User:Cholmondely

Ship's Library Manual
click to enlarge

Vimana HUD adds flashing alerts

Hints allows you to overhear hints in the station bar

GNN gives you news flashes when you dock

BGS: I prefer this older hyperjump effect

System Features Rings adds rings to planets

Riredi OXP gives the Riredi system some colour!

Killer Wolf's Hathor station

Telescope shows up Masslock borders

Equipment 'Sell Item' Color: turns sell entries red on the F3 screen

Log Events adds more information to your Latest.log to help track down problems

Oolite v1.88 Base Shipset N & S/G Maps upgrades the basic Oolite ship textures

Commies adds the CZGF station near some suns

Dictators adds the Imperial Freighter carrying goods between the Imperial Astrofactory and the main station

Feudal States adds missions and duels at the Royal Hunting Lodges

Paddling Pool neuters the nastier systems west of Lave (the anarchies in Riedquat & Uszaa...)

Cholmondeley (Pronunciation: IPAc-en ˈ tʃ ʌ m l i or CHUM-lee). See Ghoti is pronounced Fish

With a deep abiding loathing of grammatical infelicities and typographical misdeeds, Cholmondeley is slowly assaulting the pages of this Wikipedia in an attempt to bring serenity and syntactical splendour to its contents.

If you can replace any of my ghastly screenshots with a better: please, please do so!

I should mention that both Montana05 and Cody have been very helpful in all this. As have Stranger, Redspear, User2357 & Hiran. And I must mention the recent addition of Massively Locked & Alnivel to the team - they've taken over pummeling the programming pages into some sort of respectability. As did the resurrected Murgh. I think that I would have to argue that Hiran has really helped me make major improvements to the functionality of this wiki - both with his databases and his enthusiasm. If I've forgotten your name, I grovel!

The following lists incorporate various musings!

List of recommended OXZs/OXPs (2021)

These are the ones I like! Not all are on the in-game Expansions Manager. Note that I'm not personally into lots of different ships.

Vital

There is a lot of information in Oolite. These vital OXPs help give you access to the information you need to play/enjoy the game

• Addons for Beginners (Vital Statistics) will download the following

• Ship's Library (with ships manual)
• XenonUI (handy guide to the buttons on your astrogation console)
• Technical Reference Library identifies ships when you target them (just ships)
• GalCop Galactic Registry - guide to the galaxy you are in
• Market Observer - useful statistics for analysing the F8 markets page (with Market Ads at the bottom)
• Vimana HUD (flashes warnings for High Temperature, Low Altitude, Low Energy & Low Shields)
• HUD Selector - optional extra (for selecting HUDs)!

• Hints - visit the station bar while docked and eavesdrop on some professionals...

• The Galactic Almanac OXZ - a guide to everything in your current solar system - stations, planetary bodies, visible rock hermits, etc. (not yet on the in-game Expansions Manager).

Ambience

These help bring the universe around you to life:

• BGS & BGS Soundset: enhances docking/witchspace travel etc - I prefer Tsoj's version here.
• Contextual Jukebox OXP: music while playing (needs Library OXP)
• Communications Pack A: NPCs come to life
• Death Comms: dying NPCs come to life!
• Engine Sound
• GNN: News about the universe
• Home System: invest in a solar system and become famous there!
• Randomshipnames OXP: the names are often a clue to identity (trader? pirate? bounty hunter?).

These give the solar systems a bit more variety

• Solar Flares
• System Features Rings
• System Features Sunspots

These add bits of Oolite lore

• Famous Planets: expanded descriptions for the F7 screen - combine this with the detailed Povray Planets textures for which it was written
• Galaxy Names OXP: places galaxy name at top of F6 screen
• Lave OXP: gives Lave system some colour (updated by Murgh as one of his Iron Ass retexture OXP's)
• Riredi OXP: gives Riredi system some colour
• Tianve OXP: gives Tianve system a lot of colour
• Tionisla Orbital Graveyard, Monuments & Wrecks, Tionisla Chronicle Array: bring Tionisla to life (with a marvellous cemetery!)

Dockables

• Lave Academy: has training courses in combat, docking & ship-handling!
• Superhub: adds variety - and an easy dock
• Torus station: adds variety
• Z-GrOovY Small System Stations: adds the tetrahedron & octahedron (and needs the Griff Station Bundle too)
• And take a good look at Killer Wolf's stations. Magnificent!

