Elite: Dangerous
kickstarter.com
kickstarter.com
David Braben has toyed with my heart and broken it at least a dozen times since the beginning of this millennium. I've been teased and tortured with promises of Elite 4, scouring internet forums and chat rooms for any new information. My sickness manifested through vivid dreams of piloting my Cobra MKIII, loaded with contraband, and shooting my way through a swarm of nimble police ships. Awakened, I inevitably struggled with the sudden realization that Elite 4 is not reality, and it may never be. And now - a new hope awakens! And despite the burning scars of previous disappointments, I pledge 20 quid like a sad, pathetic junkie whose rehab never quite took hold. This time, I tell myself, this time it will be different.
Seek cetacean counselling before holding your breath.
If I'm counting correctly only 5 projects (out of thousands) have made that much and their project pages were insanely snazzy and detailed: http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/games/most-fu...
Also, the pitch seems like something someone wrote on a napkin. "Raw performance" doesn't make a game gorgeous.
>Imagine what is now possible, squeezing the last drop of performance from modern computers in the way “Elite” and “Frontier” did in their days? It is not just a question of raw performance (though of course these elements will make it look gorgeous), but we can push the way the networking works too – something very few people had access to in the days of Frontier.
All of this compels me to post the obligatory PA comic: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/05/04
[1] They tend to update the pages after they get the money, so you can't judge them by what they look like now.
>Elite is one of the most popularly requested games to be remade,[42] with some arguing that it is still the best example of the genre to date, with more recent titles—including its sequel—not rising up to the same level.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_(video_game)
Still, it seems criminally lazy to put such little effort into asking for $2 million.
"-Product simulations are prohibited. Projects cannot simulate events to demonstrate what a product might do in the future. Products can only be shown performing actions that they’re able to perform in their current state of development.
-Product renderings are prohibited. Product images must be photos of the prototype as it currently exists."
>The new guideline prohibiting renderings applies only to projects categorized as Product Design or Hardware. Other categories, including Games, are not affected.
Besides, that wouldn't at all explain why there is a complete lack of pitch videos or artwork (even like reward tier artwork).
Someone is forgetting how Elite 2 turned out
This what it looked like in its original form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIuOjEqY8Hk
Or is my memory failing me?
The pick of the bunch is probably the Master 128 edition, as it sports colour AND double buffering, though it won't be as fast as the second processor edition on account of the missing processor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEbhsXIL8a8
(I don't think there's a Master 128 second processor edition, sadly, but if there actually is, that one would be even better.)
In the BBC B Master edition the top was in colour. I always was jealous of my friend who had one, since it had so "much more" memory! :-)
Make it better than eve and you can have a kidney to sell, the dodgy one on the left.
I think I played Elite nearly every day for a year or so... I'm almost afraid of what would happen if a new one that was any good came along.
I found this utterly pathetic. He asks for so much from the fans but hasn't even done the most basic of legwork.
Seems like a total cash grab to me, prepare for disappointment
It may never live up to the expectations that will be placed on it
However, I am really surprised noone mentioned the 800lb gorilla in this space. If I felt like flying, modding, fighting spaceships, or trading or smuggling or pirating or flying with friends or making new friends (or followers, for that matter) or even building a space empire, then I'd reactivate my EVE Online account(s).
It is not entirely the same thing, but EVE is an incredibly elaborate game with insane depth, I do not see how one (even if his name is Braben) could successfully compete with it (for largely the same player base!) by raising $2M.
Let's hope this Kickstarter will inspire a reboot of the X-Wing series... (Are you listening, Disney?)
i) Dog fights
ii) Trading
There was a bit of ship customising; there were the missions; there was a mini-game of "land in the space-station without a docking computer and without crashing".
Planets had names, and some description, but that was just dusted on top of the actual game. You couldn't visit the planet. You couldn't get out of your ship on the space station. The space stations were mostly the same.
So Elite was really just buy low, sell high, with dog fighting and 3 factions. (Lawful, criminal, neutral.)
I dunno, it sounds pretty much like an early single player version of EVE.
On an unrelated note, you could land on planets in Elite 2. That totally blew my mind back then. Sort of like a real time lo-fi version of Powers of Ten[0] running on your computer.
I'm wondering how these "procedural techniques" will work with high quality graphics? Also, for those who played both Elite and Minecraft, is it a similar feeling? Is there any other similar - yet more recent - games in that genre?
Much more important was the trading aspect.
Some systems were safe, and law abiding, and had police ships. Some were criminal, and had pirates circling. Many goods were common across them, but you could buy narcotics and slaves from criminal systems. Your behaviour affected how other ships would react - trading slaves was profitable, but you'd be attacked by police and pirates. Attacking other cargo ships (to capture their cargo) would turn you criminal. Attacking pirates would make you more law-abiding.
