Elite: Dangerous looks better already!

[muppetts]

STar Cit killed Elite funding with the simple strat of giving access for $30, that alone raised near 20x more money, because once people were in they got tempted over months to stick in another £10 here for a variation of the ship they had, another $20 for a larger ship etc. A huge number of the pledges started off small and grew.

Asked for $150/200 up front and most bulk, get people to stick in $10 here, $10 there over 12/14 months and you get an average (now) of near $100 a person (375,402 people so far) 37.5 Mill raised

Elite could have had those funds, for Beta access at £50 quid as part of a Pre-Order for the game I would probably have hopped in.


As for Early Access it is here to stay and STEAM + the developers who take advantage of it are reacting to demand, which is a simple fact of business. I have mostly no problem with it as I just see it as a Pre-Order with access for Aplha/Beta, something MMO's have been doing for years (no idea why everyone thinks it is new??). What I do have a major issue with is charging more than the launch price for the game, I would give a 10% discount for an early order but it seem for the moment at least that the market is willing to give large sums of money for unfinished games, the difference being that you (I suppose) at least get to choose to buy the game knowing it is unfinished rather than paying for a 'full' release, in my case like RTW 2 which 9 months later is still not finished (waiting on patch 10 to play my game!)

[brucewarren]

I didn't back SC. Yes I know it's heresy, but even without the excuse of not having any money I was put off by the anticipated requirements. Maybe the hope is that by the time it's ready they won't seem quite so demanding to the average potential backer.

ED's are a little less demanding but even so I wonder how many people thought "I'm not going to be able to run this on my rig."

Both projects seem to have acquired industry backers now, so I suppose it's moot anyway.

[Rabiator der II.]

Sometimes I think procedural generation is far overrated and misrepresented. For example, a procedurally generated spaceship still has an underlying model "template" originally created in a 3D modeling program just the same as any other 3D model. The procedural part comes into play when you want to alter "on the fly" the base model in some fashion or configuration.

Some things lend themselves better to procedural generation. Planets are a good example, because a sphere is easily produced by a mathematical algorithm and "infinite" variations in clouds and terrain can be achieved without the need for a 3d model per se.

AFAIK Elite:Dangerous does exactly that:
The game uses procedural generation for star systems and (presumably) planetary surfaces, but ships are traditionally designed.

Limit Theory takes it one step further and builds the ship models procedurally, but AFAIK the textures are still designed/developed traditionally (now and then Josh pipes up about how metal looks so much nicer now ).
The LT ship models are also one thing that still needs improvement, for now they still look pretty lego-ish.

[Alee Enn]

I like Lego spaceships

[SteveMill]

I backed Elite to the tune of £85. Gives me the game, some head start stuff, some fluff-stuff and all the future DLC free.

But mainly I did it because I want to play Elite/Frontier again. One of the best games ever made.

It's a calculated risk with a developer I have some trust over. I can see what's going on at each stage and help with beta testing. Rather this than my recent experience as an involuntary paying alpha code tester.

[Trialbyfire]

Is this going to be the "X4" that we hoped from Egosoft? In not, then what doesn't Elite Dangerous have that X fans wanted? I realize it's a hard question since we don't really have a definition of what X4 would have been had Egosoft chosen to go that path. All we know is Bernd said Rebirth wasn't X4.

Just curious...

I notice the models in the ED screenshots don't appear to be as high quality as some of those in Rebirth, but I can certainly live with that if it's otherwise what I"m looking for, but I just don't know yet.

[kurush]

In not, then what doesn't Elite Dangerous have that X fans wanted?

All the factory building is out of scope. I don't think DB himself knows what the final gameplay would look like though. I only know if it is limited to the same shooting action as in old elite, it will get boring pretty fast.

[Trialbyfire]

In not, then what doesn't Elite Dangerous have that X fans wanted?

All the factory building is out of scope. I don't think DB himself knows what the final gameplay would look like though. I only know if it is limited to the same shooting action as in old elite, it will get boring pretty fast.

So probably not much in the way of trading and economy I suppose.

