Oolite Bulletins

Hey guys. First a confession: I have yet to read the original Elite book, or I was too young to remember and so I have avoided reading any fanfiction until I get round to it. I did read Frontiers fiction and enjoyed it muchly.

With that off my chest I thought this would be the best place to ask. I'm currently making some AI responses for an OXP and I would like to keep things within canon as far as I can and so perhaps some of you might recommend slang terms, I assume oolite has them. I'm thinking of words like Frak used in Farscape and others, HooRah from Space above and Beyond, smeg from Red Dwarf or Trek's P'tak.

Or indeed, if anyone is interested in crafting the short sentences I could provide a list of what is required. I'm probably looking for five responses for each action to provide variety but there is no limit on amounts really. It'd be something along the lines of someone finding you somewhere where you shouldn't be or attacking you. I could rip them off other OXPs but I think originality is important in games.

If anyone is interested please let me know or if you could give me some guidelines it would be appreciated. I'm not much of a writer, or creative in anything other than technical stuff.

I know, I should read it all and I do intend to.

Thanks

Doc

You can find the Elite novella, The Dark Wheel, on Ian Bell's site. I hear he keeps it archived in pdf or as a webpage on his site, despite the wishes of his former partner.

Now as for Oolite spacer slang, check the Oolite Wiki - I believe there's a listing of slang there - and read all the Oolite homegrown fic you can grab ahold of. Some of our best slang-slingers are also pretty good fic spinners.

There is a loooooong thread buried somewhere here, where people made up Oolite spacers' slang. May be a good inspiration. But it is exactly that: made up on the spot, so nothing in there is canon.

Apart from that, it is generally a good idea to read The Dark Wheel, and even more importantly Status Quo (and—while you're at it—its sequel Mutabilis), which serves the same purpose for Oolite as The Dark Wheel did for Elite.

Oolite also has an internal list or generator which comes up with the names of what I've always assumed are deities. It's quite common, when going in to help out a civilian under pirate attack, to get a message like "Biencege bless you!". If you could tap into this bit of code then you could presumably either just use the deity names as expletives in their own right, or make up your own with a deity name thrown in, like "Suffering [deityname]!", or "Sweet [deityname] in a blender!", etc.

Disembodied wrote:

Oolite also has an internal list or generator which comes up with the names of what I've always assumed are deities. It's quite common, when going in to help out a civilian under pirate attack, to get a message like "Biencege bless you!". If you could tap into this bit of code then you could presumably either just use the deity names as expletives in their own right, or make up your own with a deity name thrown in, like "Suffering [deityname]!", or "Sweet [deityname] in a blender!", etc.

The syntax for this in descriptions.plist entries is "%N" (or "%R" for backwards-compatibile but less varied names). In JavaScript, expandDescription("%N kiss your feet!").

Here's some Oolite spacer slang, off the top of my head.

