FAQ: 19/07/2006

1. What's the point of the game?
To fly from planet to planet, buying and selling goods, shooting pirates or committing acts of piracy. There's no goal other than perhaps to achieve the rank of ELITE.

1.1. I'm still confused, how do I play?
Have a look at Ian Bell's Flight Training Manual for the original BBC Elite, some of Oolite's control keys are different from the original, so be sure to read it alongside the Oolite ReadMe file..

1.2. What do the various colors represent on the radar?
White - unpowered items that can't mass-lock the in-system drive.
Green/Yellow - navigation buoys.
Yellow - powered craft.
Red - powered craft identified as hostile.
Green - space stations.
Green/Red - thargoids
Purple - police
Blue/Red - police on intercept
Red/Yellow - active mine (about to detonate)
Blue/Cyan - witchspace wormhole

1.3. Why are the ships so slow? It takes up to half-an-hour to get to the spacestation when you enter a system!
Oolite is a simulation game — one based on a game design that comes from a time before 'twitch' gaming. That said, there are plenty of ways to speed up your game and cut that journey time dramatically. For the full story read this post on the Oolite Bulletin Board.

1.4. My keyboard doesn't have a particular key used by Oolite, what can I do to change the keys?
Oolite reads a key configuration file called keyconfig.plist that you can find at /AddOns/Config/keyconfig.plist (previous versions of Oolite can also read this file but you have to create it first). You can open this file in any text editor and change the ASCII values of the keys used to suit your own preferences.

2. Does it work on Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar)?
No, sadly I have had to drop support for Mac OS X 10.2 because of increasing incompatibilities.
The minimum OS requirement for Oolite on the Mac is now Mac OS X 10.3.9

2.1 Does it work on the new Intel Macs?
Yes, v1.65 is a Universal Binary.

3. Is there a port for the PC or Linux?
Yes. Oolite for Linux is stable and is at the same level of development as Oolite for the Mac. Development of Oolite for Windows lags behind the GNU/Linux version by a few days. You can find links to Oolite ports in the sidebar to the left.

4. I have a question not answered here, where can I get help?
At the Oolite Bulletin Boards, the Elite Bulletin Board System, or by emailing the author.
You can also find more information about Oolite in the Oolite section of the Elite wiki.