Devs, please bring back X rebirth cinematics

[ignis_alas]

now that you guys have been exhaustively cleaning the house and filling the gaps, it s time to start dedicating time to bring back the superb cinematics (edit: by cinematics I don t mean cutscenes, i mean cinema level visuals), effects, brilliant visuals, lighting and the rich environments you had in x rebirth.

the cinematics and environments from x rebirth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNSHCoOcd_w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23YtF7NJQ0U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46-H4gmZ6Gc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0efykPkzGk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIlmkAJfUgs

and if you could bring ship modules, 5 player co op and expanded ship interiors, you will win the internet
no, but seriously, you will

(I m practically reposting this from the steam forums)

[graphicboy]

5 player co op

Please, make it stop.

[ignis_alas]

5 player co op

Please, make it stop.

fine, make it full blown multiplayer semi mmo.
i guess i just wanted the devs to have an accessibly, easy, safe start. my bad

[X2-Illuminatus]

Using the term "limited" when talking about multiplayer is meaningless. Limitations on things like numbers of players do absolutely nothing to reduce the amount of work involved; they are about communication bandwidth, not how much development is required. And it most certainly isn't something that can just be tacked on to a game as part of an expansion, unless that game pretty much already supports it in the first place.

[Tomonor]

As far as I'm concerned, I have to agree on X4 lacking in the visual effects department compared to Rebirth. But as always, there's a reason for that (devs didn't just slap on their stomach and decided to downgrade the visuals to piss us off).

However, there are also a few further things to note:
-GVMuk (MetalVenom/X3TCchannel) is an official video editor for Egosoft who has experience and is given tools to make the most out of the cinematic setting you see in the videos you've posted. In reality, Rebirth doesn't look all that great without the video enhancement goggle zoom effect (I know by experience, because I've made MetalVenom-style videos myself back then).
-If you play Rebirth after X4, you quickly realize how bland it is once you understand that the reason it feels so huge is because of the invisible fog beyond zones.
-Rebirth's environment and mechanics were not done correctly. Declared zones in random parts of space. Annoying minigames with oversized space stations and interriors. Really slow-paced combat in favor for the player.
-Sectors had a reason to be diverse, since we were limited to pretty much a few star systems. In X4, we get lots of them already, and while it would be cool to have a better use for the Superhighways (I think they ran into technical difficulties with the new map system there), it's still better to have many more systems than Albion cut into 4 pieces.
-That being said, you can't make every system special if there are many of them. Imagine if you had to come up with at least 4 really diverse alterations for every cluster in X4. And even if we limit ourselves to the current number of systems/sectors, it's still not easy to make them THAT diverse.

In the end, even if DLCs won't, I'm sure there will be some total conversion mods that will address this issue however. Modders with infinite time and no boundaries (except knowledge) can pull this off. Egosoft however had to make sacrifices with their resources when they were developing this completely new game. That includes ship modules and expanded interriors. But here's a hint: the Jinko-Tekina Courier has such a uniquely developed interrior space. And it doesn't do much justice - you just bypass it as if it wasn't even there.


Co-op, well I heard X7 is going to be a great MMO with VR support by default.

[ignis_alas]

As far as I'm concerned, I have to agree on X4 lacking in the visual effects department compared to Rebirth. But as always, there's a reason for that (devs didn't just slap on their stomach and decided to downgrade the visuals to piss us off).

However, there are also a few further things to note:
-GVMuk (MetalVenom/X3TCchannel) is an official video editor for Egosoft who has experience and is given tools to make the most out of the cinematic setting you see in the videos you've posted. In reality, Rebirth doesn't look all that great without the video enhancement goggle zoom effect (I know by experience, because I've made MetalVenom-style videos myself back then).
-If you play Rebirth after X4, you quickly realize how bland it is once you understand that the reason it feels so huge is because of the invisible fog beyond zones.
-Rebirth's environment and mechanics were not done correctly. Declared zones in random parts of space. Annoying minigames with oversized space stations and interriors. Really slow-paced combat in favor for the player.
-Sectors had a reason to be diverse, since we were limited to pretty much a few star systems. In X4, we get lots of them already, and while it would be cool to have a better use for the Superhighways (I think they ran into technical difficulties with the new map system there), it's still better to have many more systems than Albion cut into 4 pieces.
-That being said, you can't make every system special if there are many of them. Imagine if you had to come up with at least 4 really diverse alterations for every cluster in X4. And even if we limit ourselves to the current number of systems/sectors, it's still not easy to make them THAT diverse.

In the end, even if DLCs won't, I'm sure there will be some total conversion mods that will address this issue however. Modders with infinite time and no boundaries (except knowledge) can pull this off. Egosoft however had to make sacrifices with their resources when they were developing this completely new game. That includes ship modules and expanded interriors. But here's a hint: the Jinko-Tekina Courier has such a uniquely developed interrior space. And it doesn't do much justice - you just bypass it as if it wasn't even there.


