Oolite Bulletins

It pisses me off how there is no YAW in Oolite (granted, there was no Yaw in Elite, either), but it grates me. No self-respecting flying-machine is built without the capacity to turn/pivot itself along three axis. For that matter, how about some retro/maneuver thrusters, way, way less-powerful than the main engines, but they could apply thrust to nudge your ship backwards, directly up, down, left or right? That would be a bit more better. And how about some more realistic physics (in the form of a selectable switch, like "play pure without addons")? You know, "a body in motion tends to stay in motion....." You should be able to burn full thrusters, then ease back and continue to haul ass in the direction of thrust while pivoting your ship around so its nose faces backwards (allowing you to use frontal weaponry on a pursuer or brake really fast with the main engines). I know, that's not original Elite style, but this is OOLite, made with new technology.

I think the game you are looking for is Elite II - Frontier. It has stunningly realistic physics, not just for the ships, but also systems have accurate modelling of planetary and lunar orbits, station orbits, planetary rotation, the works and all to scale too.

It's also stunningly dull to play. The only way to effectively get about is to use the auto pilot. Ship to ship combat is next to impossible. It's cool to fly to a planet once - then it becomes a chore - just like it would be if you had to do it for real.

I vote for keeping the control system exactly as it is.

Neither of the above.

But I'll address these one by one:-

1. Retros - Elite on the ST (and possibly the Amiga?) had retro thrusters that could be bought as an option. But it also fitted all ships with plasma cannon rather than lasers, and I don't consider it 'canon'.

2. Yaw boosters - ArcElite had these as a reward for a mission (which one and the details - I'm not sure), I don't think they're necessary - but would add them if enough people asked.

3. Newtonian Physics - This one always gets my goat. Oolite is not your father's Elite, and although superficially you may think you're not getting Newtonian physics you need to look a little closer — right close up to an asteroid for example. Oolite does use Newtonian physics - however the ship-flight model is written to emulate Elite. It presupposes a system of thrusters under computer control that convey to the pilot a flight model that can be easily understood and flown. However, uncontrolled craft and objects lacking thrusters to correct their flight behave according to the predictable Newtonian model.

If you want a flight model where you have to control the firing of up to twelve thrusters to coordinate motion and orientation, plus main drive control and weapons, let me know where you buy your seven-fingered gloves I have an inbred third cousin who'd appreciate it.

Thanks, Aegidian, for that point-by-point (and thanks for an excellent game). As far as that last point, would it be too hard to put in a sort of "kill switch" for your inertial dampener or thruster computer or whatever it is that causes your ship under power not to behave, er, "Newtonianly"? I agree with you that it is easier to fly the way you have it programmed, but it would be cool if you could disengage the flight-model-system and just coast/hurtle through space like debris.

Oh, and how about space mines? With lasers? And they could explode? You could dump them out the back of your ship if you're being chased. (I guess we're drifting away from Elite with that idea).

Badly-worded poll.

Yaw might possibly be useful when docking, but otherwise it's completely unnecessary. Pitch and roll (and thrust) is all that is needed, and all there should be.

Reverse thrusters . . . well, maybe. But with a rear-mounted laser I don't see any need for them.

Being able to disconnect the flight model from the engines might be fun - but there's too much of an explanation of how the engines work for that to be implemented satisfactorily. You could hurtle through space (in a straight line) and spin the craft any which way, but not with these engines. . .

I think there would also be big combat applications to yaw control. a virgin pilot learning to maneuver with yaw boost, might develop an unorthodox style, rolling much less. me, I wouldn't mind it selling at a high price.

the reverse thust could have some use in combat and mining, maybe give a ship the ability to suddenly halt a hyperjump. I also like the idea of shutting down the ship and play dead, appearing a white flag on the radar.

Sometimes making things too realistic it just pointless. Let me tell you a little story...

In 1992, Virgin Interactive released a game called Shuttle. As you'd expect the game was a simulation of a NASA Shuttle. You could launch it, do space walks, fix things and other spaceman type activities. The detail was mind boggling, there were I think about 5 screens worth of control panels (accurately recreated from a real shuttle). The game was, for its time, simply stunning in all respects. It was a hard-core simulation fan's dream.

However, what baffled me was the decision by the design team to allow you to play the game real-time. "Well this doesn't sound too bad" you might think to yourself but consider this... A real shuttle takes DAYS (and I mean days!) to get from the hangar to the launch pad. Why would you want to play a game continously for several days doing nothing more than stare at the screen?

