Talk:Exploration

Leaving aside any discussion of alternative galaxy seeds for now (mainly because it causes the devs to blow their minds), as you say to perform meaningful "exploration" in Oolite requires two matters.

Ignorance about what one is exploring! Game modifications enhancing the act of exploration!

Although I'd express myself without the bangs!

Back in the olden days, we didn't have a method to conceal chart data. If Explorers' Club were being created now, it would look like Zero Maps or Here Be Dragons. There'd be an option (Murphy and I both liked adding more and more options to existing OXPs) when you first installed it, asking whether you'd prefer travelogue mode (what you're familiar with) or a harder exploration mode with the charts initially concealed. That would be a one-time choice, and you'd have to start over if you changed your mind.

As previously discussed, Explorers' Club is easily modifiable, so the question of how much work should a player be required to do to count a system as "visited" or "explored" is an open one: it can be made as easy as jumping in and out again, or as hard as any mission you could devise. Be wary though, that Oolite is a game, and we're supposed to be entertaining the player, not testing their patience. (Something the devs forgot with the loathsome Oolite 1.82.)

Getting away from Explorers' Club, exploration can be viewed at two levels: the chart level or the flying about, pew-pew, level. Flying about, the player needs more docks to visit, and more astrophysical things to see. Tianve and ringed planets are good(-ish). The criticism made by several people is that OXP creators make one of two errors: they "adopt" one home system and add as much embellishment to it as they can, ignoring that other players may only ever see all their effort once in passing; or at the other extreme, they feel a need to add their new space-dock design to almost every system, where it soon becomes boring. Relatively few seem to understand there's a huge range between 1/2048 and 1024+/2048.

I'm not much interested in the flying about level of Oolite, which I consider largely a lost cause. It needs a distinct vision of a particular look-and-feel to aim for, and a concerted effort to make existing and new OXPs consistent with that vision. It won't happen.

At the level of making planning a route to travel across the galactic chart more challenging for the player, I see several possibilities. I'm currently toying with three.

The Witches of Middlemap

Tachyona - is a clumsy first attempt at using 2 or more planets on the chart, disguised as a single planet, to simulate cycles of planetary movement at the chart level. (Not to be compared to things like Orbits OXP that did it within the instantiated system.)

The Witches of Middlemap - there's a demonic looking pentacle smack-bang in the middle of chart 1. If you haven't noticed, concealing several of the nearby systems makes it much more obvious. Trapping the player within is a relatively trivial exercise. Forcing the player to appease the witches in order to escape is step two. Rewarding the player by revealing the hitherto hidden systems would follow.

The Hidden Path - would involve hiding the gal-drive completely in normal play, and occasionally substituting a galaxy jump for a normal jump without informing the player. Yes, this IS the system I was heading to, but what happened to the one I came from!?

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SOTL Exploration

Would this work as "Local Maximum"? We might need to add a dock!

SOTL AltMap

Discussion on Wildeblood's views above

His responses in italics

Questions

• 1) If I can try to recapitulate:

Two aspects? types? of exploration. Chart level where the chart and its solar systems should be genuinely "discovered" (need to be hidden). Flying about "pew-pew" level where one explores an individual system.

Why "pew-pew"? I don't understand the nuance, I'm afraid.

W: As every schoolboy knows, it's the sound a ray gun makes. Are you aware of a technology called television?

C: When I went to study at seminary I was given lengthy lectures about how a TV was a sewer outlet into your living room. When I came back home, I realised that it jolly well was. No telly since. And I never heard the pew-pews. But why "pew-pew"?

W: Well, they're right about television being a sewer. I watch a lot of youtube, but broadcast TV from the legacy media? No, I haven't turned it on in more than 2 years.

• 2) I'm unsure how what you've written above fits in with how you regard Szaumix & Switeck as possibly sharing your view.

W: Perhaps I misread them, or misremember the conversation completely, but the discussion I recall reading had them and hiran in furious agreement. Each making the point I made above: there's a world of possibility between 1/2048 and 2048/2048. Interesting things to catch the player's attention need to be added. To more than one system, but not all over the place. All things in moderation, you know.

• 3) How about a different way of putting the question: What emotionally thrills you about exploration? And, are there any exploration moments from your playing Oolite or any other game which you look back on with enjoyment?