Equipment

• Deep Horizon Advanced Navigation Computer: enhances witchspace travel
• Email System
• Fast Target Selector OXP (helps target missiles) or Military Targeting System (automatically targets whatever you are interracting with)
• Fuel Tank: an emergency fuel tank in case of need (many others also available)
• Naval Grid Next: another defensive OXP (buy it to strengthen shields)
• Police IFF Scanner Upgrade: advance warning about known pirates
• Repair Bots: fixes broken equipment in flight
• Telescope: for navigation (I tend not to use the targeting capabilities). Vital!
• Welcome Mat warning if the system is currently pirate or Thargoid infested!

HUDs

• Vimana HUD - vital warning systems if altitude/energy/shields are too low etc.

Mechanics

• AutoRefuel in case you forget!
• BlOomberg Markets creates market fluctuations which are announced on GNN news
• Illegal Goods Tweak solves issues with rescuing slaves
• Reverse Y Control helps when navigating looking at the F2 aft viewscreen
• Traffic Lights OXP helps docking - and puts a time-limit on the wait

Miscellaneous

• Equipment 'Sell Item' Color: helps make sense of long lists of F3 shipyard outfitting options
• LogEvents: helps track down problems if you need to ask for help
• Montanas Resource Pack 01: adds ambience

Retextures

• Oolite v1.88 Base Shipset Normal and Specular/Gloss Maps: better textures for ships etc, taking advantage of the major graphics improvements.

Ships

I used to be against adding any ships (apart from Liners, DSD's, Behemoths and those which came for example in Commies or Feudal States. But then I discovered these:

• Missionaries OXP - 3 different versions
• Hotrods OXP
• Refugee Adder - 3 different versions

These are ships with personality and purpose. They add moral choices to my game and add a welcome layer of complexity. Try them!

Systems

These give these systems much individual colour. If you can handle it, add Anarchies too!

• Commies
• Dictators OXP
• Feudal States

Optional - for difficulties with Combat

• Modern Start - more choices at start of game
• Barrel Roll OXP - quick defensive option
• Paddling Pool - transforms the area west of Lave making it less pirate-ridden
• SniperLock: for targeting lasers - vital if your aim is as lousy as mine!
• Vimana Ship Overrides - adds cheat-like abilities to your ship (extra energy, more missiles, etc)

Intermediate

• SW Economy: a much more realistic (but complex) trading system
• Anarchies: gives anarchies colour - but makes the game a little tougher
• Liners: adds ambience
• Deep Space Dredger: adds ambience

Look at Career Options for more tips if you favour a mining/piracy/courier etc career

Advanced

These all add a layer of realism to the universe - but increase the complexity of play.

• Diplomancy OXP: visas & taxes
• Strangers World: a much more realistic universe, and a much more realistic mechanic for the way your ship works (suite of oxps).
• Weapon Laws OXP: restrictions on buying weapons - buying your first beam/military laser now becomes an adventure in its own right!
• New Cargoes: more complex trade options needing better knowledge of the universe (Famous Planets helps here).
• Skilled NPCs: beefs up pirate weaponry & combat skills
• Smugglers - The Galactic Underworld: more import/export bans & smuggling to circumvent them

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Some of the New Wiki pages

• Language tips and links for non-fluent English speakers

Game-play

• Vanilla game
• Expansions Manager born through not finding a guide to what the colours meant - combined with utter failure to use the x button for extraction.
• Tutorial to list the various lessons and re-iterate the method of stepping through it
• Help pages: Priming Equipment (How to), Trade (Oolite), Trade (Classic Elite), Trade (FE2/FFE), Dumping Cargo
• Witchpoint
• Maps, The Great Rift
• Technology level, Light Mach, Aegis
• Cheating, Über, Puzzles

In-game equipment

• Torus Drive felt this was very much needed (I spent about a month with Shaky Drive .oxp installed - thanks to Norby's combination packs - and could not work out why I was not flying normally! - scoured the wiki, found nothing). This led to a reworking of the Equipment pages (originally for FFE) and the adding of Standard Equipment to both the page and the template. Also added a taster of .oxp equipment to what was previously just standard optional equipment.

Also added Altimeter, Astrogation Console, Cargo Hold, Compass, Engine, Hyperspace Drive, Life Support Systems, Shields, Ship's Hull & View Screen. No others left to do (unless I find some!)