[SteveMill]

Elite is all about trading, fighting and exploring and it was never just about shooting. It could be, if that was how you chose to play it.

What Elite does not do as well as the X series used to do is the 'build' aspect of factories or fleets. In everything else it excels.

I love the single trader Han Solo experience of the Elite games. Much preferable to the space trucking of the X series. The challenging combat and large range of craft that take real skill to master also look great. As is having an enemy AI that can fight back.

It would be nice to be able to own our own bases in Elite though. Maybe it'll come into the single player option as DLC.

But for me the Elite experience is man and single ship against a huge, dangerous universe. I really enjoyed the X series up until XR. It had real charm. But Elite was always my first love in this genre.

[brucewarren]

It would be nice to own your own garage to put that second ship in and be able to do repairs and all, but I can see where DB is coming from wrt to not owning factories and stuff.

Elite is Elite and X is X. Imo It's Better that the two remain true to what they are than try to please everybody. Jack of all trades, master of none and all that.

[SteveMill]

It would be nice to own your own garage to put that second ship in and be able to do repairs and all, but I can see where DB is coming from wrt to not owning factories and stuff.

Elite is Elite and X is X. Imo It's Better that the two remain true to what they are than try to please everybody. Jack of all trades, master of none and all that.

Yea. A property and fleet aspect to Elite D would be made very complex by its MMO aspects I guess. But a station to park our ships would be nice.

The ED concept of procedurally generated stations is interesting.

[Alee Enn]

*cough*multiplayer*cough* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDWnBJYTFgs

[johncage]

worst ship designs ever. a trapazoid? seriously?

*facepalm*

[Observe]

Yea, the models don't seem very impressive from what I've seen. The upside with low poly meshes is potentially good game performance for lower-end systems I suppose.

[johncage]

Yea, the models don't seem very impressive from what I've seen. The upside with low poly meshes is potentially good game performance for lower-end systems I suppose.

it's not the poly count, which is actually quite high relatively speaking, it's the completely lack of effort in art design.

[Cpt.Jericho]

So, you would prefer which shape better? Circular, cylindric or toroid?

At least the alpha version seems to be stable enough for some fun.

[RegisterMe]

Yea, the models don't seem very impressive from what I've seen. The upside with low poly meshes is potentially good game performance for lower-end systems I suppose.

it's not the poly count, which is actually quite high relatively speaking, it's the completely lack of effort in art design.

They couldn't do a new Elite without reference to the original Elite. In computer gaming terms that has more heritage than almost anything else, and specifically in sci-fi / space combat sim etc gaming it is the heritage.

[pjknibbs]

I agree with RegisterMe. People expect a new Elite to have ships that look similar to the ones from the original game--which was designed to run on 2MHz 8-bit computers with less than 64K of RAM! Thus, in order to meet both the memory and processing constraints, those ships looked very simple. What they're doing (and rather well, IMHO) is taking those simple, very low-polygon models and adding enough detail to make them interesting, *without* losing the essential identity of the original ship.

[Ketraar]

I'm not particular Graphics dependent in games (even though being a pixel junky most of the time), I can live with "bad" graphics in return of gameplay up to a point. Just wanted to point out how funny it is see people dismissing the graphics on this one after having bashed the really god awful graphics in Rebirth.

Hope ED turns out to be a fun game regardless.

MFG

Ketraar

[Observe]

I'm not particular Graphics dependent in games (even though being a pixel junky most of the time), I can live with "bad" graphics in return of gameplay up to a point. Just wanted to point out how funny it is see people dismissing the graphics on this one after having bashed the really god awful graphics in Rebirth.

Personally, I think the 3D models in Rebirth are really outstanding for the most part! It's the rest of the game that sucks big time! I disagree with RegisterMe that the new elite can be forgiven for poor model quality models on the basis that it should remain "true" to the original. Also, I disagree that the model aren't low-poly. They clearly are very simple meshes, and if they aren't low poly, they need better modelers who could create those simple models that I've seen in the videos with < 10K poly's.