W: Yes. But they've been removed from Oolite. One night I wondered whether the system instance one flies about in was a "boxed" space. We all know that only the current system is instantiated, and that you can't fly from one system to another without a "witchspace jump", during which terrible things happen to the friends you leave behind, and the new system is instantiated out of nothingness. But... I decided to try to fly to another system anyway. I wanted to know whether the game included any mechanism to deter such an action (it didn't), and whether eventually I'd hit the side of a box and be unable to go any further (I didn't).

Anyway, out there space casually ignores things considered laws of physics in less turbulent parts of the galaxy. There was a planet and a station that I had put out there, and I attempted to dock. I couldn't do it, because the station was jittering about all over the place. One couldn't dock, or shoot things, or scoop things, because everything was jittering about. I reported my findings to the BB. Ayton said, "You're not supposed to go that far out."
I replied that I already had and that's what I saw.
He said they'd thought they could make do with single precision calculation for the ooniverse's co-ordinates, but now they would change it to double-precision. Which they did.

(People also ask: "What is double precision and single precision?
The simplest way to distinguish between single- and double-precision computing is to look at how many bits represent the floating-point number. For single precision, 32 bits are used to represent the floating-point number. For double precision, 64 bits are used to represent the floating-point number.")

That's why Redspear, Stranger, and anyone else who wants to, can now do re-scaling experiments, and put things right over there -----> without them getting all jittery looking.

Personal views

There are four genuinely enjoyable exploration moments I've had in Oolite (bear in mind I've not played any other space games other than Classic Elite)

• 1) When I first played with Redspear/Spara's Additional Planets. The views! Jumping about from one planet to another. This eventually cloyed when I realised that the planetary configuration never changed - that they are all arranged at the same side of the sun so that they look good and its easy to jump from one to another.
• 2) When I added in your Distant Suns OXP. Arriving at a planet with a blue star and everything very dim! What an unforgettable moment!
• 3) Starting Stranger's World and travelling the immense distances (20-30 mins) from one planet to another. Much more realistic. But not much to do on arrival.
• 4) SOTL Exploration. Brilliant! Searching for asteroid clusters - what fun! What a shame it is unfinished. (SOTL AltMap is also very enticing, but again, needs even more work)

W: I cannot reconcile: your apparent fascination with SOTL Exploration, which is an alternative scenario; and your apparent dedication to collating the "lore" of the traditional Elite scenario.

I'll say this though, if you're looking for someone who could be cajoled into finishing SOTL Exploration, I'm not your man. Neither in ability, nor inclination.

C: But have you actually tried it? Discovering my first clutch of asteroids was a good moment! I was already into the Oolite lore. But then I stumbled across SOTL-E, was entranced by the Witchspace jump and carried on. It's the most authentic "Exploration" I've yet come across. There are exploratory challenges (finding stuff), the witchspace jumping is an adventure in itself, et cetera.

W: When you say, "exploratory challenges (finding stuff)" what do you mean? Keeping your eyes constantly peeled for energy crystals to gobble up? Or going on quests to collect the six facets of the key to time? Or just visual stuff, like the Tianve nebula? I'm unsure whether you're advocating for scenery, or story, or a reinforcement schedule? (I quite like the structure of the 5 sentences I just wrote, so I hope you can parse them ok.) Oolite isn't a commercial game, so it doesn't have a fast reinforcement schedule of the energy crystal style. The old-timers in the pre-javascript era made scenery, and phkb seems to be contenting himself with methodically updating it all. As for quests, missions in Oolite take the form, go to system x, kill ship x, collect reward x. Sometimes ship x is huge or many, but the basic form remains. There are lots of other forms that could be implemented, but I'm not aware that they have been. Wildeblood (talk) 05:31, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

C: 1) Exploration

From Wikipedia.org: 

Exploration has been defined as:

   To travel somewhere in search of discovery.
   To examine or investigate something systematically.
   To examine diagnostically.
   To (seek) experience first hand.
   To wander without any particular aim or purpose.

SOTL-E requires using the new equipment (Astrogatory Computer & Gravitational Sensor) to locate asteroids which may contain resources needed by the mother-ship. The asteroids are not in the obvious/usual/nonsensical places found in vanilla Oolite. One has to explore and look for them. Finding them is not so easy!

I suppose, that for me, Exploration involves discovering/seeing new things - new experiences. Sometimes looking explicitly for something (searching for the Tionisla Orbital Graveyard in the Stranger's World OXP suite back before Phkb added in the beacon last year, or The Collector's hidden hideout or the planet in the Tionisla Reporter mission. Wandering around, seeing what there is to see, getting to know it. Hopefully it is something interesting! Tianve's Pulsar is different. You can see it the moment you arrive at the witchpoint beacon - you don't need to search for it. I find that less enjoyable.