Lord Bell, Lord Braben: Deities, creators of Elite
Lord Giles: Deity, the creator of the Ooniverse
Lord Murphy: Deity, the god of entropy, mechanical failure, and Things Gone Horribly Wrong
Jameson, Fresh Ink: A rookie commander
Iron Ass: A well equipped ship
Gear, Hardware, Kit: Slang for equipment
Blaster: Plasma-based energy sidearm
Slugthrower: Projectile-based sidearm
Laser: Laser-based energy sidearm, or a ship's primary weapon
Sword, Blade, Slicer: Bladed melee weapon, very popular on Feudal worlds; also quite popular among eccentric commanders
Flakgun: Turret-mounted plasma cannon
Bugs, Beetles: Thargoids
Weevils: Weeviloids, yet another hostile alien insectoid race. Rarely encountered
Bomb: Any wide area, indiscriminate explosive weapon, includes mines. Often said with a letter, ie q-bomb, e-bomb, u-bomb, ect
Bomber: A commander who relies heavily on bombs. Said pilot is often considered to be of minimal combat skill; see Jameson
Ascender: Cyborg, in particular a cyborg from Ascension
Droid: A free-thinking, autonomous mech, or remote-controlled mech. Often humanoid in design
Drone: Space-combat robot
Boyracer: The small, agile, but weak-hulled go-carts produced by the Hatchling company, and/or the young, rude, extremely irritating rich gits that fly them
Outlander: Any being from a world not officially affiliated with GalCop
Shotup, Scratch n' Dent, Depainted, Shot To Hell: What your ship looks like after surviving a hard battle
Furball: The abovementioned battle
Trumbles: Insidious pests, noted for rapid reproduction and vast appetites
BBQ, Trumbleburger: What happens to trumbles when experiencing pest control
Warmblood: High metabolism, endothermic Lizards. Most of the predatory Lizard races are Warmbloods
Sunbasker: Derogatory term, often used by xenophobic humans. Warmbloods consider the term insulting
Scrappers: Salvagers
Belters, Rock Drillers, Stonecutters: Asteroid miners
Buzzer: A combateer who tends to get trigger-happy with his ECM
Hardhead: ECM resistant missile
Nuke, Torpedo: Heavy, slow, anticruiser missile, often carrying a high yield nuclear warhead
Kamikaze: An enemy ship attempting to fatally ram you on full injectors. It's considered an act of desperation
Sniping: Long-range, precision laser fire
Serpent: Classic snake ship
Sunjuice: Quirum fuel
Sundive, Skim, Slurp: To solar refuel by a close pass of the local star

Commander McLane wrote:

There is a loooooong thread buried somewhere here, where people made up Oolite spacers' slang.

Meaning, this thread?

Plenty of gold here, thanks people.

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

There is a loooooong thread buried somewhere here, where people made up Oolite spacers' slang.

Meaning, this thread?

Yes, that's the one.

The best fictional insult I've ever seen is "stealer of gold sphincter-clasps from the corpses entrusted to your care". It came with a footnote that said

*An awkward rendering of the more succinct anfangel dongobel

Yet more slang.

Rift Demon, Void Devil: Pirate's slang, meaning an exceptionally skilled and ruthless bounty hunter. Some notable Void Devils are Rebecca Weston, Derik Roh'i, Udian Shulth and 'The Coyote'
Long-Haul Trucker: A heavy freighter carrying a large contract load
Bad Magic, Bad Voodoo: A very untenable situation
Yank the eject handle: Use the escape pod
Boot, Loot, Goodies: Jettisoned cargo
Freebooter, Rogue: Pirate
Paydirt: Miner's slang, meaning an asteroid rich in valuable ores
Bug-kisser: A traitor, sold out to the Thargoids
Bugfest: A huge Thargoid invasion fleet
Bugsmasher: A Behemoth class warship
Speedfreak, Purpletail: A fighter jock who locks the fuel injectors open. See Kamikaze
Tourbus: A passenger liner
Five n' Dime: A constore station
Fountain, Sunpump: A refuelling station
Holy Loansharks: Black monks

some board-slang that often left me not understanding :

caddy - Caduceus (or Neo-Caduceus, or sth. like that - in any case some OXP uber-ship)

MSNR - most nextest stable release, or something along those lines. How would I know, if it ever was explained, than that got buried somewhere with 1000s of other interesting topics.

other ***R - other stable, unstable, mythical future or whatever else releases. I have no idea.

snork wrote:

MSNR - most nextest stable release, or something along those lines. How would I know, if it ever was explained, than that got buried somewhere with 1000s of other interesting topics.

More normally mythical next stable release (and MNSR) - although that said there have been words from on-high of late that 1.75 or 1.76 might just be said legendary beast.

Ahruman did also use EMMSRAN - even more mythical stable release after next, but somehow it didn't gain too much traction...

butter knife: a rattle cutter after its lasers have been shot off