Oolite Bulletins

Hello from a Oolite wannabe.

Hey, GuRu's,
Ever played Freelancer (MS) ?
Too arcade ? I still enjoyed it, thought that it was the new Elite II.
It's good for an arcade-game. Opinions ?

I just Love Oolite. Exploration and constant thinking.
I wish I had 7 days a week to play. (Like i used to)..


Elite I & II was an experience with my faithful amiga 1200, no game can beat Oolite though. :)

Recommending any addons except Realistic Shipyards ?
(I have RS on my computer@home but i cant use it with my laptop)

Explored Oolite for some time and I want to give a big respect to all U guys making the addons. Spices up :)

It's hard to earn cash in this game but it's worth it.

Frustrated, go to rockhermits ;)
Trading becomes more fun.

-Sectoid

Welcome to the Friendliest board this side of Riedquat(tm)

Recommendations are always personal - I like eye-candy and additional trading opportunities - therefore any ship designed by Griff, Simon B or Ramon definitely worth a look, plus all the wonderful new stations - pagroovestations, gritty coriolis, etc, and then YAH and Hoopy Casinos to add additional trade.

Enjoy.

DH

Hi Sectoid.

System Redux for pretty planets and moons.

Welcome to the board!

sectoid wrote:

Recommending any addons except Realistic Shipyards ?

If you use RS, maybe you would be even more happy with OSE which is linked in the test part of the forum.

Eye candy oxp's are really great, as already suggested.

If you're not the trader type, you might want to install Random Hits and - later on - Assassins.

The Thargoid and GalNavy additions are also great, providing further mini-missions whenever you want them.

Maybe you should simply have a look at this page:
http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/OXP
It's giving an overview about most oxp's and does allow to plan which additional flavour and missions to install.

OSE already comes with many additional equipment, thus, if you are considering to run OSE, you already can ignore many ship/equipment additions...otherwise there are quite some to look for, especially the Fuel Collector is a must-have.

Screet

(Points to his sig)

the main problem with freelancer, is/was that its complicated, and its not elite

it really cant be overstated what a perfect idea elite originaly was. the oxps that we add dont change that fact, they merely (for some people) enhance it.

the eyecandy, however fancy the graphics become, is essentially the way the ship rotates and everything moves arround you. the exceptional cleverness is that there are only 2 things to do, shoot and trade, and they seem like a million things to do

The real main problem (for me) about Freelancer was that although it appeared to be open-ended it was actually very scripted - on one occasion I surmounted my unsurmountable odds and actually survived a huge battle - but clearly that wasn't supposed to happen and the game carried on as if I had lost and barely escaped with my life - I did like the control mechanism (for combat) though and it had some lovely graphics.

sectoid wrote:

Hello from a Oolite wannabe.

It's hard to earn cash in this game but it's worth it.

In the basic game. Add a few OXPs and it becomes easier. I recently added Your Ad Here and the addition of Constores have made it very easy to make lots in a short time.

The best part of Freelancer was:

Flying through those large asteroid shards - all dust and lightning and tall-thin vertical chunks of rock to dodge.

Also the tractor beam was a hoot seeing those lighting bolts zap out and grab the debris.

The mouse flight controls were excellent and made dog-fights fun.

Apart from that it was very linear and once you had finished the story there was little incentive to continue (for me at least).

Other games of note in this vein:
Evochron legends
- Not free but has wonderful seamless planet descent/landing/mining)

Ad-Astra
- Free, all procedurally generated so seamless planet descent is even more impressive with creatures and plants roaming around - and a sensible planetary orbit system but slightly odd graphics and the controls take a while to customise into something useful (for me).

Fr me, the joy of skimming close to the surface of a planet and seeing mountains not just a smooth horizon is a wonderful experience and I would love to see in oolite some day. But then it would not add to the game-play just offer us tourists some nice scenes to snap.

I have a whole batch of screenshots somewhere from both of these games.. I hope to have some from oolite when I start getting back into it.

wolis wrote:

I have a whole batch of screenshots somewhere from both of these games..

Care to share a couple of those, so that us uninitiated can see what we are up against?

Here are some pics from ad astra:
http://www.wolispace.com/cgi-bin/a.pl?p ... s/ad_astra

http://www.wolispace.com/cgi-bin/a.pl?p ... ra/page_01

http://www.wolispace.com/cgi-bin/a.pl?p ... ra/page_02

And some Ecvochron Legends:

Some nice ones I posted on their forum:
http://www.starwraith.com/forum/viewthr ... 985&page=4

This city in the rain is one of my all-time favs from a space sim:
http://wolispace.com/images/wolis/wam_city_004l.jpg

And some slightly categorised ones on my site:
http://www.wolispace.com/cgi-bin/a.pl?p ... n/legendsn

I wont bother putting links in to all the pther pages (asteroids, crates, gates etc..) just click and browse from the menu on the left.

I had forgotten how much I enjoyed sight-seeing in these games (Been too busy playing survival horror and the like for some strange reason - check out the Penumbra games)

About Ad Astra. The planet engine is ok but I don't like the ships and fighting. Well therefore I'm with Oolite. Now someone combine a Ad Astra like planet engine with Oolite.

pagroove wrote:

About Ad Astra. The planet engine is ok but I don't like the ships and fighting.

True.. all a bit strange.. but you gotta love those planets.

Im not much of a fighter so I like having the freedom to roam hither and thither just snapping screenshots.

I was thinking some planet-side monuments like the Pyramids or Stone Henge randomly scattered around would add an interesting twist to and photographic challenge.

Interaction between npc on Freelancer to make you feel like your not alone. I also like the graphical buying of ships in a shipyard , also when buying goods and going to a spacebar to get missions and news on the system all help to enhance this. These are things freelancer does better than oolite rather than just text based menus.

Rustybolts wrote:

Interaction between npc on Freelancer to make you feel like your not alone. I also like the graphical buying of ships in a shipyard , also when buying goods and going to a spacebar to get missions and news on the system all help to enhance this. These are things freelancer does better than oolite rather than just text based menus.

You know, text based menus are one of the main reasons why I prefer Oolite to Freelancer. In Oolite it's all supposed to be happening through your ship's monitors/viewscreens and there is room to work the imagination, whereas in Freelancer it's like being "out of the game", like watching a movie. For me, this is completely ruining the immersion. But as they say, different people, different tastes.