I admit that the asteroids in SOTL-E are not exactly fascinating! But the process of exploring for them was quite involved. In some ways, I suppose that it was a similar sort of experience to yours (in trying to fly to the next solar system) - except it was more successful!

And that for me is where the Systems OXPs add value. Different ships and stations in different systems. The hidden Hackers in Anarchies. The different SLAPUs and CZGFs in the different Commie systems. Royal Hunting Lodges in wealthier Feudal States. Astrofactories in Industrialised Dictatorships. Et cetera. Sadly, apart from the Hunting Lodges, the various Systems.oxps added-in-stations are merely copies of the Main Orbital with tweaked markets and tweaked prices for goods. Wouldn't it be great to be able to do stuff differently in Vetitice? Help an Astrogulag Mining Pod pilot escape the nasty system to civilised Digebiti? Help sabotage the Nova bomb production in the local SLAPU's Sector Black?  Or discover hidden Commie stations where they are up to mischief.

Its also what I was hoping to achieve with LitF before Massively Locked's mother collapsed. Beetle Bethlehem had already built in some minor differences for the various political systems - different screen shots for the inside, different chances of crime etc. ML added in more, and we were hoping to add in much more (see the ideas for the various government sectors and the list of museum descriptions for the different G1 commie systems on our sundered BB).

2) Missions

Quite a number of the missions have goals other than murdering other ships. Tionisla Reporter (find a planet), Asteroid Storm (save a station), Vanilla game Nova (save people), Long Way Round (passenger delivery), The Galactic Almanac (collect a shrubbery), Trident Down (investigate an attack), etc., etc. What sort of missions would you be wanting? Cholmondeley 10:31, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Brainstorming

• 1) It would be super to make more of SOTL Exploration.

It needs a better HUD, stuff to do with the resources one discovers, possibly hiding the chart (apart from what the mother ship already knows - ie part of the path taken to get there} and then including more instrumentation to discover the unknown systems!), and better models/textures (ship, "Local Maximum" station which should be another ship). And possibly a more sophisticated "career path".

We could add in the phkb's Tianvean pulsar, his Black Hole and maybe even some real asteroid rings (Commander Frame implied that he was working on this, and there might be relevant code in the "brilliant but broken" Tetiri Planet Ring OXP).

And in terms of adding bases at other planets, phkb's Hermitage might be adaptable (it has code for developing your Rock Hermit).

We could use the Final Capital ship (pictured) or a Generation Ship for the Local Maximum colony ship. And pillage phkb's recent Alternative Rock Hermits for the growing Rock Hermit at a new system - and work in how to carry passengers there (passenger berths?).

• 2) SOTL AltMap

This would take much more work. But there are rival blocks of worlds, possible wars, unpopulated worlds, etc. Adding in chart-hiding could make it very exciting! More political systems to work with, different species, etc. It needs an ambience retexture. Some Navies. Unsure about how well the NPC AI use of Torus drive works when it comes to combat.

• 3) Why is the "flying about level" a lost cause?

The vanilla-game descriptions give us a host of differences which can be built upon in-game.

We have OXPs which add in politics (we need a Corporate Systems OXP, and to decide how best to handle Democracies, Multi-Govs & Confederacies). More could be done (make something of Comoonin for example - those systems which belong, and those which don't).

We already have a textual differentiation regarding wealth, population & species which can be built on. Real differences for lobstoid worlds, for example. The ships (ship models, their responses to the player), the stations (what is available there, the docked experience, special stations - Witchspace Lobstoid shrines?), the downplanet experience (see DGill's work on Feudal States) etc. Redspear has done this to a limited extent. See his Alien Systems OXZ, Solos Alt Stations, & New lasers OXPs.

We would need to see if we can come up with something reasonable for the effects of wealth and population (SWEconomy does this for wealth).

We can add in more religion and have it make a real difference.

The OXPs are tweakable We can come up with a suite of tweaked OXPs which create a Ooniverse for a decent "flying about level" exploration game. And using the scenario.plist exclude all other OXPs which might wreck it.

Thus any issues arising from conceptual clashes between say the Anarchies & Feudal States OXPs could be dealt with.

Cholmondeley 11:26, 27 February 2024 (UTC) (original gubbins)

Cholmondeley 16:55, 27 February 2024 (UTC) (responses to responses)

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