Oolite: Elite Re-Invented, Open-Source style

[ekianjo]

A fine article by Milinks, published on Pandoralive, telling you all you need to know about Oolite and how different it is from the original Elite game, and focusing on the quality of the Pandora port



--> Continue Reading

 

[atari_afternoon]

Very good

 

[ElPoco]

I like the idea of generating characters who act independently of the player, but I'd like to see it taken further, with persistent characters with their own agendas. This way you could make friends, enemies, have betrayals, etc. You could make a friend, then receive a distress call from him, travel accross half the galaxy to reach him, fall into a trap, have him tell you he's sorry but he has been forced into this, survive the ambush, learn the whole backstory, then help him get back at whoever manipulated him...

Yeah, that'd be nicer than doing another random mission/run between two systems.

 

[ekianjo]

but I'd like to see it taken further, with persistent characters with their own agendas.

 

Yeah, that's where I expected games to go years ago, but nobody has taken on this kind of idea. It's probably relatively difficult to program, very close to pure IA simulation. 

 

[levi]

OOLite has that to some extent - as far as I know it keeps tracks off all NPCs in a system, and they all have their own motivations and reactions. While they can fire off simplified messages (generally 'help me' or 'die scum') I've not found a way to broadcast such messages myself. That's all fine - generally playing as a lone trader or bounty hunter is more fun that slowly shadowing a Boa I guess, and I suppose there's nothing stopping you finding a friendly craft and shadowing it all the way to wherever it's going, other than boredom.


The other problem with persistent NPCs is that even in a single plantary system, space is bloody big, so finding anyone outside your limited scanner scope is pretty much impossible.

 

[milinks]

I like the idea of generating characters who act independently of the player, but I'd like to see it taken further, with persistent characters with their own agendas. This way you could make friends, enemies, have betrayals, etc. You could make a friend, then receive a distress call from him, travel accross half the galaxy to reach him, fall into a trap, have him tell you he's sorry but he has been forced into this, survive the ambush, learn the whole backstory, then help him get back at whoever manipulated him...

Yeah, that'd be nicer than doing another random mission/run between two systems.

This is actually an on-going research with the oolite board crew, one example although not truly AI, as described is the communications OXZ (which is the new AddOn, requirement, all you need to do is rename it from oxz to zip, unzip it and rename it to...oxp)

This Addon creates custom "characters" that you can come across, and have to a degree a bond/conversation with that highlights each type of character, such as a pirate insulting you, a trader saying hi, or asking for help etc... There are so many examples of this on oolite bulletin boards that aren't on the Oolite WIKI, so its well worth visitng the boards to get the newest ideas available

 

[NoeleyC]

Stupid question Time again, for this version is it best to delete all appdata apart from my save game before running this new version? I did so but should the ships in game now look completely different?(They still look the same to me or are they only slightly retextured?)


Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk

 

[NoeleyC]

Ok downloading the file directly and not updating it through PND manager seems to have fixed the issue


Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk

 

[levi]

To be honest this new version has already added a lot of personality to the ships occupying the universe with you - they're a lot more chatty now.

 

[fusion_power]

Wow, impressive Wall-Of-Text-Article. ^^

but I'd like to see it taken further, with persistent characters with their own agendas.

 
Yeah, that's where I expected games to go years ago, but nobody has taken on this kind of idea. It's probably relatively difficult to program, very close to pure IA simulation.

 Take a deeper look at the development of "Limit Theory", full procedural Universe with "rea"l AI that does it's own thing and capable of almost anything the player can do. Impressive project for one developer, I don't backed for this game but his deep and detailed dev logs are very informative. 

http://ltheory.com/

http://forums.ltheory.com/viewforum.php?f=12&sid=fc47e967397a28ad1a9aadde843bfb39

Video Updates every month.

However, I sould play Elite (-kind games) first, never did before, I guess it's not easy to get into these kind of complex Games. Does Oolite has at least some noob friendly ingame tutorial stuff?

 

[levi]

The new version does have tutorials, yeah.  Not tried them myself.

Don't let the size of Miilinks article put you off.  It's still at its core an 8-bit designed game, albeit one of the most complex 8-bit games.  Docking is the only bit that's likely to catch you out as a beginner.

Still, I'd advise you to hold off the new version for a couple of days, or perhaps just do the tutorials on it.  The current version has a market bug that makes it very hard to make any money from trading, which is something you tend to need early on in your Oolite career (you're not likely to make much money from bounties with a crappy pulse laser).

 

[fusion_power]

I only have an slow CC Pandora so I would be surprised if the game even runs at playable speed there. I guess the PC Version would be the better choice in my case. ^^

 

[ptitSeb]

I only have an slow CC Pandora so I would be surprised if the game even runs at playable speed there. I guess the PC Version would be the better choice in my case. ^^

OOOh, I think you should try! You'll be surprised by the speed and playability.

 

[levi]

Yep, and you can ignore my warning about market prices - that was fixed in build 08 (v1.80). It's a good time again to jump in.

 

[romanaOne]

I'm a little confused about docking? Why do you have to keep hitting the roll keys to match spin with a station?

I don't see any attitude jets (or little angels flapping, LOL) on the station firing to keep it spinning.

Actually, anyplace in the game, when you hit the arrow keys to roll why does your roll die out? There's no air hitting your wings.

i.e. in a vacuum, when an attitude jet pushes on the ship to give it spin, it should keep that spin.

Not sure how hard the science fiction background story is for this game.

This game is seriously unphysical. Nevertheless, it is starting to grow on me.

 

[levi]

Oh yeah, it disobeys the conservation of momentum massively a lot of the time, but then playing a game where you manually have to hit retro thrusters all the time is a bit of a distraction at best.  Although theoretically the station wouldn't have to deploy thrusters to keep it spinning - being outside the atmosphere means it wouldn't slow very quickly, all other things remaining constant, and it could boost or slow spinning by the internal movement of mass if it wanted.  But in that case, you wouldn't have to keep hitting the roll keys.

If you'd prefer, you can imagine little control thrusters going off all over the ship to slow you when you decelerate and to stop your spin when you release the keys, the game just doesn't draw them.

 

[moxie]

I remember that being a design choice for the original Elite, as it became a lot more difficult to control otherwise. One of the later games (Frontier II? Something like that) was made more correct, and got massive criticism for being uncontrollable

The original manual mentions this, and explains it just like Levi actually: The command and control system of your MK3 Cobra automatically dampens your rotation.

 

[ElPoco]

Frontier Elite II had Newtonian physics, but it also had an autopilot so it was playable, but combat was very different, and a bit dull.

 

[gunrock]

I loved Frontier. I know it had it's detractors (and it's bugs) but I still thought it was amazing! Really enjoyed the blueness of space (yeah, that's one of the major complaints people had, space was no longer a black void).

I still have my Amiga save. I must go back to my Commander on the Pandora with UAE.

 

[ekianjo]

it was indeed very fun to land on planets in Frontier. I had it on CD32 and it was super fun.