150 lines
6.8 KiB
Plaintext
150 lines
6.8 KiB
Plaintext
Oolite-Linux Frequently Asked Questions
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=======================================
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Note: Long answers to questions about installing and gameplay can be
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found in README.TXT and PLAYING.TXT respectively.
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General questions about Oolite for any platform
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-----------------------------------------------
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1. What's the point of the game?
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To fly from planet to planet, buying and selling goods, shooting pirates
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or committing acts of piracy. There's no goal other than perhaps to achieve
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the rank of ELITE.
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1.1. I'm still confused, how do I play?
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Have a look at Ian Bell's Flight Training Manual for the original BBC Elite,
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some of Oolite's control keys are different from the original, so be sure
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to read it alongside the Oolite Controls Wiki section.
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( http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/ )
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( http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Oolite_Keyboard_Controls )
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1.2. What do the various colors represent on the radar?
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White - unpowered items that can't mass-lock the in-system drive.
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Green/Yellow - navigation buoys.
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Yellow - powered craft.
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Red - powered craft identified as hostile.
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Green - space stations.
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Green/Red - thargoids
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Purple - police
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Blue/Red - police on intercept
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Red/Yellow - active mine (about to detonate)
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1.3. Why are the ships so slow? It takes up to half-an-hour to get to the
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spacestation when you enter a system!
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Oolite is a simulation game — one based on a game design that comes from
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a time before 'twitch' gaming. That said, there are plenty of ways to speed
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up your game and cut that journey time dramatically. For the full story
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read this post on the Oolite Bulletin Board.
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( http://aegidian.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=301 )
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1.4. My keyboard doesn't have a particular key used by Oolite, what can
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I do to change the keys?
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Oolite reads a key configuration file called keyconfig.plist that (from v1.40)
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you can find at /AddOns/Config/keyconfig.plist (previous versions of
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Oolite can also read this file but you have to create it first). You
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can open this file in any text editor and change the ASCII values of
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the keys used to suit your own preferences.
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2. Does it work on Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar)?
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Yes, from version 1.20 to version 1.51 Oolite works with Mac OS X 10.2.8.
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There are still has some problems with Speech Synthesis and handling
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events in full-screen mode though, so you're advised not to use those
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options.
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Keeping Oolite compatible with 10.2.8 has been a task with diminishing
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returns for me, and from v1.52 I will only be supporting Mac OS X 10.3
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and higher.
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3. Is there a port for the PC or Linux?
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Yes. Some people are working on this, porting my code to GNUStep and SDL.
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You can find links to their work under 'Ports' in the nav-bar to the left
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4. I have a question not answered here, where can I get help?
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At the Oolite Bulletin Boards, the Elite Bulletin Board System, or by
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emailing the author.
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Oolite BBS: http://aegidian.org/bb
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Elite BBS: http://www.alioth.net/cgi-bin/bbs.pl?siteId=1&action=show
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Author: <oolite@aegidian.org>
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Linux port: <dyls@alioth.net> / <dajt@...>
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Linux Specific Questions
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------------------------
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1. Why does Oolite use GNUstep?
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Oolite was written for the Macintosh and was at 'production level' for about
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a year before the Linux port was started. Mac OS X is essentially what
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NeXTstep/OpenStep became when Apple bought NeXT. Oolite was written in
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Objective-C using Cocoa (the Macintosh Objective-C libraries). GNUstep
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provide the same Objective-C classes that are used by Mac OS X for building
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utilities and applications.
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To not need GNUstep, Oolite would have to be totally rewritten from scratch.
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There was a project early on to make a Win32 port by converting objc to C++
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automatically, but the project seems to have vanished. It is likely that
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the mechanical conversion of objc to C++ would be the easy bit - then
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you still have to re-implement Cocoa/GNUstep as C++ classes; a task
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of truly epic proportions.
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Even if it was practical, it would mean that any new features implemented
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for a C++ version of the game would have to be backported into the ObjC
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version of the game on the Mac, a much more troublesome task than the
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simple code merges that are possible now, as the GNUstep code and
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Mac OS X code are 99% the same.
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2. What are the positives of using GNUstep?
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A well developed object oriented library for Objective-C, plus the just mentioned commonality with the OS X code base which forms the
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root of Oolite.
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Oolite probably also has the distinction of being the only proper
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GNUstep OpenGL game :-)
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3. What are the downsides of using GNUstep?
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Most Linux users don't have GNUstep installed. This is easily solved with
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the dependency pack that comes with this Oolite binary installer, but it
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does mean Oolite uses a bit more memory than you'd expect if the game
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was written just with C and SDL/OpenGL, and the performance probably
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takes a bit of a hit because Objective-C uses more 'real' message passing
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than languages like C++. However, I do have a 5 year old laptop I do
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tests on, and it runs fine on that.
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4. What distros will Oolite run on?
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Hopefully any distro that came out within the last couple of years
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with a 2.4 or 2.6 kernel.
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The package you have now is known to run on:
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- Gentoo
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- Fedora Core 2
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- CentOS 4.1
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- Ubuntu 5.04
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- Debian Sid (Sept 2005)
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- Knoppix 3.7 (with the 2.4 kernel)
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5. What dependencies do I need?
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Aside from X, you'll need accelerated OpenGL. The game plays well with
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relatively modest accelerated 3D hardware - the frame rate is acceptable
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on thte Radeon Mobility M6 on older laptops, and I've found it playable
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on HP/Compaq 'business' PCs such as the d510 which has cheap integrated
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onboard Intel graphics. Of course it plays VERY well on my development
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system with is a P4 with a GeForce 4 Ti 4200.
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Aside from that, you shouldn't need any additional software dependencies
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since most of the libraries are part of the dependencies pack that's
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included with this package.
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6. Where can I get the source code for the game?
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You can get the full game source from the following two places:
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FTP: ftp://ftp.alioth.net/oolite (look for the 'src' tarballs)
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HTTP: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de
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You can also get the latest source by anonymous SVN - see
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http://oolite-linux.berlios.de for more details.
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Source code (mainly tarballs) for the dependency pack can be found
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at ftp.alioth.net/oolite-depends-source
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7. What about other (non x86) architectures?
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Sadly, I don't have any non-x86 architecture systems I can install Linux on
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to build the game. However, binaries for other architectures are always
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welcome - please contact <dyls@alioth.net> if you've successfully built
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and run the game on non-x86 platforms. You shouldn't run into endian-ness
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problems as it already runs on macppc under OS X, but I've heard the odd
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report that building GNUstep on 64-bit archs failed - but if you have
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an amd64 system - please try and build it and let me know the results!
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(Additionally, last time I tried to build GNUstep on Fedora Core 4 it failed
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due to an internal compiler error in gcc 4)
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