The point of the story... if you want that level of detail why not just go get a job at NASA otherwise your life will be nothing but one giant computer game.

For what its worth, I owned the game on the Atari ST and I like simulations but it was way too heavy for me!

Darkbee wrote:

otherwise your life will be nothing but one giant computer game.

He He

What are we doing here guys, perhaps we should get out more.

(pause for thought)

Naaaaaaa - bring on them Thargons I've got an itchy trigger finger, and a few scores to settle!

TGHC

TGHC wrote:

What are we doing here guys, perhaps we should get out more.
TGHC

Yeah, sometimes I think to myself "What a sad little person I am with no life" then I go back to my computer game.

I think there is an inner geek (to varying degrees) in just about everyone who posts to this forum but there are still limits!

BTW my Shuttle post was not meant to be condescending and I certainly don't want to shoot anyone down (metaphorically). I'm just concerned, espeically in this day and age, that we are obesessed with adding more and more features which may eventually end up killing a game rather than enhancing it.

Well, when you look at it in the cold light of day, most of science fiction is utter vapid nonsense unless viewed as an exercise in "what if". As for games; any game only really has to establish a set of rules that a player must abide by and the game never breaches, itself. "Reality", here, is defined by the "reality" of the game, and how far towards anything we might call "actually real" it chooses to make things look.

Otherwise, we might all like to take the inventors of that so-called 'game' of 'Chess', to task, for producing a ludicrously over-simplified vision of what medieval pitched warfare was like .

To paraphrase Douglas Adams: "Space is dull, really dull. You just wouldn't believe how vastly, mind-bogglingly dull it is! I mean you may think it's pretty dull going down the street to the chemists, but that's just peanuts to sapce!"

Yaw would be nice, but I can't imagine it being done right without a twisting joystick or floor pedal rudder.

Also, having a 'aerodynamic/space' physics toggle would be cool, the backstory being that people are used to aerodynamic flight controls so thrusters are computer-controlled to simulate that behavior, but 'expert' pilots can switch it off to do stuff like strafe slides, power 180s, 180 peekaboo rear attacks, etc...

If you're interested in the whole kin 'n' kaboodle, you might want to have a look at Vendetta Online. It's got verticle and horizontal strafing, turns in both those directions, rotate, and (obviously) forward/back. It also uses Newtonian inertia and has a "frame" that sits on top of it that gives a more traditional simulator feel which can be turned on and off.

You get eight hours free, which is plenty of time to see that those features are much more trouble than they're worth. (Combat is possible only because the computer displays crosshairs where it thinks your opponent will be and auto-aims towards that as long as your fire reasonably close to that direction.)

Otis Wildflower wrote:

Yaw would be nice, but I can't imagine it being done right without a twisting joystick or floor pedal rudder.

Also, having a 'aerodynamic/space' physics toggle would be cool, the backstory being that people are used to aerodynamic flight controls so thrusters are computer-controlled to simulate that behavior, but 'expert' pilots can switch it off to do stuff like strafe slides, power 180s, 180 peekaboo rear attacks, etc...

Well, how's this for a backstory for you...

They tried that for a while, but they had so many 'expert' pilots smashing up against the space station, they outlawed it. As such, you only have the legal controls available to you.

Just catching up, or trying to...

My fave version of classic Elite was the Arc one, which featured yaw boosters. I think they were actually a purchasable upgrade, rather than a mission reward. I'd love to see them included in Oolite, for completeness sake if nothing else.

To be honest though I rarely used them, since I was an old-school Electron/BBC Elite player so they didn't fit into my mental flight model. Still, having seen people play ArcElite who hadn't learnt Elite on the BBC they generally made good use of the yaw boosters. Their addition would I'm sure be most welcome.

I've always assumed (especially since the dawning of Frontier) that the Elite controls were relativity based. There is real-space movement, but your controls when in combat or whatever control your attitude and speed relative to any nearby bodies. Hence the space bar and slash key (or whatever your accel/decel keys were) accelerate or decelerate you tiny amounts in real velocity, but quite a considerable amount relative to other objects in your area.

The actual real-space flying (with the tedious acceleration, decelation yada yada) is handled by the navigation computer, and various safety measures are built in to minimise the dangers of overshooting, docking etc.