New pages for F3, F5, F6, F7 & F8 pages

• Decal

Out-game equipment

• Buttonboxes raising awareness of putative real-life Astrogation Boards!
• Joysticks and Gamepads‎‎ rehabilitated from an indirect - and now with vital information about Precision Flying on it previously buried in the BB - linked to Linux page, Dizzy's page (& the Mac Thrustmaster Harness).
• Joysticks: Guide to Setting Up‎‎ with a small selection of examples
• Keyboard Issues

OXPs

• OXZ List - redirect to http://www.oolite.org/oxps/
• New: eg Diplomancy OXP, BPlanets, Target System Plugins, FPO Lave & FPO Zaonce,
• Old: eg Extra Thargoids, Zieman's Habitat Orbital Station‎‎, Shaky Drive, Galaxy Names OXP, Distant Realms, NPC equipment damage OXP, Ebortsa's lucky charm, Amber Moon Chronicles
• Mouldy: eg Her Imperial Majesty's Space Navy, Monument, BioSphere station, RS
• Ship's Library OXP with much detail about the excellent Ship's Manual and the Extracts from the Tre Clan
• The Strangers World OXPs (almost all) - and also a page on Solar Wind Flux to explain it.
• Redspear's OXPs (some)
• Mining IFF Scanner Upgrade - first OXP I've come across written by a woman!
• Vimana HUD: wanted to raise awareness of an inspiring HUD
• MFD with the missing MFD OXZs from the wiki

• How to tweak OXZ's - started - needs an expert to go over it
• Guide to Ambience OXPs - mostly finished, unsure how to complete. But I think it now does what it should.
• Guide to Unlisted OXPs - I've unearthed over 150 or so in my digging
• Guide to Accuracy OXPs - contrasting the "missile locks" with the "laser locks"

People

• User:Another_commander - see his superb essay about Oolite vs Elite combat
• User:Astrobe - lots of recent OXZs not on this wiki
• User:Captain Beatnik - lovely HUDs, ships - and Riredi orbital station is a must see!
• User:ClymAngus - beautiful maps, fiction, aids for playing, and some ship OXPs - Cadaceus has a rather different philosophy behind it!
• User:Diziet Sma - gave a lot to the community over the years
• User:Dybal - wanted to encourage the chap but he left!
• User:Gsagostinho - what an incredibly talented chap!
• Jannah Berihn - her famous blueprints
• Killer Wolf - a man with a wonderful sense of the aesthetic (ships, stations, HUDs)
• User:P.A. Groove‎ with links to his music & films
• User:Ramirez - with links to the archived version of his archive - seminal OXPs which have been kept updated
• User:Redspear & Weapon Laws OXP: felt this was needed. Lots of fascinating & useful stuff but virtually nothing on wiki
• User:Rorschachhamster of Satellites fame
• User:Stranger & some of his OXPs: felt need to raise awareness: virtually nothing on wiki
• User:Uk Eliter & Fer-de-Lance 3G OXP - Put his excellent promotional material on wiki: learned use of tables!
• User:Zieman

And all the Developers for whom I could work out what they did!

Some of the above I find quite admirable. Another_commander is very modest and has done so much for both our little community, and for the game. Our artists (of whatever bent) have had some truly inspirational ideas (Clym Angus, GS Agostinho, PA Groove). Stranger's work is just truly awesome. And then there are those I've not mentioned. And a lot of the work I'm unable to appreciate - such as that on ships for example. I really must mention phkb, too. Again, very modest. In the past year since I joined, he's been working away updating other departed authors' oxp's, as well as devising his own. When you look at his own, they are very unassuming (like him). And, like him, they make a massive difference to the game. I first noticed his common-sense oxp's (maintenance on demand, making planets look like their descriptions, e-mail system, XenonUI, liners markets, red fonts for "selling" items in the shipyard, etc. But then he came out with his GalCop Galactic Registry and I discovered his GalCop Missions, Home System, Broadcast Comms, Smugglers...). He has added an entire new dimension to the game. Just look at the equipment he has created for GalCop Missions: Cargo Stopper, Ejection Damper, Range Finder, Seismic Resonance Scanner, Solar Activity Scanner, Mass Passenger Transport Module ... And then look at his Ship Configuration.oxp! And of course, his experiments: Pirate Player, Hermitage... Just Brilliant!

