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This review is slightly less impressive if you are aware of the other (official) Elite games, "Frontier: Elite II" and "Frontier: First Encounters". > It has t

by keenerd 12y ago

This review is slightly less impressive if you are aware of the other (official) Elite games, "Frontier: Elite II" and "Frontier: First Encounters". > It has to be said that the premise of oOlite is based upon the Elite Universe, however oOlite is really a new concept, with so many new features, new ships, weapons, stations, missions etc that it is a unique game in its own right. No. Oolite is not an expansion of the original Elite and really should be compared to FFE. One might as well compare modern Libreoffice to MS Word 1.0 for DOS (the age difference is about the same). No critism of Oolite, as FFE was extremely buggy and Oolite is a solid foss replacement.

vidarh 12y ago
Oolite is much more of a descendant of the original Elite than it is an descendant of FFE. Last I tried Oolite you couldn't land on planets for example. And contrary to Frontier: Elite II and Frontier: First Encounters, Oolite takes place in the "classic" Elite universe. Oolite also uses the "classic" hyperjump's of Elite, rather than the mechanism used in FFE. Overall, I'd say oOlite is "Elite 2 for those that didn't like the Frontier games". It doesn't try to change Elite conceptually nearly as much as the Frontier games did. When I finally first saw them, the games were not recognizable to me. When I first saw oOlite, my first reaction was "ah, this is Elite, just prettier and with more choices". Comparing Oolite to FFE makes little sense to me, unless your goal is explicitly to contrast them - they've gone in drastically different directions from the same starting point, and oOlite bears pretty much no resemblance to FFE.
- Freaky 12y ago
  And for those who preferred the sequels, we have Pioneer - http://pioneerspacesim.net/ http://pioneerspacesim.net/
  - ekianjo 12y ago
    Do you know if it's any good? I have never heard about it actually.
    - Freaky 12y ago
      It's lacking a good deal of polish, but it's a good effort. It's more or less a direct clone of Frontier/FE, practically to a fault, though sadly without any of the original ships due to copyright restrictions. Surprised oolite hasn't had similar problems. There's also a commercial space sim based on it in development called Paragon which might be worth keeping an eye on: http://www.paragongame.com/ http://www.paragongame.com/
- keenerd 12y ago
  Let me make my point clearer - this article gives a lot of credit to Oolite for things that other Elite games did first. Keep in mind, I'm only critiquing the way the article was written, not oolite. Oolite is a fun and well designed game. Also I might commit the same sin as the author, and credit FFE for the introduction of a feature when I should be crediting FE2. Let's run down the list. > If you sit outside a station, you can watch many ships entering and leaving to their destinations, watch as a fugitive decides to attack a vulnerable trader, and is attacked by the system police, or scoops up its ill gotten gains. ... These things will happen regardless as to whether you are there or not. THAT!.. is one of the major points that differentiates between the two games, which makes oOlite a game of its own. This was more or less in the original (Acorn) Elite and was absolutely in Frontier. > oOlite brings new roles and perspectives to fill that seat from the outset, such as transporting clients (should you have a passenger bay fitted) from one system to another, or delivering packages to earn credits Entirely from Frontier. > One example as to the massive improvements within oOlite compared to any other Space Trading Game could be the career of a miner. ... after purchasing a fuel Scoop, an item intended to scoop fuel gravitational matter from the Suns, but also found to scoop all items with matter, such as CargoPods (ejected from traders you’ve attacked, or that you’ve come across after someone else’s misfortune), also pieces of Asteroids found in Space, broken up with a mining laser "Compared to any other" except for the original Elite, which had all of those. And Elite 2 and Elite 3. > the forthcoming release of Elite: Dangerous (the official sequel to the Original Elite game By David Braben: see a recent E3 2014 trailer on youtube) Well these extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I was pretty sure "Frontier Elite II" was "the official sequel". Oh, linked the source is just gameplay footage, no voice-over retconning FE2 out of existence. > Within the vast regions of Space and the thousands of planets, there are many different systems of Government ... Once again, not original and entirely from Elite. The next couple of paragraphs are well written, explaining actual original features or giving credit to Elite when appropriate. I would have no complaints if the entire article was written in the same style as the sections about missions, expansions, backgrounds, and towing. > Elite gave a new realm of “choices” in a game. Then came oOlite, which took hold of the idea of Elite, transforming it into something huge ... But it quickly falls back into a revisionist history. > It is without doubt, the best Space Trading game freely available, and is, in the opinion of the writer, everything that Elite wished to be, and with the advent of OXPs, everything that the new Elite: Dangerous wants to be but can’t. Considering that "Elite: Dangerous" is only half done, a bold claim. Other un-credited things that were in other Elite games first (but were more awkward/lengthy to quote) include the story-driven news feeds, jump tracking, a table of prices, and in-game ads. Basically, if you edited out 20% of the article it could be about FFE. 30% of the article and it could be about the original Elite. Considering that 100% of the article is about how great oolite is, this does not exactly come across as fair.

