Oolite Bulletins

So I've been away from oolite for a while, bout half a year. I'm back with a new idea: The plain install of Oolite is pretty boring and ugly last I checked. What if we made a "starter pack" with the addons the community believes are the best? Like RS, simonb's ships (did he finish those?) all the Griff ships? It might help the newer players out there...
Also: what's new here in the Ooniverse?

Hi wackyman465!

wackyman465 wrote:

What if we made a "starter pack" with the addons the community believes are the best? Like RS, simonb's ships (did he finish those?) all the Griff ships? It might help the newer players out there...

Thanks for thinking RS is one of the best oxps - but your idea, methinks, won't work because "the community" would never get to a consensus about which oxps are "the best" - it's far too much a question of individual tastes.



L

Oops, i see that i accidentally posted this twice. Durned slow computer.

But seriously, I think that there's a few OXP's that might really improve people's first impressions of the game. Not everybody is playing Oolite just because they played Elite.
Also another idea: What about procedurally generated, HD planets? Just a thought.

wackyman465 wrote:

Also another idea: What about procedurally generated, HD planets? Just a thought.

That's coming in 1.73, among other nice features. Go get Dizzy's trunk installer for a sneak preview.

Sweet.

but making a torrent of all the greatest OXP's wouldn't be that hard..

Also: Isn't 1.73 trunk windows only?

And whatabout shadowed planets and entities, as in the sun is the only source of light in the system, maybe (AWESOME) spotlights on your ship?

wackyman465 wrote:

Sweet.
but making a torrent of all the greatest OXP's wouldn't be that hard..

All the various "bundling-OXP" discussions come down to the same problems
- you need a single version of the truth, ie THIS is the one true version
- and all of those One True Versions must work together and override one another in a graceful way

1 is a nightmare in any componentised system. In oolite the idea now is that the Wiki is the Truth, but even then not EVERY OXP is quite up to date and I found a couple a while back where the master list of OXPs had a different version to the link on the OXP's page itself. Fun.

2 is bloody hard work, ask Lestradae about OSE. It's getting better with JavaScript but not all OXPs have been converted yet.

Also: Isn't 1.73 trunk windows only?

Nope. The handy-dandy installer is for Windows, sure.
Download and compile on Linux is really easy if you have compiled stuff before, and you can ignore 90% of the very long thread on it, and just "make pkg-deb". The rest just works.

Mac, I dunno, but since Ahruman has a Mac, I'm guessing it's gonna work pretty slick.

And whatabout shadowed planets and entities, as in the sun is the only source of light in the system, maybe (AWESOME) spotlights on your ship?

Funny, someone was on here the other day complaining everything was too dark. I really think that would be unplayable... in fact, I know it would because I've launched once or twice without turning up the monitor, and it ain't pretty.

Anyhoo, get hold of trunk and check out the new planets!

Actually (shame) I wiped my Oolite install about a few weeks ago, because I needed disk space on my laptop, I wasn't playing much, and my install was pretty gnarly and unreliable anyway. I'll try putting something together, though; what new OXP's have I missed that should go on there? Or should I wait for OSE then add mission OXPs?

wackyman465 wrote:

Or should I wait for OSE then add mission OXPs?

Actually, the OSE beta is already stable enough that I daresay you can use it in normal play. But you need the trunk version of Oolite for it to work!

That said, the "1.73" version of Oolite is still a test version and so is OSE, so things could go wrong.

Oolite is always growing. So you can wait forever or re-jump at the bandwagon now



L

One reason not to include RS for beginners would be that there are some 'uber' ships in it, a newbie doesn't stand much of a fighting chance if he/she encounters thes, would make for a very frustrating experience.

RS is more for the experienced players, IMO...

Rxke wrote:

... there are some 'uber' ships in it, a newbie doesn't stand much of a fighting chance if he/she encounters thes, would make for a very frustrating experience ...

It is possible as a Jameson to play with OSE, but your Ooniverse gets a lot harder! You are restricted to the really save areas (i.e. the space lanes of democracies and corporate systems) for quite some time at the beginning because of what lurks outside the lanes ...

If you are fine with that and also with buying injectors for the "running away really fast" mode before you buy docking computers, and/or if you like a challenge, it can be fun.

If you want to learn to play the game slowly and already find it difficult in strict mode, perhaps better wait until you're Competent ...



L

O.K., tomorrow I'll get cracking on that... but not now, it's 2am.
Nobody said anything about what mission oxps there are new. Cataclysm, perhaps?

For Cataclysm, I think you need to be at 5400+ rank ... so, you probably won't play that soon (or did your savegames survive the purge of the harddrive?)

Oh no i wiped my install off the comp I have with me but it's still on my desktop. Ya think I'd give up my iron ass Imperial Courier?
This isn't for me, this is an idea as an alternative to the vanilla 1.73
Ya know, like the people who want it all set up for them when they buy it? Like mac owners, people who avoid Ikea..
You linux diy folks can keep on building your installs.

Welcome back oh wacky-one.

Your basic idea is not without merit and has sort of been mulled over in your absence.

I think there is a halfway house where the basic set is replaced by either Simon B's excellent ships and/or Griff's if he finishes the full basic set.

Problem is - which one - both are utterly gorgeous and equally deserving - problem two - both really need shaders enabled to look their best - so are you saying/asking that from now on only people with shader capable gfx cards and 'good' PCs should be able to play Oolite?

[RS needs a good machine with lots of RAM and OSE is even more demanding - I'm still getting by on a XP2800+ with 2GB RAM and a 128MB FX5900 - therefore will never have RS/OSE installed]

DaddyHoggy wrote:

I'm still getting by on a XP2800+ with 2GB RAM and a 128MB FX5900

Hm, you know that this should/could work fine?

My girlfriend's laptop has these specs too, and I could run the latest OSE version on there, albeit with the occasional hiccup every now and then.

Just saying

L