Oolite
- Thread starter Mo Ronik
- Start date
Oolite (c2004) for the PC is a player inspired version of the original Elite games that has been played by many thousands of players over the years. The original Elite PC games were DOS only and Oolite brought the game to Windows. It is pretty cool that the game is still supported including an active Forum. If a player desires an Elite legacy experience it is well worth trying out. Here's their website.
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It is from before ED, when noone knew if there ever was going to be a new Elite. It has pretty much been rendered irrelevant for most gamers.
Oolite's intention was never to be "the new Elite", it was to be an exact replica of the classic Elite game as it was launched in 1984, so that people can play it on current gen PC's/hardware, also to make it mod friendly. Later on other stuff like textured ships/stations/ect was added to the game, but you can still play it in "classic" mode.
Besides, a player can obtain a "cloaking device"! Later they can come back to the Forum and complain why Elite Dangerous doesn't have one. Could be useful in Open mode...Then again I think Frontier's ED solution was "silent running" as the CD used power and didn't last very long. 
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Besides, a player can obtain a "cloaking device"! Later they can come back to the Forum and complain why Elite Dangerous doesn't have one. Could be useful in Open mode...Then again I think Frontier's ED solution was "silent running" as the CD used power and didn't last very long.
A cloaking device would be an interesting option with a few restrictions. You either have the cloaker or shields, deploying hard points kills the cloak, whatever sensible time limitation on said cloak. In other words, it is designed primarily for defence.
Z...
I'm hoping if and when atmospheric landings show up we'll have transport missions between the orbiting stations and the planet cities with lots of awesome graphics. Maybe in Sol from the orbiting Abraham Lincoln station to New York city or 6 others. I don't think that FD will go with the IP Shuttle which is obviously from Star Trek TOS. But as you noted with the Gecko and Moray Starboat the Transporter has also been in every version of the game. Let's hope your analysis works.
Even if we didn't or couldn't purchase a Transporter it would be cool watching the NPC versions flying around.
Then again this thread started with Oolite. Sorry if I'm rambling.
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Yep, it's an updated Elite before ED came along. I used to play it regularly but ED fills that need now. It's damn fine for what it is; an modernised update to the original. There are still things it does better IMO, in the little story campaigns that you can play made by various modders, the real feel of a military presence in game world, thargoids that are actually threatening.
No they weren't. The original Elite was on Acorn BBC Micro (and descendants), and later ported to Spectrum, C64, Amiga, Atari and a few others. Eventually, a cut down version appeared on MSDOS.
E2 and E3 were on DOS among others... (though disappointingly not on the Acorn).
Oolite is the best of the Windows versions.
Another notable is Alite, on Android.
Promising yet discontinued sadly.
Yeah... at least we have ED now, and with the steamlink app, that can be streamed to a tablet/phone. Not tried that yet, but it might work
Irrelevant? lol
It's a great free tribute to the Elite games and lots of people still play it 'instead' of ED (like me) as it provides an off line game that we can add mods too. And the mods for Oolite are great and help you craft that perfect game of elite you always wanted.
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If anyone is feeling the grind in ED it is worth a look to get that Elite kick (without the frustrations). Like Open Xcom it does a fantastic job in pulling an old classic game into a playable state on modern systems. 100% recommended for all Elite fans, and free
Dont mean that as an insult, but it is clearly something exclusively aimed at people who have nostalgic feelings about the original. A (younger) gamer who doesn't have that will compare Oolite with ED, X-games, NMS etc etc and every single one is just a better game. Nothing wrong with that, I still play Might & Magic VI every year; that is my nostalgia game, but it, and any remake, is irrelevant to anyone who doesn't feel that way about it.
It's definitely worth a look in its own right - while it started out as an Elite clone, it's developed further since - but it's also interesting if you never played the original Elite because it follows a few of the design decisions from that which weren't in FE2, FFE or Elite: Dangerous.
- jump range locked to 7LY for all ship types: this gives the map a very definite topology of routes. The recent versions of Oolite know whether or not a system is a bottleneck and spawn NPCs accordingly: try getting into the top-left of Galaxy 2 with a bunch of passengers or courier missions on board and you'll find out what I mean
- only enough fuel for a single max-range jump. Same fuel reserve powers your boost (once you've installed it). So if you make a 3 LY jump you can probably run away from most danger ... if you make a 6.5LY jump you'll have to stand and fight. Lots of places - see previous point - require long jumps to get into.
