The Oolite Thread

drew

drew
Elite / Oolite Fanfic...

Folks,

Might be regarded as spam (please delete if inappropriate), but I thought there might be some out there who'd appreciate some Fan Fiction in the Elite genre...

I wrote a fairly significant story for the 'Oolite' (oolite.org) remake of Elite back in 2006, the idea being to give it a 'The Dark Wheel' kind of story to set the scene, reminiscent of Robert Holdstock's original novella. There is also a sequel which follows on from the original set piece.

The story likewise sets the scene, and introduces some of the new technology made available in Oolite over and above the original game.

I assumed that Oolite sat somewhere between FE2/FFE and Elite, so there is a mix of ships, events and technologies in there. The first story has a number of 8-bit 'in jokes' for the cognoscenti to spot :)

Anyway, the stories can be found here.

Happy 25 Elite!

Cheers,

Drew.
 
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DraQ

D
drew said:
Folks,

Might be regarded as spam (please delete if inappropriate), but I thought there might be some out there who'd appreciate some Fan Fiction in the Elite genre...
Click to expand...

Nah, the moderators are very lax and level-headed here, so as long as you refrain from this kind of behaviour, there should be no problems.

Welcome and have fun. :)

(Hmm... Turns out this little program for making urls unreadable I wrote for lulz some time ago will actually find some use now - board software is being overzealous again and censors my URLs because file I want to link happens to have a name matching the wordfilter, blah.)
 

drew

drew
Thanks for the warm reception!

I always considered that 'Elite' gave me a lot during my youth, and it was fun to give 'something' back to the community!

Hope you enjoy the stories, and let me know what you think!

Cheers,

Drew.
 

drew

drew
Folks,

I'm working on the third and final part of my fan-fic Oolite Saga and I've knocked up a 'trailer' for the book. Thought you might enjoy! :)

For the sake of narrative. I've assumed Elite was set in the year 3125, and Oolite in the year 3142. This is a little later, in 3151, before we get going with FE2 in 3199...

Certain insectoids of your acquaintance are up to old tricks...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peBz1F2c7gY

Cheers,

Drew.
 

drew

drew
Another Elite/Oolite Fan-Fic...

...to keep you occupied whilst we all wait for Elite 4 :)

And this will be my last, rounding off an (increasingly inaccurately named tm) trilogy with a fourth part.

Set between Elite and FE2/FFE in the year 3151 it explains what happened to the Thargoids and all the various indigenous lifeforms before the story resumes in 3199, all based around the Oolite remake of Elite.

Part 4 of the Oolite Saga, 'Finis' will be available on the 16th of December. As before, totally free and gratis, available in various ebook formats and in PDF.



You can see the complete set here if you're interested.

We write on, Commanders!

Cheers,

Drew.
 

Geraldine

Geraldine
Hi drew
Welcome back! :)
I've been looking forward to the final installment. The whole series is awesome work indeed :cool:

I vote that your novels should be included in a bonus DVD containing tons of community developed content should Frontier ever get around to creating "The Game"
 

drew

drew
:cool:

And If Mr. Braben ever wants to get in touch regarding a novella for Elite 4, I'll be happy to have a chat! :D

Cheers,

Drew.
 

Geraldine

Geraldine
Oolite Bump

Hi Folks
Thought I would give this old thread a wake up and give you some useful Oolite links. Lots of work has been going on within their community. Do have a look :)

As most of you will know Oolite is a nice re-imagining of the original Elite game and is always being added to thanks to regular updates and community developed add on packs or OXPs as they are known. There are versions for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows Here is a link to the web site http://www.oolite.org/about
Oolite Forums http://aegidian.org/bb/index.php
SSC Oolite Section http://www.spacesimcentral.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=80
OXP link http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/OXP_List
You Tube vid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf0R3C-kPOo

This game deserves to be played :cool:
 

Geraldine

Geraldine
:eek: I know, I know, I am preaching to the converted here, but the lovely guys on the Oolite forum would like to see more traffic on their forum and the SSC Oolite section, so why not drop by and say hello? :)
 

Styggron

S
Absoultely it is worth playing. For any Fan of the original Oolite is a MUST !