Co-op, well I heard X7 is going to be a great MMO with VR support by default.

exactly, the editor makes the most out of, it doesn t add, x4 is bland in effects and other visuals (i understand why they had to make that choice, i m glad they did, but now they can finally start paying attention to that). not all videos are from gvmuk btw.
the effects in x rebirth, were full of details, they were striking, rich and captivating, the editor wasn t creating entirely new visuals. of course it makes a difference when making these videos, if you give an expensive camera to me you ll have bland crappy pictures even if i m taking pictures of a flying elephant shooting lasers from his eyes, give a crappy camera to my sister and she ll make pictures of the side walk look like if a flying elephant dressed in neon Hugo Boss clothing, with laser shooting eyes just passed by. offcourse the editor was important to make these videos, but i m sorry, you can t make the same videos regardless of editor with x4 foundations, infact, his own video from x4 completely pales in comparison to his x rebirth videos. the firing shots in x4 look like emailed declarations of disagreement, the impacts are almost non existent, etc

i didn t said bring back x rebirth mechanics , neither the rebirth mini games, sectors etc
i think you re misunderstanding when i said environments, i for example didnt said also, make each sector a completely different thing from each other. but make for example 3 very different regions, with each 'region' composed of the existing several sectors. and to a point they kinda are, but in x rebirth it was brilliant, they were really remarkable.

when x6 will be released, you ll all ready have smartphone games doing and having more than the current x4 foundations does and has.
(and some will be buying 3000 euros hats for star citizen by that time )

[MakerLinux]

Are cinematics that important? What, are we talking about at most 20 minutes of cutscenes in a 1000 hours game? Developer efforts should be focused on improving gameplay, unless these cutscenes are for promotional material. In-game explosions in X4 are already much better than in X Rebirth, and bright yellow wrecks slowly cool until they are all grey, which is awesome.

[lordmuck]

dont forget the old ship models with upgraded textures !

[Imperial Good]

Cinematics cost money to make, significant money in the case of a small game company making a game with a smallish team. It is better that money is spent on new game features, content and polish.

[ignis_alas]

Cinematics cost money to make, significant money in the case of a small game company making a game with a smallish team. It is better that money is spent on new game features, content and polish.

absolutely, i completely agree. it seems i m being misunderstood, i meant cinematic visuals, as all sort of sfx, details increasing immersion etc, i didn t meant cutscenes

[SumUser]

Cinematics cost money to make, significant money in the case of a small game company making a game with a smallish team. It is better that money is spent on new game features, content and polish.

absolutely, i completely agree. it seems i m being misunderstood, i meant cinematic visuals, as all sort of sfx, details increasing immersion etc, i didn t meant cutscenes

I agree, X:RB had some great explosions (especially the big ships), huge and detailed space stations, and the background scenery was usually vivid and artistic.

Of course, this all changed once you docked. Nearly motionless NPCs with somewhat dubious textures and repetitivity. Space was as gorgeous as it ever was, the cockpit of the Albion Skunk was decent, the rest was... It took some imagination let's say.

However, X4 could get by as is, or maybe with improved explosions (even blowing up empty loot boxes with a blast from a MK 3 plasma cannon was sweet in Rebirth). The rest would be a waste of resources as X4's aim is different from X:RB. Rebirth was an attempt at an immersive first-person action/adventure type of style. X4 in contrast has more of a traditional "systems based" approach similar to X3 tc/ap. More drop down menus and scripts which makes it feel more like a "management" sim or even a 4X hybrid.

Thusly, it makes sense to use most of Egosoft's resources and production time to further goals congruent with the X4 genre like expanding features, mechanics, and content. However, it would be awesome to have it all!!!

[Général Grievous]

There is no time or ressources to spend on all these effects as they already exist in Rebirth.
some modders have already modded it, and today you can have all those visual effect in X4.
But i still do not understand why Ego did not add X Rebirth effects into X4...

[Tomonor]

But i still do not understand why Ego did not add X Rebirth effects into X4...

No official explanation yet, but I can think of 3 very good reasons:
-The effects were to put way too much stress on the already stressed out GPUs (especially in the low-end sector).
-The ported effects have caused obstructions for the player that would had required complete restructuring of already implemented ships.
-The ported effects had to be reconstructed from scratch to remain compatible, and Egosoft had no resources available for that until release (most likely).


It will be up to the modders to correct these visual errors. I'm sure great modifications will come over the next years, as they did with previous X games.

[Artean]

Agree wholeheartedly. In particular I miss the cap ship explosions from X:R. They were epic.

Hopefully Egosoft will, somewhere down the line, find time to continue develop their new graphics engine further. A more modern and better looking anti aliasing would be welcome, for instance.