blog/data/2016-12-11-nice-oolite.txt

   1 Title: Oolite, a life in space as vagabond and mercenary - nice free software
   2 Tags: english, debian, nice free software
   3 Date: 2016-12-11 11:40
   4
   5 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-12-11-nice-oolite.png"/></p>
   6
   7 <p>In my early years, I played
   8 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Classic_Elite">the epic game
   9 Elite</a> on my PC.  I spent many months trading and fighting in
  10 space, and reached the 'elite' fighting status before I moved on.  The
  11 original Elite game was available on Commodore 64 and the IBM PC
  12 edition I played had a 64 KB executable.  I am still impressed today
  13 that the authors managed to squeeze both a 3D engine and details about
  14 more than 2000 planet systems across 7 galaxies into a binary so
  15 small.</p>
  16
  17 <p>I have known about <a href="http://www.oolite.org/">the free
  18 software game Oolite inspired by Elite</a> for a while, but did not
  19 really have time to test it properly until a few days ago.  It was
  20 great to discover that my old knowledge about trading routes were
  21 still valid.  But my fighting and flying abilities were gone, so I had
  22 to retrain to be able to dock on a space station.  And I am still not
  23 able to make much resistance when I am attacked by pirates, so I
  24 bougth and mounted the most powerful laser in the rear to be able to
  25 put up at least some resistance while fleeing for my life. :)</p>
  26
  27 <p>When playing Elite in the late eighties, I had to discover
  28 everything on my own, and I had long lists of prices seen on different
  29 planets to be able to decide where to trade what.  This time I had the
  30 advantages of the
  31 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Main_Page">Elite wiki</a>,
  32 where information about each planet is easily available with common
  33 price ranges and suggested trading routes.  This improved my ability
  34 to earn money and I have been able to earn enough to buy a lot of
  35 useful equipent in a few days.  I believe I originally played for
  36 months before I could get a docking computer, while now I could get it
  37 after less then a week.</p>
  38
  39 <p>If you like science fiction and dreamed of a life as a vagabond in
  40 space, you should try out Oolite.  It is available for Linux, MacOSX
  41 and Windows, and is included in Debian and derivatives since 2011.</p>
  42
  43 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  44 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  45 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>