You could find two systems and find the right product to buy-low, sell-high.
There's more in common with games like Fallout 3, although fallout 3 didn't really have a good trading system.
(All the above is from memory. I have no doubt made mistakes.
Docking was my favorite part of the game. Particularly when under fire and heavily damaged. How fast should I come in? How steep? Can't be too cautious or this pirate on my tail will waste me. Glance the edges and I'll be dead anyway.
<armchair role=gamedev>
There are other places in Elite where similar high pressure situations could be added. The obvious one is to make the sun scoop more dangerous. Make it work better the deeper you go in the sun. But in addition to the hard surface to avoid crashing into, the sun does damage over time proportionate to depth. (Maybe collection rate is linear to depth while damage is squared, with a small safe zone for the patient at the top.)
A less exciting one would be cargo transfer. What if cargo was moved by porters? The union guys take their time, but do a good job. You could do it yourself, but you'll get irate customers if you clip a corner and damage the stock. Better hurry though, the police inspections are only a few docking bays down the row from your ship.
</armchair>
It can be argued that there has always been a contrast between procedural games and handcrafted games, a contrast that has followed us since the dawn of game design. Procedural tends to mean lifeless, Handcrafted tends to mean depthless.
There is no longer a clear distinction between the two, though. Games tend to include procedural elements and interweave them with handcrafted ones. Procedurals are generally used to provide a longer game experience, while Handcrafts are generally used to convey a story or a designer's cut of fun.
A recent example could be Diablo 3. This is at the core a Procedural game. The game has been divided in acts, chapters and quests. Each quest ends with a handcrafted challenge, each chapter ends with a handcrafted miniboss fight, and each Act ends with a handcrafted "act boss" fight. Everything in between, including the fights, the rare monsters, the champion monsters, the stage layout and of course the loot, is procedurally generated. The designers have a set of game rules that dictate how and when this or that monster can spawn, how it looks like, and how, when, and what kind of loot it can drop.
For some players, this extends the game's depth and the fun they can get, from a dozen hours of handcrafted content to hundreds, possibly even thousands of hours of procedurally generated entertainment.
Another great example would be Skyrim. Again at the core, the Elder Scrolls series is procedurally generated, but with a twist; in Daggerfall, the third episode, they pushed the envelope to its limit with a really humongous generated world, of a size that only Elite games could surpass. With time they realized that they went too far; they had to restrict the procedural aspect and resume the handcrafting. Using the procedurally generated content as a mold, they could "paint" the game on top of it to make it feel more lively, possibly more epic with each following iteration thanks to a better engine and of course a bigger budget.
Then there's the opposite line of game design - those that start as Handcrafted with increasing amounts of procedurally generated elements as the franchise advances. The Dragon Age series is widely seen as taking this path (a mistake in my opinion).
For some other games that are pretty much only procedural, check The Sims, Sim City and their ilk, Dwarf Fortress, Audiosurf, NetHack of course, the Civilization series, etc. The whole line of EASports games could also be seen as procedurally generated as well depending on your point of view. "God Games" such as From Dust are also generally procedural.
http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php?option=c...
I'll throw in Space Rangers 2. Great soundtrack, universe feels alive without you, NPCs that can rise to fame just as the player, plenty of minigames (e.g. land battles are an RTS, prison is a text game) and space battles are pretty cool.
Space Rangers 2 sounds cool.
(Of note: 3D printers still can't print Lenslok type devices; This is perhaps the only form of copy protection from those days that is still not trivially breakable)
One request: Please make docking at a space station easier :-)
Excited to see how this iteration of Elite will turn out!
Ahhh, Christmas 1984, what a sweet sweet time.
It was a bad idea to activate it on the wrong side of the station though ..
Not much has matched the fear and excitement of docking after a dangerous run through pirate infested outer space while holding valuable cargo. That moment as you enter the space station, matching your rotation to its rotation, only for your heart to skip a beat as your ship drifts off-center and you hear it scrape against the wall before successfully docking.
If this was 2000, I'd have handed over my money straight away but Frontier Developments has had that many false starts over a new Elite game it's almost like the Duke Nukem forever fiasco (except that Elite IV pre-dates Duke Nukem forever).
I want to believe. But I just don't see it happening.
http://www.twinbee.org/hob/play.php?snap=elite
I grew up playing it on the BBC in a computer store and C64 at home. Loved it.
I never made it to 'Elite', I'm ashamed to say - I was stuck on Deadly for a long time. I still have my disk as I vowed to one day return and finish what I started.
However, regarding a new version of Elite, David Braben is a feckless omega male, a Thargoid runt who never had his fear glands removed. Frontier is a fine developer of new games where there's no legacy to destroy, but if Braben delivers a decent Elite this side of 2015, I will EAT MY SOCKS.