or joystick control. Really.

Is that also true if the 'mouse' is in reality a touchpad?

Ahruman wrote:

I suspect both keyboard and joystick control could be improved by using a non-linear response curve, though.

I have been thinking exactly the same thing.
The small ship vector ajustments needed for fine control in Oolite must be small fractions of a degree, while the ability to rotate a ship fairly quickly according to it's manuverabilty is also needed.
I have tried using DXTweak 2 but it doesn't seem to do the job with Oolite. I don't know if this is an SDL thing, and anyway I don't like using windows even for gaming if I can help it.
The controls ATM are amazingly close to the original elite (congratulations), there is just that fine control issue which it does seem would be solved with a non-linear response curve without spoiling the elite control feel.

Hi.
Couldn't two different speed settings be programmed in for the controls, the slow one being one half/ two thirds the value of 'normal', then switch between them with the caps lock?

ie. ',' & '.' = left & right, normal
and < & > = left & right, slower.

It IS the FPS that makes it impossible to shoot accurately when all hell is breaking loose, or there's a super lush station spinning away in the background.


*edit*
can the plist's do sums?
If so, then no additional settings changes would need to be done to all the ships, just have the caps locked'<' & '>' as 66% of ',' & '.' values.
you'd even have a light on your 'dashboard' (caps lock) to tell you when you were in 'accuracy' mode.