Great plug for the Oolite team Geraldine. I'll pop in there and say hi. Oolite deserves all the support we can give it. :)
 

Kipper

K
An Oolite thread

So all this recent talk of eliteness made me fire up Oolite.

What the hell?! Is it the most unforgiving thing ever or what? There's no way the old versions of Elite were THAT hard.

What gets me is the murderous self recharging NPCs. The pulse laser is useless against them, and they aren't scared of flying up past you and launching 3 missiles at point blank range, taking all shields, energy banks and killing you instantly.... :eek: (even if you have an ECM, I just got killed from so close I couldn't have used it).
 

Alien

Alien
A little trick that will help you early in your game.
Let's call it "Avoid The Trade Lane"
Jump into a system
Look at the little space compass
Put the planet at exactly 6 O'clock or 12 O'clock
Go to full speed and press J
leave that running for about 30 seconds
Re-orient yourself to the planet
Press J
Find the space station

You'll avoid other ships pretty much every time.
Very useful early in your game.

Alien

EDIT : And no, Elite wasn't that hard ... it was harder.
 

Kipper

K
I've got my beam lasers & ECM now thanks to a narcotics run (although I also have a criminal record thanks to same), next on the list - docking computers and laser cooling booster (if I remember that even existing).

Might have to try flying with the mouse, pretty hard to get those faster ships on keyboard alone. They are pretty hard hitting when they get a bead on you though.

I seem to remember being able to take docking at full speed on the the spectrum / atari ST, because you only had to aim for a flat square rather than an actual hole in a solid object.

Cracked docking now though, no problem just have to time it right.
 

Bounder

Bounder
The only way i could play it was by using the time deceleration feature, however this is/was a temporary debugging hack to be removed in later versions.

Having just fired up BeebEm for a quick blast on the M128 version, the handling is just so sweeet, exactly as i remembered it. I launched, attacked the Coriolis then fled, watching in the rear view as six little blue dots emerged from the receding station in hot pursuit. As the first laser strikes hit my rear shields i turned into the fray and let muscle memory take over. With just a pulse laser i took out 3 vipers before coming a cropper - my own fault, too lazy on the turns... but the sheer thrill and exhilaration, as well of course as my awesome Leetness, is still there all these years later.

Oolite misses by a football field. It just doesn't handle right, and i doubt it ever will. I've tried to address this on the Oolite forums but just got a load of sycophantic dismissals.

I get the feeling part of Elite's handling is intrinsic to the timing of the hardware components. There's a certain intangible 'inertia' to its responsiveness and how it reacts to your inputs... Oolite has tried to emulate this with a 'damping' effect but, short of adding in a 6502 emulation, i don't think it'll ever succeed in recapturing that special fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants mechanical feedback that characterised the original's handling. Hell, in Oolite, i could barely target a space station at point blank range. Where Elite allowed accurate aiming with the lightest taps of the keys, in Oolite i always overshoot - even slight 'correcting' taps veer wide of the target.

Oolite looks pretty, in its own way, but is trapped in some kind of nouveau-retro straightjacket that eschews any of the innovations or progressions that made FE2 such a worthy successor (while hypocritically borrowing many of its ship designs), rigidly idealising broken scaling systems, flight models and physics / cosmology, in lieu of just about all the gaming elements that made Elite so much fun.

Instead, it feels like the challenged offspring of Amiga Elite vs X:BTF - dull and boring, with garish clashes in style and gameplay. For a veteran pilot it's an emasculating and frustrating grind, the fun factor painfully absent... an all-show and no-go Frankenstein of a tribute...

My advice; get BeebEm and play the M128 version - instant gratification, urges satisfied, job done, sound sleep ensues... :cool:
 
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