Oolite Bulletins

From Space Sim Central:

Since June 2008 I (and 2 other coders) have been working on an open-source remake of Frontier: Elite 2. I felt it was a shame there were lots of Elite clones but no free software Frontier clones.

It is called Pioneer, is written in C++, SDL, OpenGL, works in Linux, Windows and whatever people can port it to. So far me and 2 other programmers have worked on it, but now it needs artists.

http://pioneer.sourceforge.net/

We all know a lot of people around here don’t like the sequels, and since we do know that, there’s no particular need to point it out again in this thread, right? :-)

Ahruman wrote:

We all know a lot of people around here don’t like the sequels, and since we do no that there’s no particular need to point it out again in this thread, right?

I just made a remark about your impeccable English skills, but this sentence seems wrong to me.

Commander McLane wrote:

Ahruman wrote:

We all know a lot of people around here don’t like the sequels, and since we do no that there’s no particular need to point it out again in this thread, right? :-)

I just made a remark about your impeccable English skills, but this sentence seems wrong to me.

I blame this auto-correct I turned on and can’t seem to turn off. How am I supposed to be impeccable when the spell checker is actively distorting my typos?

Ahruman wrote:

We all know a lot of people around here don’t like the sequels, and since we do know that, there’s no particular need to point it out again in this thread, right?

There's plenty of people that do like FFE and all, imagine that. And why not? Except for the flight/combat/navigation model, the game as a whole isn't too bad.

As for Pioneer, maybe, just maybe - crossing fingers here - they'll engineer a flight mechanics model that doesn't suck.

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:

As for Pioneer, maybe, just maybe - crossing fingers here - they'll engineer a flight mechanics model that doesn't suck.

I don't think that would be too hard...pump up accel of ships a bit, change relative weapon/shield strengths more in favor of shields and engineer a better control scheme, and I think you can have a good dogfight even with newtonian physics.

I'm looking forward if any space game tries to implement einsteinian physics-I broke the speed of light on sublight thrusters while playing FFE, or got damn close to doing so.

In Oolite you break the speed of light in a Cobra with injectors. Hands down!

Commander McLane wrote:

In Oolite you break the speed of light in a Cobra with injectors. Hands down!

Coincidentally, in my speed of light test in FFE, I was also pilotting Cobby III.

Using Oolite's flight model with Pioneer's graphics and FFE-like distances, landing on planets and all, would work out well. Take the stardreamer thing, and turn it into a 5-speed Torus drive.
Yeah, that's cooking with gas.

BTW, how did you come to the conclusion that a Cobby can break light speed with injectors? It can only do .350 with thrusters at full.
Approach light speed with Torus running, maybe.

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:

BTW, how did you come to the conclusion that a Cobby can break light speed with injectors? It can only do .350 with thrusters at full.
Approach light speed with Torus running, maybe.

And why does C3 do 0.35, when it should do "only" 0.30 ?

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:

BTW, how did you come to the conclusion that a Cobby can break light speed with injectors? It can only do .350 with thrusters at full.
Approach light speed with Torus running, maybe.

Well, injector speed equals full speed times three. Therefore:

0.35 LM * 3 = 1.05 LM

Torus speed, however, equals full speed times seven. Meaning that the absolute top speed for an unaltered Cobra III is

0.35 LM * 7 = 2.45 LM

(As I pointed out many times before, sizes, distances, and speeds in Elite/Oolite make no sense and are utterly non-reconcilable. So you don't even need to try to pretend to make sense of it. It isn't a space simulation, but a playable game, the stress being put on playable. Therefore gameplay rules, not "realism". Anything with real sizes, distances, and speeds would be utterly boring as a game*, hardly anybody of us (me included) would waste even ten minutes with it. Thus it isn't a development goal.


*because you would practically never meet any other ship or even the main station, moving painfully slowly through a universe too vast to imagine

Zieman wrote:

And why does C3 do 0.35, when it should do "only" 0.30 ?

0.35 LM is the canonical speed for the player's Cobra III, although the NPC Cobras only make 0.3 LM. I think the reason is that in the original Elite it enabled you to slowly outrun other ships and eventually engage your torus drive again, if you got stuck in a clutter. But I could be wrong on this one.

was it ever established in canon that "light mach" actually meant "light speed"? because it seems to me that even 0.35 light speed is, to get all technical, really fkn fast.

A valid question, but is the answer really important?

The Ooniverse operates with different set of physical laws (and other laws for that matter) than our universe. It won't make sense. Especially since 1 LM is about what...3 km/s?

And I don't think it is actual light speed, because if it was, lasers would have to travel at 1 LM, but they are obviously a lot faster.

Commander McLane wrote:

0.35 LM is the canonical speed for the player's Cobra III, although the NPC Cobras only make 0.3 LM. I think the reason is that in the original Elite it enabled you to slowly outrun other ships and eventually engage your torus drive again, if you got stuck in a clutter. But I could be wrong on this one.

Can you elaborate on this - how/where/when it (0.35) became canonical.
I just happen to have another opinion about it, no disrespect intended towards anyone.

You see (again I refer to the C64 version on this), I used to fly along NPC ships quite a lot for fun back then. And I noticed that the NPC Cobra mk 3 never redlined their engines. As we all know, the speed (velocity) indicator turns red at some point (80-90% of max?). The NPCs flew always at max (or one increment below) yellow speed. So, IMHO the C64 player Cobra could fly 0.30 LM, as could the NPCs, but they chose always to fly slower (0.26-0.28?), never stressing the engines with max speed. Of course it didn't matter if the player did all the time because the game engine didn't model engine wear due to excessive stress. What I'm saying is: why artifically contradict the manual if a reasonable explanation exists?

Zieman wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

0.35 LM is the canonical speed for the player's Cobra III, although the NPC Cobras only make 0.3 LM. I think the reason is that in the original Elite it enabled you to slowly outrun other ships and eventually engage your torus drive again, if you got stuck in a clutter. But I could be wrong on this one.

Can you elaborate on this - how/where/when it (0.35) became canonical.
I just happen to have another opinion about it, no disrespect intended towards anyone.

You see (again I refer to the C64 version on this), I used to fly along NPC ships quite a lot for fun back then. And I noticed that the NPC Cobra mk 3 never redlined their engines. As we all know, the speed (velocity) indicator turns red at some point (80-90% of max?). The NPCs flew always at max (or one increment below) yellow speed. So, IMHO the C64 player Cobra could fly 0.30 LM, as could the NPCs, but they chose always to fly slower (0.26-0.28?), never stressing the engines with max speed. Of course it didn't matter if the player did all the time because the game engine didn't model engine wear due to excessive stress. What I'm saying is: why artifically contradict the manual if a reasonable explanation exists?

I was just about to contradict you and quote from the flight manual http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/manual.htm#A47 but it turns out the online manual also claims 0.30LM - but I, also a C64/A500 Elite player was certain it was 0.35LM - so I'm going to have to go into the loft and fetch out my original C64 manual to double check!!