Lore

• Lore, History, Time, Law, Economics, Species
• Geography, The Eight, Distance (Oolite)
• Religion, ‎Church of Giles the Creator with some theology, applied theology & eschatology.
• Amnesty InterGalactic, Edible Poets
• Tibecea (Rough Guide)‎‎ learned use of templates & added the various ship pages for the Rough Guide from the BB threads.
• The Space Traders Flight Training Manual‎‎, Oolite Literature
• Combat Manoeuvers,
• Obnoxicorp, Murgh Shipyards, Zorgon Petterson Group, Marine Trench Co., Aegidian Industries, Lance & Ferman
• Slang, Sports
• The Great Rift
• Finally added in Captain Hesperus's Dicky-Bow Run‎ which had been languishing in the back of our BB for 14 years!

Talking about Oolite

• Handwavium
• Roll vs Yaw crusades
• Galaxy Seeds
• Oolite 2.0 or II

Structure of this wiki

• With Hiran's help, new pages/redirects for all unlisted OXZ's in the Expansions Manager (zillions of the blighters!)
• Redirect pages for ANA, STE, MTS etc. Also for most equipment listed in Hiran's invaluable Index of artefacts
• New categories: Lore, Stranger's World, Racing, Classic Elites, Classic Ships, Lasers, Missiles & Bombs, Legacy Scripting, Concepts, Help pages
• Collecting the various Help pages and linking them together with a new head page: How do I ....

History of this wiki

• Wiki and OXPs redux (2007)
• Oolite Wiki (2007)

The Dark Side

• The Dark Side
• Legacy Scripting
• Brilliant but broken...‎‎ guide to brilliant oxp's which need work...

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Major Edits

Sorting out messes

• Adding links & lists of relevant OXPs to Hyperspace/Quirium/Witch Fuel Injectors etc
• Sorting out the various Rock Hermit (Oolite) pages and their OXPs
• Sorting out the ghastly Lave & Tionisla messes with lashes of lavish linking
• Sorted out the Ascension - Sector1/Sori‎‎ mess. Also referenced Ascension in Weapon Laws OXP for those using it.
• Tried to sort out the muddle with 4/5 different library pages (library.oxp, cim's ship's library, spara's technical library, etc.) by adding a disambiguation section at the top of the most confusing pages: BB beg.
• Tidied up the OXPList‎ page, reducing entry sizes to just the one line on my screen (11 inch?), and sorted out the Ship's Library oxps.
• Sorted out all but the gnat's link on Complete Ship List
• Linked all the various Thargoid OXPs together.
• Linked the various fuel tank OXPs together to enable comparison.
• Tried to make sense of the Racing pages Zorg Racing, Ring Racer OXP et al.
• Linking together the disparate pages on systems/planets: the Oolite Planet List family with the Galaxy Guide family with the new pages on The Eight & Maps

People matter

• Lots of work on User:Cim with links to the fascinating debates on the development of v1.80 & v.1.82
• Ditto for User:Ahruman
• Editing various user pages and then pm-ing the people in a desperate attempt to draw them back. People are important and deserve recognition for the things they do right. I'm fed up with only ever blaming people for things they do wrong.
• In the handful of cases where I've been able to contribute meaningfully to the various Frontier pages, I've done so too.
• Adding in a little historical context and links to the Realistic Shipyards page
• Listed Cody's fiction

Unearthing treasures

• Trying to raise awareness of SOTL and Strangers World, so bunged in links right, left and centre!
• Ditto with User:Redspear's work
• Links for downloading older versions of Oolite
• Snark was fun. Montana05 was very helpful.

• Passenger Coms v0.5 by BryonArn (2014) - see here: talking to your passengers! This was later included by Phkb in his Enhanced Passenger Contracts.

• Tetiri Planet Ring Tetiri Planet Ring: artificial ring for Tetiri (2011-14) devised by P.A. Groove‎‎ & Thargoid.
• Gsagostinho's station experiments here. (2017, unfinished, see picture at bottom of page).

