Oolite Bulletins

After years of waiting for elite 4 i have finally given up and decided to hunt for a clone, and found this. what an amazing attempt.

i have downloaded around 250mb of oxp's and the game is looking pretty damn smart, brilliant for a hobby effort. Bell & Braben must be so proud that their creation lives on, has either of them ever posted on here?

before i get stuck in properly, i do have 1 question.

the game is so upgradeable so i assumed it would be simple but perhaps not.

since 1st playing this game on the bbc i spend months playing on the Amiga, and the general user interface is MUCH improved in that version, with mouse support and icons etc

however this version seems to be purely keyboard driven, much like the BBC original.

are their any plans to release an oxp to improve this (or is there one already) or will i just have to get used to it?

cheers

M.

ps is oolite extended linked to this or is it just another port (have never heard of it before 10 mins ago when i finished reading the faq and was googling for oolite improved front end.

once again, thanks to everyone involved.

bigmike20vt wrote:

After years of waiting for elite 4 i have finally given up and decided to hunt for a clone, and found this. what an amazing attempt.

i have downloaded around 250mb of oxp's and the game is looking pretty damn smart, brilliant for a hobby effort. Bell & Braben must be so proud that their creation lives on, has either of them ever posted on here?

before i get stuck in properly, i do have 1 question.

the game is so upgradeable so i assumed it would be simple but perhaps not.

since 1st playing this game on the bbc i spend months playing on the Amiga, and the general user interface is MUCH improved in that version, with mouse support and icons etc

however this version seems to be purely keyboard driven, much like the BBC original.

are their any plans to release an oxp to improve this (or is there one already) or will i just have to get used to it?

cheers

M.

ps is oolite extended linked to this or is it just another port (have never heard of it before 10 mins ago when i finished reading the faq and was googling for oolite improved front end.

once again, thanks to everyone involved.

Hi BigMike - Welcome to the friendliest board this side of Riedquat!

I definitely don't play oolite on the keyboard - under both M$ Windows and Ubuntu I use a Thrustmaster Firestorm 2 Gamepad with lots of keyboard keys mapped to the 14 buttons available, I know at least one of the Devs uses the mouse control under Mac OS (and this control method is being improved for 1.74).

If you pause the game or while docked press F2 - if you have a joystick plugged in and Oolite finds it, you'll have the option to play with the options and keymappings.

We're fairly certain Bell and Braben are aware of Oolite, but we walk a thin grey wire between acceptance and the potential for being shutdown for copyright infringement, even now there's a poll going on on whether ClymAngus' excellent maps should be sent to the game's original creators.

Oolite Extended is run by Lestradae and is worked on and contributed to by others on this board - it started life as a Mega-Meta-OXP but ran foul of licensing issues and just generally caused some bad feeling on the forum, the sensible thing was done and the Meta-OXP was forked into a different variant of the code, where you'll be able to do things like buy stations, own multiple ships, alternative trading methodologies.

It's not for me (even though I contribute to it in a small way) but others are keen and I have always wished Lestradae the best of luck with it.

HTH?

Why yes it would be nice if they popped by. Ian and David that is, unfortunately past legal actions caused some bad feeling between the two of them and the maker community on the internet.

Oh and their not my vector maps, I had a lot of help so technically they are the communities vector maps. Although I did have a bit of a nazi moment half way through but that was purely on consistency grounds. (honest)

One thing oxp wise which is under used are the broad selection of huds out there or heads up displays. They are a lot of fun!

ClymAngus wrote:

Ian and David that is, unfortunately past legal actions caused some bad feeling between the two of them and the maker community on the internet.

Don't forget that David took Ian to court previously, so I don't think they are bosom buddies!

hi

thanks for the replies guys

i remmeber the bust up between them. am i right in saying it started when David Braben changed the name of elite 3 to first encounter so he didnt have to pay royalties to Ian Bell as he handt worked on the game at all?

all that aside, i must say i think it lost its way a little after the 1st game.

whislt it may have been more accurate, flying a ship in frontier or first enc just wasnt as fun, and space battles were a bit of a pain.

back to oolite.....

i was tryign to find a screen shot of the icon driven menu system of elite on the amiga.... but i cant.

maybe one of you guys can remember what it was like, it was far nicer to use imo

(note this isnt a complaint!!!)

cheers

M.

I remember the Amiga interface, although I think I played it pretty much entirely using the keyboard accept for the system map screen, where I used the mouse to select systems.

What would be nice is if someone could work on re-creating the Amiga Elite Hud as an oxp for Oolite.

And welcome to the boards!

bigmike20vt wrote:

hi

thanks for the replies guys

i remmeber the bust up between them. am i right in saying it started when David Braben changed the name of elite 3 to first encounter so he didnt have to pay royalties to Ian Bell as he handt worked on the game at all?

all that aside, i must say i think it lost its way a little after the 1st game.

whislt it may have been more accurate, flying a ship in frontier or first enc just wasnt as fun, and space battles were a bit of a pain.

back to oolite.....

i was tryign to find a screen shot of the icon driven menu system of elite on the amiga.... but i cant.

maybe one of you guys can remember what it was like, it was far nicer to use imo

(note this isnt a complaint!!!)

cheers

M.

If I wasn't snowed in and I didn't have two kids off (one with Chicken Pox and one because her school is closed) I'd get the A500 out and fire up Elite (which I still own) (BTW, snowed in is because the ladder to get into the loft is in the shed which I'm not digging out at the moment - car first) and have a look for you - I could have played it through my VCR and captured some video too - I may yet if I get time at some point...

bigmike20vt wrote:

i was tryign to find a screen shot of the icon driven menu system of elite on the amiga.... but i cant.

maybe one of you guys can remember what it was like, it was far nicer to use imo

I don't remember Elite having a icon menu system. You don't mean Frontier do you, as that did have an icon menu system?

I had an Atari ST (don't start, LOL), but both versions on the ST and Amiga were virtually identical, apart from the Amiga's better sound.

Have found a couple of videos of Amiga Elite on YouTube. They don't show any in game menus though, so no idea about icons.:

Amiga Elite intro

Amiga Elite Docking Sequence

thanks for the replies..

ok its not quite as neat as i remember it (rose specs) but here is the amiga menu system.

http://mstancevic.tripod.com/Elite/imag ... iga500.gif

just curious is this would be oxpable or if the menus are fixed.

see at the bottom the icons to click between menus and the "pretty" trading pics

bigmike20vt wrote:

thanks for the replies..

ok its not quite as neat as i remember it (rose specs) but here is the amiga menu system.

http://mstancevic.tripod.com/Elite/imag ... iga500.gif

That link doesn't work here. I get this instead:



Incidentally, to display pics in your messages use the [ img ] and [ /img ] tags (without the spaces) around the URL.

The link works for me if I use "Open link in new window" ...

JazHaz wrote:

I don't remember Elite having a icon menu system...

I believe some versions had it, some didn't The NES version had it.

BTW I love the old NES hud, i've been thinking of making a hud like that for Oolite

Disembodied wrote:

The link works for me if I use "Open link in new window" ...

It don't for me!

ADCK wrote:

JazHaz wrote:

I don't remember Elite having a icon menu system...

I believe some versions had it, some didn't The NES version had it.

Yeah the NES version did, but we were talking about the ST/Amiga version done by Mr Micro. Not the best version in the world IMHO!

Copy the URL ,
paste it into the address bar, hit enter.
Has to work
If you have it in your cache, it should work as usual, though.