Re: Oolite

In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] says...
> 
> So, I haven't really been playing elite that much, but I have been 
> playing Oolite, which seems to be a rather decent clone to my uncultured 
> eye. What's your opinion?
> Or is something like Elite: Dangerous better? (which I have but haven't 
> found the will to actually play for as long as Oolite)

Big fan of both here.

Oolite is a great fan-made remake that retains a lot of the atmosphere 
of the original 1984 Elite, while making the game world feel busier and 
more fleshed-out. NPCs act more like real pilots going about their own 
business, the graphics are much slicker, and you can do a lot more stuff 
like flying different ships, running transport missions, and docking 
with rock hermits. There are loads of fan-made expansion packs that you 
can mix and match and you choose, and you can even code your own to 
customise the game however you like. As an open-source, grass-roots 
community effort, it's remarkably impressive.

Elite Dangerous looks spectacular and the galaxy is unfathomably vast. 
If what you want from a game is to fly cool spaceships and look at 
beautiful stars, it feels pretty close to perfect. And, of course, it's 
multiplayer and online, giving you the ability to team up with friends 
or take part in community events and storylines. Later expansion 
activities such as scanning alien plants and taking part in on-foot 
battles feel a bit more bolted-on, but can still be a decent diversion 
if flying around gets a bit samey. I'm particularly impressed by the way 
ED has motivated players to create their own external tools and groups 
to make the complexity of the game more tractable; the encyclopedic 
inara.cz, the star catalogue of edsm.net, and the shipbuilding tools of 
edsy.org are ones I'd be struggling without. I'm very much enjoying the 
current Thargoid War storyline, which has led to players organising, 
gathering intelligence, and forming bold strategies to hold the invasion 
forces back.

I do find it interesting how the two games have clearly grown from the 
same roots, but have such a different feel to them. Oolite leans heavily 
into the space-opera side of sci-fi, and some of the expansions are more 
than a little tongue-in-cheek (reminding me of the original Elite's nods 
to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). ED feels more "realistic" 
(though still with a fair bit of handwavey space-magic) and there's a 
genuine sense of awe at being a very tiny speck in a full-scale 65,000-
light-year-across replica of the Milky Way.

I should be working but now I kind of feel like a quick game.

(there is no such thing as a quick game)

R