Lore

• Rejigs of The Dark Wheel & Robert Holdstock
• Rejig of GalCop & Oolite timeline
• Rough Guide: Isence (Rough Guide)‎‎, Qutiri (Rough Guide) and Zarece (Rough Guide)‎‎: built up the stubs; added to the Sector1/Digebiti page
• More links for the Powers and Organisations‎‎ page
• Building up the Systems pages: Copied much of the planet-specific gubbins from the Powers and Organisations‎‎ page and detailed ship histories onto the relevant planets pages.
• Linking the better fiction to relevant pages in the wiki (eg Species).
• Added in gubbins on the history of the development of the game of Oolite
• Fixed the ghastly travesty of the stubbish-status of the Royal Hunting Lodge - and of Sector1/Digebiti too!

Help pages

• Links for the various Help pages (some of which have hopefully been thus rescued from utter obscurity)
• Fleshed out Milkrun with sample routes and maps - also Short Range Chart‎
• More links for the Career Options page

Style

• Replacing cr./cr/credits with ₢ (Dybal did it first!).

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To do

General Guide

Guides to all the GUIs (if that is what these things are!)

F1 page (launch)

F1 page (forwards view)

F2 page (commander "jameson" options)

F2 page (aft view)

F3 page (ship outfitting)

F3F3 page (Dockyard ships for sale)

F3 page (left/port/larboard view)

F4 page (ship and system interfaces)

F4 page (right/starboard view)

F5 page (commander "jameson": details)

F5F5 page (ship's manifest)

F6 page (galactic chart "1")

F6F6 page (long range chart)

F7 page (data on "system")

F8 page (commodity market)

F8F8 page (commodity "item" information)

Note - I think that I need to rename the "page" to "screen" (major chore...)!

OXP programming pages

I find these almost entirely incomprehensible. If I ever learn enough I would like to make them more accessible to the uninitiated. Aegidian wanted to teach people how to programme via Oolite. I wonder if the introduction of both Javascript and of the OXZ format has defeated that ambition. Especially when combined with the failure to keep the programming pages on the wiki up-to-date - or to write updated introductions for beginners. But see Massively Locked's work - and his introduction to Javascript

Hiranical

All OXZ's and Equipment now listed on this wiki (Oct 2022).

• Links for all names/terms appearing on "GUI" screens

Pre-Hiranical

• Finish updating the OXPList
• Finish Redspear's oxp pages (where he has rejigged everything several times and one can't work out what is what anymore!)

Also swapping roll vs yaw. Could do with an OXP?

• Enliven the Sector1/Digebiti page (mostly done).

• Finish incorporating programming tweaks from the BB onto the pages of relevant OXPs. (major project). Just a handful so far: Laser Booster OXP‎‎, Commanders Log OXP‎‎, Deep Space Dredger‎ & Commies‎.

STOP PRESS: DONE! Or at least all the gubbins in the Tinkerer's Workshop thread. I'm presuming the rest will be too difficult to find/extract.

• Extract lore from The Dark Wheel and incorporate into wiki pages (mostly done).

WIP pages

• Unfinished WIP pages (under construction)

Humour - this one might actually be there!

Immersion

Realism

License - needs summaries of the different types of licenses

Mission screen - desperate attempt to help dumb pilots like myself

• User:Snork/to-do-list look over
• User:Spara look over
• User:Svengali look over
• User:Thargoid look over - needs pictures
• User:Treczoks look over
• User:Tricky look over
• User:Zireael look over

A real solar flare

Musings

Things I'd love to see in-game

• Solar flares which really flare, planetary rings which contain asteroids and dust which affect one's ship (there may be relevant code inside the Planetfall OXP), asteroids in belts or in clumps at the Lagrangian points (see discussion at [https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?p=283298#p283298 Method for placing asteroid belts - and also [[SOTL Exploration), binary stars, Klemperer rosettes, Black Holes.

Wolis wrote this in 2009 - with links to screen shots of proper asteroid belts, volcanoes, lightening, etc. Is any of this possible in Oolite?

• An F7F7 display of the solar system one is currently in. So many other games are able to manage this... can we really not do it?
• Some way of verbally describing location using 3 dimensions. Currently all we can manage is distance. Phkb has managed to improve on this a little in GalCop Missions with "1,000km behind the sun", but how can one describe where a Jaguar Company base is? ...How do other games do this?
• It would be nice to get rid of those ghastly kilometres and use other units of measurement (miles, cavezzi, leagues, plethrons, versts etc).
• Pirates recognising me when I return and carry on beating up on a pirate pack, after fleeing to let my shields recover!
• I think that the MFD in Ship's Library should be free to encourage in-flight use of the Ship's Manual (done! "Thank You", Phkb!).

