more info on Rebirth.

TTD · Post by **TTD** » Fri, 12. Jul 13, 22:58

German text but vids in English.

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/X-Rebirth ... n-1078452/

edit
Text translation further down this thread.

dougeye · Post by **dougeye** » Fri, 12. Jul 13, 23:19

that's an old video now, posted already in the rebirth making of thread.

TTD · Post by **TTD** » Sat, 13. Jul 13, 00:22

Then why has it only just been put on my FB page?

Post by **X2-Illuminatus** » Sat, 13. Jul 13, 01:39

The videos are not new, however the interview is.

Although it's probably not the best time to translate this wall of text, here's a translation of the interview linked above.

Edit: I corrected two small mistakes.

PCGH: Since when are you working on X Rebirth and how many members does your current team at Egosoft have?

Bernd Lehahn: We are working since unbelievable six and a half years on X Rebirth. The project started in 2007. While we have been working on the old series in the meantime – and recently released X3: Albion Prelude, which is kind of a bridge between the old and the new game universe – the biggest part of our usual about 20-developer-strong team has been working on X Rebirth the whole time.

PCGH: Have you scrapped certain fundamental ideas in this time or are you still working to plan?

Bernd Lehahn: With a linear game, which consists of levels, it might be possible, to work to plan in such a big project. But in a free universe every part depends on all others. Our aim is to correct many design weaknesses of the X-series, but also to make space games for a wider audience more interesting. Many of the things we planned have to prove themselves in the praxis and our work consists of continuous corrections and improvements of the initial concepts. Still, the most important aims and the methods to realise them, which were planned at the beginning, are the same.

PCGH: There is still no release date. Are questions after the release date still okay for you?

Bernd Lehahn: It is already a running gag in our forums and on our Facebook site. Whatever we post there, whether it is an announcement of a new Linux and MAC version for our X3 series, which people get for free in addition to their Windows version or cool new missions for X3: Albion Prelude, there are always people, which immediately say: That’s great, but we don’t care. WHERE IS X REBIRTH? Well...very soon I will be able to say more about it...

PCGH: To speak up: When do you want to announce the release date? Or asked in another way: Have you scheduled, how much time there will be between the announcement of the release date and the release itself?

Bernd Lehahn: OK... The release date of the release date will be… beginning of August.

PCGH: What makes the development so complex, that you can’t even say, whether it comes this or the next year?

Bernd Lehahn: It comes this year.

PCGH: In short, what are the three biggest differences to Albion Prelude?

Bernd Lehahn: It’s impossible to name only three things. Actually, almost everything is different. It may be easier to tell you, what remains the same and this is, what I call the "Spirit of the X-Universe". The freedom to do everything you want to do. A real simulated economy, which the whole universe is built on. A game, in which every action can have an influence on the whole universe.

PCGH: X Rebirth should become more beginner friendly. Will hardcore fans notice this at all? What can we expect, how this beginner friendliness will look like?

Bernd Lehahn: Outsourcing of many functions that were possible with one ship to many specialised ships or drones. Controlling things by talking to NPCs, instead of fiddling in complicated menus. Controls that let you play the game with a gamepad. Many more things…

PCGH: Are you integrating the community into the current development phase? If so, how are you doing that and what kind of ideas were you able to realise already?

Bernd Lehahn: At the moment this is unfortunately not possible in the same way we did it with previous X-games. Currently only a small group of ca. 200 people have access to an early version of the game. However, it is important to us, that the development of X Rebirth will first really kick off with the release of X Rebirth 1.0.

PCGH: Have you spent any thoughts on a possible Collector's Edition? How could it look like?

Bernd Lehahn: This is up to our publisher. We talked about it, but no decision has been made yet.

PCGH: What about your graphics engine: Is it ready yet or are you still working on effects? Which component of high end PCs is tortured by X Rebirth the most?

