Oolite Bulletins

Hello. I am giving this game a whirl on my Linux System (Mepis - Debian Based), and have run into a bit of a snag - while the game seems to run okay (despite a lack of enabled 3D Hardware acceleration), every time I switch to the forward view (Via pushing 1 or F1), I can see very little. In fact, I mostly see what must be my own ship covering my field of view (also covering the crosshairs). Is there a way that I can prevent the game from rendering my ship so that it does not obstruct my view? An options file or something that I could tweak a couple of lines in? Or is there another work-around for this problem? This obstruction makes it impossible to dock (I cannot see the docking portal on space stations to match their rotation), and is just plain annoying.

Hi,
I can't quite picture that. Are you flying a Cobra MKIII? If so there shouldn't be any obstruction like that. Maybe it's a video driver problem. Can you see if you have the latest version of them? That fixed my initial Oolite problems.
I'm on Ubuntu and it works fine.
Undoubtedly, someone here will have some suggestions.

And Welcome to the friendly board this side of Reidquat.

Also, what version of Oolite are you running? The one in the official repositories is 1.65, whereas the current (much-improved) state-of-the-art version is 1.73.4. Possibly also of importance, where did you download it from? There have been some problems with the version from Playdebs, as I recall, though they are supposed to be fixed now.

Welcome to the boards!

It all comes down to what ship you are flying?

To me it sounds like the ship you are flying is possibly not a player ship (do you use Illicit Unlock OXP?), and is bugged so that the view position on the model is set too far back.

If we can find out what ship it is, especially if it is an OXP ship then we should be able to change the view position.

Also, can you do us a screenshot please?

Play the game, and in flight pause the game (P). Then press * to save a screenshot. Upload the screenshot to Flickr or Photobucket or similar and then put it up on here.

Well, I tried upgrading to the lastest version, and between that and successfully getting 3D Acceleration working, it seems to be working fine... now if these... pirates would leave me alone I could get some serious trading done.

Thanks for your replies.

Sir Lunch-a-lot wrote:

Well, I tried upgrading to the lastest version, and between that and successfully getting 3D Acceleration working, it seems to be working fine... now if these... pirates would leave me alone I could get some serious trading done.

Thanks for your replies.

Stick with Commie and above worlds. The rest are a bit too sketchy for new pilots without ECMs or good lasers.

Sir Lunch-a-lot wrote:

Well, I tried upgrading to the lastest version, and between that and successfully getting 3D Acceleration working, it seems to be working fine... now if these... pirates would leave me alone I could get some serious trading done.

Thanks for your replies.

Good to hear you got it fixed.. as for the pirates, unless you've installed the Deep Space Pirates OXP, you can avoid them by getting away from the spacelane between the witchpoint beacon and the planet. When you exit witchspace, turn about 90° away from the planet and engage your Torus Drive (j-key) for about 15-20 seconds before turning back towards the planet. Leave the Torus running, and you should arrive in the vicinity of the station pretty quickly.

This, and many other tips are available in the PDF document "Advice For New Commanders" which should be in the main Oolite installation directory.

You can also have a chat with this wise old fellow.

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:

You can also have a chat with this wise old fellow.

Oddly enough, he's also the star character in "Advice For New Commanders"

Diziet Sma wrote:

as for the pirates, unless you've installed the Deep Space Pirates OXP, you can avoid them by getting away from the spacelane between the witchpoint beacon and the planet.

This is still worth doing even with DSP installed. The pirates are still quite rare with DSP, and you can always injector away from them if you don't fancy fighting.

One thing you can do to completely avoid the fights is (to CHEAT ) increase the game's time acceleration feature (press pause, press Shift-F to show the flags, press Right-Arrow a couple of times, unpause). Any ships that lock onto you to attack, can't actually damage you and eventually give up and fly out of range.