OXP "to do" list

See my discussion/talk page

Adding depth

Apropos of Stranger's Roolite essay: some adventures or whatever giving purpose to various worlds. We have "anywhere" missions which fail to mark out places as special (eg. in RRS, Galactic Navy, GalCop Missions, Taxi Galactica, Random Hits... ).

The following call out for dramatic depth and politics:

• Lave (already has Monument, Lave Academy, the moon, the planet)
• Tionisla (already has TOGY, TCA and Tionisla Reporter mission)
• Scandal-ridden Onrira (Obnoxicorp story)
• Larais's industrial orange haze (what lies hidden there?).
• Tianve (Pulsar & station)
• Riredi (Captain Beatnik's superb station)
• Lerelace (Taranis HQ and mission)
• The relationship between Lave and Zadies (both homes to significant bits of GalCop).
• Ceesxe TL 15 vs backwards Lave & Zadies (TL5 & TL9) - might this be a possible fight for prestige?
• Xexedi vs Laenin (home of the Comoonin) - and Laenin's three chums (Terea, Oresri & Xeoner)
• Teorge Home of the humanoid clones (The Dark Wheel), the Shulth dynasty (Oofiction) & 3.3 Billion (tedious) Black Bony Lobsters (Elite/Vanilla Oolite description)
• Communist Vetitice & Inonri and Communist Usanat & Entizadi vs the bridge systems in-between
• Stuff about some of the more colourful "famous planets" (eg Aesbion's invasion of Aronar).

Ideally one wants more than a mere mission. Something special which keeps one coming back, and marks out the system as special in some way.

• Special price for a commodity (New Cargoes - mission involves picking it up and then one returns with more of it)?
• Special servicing for some piece of equipment, which can only be done there?
• Something building on phkb's Home System or on Feudal States which gives one a stake on the planet. Politics (... Diplomancy).
• Romance?

More ideas along these lines

Brainstorming: Making geography more relevant

Romance: if the romantic interest stays on the planet, that is a reason to return there. The RI's family could provide incentives too - missions, better prices for certain commodities [i]etc[/i].

Family: I suspect that this might go against the grain of what is out there (Oolite seems to presuppose that one has divorced one's family and run away to space - even Diplomancy requires one to buy citizenship of a system, rather than automatically getting citizenship of where one was born). But family, and messages from dying parents or siblings getting married, would add some flavour to one's homeworld. Especially if one starts getting recognised as one gains in Elite Rating (tweaking Phkb's Home System .oxp)

Vendettas: an enemy. Imprint depicts a vendetta which develops over the course of time. Is this doable in Oolite (game code needs to remember the enemy. Need for credible escape when defeated. And is it possible to develop the enemy's skills over time)? If the enemy is based in a particular system, then again, that system is marked out as special (to visit or to avoid).

Causes: for example, joining Amnesty InterGalactic, and fighting against slavery. The HQ thus becomes a place to visit for mission details, get cheap repairs, etc. Or joining the Bounty Hunter Guild to fight against pirates, etc. If there was one specific cantina/bar where one had to report, then again, there would be a geographical focus for the player. (See Resistance Commander)

Political Involvement: if one got politically involved with a system (along the lines of Feudal States or Home System, say, but with a bit more to it).

I'm unsure to what extent Vendettas are do-able within the game code as it stands. The rest seems oxp'able to me.

A useful comment from Szaumix

However, I don't know if I said this to you in another thread or just thought it... the solution to filling the emptiness of open worlds is with crowdsourcing. I got the idea one time when I was adding to Broadcast Comms, I remember thinking, "why are there only ten responses here? There are hundreds of ways that the various flavors of person might express this!" -- which gave me the idea that developers should be making threads asking for mass contributions to fill the cavities of flavor and imagination in their projects. The lone developer is crippled by the fact that he must do everything himself, but as soon as it becomes a 5 man, 10 man, 50 man effort the increases are probably exponential. Take any mod with a description, anything with goal or purpose or variety that is easily added to already existing code. Then imagine that not one (or two or three) developers, but FIFTY+ aegidian users had each thought up tens of variations of each subset of thing in that mod... suddenly the richness of the world explodes.