- cartoon scale (but Elite+'s non-player-centric simulation): this gives the ability for "living" NPC interactions to just happen, in a way that they don't much in the later ones. You can get attacked by pirates and a group of bounty hunters returning from raiding a nearby anarchy can see this happening and come to your aid. Or you can be the bounty hunter coming along and rescuing the trader from pirates. And then a Thargoid warship might show up and *everyone* will drop what they're doing to fight it regardless of their previous differences. Realistic scale is great for a lot of things (planetary landings, for example!) but I think it inevitably compartmentalises the gameplay.
And some innovations of its own
- jump time is proportional to the square of the jump distance, so lots of little jumps are quicker than one big one. This allows for some very interesting playing around with mission deadlines (and time loss as a consequence for your actions - whether needing to repair or being forced to do community service for your crimes) that means you don't always just pick "shortest route"
- it tracks your "profession" based on your actions, and uses this to adjust NPC behaviour. So if you behave like a bounty hunter most of the time, pirates will mostly avoid you unless they have you outgunned ... whereas if you behave like a trader they'll try to rob you ... and if you behave like a taxi they'll largely ignore you. Similarly if you get a rep as an assassin, the police may harass you even when you're clean - whereas if you're known to be a trader they might give you the benefit of the doubt when they stumble across you in a fight with another clean ship. Your reputation builds up quicker if you stay in the same place, whereas if you go somewhere new there's a good chance half the NPCs won't have heard of you.
- (EDIT) you can follow a ship through hyperspace just by flying into its wake, for no fuel cost. This was originally so that traders could have non-hyperspace fighters (Sidewinder, Mamba, etc.) as escorts ... but once it was in lots of other uses came up.
Plus all the expansions, of course.
- jump range locked to 7LY for all ship types: this gives the map a very definite topology of routes. The recent versions of Oolite know whether or not a system is a bottleneck and spawn NPCs accordingly: try getting into the top-left of Galaxy 2 with a bunch of passengers or courier missions on board and you'll find out what I mean
- only enough fuel for a single max-range jump. Same fuel reserve powers your boost (once you've installed it). So if you make a 3 LY jump you can probably run away from most danger ... if you make a 6.5LY jump you'll have to stand and fight. Lots of places - see previous point - require long jumps to get into.
- cartoon scale (but Elite+'s non-player-centric simulation): this gives the ability for "living" NPC interactions to just happen, in a way that they don't much in the later ones. You can get attacked by pirates and a group of bounty hunters returning from raiding a nearby anarchy can see this happening and come to your aid. Or you can be the bounty hunter coming along and rescuing the trader from pirates. And then a Thargoid warship might show up and *everyone* will drop what they're doing to fight it regardless of their previous differences. Realistic scale is great for a lot of things (planetary landings, for example!) but I think it inevitably compartmentalises the gameplay.
And some innovations of its own
- jump time is proportional to the square of the jump distance, so lots of little jumps are quicker than one big one. This allows for some very interesting playing around with mission deadlines (and time loss as a consequence for your actions - whether needing to repair or being forced to do community service for your crimes) that means you don't always just pick "shortest route"
- it tracks your "profession" based on your actions, and uses this to adjust NPC behaviour. So if you behave like a bounty hunter most of the time, pirates will mostly avoid you unless they have you outgunned ... whereas if you behave like a trader they'll try to rob you ... and if you behave like a taxi they'll largely ignore you. Similarly if you get a rep as an assassin, the police may harass you even when you're clean - whereas if you're known to be a trader they might give you the benefit of the doubt when they stumble across you in a fight with another clean ship. Your reputation builds up quicker if you stay in the same place, whereas if you go somewhere new there's a good chance half the NPCs won't have heard of you.
- (EDIT) you can follow a ship through hyperspace just by flying into its wake, for no fuel cost. This was originally so that traders could have non-hyperspace fighters (Sidewinder, Mamba, etc.) as escorts ... but once it was in lots of other uses came up.
Plus all the expansions, of course.
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