Bernd Lehahn: The engine is ready since a while already, but is still being polished and tweaked. Especially the performance is being improved further. We also have a lot of plans for the engine. However, they will have to wait until after the release. We’re currently focussing on finishing X Rebirth to finally be able to show it to the public.
I would say, X Rebirth tortures graphics card and CPU almost the same. Thanks to the consequent designing for multithreading we will even utilize PCs with lots of cores, but in the end it depends on the cooperation with the graphics card.

PCGH: In 2011 you said the renderer would be DirectX 9 and that the Tesselation feature of DX11 would not be suitable for X Rebirth. Has anything changed since then?

Bernd Lehahn: As I said already, the engine is ready since a while. Our current focus is the gameplay and the improvement of the engine performance-wise. But although we use DirectX 9, there are still a lot of new graphics features and a lot of new splendour. We don’t feel limited by DX9 in any way, although an update after the release comes into question.

PCGH: In which development stage will you start to work on the scaling for different PC systems? Can you estimate, what kind of PC you will need at least to play X Rebirth?

Bernd Lehahn: The engine is designed to be able to scale the level of detail and a lot of graphics features relating to the respective hardware. However we haven’t decided, what the minimum requirements will be, as the game will be optimised until the end.

PCGH: Will there be an X game with a multiplayer in this life, even if it is just LAN-based?

Bernd Lehahn: You are talking about YOUR life? Do you smoke? Do you have any health issues? Best you send me a medical report from your doctor, then I can better answer this question

PCGH: The Xbox One and the PS4 arrived in the x86 world. Have you followed this topic? Do you welcome this development? If so, why?

Bernd Lehahn: To be honest, I don’t care about the CPU architecture. We had a look at the CPUs of the predecessors and were good with them. Much more problematic is the memory consumption. There the new consoles are of course a good thing for us. However, I cannot say, whether this will be interesting for us in the future.

PCGH: With the help of crowdfunding platforms more and more retro game concepts (adventures, classic RPGs, round based strategy etc.) re-enter the market. You’re still pretty comfortable with your publisher or would Kickstarter be an option for you?

Bernd Lehahn: I think Kickstarter is a great thing and I supported many projects myself already. Whether this will be something for us someday, I cannot say at the moment.

PCGH: Thank you for the interview!

Hornet108 · Post by **Hornet108** » Sat, 13. Jul 13, 02:08

The bit that I got out of that is that there will be an announcement in August, which ties in pretty well with community expectations of gamescon.

Excellent.

Post by **Santi** » Sat, 13. Jul 13, 02:20

Thank you so very much Illuminatus for the translation. I really appreciate it.

Falcrack · Post by **Falcrack** » Sat, 13. Jul 13, 02:47

Most informative piece of news regarding Rebirth in a very long time. Glad to hear this announcement of an upcoming announcement! With a rough date even (beginning of August).

Hemmingfish · Post by **Hemmingfish** » Sat, 13. Jul 13, 02:58

I really hope they don't alienate too many people with the new direction they're going in. Space games in general are a niche genre and a lot of people love X for what it is.

Looking forward to August anyway.

Aderthad · Post by **Aderthad** » Sun, 14. Jul 13, 09:52

Thanks for the translation! *hatoff*

Matthew94 · Post by **Matthew94** » Sun, 14. Jul 13, 19:01

PCGH: What makes the development so complex, that you can’t even say, whether it comes this or the next year?

Bernd Lehahn: It comes this year.

2017 RELEASE DATE CONFIRMED

I kid, I'm glad to see more info is coming soon.

TTD · Post by **TTD** » Sun, 14. Jul 13, 19:37

Matthew94 wrote:
PCGH: What makes the development so complex, that you can’t even say, whether it comes this or the next year?

Bernd Lehahn: It comes this year.
2017 RELEASE DATE CONFIRMED

....

shireknight · Post by **shireknight** » Mon, 15. Jul 13, 00:19

Bernd Lehahn: OK... The release date of the release date will be… beginning of August. Wink

Finally I am a happy Terran.

