Oolite 2.0 or II

Debate about the Future Development of Oolite

In essence, does one carry on slowly changing Oolite (2.0) whilst maintaining continuity with Classic Elite

or

does one perform a quantum leap and create a totally new game to conform to modern space-game capabilities & stereotypes (Oolite II)?

Historical Perspective

One of the running issues since the early days of Oolite was maintaining similarity with Classic Elite. Thus, Aegidian's work focused on rewriting Classic Elite for the AppleMac where his Strict Game was a very close resemblance to Elite. His opening up the game code through oxp's allowed variation - but most people who downloaded Oolite at the time had come from playing Elite a decade or more earlier. Many had also tried Frontier/FFE and had differing views towards them (brilliantly scientific! ... wonderful gaming ideas! ... lousy gameplay! ... buggy as heck!).

As time went on, a growing minority of people with no background of playing Elite got involved. For them, retaining the connection with Elite was less vital.

Thus debates sprang up about retaining the Energy Bomb, for example. Elite was player-centred, but Oolite is not. The energy bomb was much loved by the Classic Elite players, but seen as utterly player-centred (the player is always unhurt by it - unlike the Quirium Cascade Mine which replaced it). See the essay on player-centric gaming in Cheating for more detail.

Other areas where tension can be seen are approaches to Trading. Classic Elite's primitive model has been surpassed by modern games. It was written for a 8-bit 42 KB computer - and helped create a compulsive game back in the 1980s. But if one was never hooked on playing Elite it is not so good. See the critique in Economics. Oolite being so alterable has preserved its relevance to the non-Elite newcomer - one can easily download a range of OXPs which counteract each of the various perceived deficiencies in the game. But one must spend time and effort mastering the Vanilla game and the hundreds of OXPs to do this. Not all will.

Hence the impulse to rewrite the game from scratch as Oolite II.

Links

Oolite - you might find the A little History & some important early Versions section useful for giving some context to the above.

Debates about this on the Bulletin Boards

• Oolite 2.0 or II (2016/7)
• Dream Weapon (No, I'm not proposing another OXP here) (2011)
• Future plans for Oolite 1.x (2011) - starts with summary of lower thread
• Looking Ahead (2011) by Jens Ayton

And see Cim's listed threads.