Oolite Bulletins

Tonight I played with lots of new OXP's and wanted to say to you:

Just looking at all those OXP's. It makes me proud what a game Oolite is as it stands today. Such a playable and enjoyable game.

it makes me proud of being a part of the coomunity. I jumped in at version 1.65 and saw the game grow till now. While other games may have better graphics they do not offer the simple to pick up yet deep gameplay Oolite has.

I too was a sixty-fiver, then I disappeared (RL(tm)) for a year and returned to sixty-eight - that was amazing but look how much we've come on since then.

As you said - best commoonity out there.

Hip-Hip...

Hurrah and Huzzah!

I joined prior to v1.65, but can't remember the version now. I do recall having to alter Status Quo because of changes in v1.65 though.

It is astonishing though. The game is so much improved, but has lost none of that 'Elite' feeling that is so crucial!

Cheers,

Drew.

I get the opposite pleasure: I joined 'yesterday' at 1.73.4, which means I had a good couple of months delving into all the other OXPs people had made in the past. For a while it was like a toy box with dark recesses... I never knew what OXPs I would find

Poro wrote:

For a while it was like a toy box with dark recesses... I never knew what OXPs I would find

You'll never know what comes next .-)

First of all I would congratulate with this beautiful board and its friendly users

I play 1.73.4 with following OXP:

Galactic Navy: the first time I saw a Carrier Battle Group in Delta formation I was moved to tears. Plus I love the Reserve.
Commies OXP
Feudal OXP
Random Hits OXP for extra missions.
Dragon Ship OXP: yes, I loved my MkIII but I needed more firepower.
BlOomberg Markets
Asteroid Storm
Ionics
Thargoid Wars: Great in conjunction with Galactic Navy
Military Fiasco
Missiles and Bombs


I have got a Pentium IV 3Ghz with 3Gb Ram and a ATI Radeon x1300
Sometimes my FPS drops to 20-30. I already reduced res (I'm playing at 1024x768)and No shadows.
What could I do to enhance my PC's performances?

I don't recall which version I joined in... joined the forums in '04, but had to wait a while for a version I could run.
Aegidian was still in command in those days.

edit:
As for good communities, I've been spending a lot of my time on the bay12 forums, which supports the DwarfFortress game being created by Tarn Adams.
Less action oriented and anti-eyecandy than oolite, but I think the retro aestetic, open ended design, moddability, scope of the game and community may entice some of you.

it's NOT a space sim though.
it is an ongoing project to design a procedural fantasy world generator, which can be interacted with through a (very buggy) adventurer mode and via a simcity-like fortress mode in which you lead a group of 7 dwarves from the mountainhomes to found a new settlement.

edit2: There are at least 4 people there that could not suppress their elite fandom. . . amongst which a Tobias from Sweden.

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

As for good communities, I've been spending a lot of my time on the bay12 forums, which supports the DwarfFortress game being created by Tarn Adams.
Less action oriented and anti-eyecandy than oolite, but I think the retro aestetic, open ended design, moddability, scope of the game and community may entice some of you.

Checking it out now.

Dave McRoss wrote:

What could I do to enhance my PC's performances?

Hi Dave and welcome.

I’m no expert when it comes to improving fps and performance, it may be one particular oxp that’s responsible… you could try removing them all, check your fps, then add oxps one by one until you possibly find a culprit.
I’d recommend that you upgrade to Oolite 1.74.1 and check which driver (Catalyst version) you have installed to your X1300 (that’s a good card for an old one… I had one myself). Which OS are you using?

Get Clearskies OXP...
"Reduces nebula effects. Handy if your system is finding it hard to run Oolite."
http://oosat.alioth.net/files/clearskies.oxp_.zip

It may not help a lot...but it's more like the original Elite to have a simple black space.

Also turn details down on the planet...not like you can interact with it (nicely ) unless you have various OXPs installed.

Check the total filesizes of various OXPs...the largest ones probably contribute the most pain to your cpu and video card.

Lastly, shut down any unnecessary programs. On Windows XP/2000/Vista/7, Game Booster can help by shutting down windows background processes:
http://www.iobit.com/gamebooster.html
http://forums.iobit.com/

Dave McRoss wrote:

First of all I would congratulate with this beautiful board and its friendly users

I play 1.73.4 with following OXP:

Galactic Navy: the first time I saw a Carrier Battle Group in Delta formation I was moved to tears. Plus I love the Reserve.
Commies OXP
Feudal OXP
Random Hits OXP for extra missions.
Dragon Ship OXP: yes, I loved my MkIII but I needed more firepower.
BlOomberg Markets
Asteroid Storm
Ionics
Thargoid Wars: Great in conjunction with Galactic Navy
Military Fiasco
Missiles and Bombs


I have got a Pentium IV 3Ghz with 3Gb Ram and a ATI Radeon x1300
Sometimes my FPS drops to 20-30. I already reduced res (I'm playing at 1024x768)and No shadows.
What could I do to enhance my PC's performances?

I have a similar spec/era PC (Athlon 2800+, 2.5GB Memory, but a different gfx card) - I seem to get better frame rate than you.

Not sure whether your X1300 is AGP or PCI-E, but looking here:

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php ... &card2=190 (AGP)
http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php ... &card2=190 (PCI-E)

Would indicate to me that your gfx card is letting you down - obviously, if, like me, you're trapped in AGP, than upgrades are limited, but if you're PCI-E capable then there's a host of cheap cards that will blow the X1300 out of the water for under £50.

Thank you for your kindness, commanders. I'm out of money at the moment, but I plan to renew my PC in one or two years.

@Daddy: My Graphic Card is luckily a PCI-E
@Switeck: I will follow your advices, but I already used Game Booster. It frees about 181Mb of memory. It doesn't seem a great gain.
@El Viejo: I have got Windows XP Professional. I also have DirectX 9.0c

I noticed also that this ugly slowing appears when there are more than 6 ships on screen...expecially in Galactic Bars area and, of course, Galactic Navy missions.

I think I’m right in saying that DirectX means little to Oolite (someone please correct me if I’m wrong)… it uses OpenGL. A driver update for the Radeon X1300 might help… ATI/AMD have improved their drivers a lot lately. The latest versions of the Catalyst Control Centre are more ‘tweakable’. I think the X1300 can take Catalyst version 10.2, which is fairly recent. You can find it from this page, if you need to.

Oolite does use DirectX for sound. This is done in an indirect way (pun intended), via the SDL library. But for graphics, as El Viejo said, DirectX has no place in Oolite.

Dave McRoss wrote:

First of all I would congratulate with this beautiful board and its friendly users

I play 1.73.4 with following OXP:

Galactic Navy: the first time I saw a Carrier Battle Group in Delta
Random Hits OXP for extra missions.
....
I have got a Pentium IV 3Ghz with 3Gb Ram and a ATI Radeon x1300
Sometimes my FPS drops to 20-30. I already reduced res (I'm playing at 1024x768)and No shadows.
What could I do to enhance my PC's performances?

I have a 2.66Ghz machine with 2Gb memory but my fps count is generally good (50 fps) with 10 times as much oxp's than in your list. So it could be the graphic card that makes the difference.

From the oxp side, the above two are frame rate killers. The galactic navy in a system that contains a base station. And Random Hits in Anarchy systems. For Random Hits there exists a noticeable faster version, but that needs Oolite 1.74.