Oolite Bulletins

I've been slacking a bit on my latest OXP and so to give me some incentive to get actually things done I thought I'd set up some expectation by way of a preview.

It's another mission, a loose sequel to Trident Down, provisionally titled 'Iron Raven' and set in Galaxy 8. It started out as a crossover between Oolite and that old 16-bit classic, Midwinter, and harks back to the old days of computer gaming when you had to do things like look up maps and read through character profiles.

One important issue I want to get out of the way is that the storyline is definitely not Oolite canon. The reason is that it's based on a bit of idle fan fiction I wrote years ago while playing Frontier. It can be summarised easily enough in picture form:



That should give you a rough idea of what the mission's about. Of course there'll be the usual mixture of locations and personalities plus a wad of flavoursome mission text. I'll post more bits and pieces as I complete them.

Work continues on this OXP. I've learned quite a bit from the recent translation of Trident Down and in particular, finding the most efficient way of handling mission choices. So, what's it all about then?

Scenario

In Galaxy 8, GalCop has picked up some worrying information about the Sirius Corporation. They've been building up the strength of their in-house security organisation, the Sirius Defence Force, and at the same time the corporation has begun to show an unhealthy interest in the Maenes system. Maenes is the home of QuiCo Pharmaceuticals, the company that produces the Quitolline anti-hyperspace sickness drug. So important is Quitolline to the galaxy's economy that Maenes' security is protected by a formal treaty: any hostile move against the system by a member of the Galactic Cooperation would be considered an act of war. However, Sirius is an independent Corporate State and not bound by interstellar law. If the unthinkable were to happen, and Sirius were to gain control of Maenes, the consequences could be disastrous.

Gameplay

Faced with this scenario, the player is tasked by GalCop High Command to investigate and if necessary, put a stop to Sirius’ nefarious plans. This involves in a bit of old-school adventure style action in which, armed with a list of contacts and places of interest, you’re free to travel to various locations, asking different questions and following leads. While the mission screens deal with a lot of the story exposition, I’ve stopped short of turning this into too much of a plain text adventure by ensuring all the mission-critical stuff takes place in-flight. There’s be the usual amount of shooting up stuff but I’ve tried come up with a few unusual set-pieces.

I still don't have much in the way of pictures to show off - I'm not planning to create loads of new models anyway - but here's a quick pic showing some of the powers and organisations involved in the story.



More info coming soon...

Keep us informed, this kind of adventure i like!

Encouragement +1!
I like what I've read so far. Nothing quite like a bit of healthy intrigue
I really like the concept of a drug to alleviate hyperspace-sickness ("getting a tad witch-sick there, dear?") - I imagine that spending hours in witchspace, which does not obey our dimension's laws of physics, could be quite... unnerving.

Best of luck!

To give credit where it's due, the two main elements of the mission, i.e. the Sirius Corporate and Quitolline, are both taken directly from entries in the Frontier Gazetteer, courtesy of David Braben and David Massey. Must remember to include an acknowledgement in the readme!

Interesting...I also should go to G8, so I'm waiting your OXP

Looking forward to this new missions are always welcome.

My word, this OXP is taking a long time to do!

So, I've now scripted about 3/4 of the complex mid-section of the mission. I've done all the missiontext for the last quarter and the scripting shouldn't be too tricky, but I've got a bit more in-space action to do for that. My advice for mission makers: if you want to keep things simple, don't start out by giving the player four choices all the time!

You remember the defence cannon I created but never used for the Feudal States:



Well this now plays a rather important part in a set-piece. Originally I set the cannon up as a normal ship with lots of pitch n' roll but zero speed, however it didn't seem to be able to track the player very well. What I've done instead is make the whole thing one massive ball turret, with the actual ship being a block hidden in the middle of the model. That way the cannon tracks the player much better, and I can also modify the weapon energy of the plasma fire to make it more deadly. There'll be a whole string of these cannons surrounding the planet Maenes.

I've then gone back and have done a bit of modelling for the scripted threads. At some point I need a fuel reprocessing station - this is an unmanned facility where people dump their spent fuel so it can be cleaned up and repackaged. Ideally I'd like to do an impressive space station with loads of solar panels, struts, etc, but for the moment I've just done a box with a big funnel at the front for collecting the fuel pods. I've added a couple of imperial tankers for scale.

Also the plot called for a luxury apartment block and so I was going to do a custom space station, vaguely like the Bespin cloud cities. After starting the model I realised that this is a bit similar in concept to the Nuit space station but I'll probably crack on with it anyway.



At some point I'll need to put some ships together for the Sirius Defence Force. I've already used my Saleza stuff in other missions so either I'll try repainting some vipers or I might cast some other OXP ships in the role. If anyone has ideas for candidates let me know.

Despite trying to make things a bit more linear than last time I haven't been able to stop myself adding the odd branch here or there. I've been a bit more diligent when it comes to planning this time around though, so I've actually got a firm structure to work around:



I'll be able to start going through these diagrams and tick off the bits I've done - for comparion here's what my highly-advanced Trident Down Progress Plan looked like once I'd finished translating it to javascript - what a relief it was to finally see all those ticks!

Impressive project!

Impressive, and the choose of colors are very intriguing.

Looks great, Ramirez!

Fourthed!

Sounds like Galaxy 8 is going to be a fun place by the time I get there.

Feel free to adopt the Nuit if you want, no one else has shown interest yet. back plot is that they're available for sale from II so it's logically possible your group bought one.

Ramirez wrote:

Also the plot called for a luxury apartment block and so I was going to do a custom space station, vaguely like the Bespin cloud cities. After starting the model I realised that this is a bit similar in concept to the Nuit space station but I'll probably crack on with it anyway.

It's also quite a bit similar in appearance to the bioSphere, which—as a notice—doesn't seem to be documented anywhere, or available from anywhere, be it Oosat1, Oosat2, or the Wiki.