BugMeister · Post by **BugMeister** » Mon, 15. Jul 13, 13:44

an "improving" game engine is definitely encouraging,
and making use of multi-cores also sounds promising..

I just love the way the thing polishes over time, in keeping with the previous chapters in the XSeries
- remember X3:TC was greatly improved to v3.2, over some considerable time..

as with the previous incarnations, one assumes that, initially at least..
- X:Rebirth v1.0 will be the sort of on-going "live" experiment we've all come to know and love..

- looking forward to it..

- hey, cheers guys..
- nice one..!!

Demongornot · Post by **Demongornot** » Mon, 15. Jul 13, 13:59

You can't call it "use of multi-cores" you have to call it :
Use of incredible awesome number of god damn so many core from super alien computer from the future

So the upcoming new explain why we don't have more gameplay/making of X Rebirth video anymore, a big thing is around the corner, and probably the start of the commercial campaign, it will explain that they will announced the release date !
At this point we can (almost) be sure that X Rebirth have for dev a real release date and not an expected one, so finally we have maybe a chance to see X Rebirth this year after all !

notaterran · Post by **notaterran** » Mon, 15. Jul 13, 17:10

Nice, this made my day. As for the whole “polishing” thing, I played the Arma3 Alpha and the Trackmania2 Stadium beta (and Trackmania Canyon which finally got another camera and controls update recently) and those games were ok. As long as the devs are committed to the fruits of their labor I don't mind if XR has a few problems at first, which it will. The logic goes like this: XR --> PC --> Windows --> Microsoft --> NSA-approved --> Bugs!

Toramo · Post by **Toramo** » Mon, 15. Jul 13, 18:33

WooOooOoot !

Fantastic interview ! (Thank you for the translation)

Also i'm a little bit disappointed with this answer about multiplayer.

"You are talking about YOUR life? Do you smoke? Do you have any health issues? Best you send me a medical report from your doctor, then I can better answer this question"

Do you think Bernd is hiding something or do you think it was 100% ironical ??
IMO, a multiplayer (coop ?) feature would be the biggest surprise for the XR release

!

Anyway nice answer, isn't it ?

TTD · Post by **TTD** » Mon, 15. Jul 13, 18:45

In other interviiews it has been said that multi-player has always been a dream ,but has not been able to be produced as yet.
It is still a dream for the future.

theeclownbroze · Post by **theeclownbroze** » Mon, 15. Jul 13, 19:33

well

idk, but

watch this, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4Xiaebq ... page#t=30s

Bernd sais "HDP Server" don't know what HDP stands for or what it means, but the word SERVER comes to a great juxtaposition when it comes to the x series. being singleplayer and all.

Another cool thing i spotted out is this.
http://i.imgur.com/921oK2E.jpg

Sais "128"

could refer to 12th of August

And bernd did mention that "THE RELEASE OF THE RELEASE DATE IS IN EARLY AUGUST"

Post by **CBJ** » Mon, 15. Jul 13, 19:38

theeclownbroze wrote:Bernd sais "HDP Server" don't know what HDP stands for or what it means, but the word SERVER comes to a great juxtaposition when it comes to the x series. being singleplayer and all.

What he actually says is "HTTP Server". We have an HTTP-based debugging tool that allows you to do certain things, and receive certain information about how the game is running, via a web browser.

theeclownbroze wrote:Another cool thing i spotted out is this.
http://i.imgur.com/921oK2E.jpg

Sais "128"

could refer to 12th of August

There are a lot of numbers on the sides of objects. I expect you could find something that indicated almost any date you wanted.

A5PECT · Post by **A5PECT** » Mon, 15. Jul 13, 20:02

CBJ wrote: I expect you could find something that indicated almost any date[/b]you wanted.

Oh, so the game must be coming any day now?

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

more info on Rebirth.

more info on Rebirth.