Oh My Gosh was there an update

[Leviticus]

Plain and simple, my old O-R-B copy from steam shows version 1.04, when I installed it onto a windows 10 machine, not only did the game surprise me by working, but the game now has multiple processor support (which it previously lacked) Aldar as a playable race only on SOME scenarios, and destoryer class ships bank and pitch now, (Interesting to see a Righteous popping a wheelie, it's actually usefull now because it can use all 4 turrets for once.) Can SOMEONE confirm that this may have been... spruced up a bit? No mods, I know there is the planetary mod, I did not download that.

[yamanohijiri]

Thanks for your quick reply! As for me, I am really not given any choise other than Malus and Alyssia on Cohmra (playing on Mac through wine but that should not be the reason). Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine playing for Kyulek, Aldar or Elathen: they did not have any mining, recon or carrier units the last time I played the game in far 2007. I am under impression that 1.0.4 addon is also an old pre-Steam thing, although I did not play it earlier and may be wrong about it. I would be fascinated if all five races were playable because the other three are so different from Malus and Alyssia and this would add diversity, but sadly we are probably not given such an opportunity. If you are able to make this work without crashes, please tell me.

[Leviticus]

Originally posted by yamanohijiri:

Thanks for your quick reply! As for me, I am really not given any choise other than Malus and Alyssia on Cohmra (playing on Mac through wine but that should not be the reason). Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine playing for Kyulek, Aldar or Elathen: they did not have any mining, recon or carrier units the last time I played the game in far 2007. I am under impression that 1.0.4 addon is also an old pre-Steam thing, although I did not play it earlier and may be wrong about it. I would be fascinated if all five races were playable because the other three are so different from Malus and Alyssia and this would add diversity, but sadly we are probably not given such an opportunity. If you are able to make this work without crashes, please tell me.

I have the most up to date O-R-B Pre-Steam version which was 1.04 and the actual steam version which is also 1.04. As for the no mining or recon, yeah they are missing those units and I think that's what crashes it. If you force Cohmra to open with the aldar race as the playable race using Scenario Editor to open the program, the Aldar spawn with an Alyssian Triumph which is annoying because you can't build anything as the aldar, the tech tree and the build list is completely bare. So that's probably why it crashes in the normal game. However, the aldar did have mining units they just weren't finished. code for them and their ID's can be found in the scenario editor. You can also find an unfinished Kyulek starbase in there and a mining colony, both of which crash the editor on spawning in but it seems obvious that the devs intended to impliment the ability to play as those races. A shame, there's alot of unfinished goodies hidden in O-R-B's code.

Kind of like the console command to make O-R-B's playing arena's free roam. There's a config tweak you can make so that if you remove the boundary line in scenario editor, you can littterally go for ever in any direction. It looks like the Statues scenario intended to use this because that cluster of asteroids out by the statue that looks like a guy holding a spear, well, they're all minable and there's a trigger field out there for some reason. If you use the config tweak to get over there nothing happens but... it makes you wonder.

[yamanohijiri]

Thank you a lot for the interesting stuff! You may also like the article at http://orb-offworld-resource-base.wikia.com/wiki/Ships,_Levels_and_Stuff_Cut_From_the_Game (probably you have seen it though).
Free roaming feature sounds fascinating! Unfortunately, Scenario Editor works poorly under Wine so I cannot make such experiments yet – need to get to Windows machine. But I wonder if you can share the tweak for free roaming.

[Leviticus]

If you look closely at the avatar of the guy who wrote that article and my avatar you might notice a connection. Here I was thinking it was a dead wiki.

And just to prove that it's not coincidence and that Mg-4ever and I are really the same, recheck that exact page and scroll down to the comments section.

[Leviticus]

Anyways that config file tweak I was talking about, to make the game have infinite playspace for a custom scenario, use this:

Universe_Size= X where X is the number you desire. 500000 is the standard boundary limit so think big. This command determines the maximum size of playable area. The game doesn't like you touching this. Overriden by scenario boundary settings, if there are no boundaries, this number denotes the maximum radius in a sphere from the center that the player can command units to travel. If set to numbers larger than 500000, the game will play it but it will cause visual glitches like shaking ships when that particular ship gets too far away from the center. If you go really far out, friendly sensors stop working and you will no longer be able to engage the enemy. This distance is around the 3rd ring in the tactical overhead map, so this tweak isn't as usefull as it first sounds.

[yamanohijiri]

Wow! I suspected that may be you are the author :) I really appreciate your research on ORB. The game does not have a huge community so every piece of information is valuable, and yet you did such an elaborate job creating and filling a wiki by yourself and digging the game for the information! I was especially glad that you've found hidden missions and the sixth race: it gives a different look on the game's story which probably was planned to be even more epic. Personally I consider the story of ORB very appealing and it would be cool if it had some sequel. The game itself is very underrated.

[Leviticus]

It's a good story but here's the problem, most of the cinematics and the storyline despite being great was geared completely wrong for an RTS. Now a flight simulator where you could pilot any of the above, that with OR-B's storyline would have been a perfect union, not saying the RTS is bad but it doesn't mix well with it's action oriented storyline, case in point being the sixth race, in an RTS yeah it kind of fits but the way the logs describe the encounter fits more of an action approach and less of an hour or two of planning before carefully crushing your opponent.

[Leviticus]

Originally posted by yamanohijiri:

Wow! I suspected that may be you are the author :) I really appreciate your research on ORB. The game does not have a huge community so every piece of information is valuable, and yet you did such an elaborate job creating and filling a wiki by yourself and digging the game for the information! I was especially glad that you've found hidden missions and the sixth race: it gives a different look on the game's story which probably was planned to be even more epic. Personally I consider the story of ORB very appealing and it would be cool if it had some sequel. The game itself is very underrated.

And thanks btw, love this game. I've been thinking of adding pages with pics and trivia for each scenario in Skirmish mode but the fact is I'm lazy. Might do it some day but by and large I've been too lazy to actually get up and do it. Not that it's difficult, it's just crashing my computer by having 10 thousand nukes go off at the same time in GMOD is hilarious and time consuming, what with the ten minute reboot process. I get bored easy, I know. Then there was the Skyrim mod I was helping develop before it fell on it's face. Now that there's not much to do I might get back into the wiki soon but no promises.

That and it gets frustratung when you write out an entire page for the wiki but then the wiki crashes the web browser and deletes all your work for the last 15 minutes.