by keenerd 12y ago

vidarh 12y ago

Oolite is much more of a descendant of the original Elite than it is an descendant of FFE. Last I tried Oolite you couldn't land on planets for example. And contrary to Frontier: Elite II and Frontier: First Encounters, Oolite takes place in the "classic" Elite universe. Oolite also uses the "classic" hyperjump's of Elite, rather than the mechanism used in FFE. Overall, I'd say oOlite is "Elite 2 for those that didn't like the Frontier games". It doesn't try to change Elite conceptually nearly as much as the Frontier games did. When I finally first saw them, the games were not recognizable to me. When I first saw oOlite, my first reaction was "ah, this is Elite, just prettier and with more choices". Comparing Oolite to FFE makes little sense to me, unless your goal is explicitly to contrast them - they've gone in drastically different directions from the same starting point, and oOlite bears pretty much no resemblance to FFE.

Freaky 12y ago
And for those who preferred the sequels, we have Pioneer - http://pioneerspacesim.net/ http://pioneerspacesim.net/
- ekianjo 12y ago
  Do you know if it's any good? I have never heard about it actually.
  - Freaky 12y ago
    It's lacking a good deal of polish, but it's a good effort. It's more or less a direct clone of Frontier/FE, practically to a fault, though sadly without any of the original ships due to copyright restrictions. Surprised oolite hasn't had similar problems. There's also a commercial space sim based on it in development called Paragon which might be worth keeping an eye on: http://www.paragongame.com/ http://www.paragongame.com/
keenerd 12y ago
Let me make my point clearer - this article gives a lot of credit to Oolite for things that other Elite games did first. Keep in mind, I'm only critiquing the way the article was written, not oolite. Oolite is a fun and well designed game. Also I might commit the same sin as the author, and credit FFE for the introduction of a feature when I should be crediting FE2. Let's run down the list. > If you sit outside a station, you can watch many ships entering and leaving to their destinations, watch as a fugitive decides to attack a vulnerable trader, and is attacked by the system police, or scoops up its ill gotten gains. ... These things will happen regardless as to whether you are there or not. THAT!.. is one of the major points that differentiates between the two games, which makes oOlite a game of its own. This was more or less in the original (Acorn) Elite and was absolutely in Frontier. > oOlite brings new roles and perspectives to fill that seat from the outset, such as transporting clients (should you have a passenger bay fitted) from one system to another, or delivering packages to earn credits Entirely from Frontier. > One example as to the massive improvements within oOlite compared to any other Space Trading Game could be the career of a miner. ... after purchasing a fuel Scoop, an item intended to scoop fuel gravitational matter from the Suns, but also found to scoop all items with matter, such as CargoPods (ejected from traders you’ve attacked, or that you’ve come across after someone else’s misfortune), also pieces of Asteroids found in Space, broken up with a mining laser "Compared to any other" except for the original Elite, which had all of those. And Elite 2 and Elite 3. > the forthcoming release of Elite: Dangerous (the official sequel to the Original Elite game By David Braben: see a recent E3 2014 trailer on youtube) Well these extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I was pretty sure "Frontier Elite II" was "the official sequel". Oh, linked the source is just gameplay footage, no voice-over retconning FE2 out of existence. > Within the vast regions of Space and the thousands of planets, there are many different systems of Government ... Once again, not original and entirely from Elite. The next couple of paragraphs are well written, explaining actual original features or giving credit to Elite when appropriate. I would have no complaints if the entire article was written in the same style as the sections about missions, expansions, backgrounds, and towing. > Elite gave a new realm of “choices” in a game. Then came oOlite, which took hold of the idea of Elite, transforming it into something huge ... But it quickly falls back into a revisionist history. > It is without doubt, the best Space Trading game freely available, and is, in the opinion of the writer, everything that Elite wished to be, and with the advent of OXPs, everything that the new Elite: Dangerous wants to be but can’t. Considering that "Elite: Dangerous" is only half done, a bold claim. Other un-credited things that were in other Elite games first (but were more awkward/lengthy to quote) include the story-driven news feeds, jump tracking, a table of prices, and in-game ads. Basically, if you edited out 20% of the article it could be about FFE. 30% of the article and it could be about the original Elite. Considering that 100% of the article is about how great oolite is, this does not exactly come across as fair.