(Szaumix)

References

• The Seven Basic Plots
• Stranger's Roolite Essay #1 (adding flavour & depth to Galaxy 1)

My oxp's

I can't really call these "mine" - I had to lean very heavily on the community to get any of them published!

• Addons for Beginners (Vital Statistics) - downloads useful oxp's for knowing what's what! On the Expansions manager
• Hints - Help for new players (in-game): Overhear some useful (and some not-so-useful!) tips at the station bar.
• Lore Collection (Classic Elite) = downloads oxp's to recreate the world of Classic Elite's lore (rather than just that of the game code)

My tweaks to other people's oxp's

• Broadcast Comms - Digebiti Variations - the real work was all done by Phkb! On the Expansions manager
• Steampunk HUD‎‎ - added HUDSelector compatibility & posted on the Expansions Manager
• Famous Planets - Updates & corrections to the planetinfo.plist - you need to tweak it to include them!

OXP HowTo

• What "can" be changed without re-compiling? (2010-date) - for what oxp's cannot do see the 2021-2 posts
• Spara's intro to Dockable.oxp's (2021) Override .oxp's, using the Debug Console, moving a station, fixing the market, issues with brackets.
• Phkb's intro to Mission.oxp's (2021) This and following posts explain player choices, story-line plots, timers, world events etc.
• LittleBear's intro to GNN Broadcasts & bar conversations (2022)

Links

• Fons et Origo of this Wiki: BB "Wiki-ed" thread

by winston » Tue Jan 03, 2006 3:30 pm
On a suggestion from Red Ravens on the EBBS, EliteWiki has been started. It is for all Elite-related stuff, fiction, factual, how to, etc. It needs articles.

If you want to contribute Oolite information, please do.

Once there's some content up, I'll advertise the EliteWiki further.

Good Oolite articles would be:

- Quaternions and why are they useful
- How to make an add-on ship
- How to make missions
- General information on the game

etc. (It's not just for factual information either - there are categories for fiction, too).

EliteWiki is at http://wiki.alioth.net and anyone can add articles, categories, edit etc. The front page has a link to the MediaWiki help so if you've never edited a wiki before you can find out how. MediaWiki is the software that Wikipedia uses.

By Jan 2006 Oolite was no longer AppleMac only - Winston had helped develop the Linux version (and DAJT the Windows version), and there were a number of the early OXPs: Aegidian's exemplars, a couple of dozen ships by Murgh, 8bitapocalypse & Flying Circus, some stations, a handful of early missions, HUDs and collections of different sounds. See Oosat.

From this, one can deduce that the Oolite category was originally all-important, and served crucially to differentiate the Oolite articles from those for Classic Elite and Frontier. But the Oolite contributions grew and grew. The others stagnated. But this wiki was originally for all the Classic Elite derivatives - hence the Main Page and such original 2006 articles as Vetitice & Empire (click on the "history" tab for each to see the older versions).

Fascinating threads

• See the threads listed here: User:Cim
• The pain of flying an Andromeda...or any other big ship! - see discussions on Trade/Economics
• Wishes for Oolite's development (Wolfspirit 2007) thread with several of his posts
• Dynamic Ooniverse (2007) - the Ooniverse changing as time goes on (eg more pirates, Thargoids etc).
• Alternative Galaxies for Oolite: Galaxy seeds and system properties 2012 thread; OoniverseRepopulation 2017 attempt.

Attempts to elicit a response

• Stranger's Roolite Essay (Oolite essay: game lore, features and mechanics) - and see his second essay too Economics & Trade!
• OXPs - Strategic thinking!: what oxp's do we need? Should we have a meta-oxp for people after good graphics? Can we simulate wars?
• Government Types (anarchy/corporate state etc)

Other Links

• Sunless Skies - I came across this on the Pioneer forum. Very suggestive - I do like the interactions while docked and it would be super to have something similar in Oolite. Also to be able to build up the persona of one's in-game avatar in some sort of way.
• Also from the Pioneer forum: Syndicates, Revolutionaries, and Opposition Governments - ideas for introducing crooks and politics
• Who Broke the In-Game Economy? - not as profound as it could be, but a start.

• Quote: ... Oolite is not "just a shooter" game. But it would be very interesting someday to see what it could be like if even half of the attention and effort that has gone into the combat related functions was expended on the economic and cultural possibilities Ganelon
• Inspiration: A man I would be honoured to meet