Elite Dangerous plans for 2024

[Markov Chaney - Dormant]

Regarding "modules" - several commenters have come up with examples of how modular design may help and what some of the less obvious gotchas may be.
There is absolutely nothing unique about ED or FDev here. Y'all are discussing software and asset design, and the Don't Repeat Yourself reuse principle.

It's not even unique to game development, it's just plain old software development and as someone pointed out upthread that's been happening since functional programming was invented in the 50s. (inb4: OO is a different way to express and implement reuse, but it's still reuse.) And the concept under those languages is lambda calculus so you're talking yourselves in circles about a "debate" that was put to bed in the 1930s (and leads directly to Turing!)

So whatever is unique to FDev, it's... not this topic. Furthermore if you think they got as far as Odyssey without doing all the basic reuse things in code and assets, you're wrong about that too; you can't point the finger there. You genuinely can't fix complexity by throwing people at it, so the fact this game exists shows they got some things right. The issues have to be at the overarching level.

As an example it struck me yesterday that there are data feeds available for real-world exoplanet data and automating ingestion of those would be a day's exercise in Python for a graduate. But I bet it's then six months' work in FDev's organisation to come up with a way to look after that and manage QA, and another n years' work to get that into a release.

FDev either a) don't think of these things or b) they're missing the mechanism between "the idea" and "the deployed feature."

(Hint: it's (b) )

 

[CaptainPugwash]

respectfully, do you have any experience in this?

I have 35 years experience of SW development projects, but I still don’t work for frontier and have no experience of their game engine, so where does that leave me, or you?
It’s going to take a lot to convince me that, after having successfully implemented station interiors in odyssey, including fleet carriers, that ship interiors would not be technically feasible. It’s a question of investment and the amount of gameplay that frontier would want to bring into the game via ship interiors. I think it is a necessary step along the future development path of elite if frontier wants to keep pace with other games. Grow and develop or die, it’s as simple as that.

 

[zimms]

I just want to add that the big problem with comparing station/FC interiors with ship interiors is that the former are stationary and the latter are not. That could complicate things A LOT.

But design questions are probably just as much a problem as implementation details.

 

[CaptainPugwash]

I just want to add that the big problem with comparing station/FC interiors with ship interiors is that the former are stationary and the latter are not. That could complicate things A LOT.

But design questions are probably just as much a problem as implementation details.

Point taken, although stations do actually rotate ;-)

 

[IstvaanDCIV]

I just want to add that the big problem with comparing station/FC interiors with ship interiors is that the former are stationary and the latter are not. That could complicate things A LOT.

I suspect that if we ever do get ship interiors, that there will be some kind of compromise involved such as the compartments beyond the cockpit/bridge only being accessible while the ship is stationary/landed or travelling at a constant velocity.

Me, I'd just be happy that we'd have some new features to play with. But I suspect that there might be complaints about such compromises.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

It’s going to take a lot to convince me that, after having successfully implemented station interiors in odyssey, including fleet carriers, that ship interiors would not be technically feasible

Agreed. Frontier have done enough things which individual players confidently asserted were "impossible in the Cobra Engine / a P2P networking solution / etc" that I can't think of anything which could reasonably be expected to be impossible (as opposed to undesirable!) given sufficient time and budget. Of course, equally, everything is impossible (or at least undesirable) given insufficient time or budget.

Station interiors do hint that the major constraint may well not be the programming budget but the art budget, of course.

I just want to add that the big problem with comparing station/FC interiors with ship interiors is that the former are stationary and the latter are not. That could complicate things A LOT.

The exception to the station interiors being stationary is perhaps a useful point, too; Coriolis interiors are in a rapidly rotating reference frame relative to the surrounding instance.

In theory converting between reference frames is an extremely routine operation which ED already needs to do flawlessly thousands of times a second just to run at all; in practice there are still some occasional bugs around rotating stations (or rotating planetary rings...) where the game picks the wrong reference frame for an object. Still, it's probably not the major problem - there are a lot of games which implement vehicle interiors which can move or rotate relative to the world reference frame without their occupants falling through the wall.

(Whether "we use a lot of magnets and velcro" ends up being a sufficient handwave to satisfy the lore-fan side of ED players that you should move with the internal reference frame rather than the external one under acceleration is a different matter, of course)

 

[aRJay]

Point taken, although stations do actually rotate ;-)

And orbit around multiple bodies at once in a way predictable for a long time, however they don’t change direction on the whim of some player.

 

[sidereal6]

You cannot draw properly each combination of modules player can put it.

You're making the assumption that "walking inside a ship" implies, "we can walk throughout the entire ship"

That is identical to assuming that "walking inside a space station" implies, "we can visit the habitation ring"

or assuming that "walking inside a surface port" implies, "we can go inside every building in a surface port"

All three assumptions are false.

You're aware that since Odyssey we can indeed walk inside a space station. And yet, we cannot visit all parts of the station. You're aware that we can walk inside surface ports. And yet, we cannot visit every building.

It's entirely possible for FDev to give us the ability to walk inside parts of a ship, but not the whole thing. Honestly, just being able to walk from the commander's chair to the bridge door would be nice, on bigger ships. You can devise gameplay elements using the copilot chair, or not - I don't even care. I'd just like to be able to walk around on the bridge.

 

[zimms]

You're making the assumption that "walking inside a ship" implies, "we can walk throughout the entire ship"

That is identical to assuming that "walking inside a space station" implies, "we can visit the habitation ring"

or assuming that "walking inside a surface port" implies, "we can go inside every building in a surface port"

All three assumptions are false.

You're aware that since Odyssey we can indeed walk inside a space station. And yet, we cannot visit all parts of the station. You're aware that we can walk inside surface ports. And yet, we cannot visit every building.

It's entirely possible for FDev to give us the ability to walk inside parts of a ship, but not the whole thing. Honestly, just being able to walk from the commander's chair to the bridge door would be nice, on bigger ships. You can devise gameplay elements using the copilot chair, or not - I don't even care. I'd just like to be able to walk around on the bridge.

Well, the premise of that argument was completely flawed anyway. The amount of possible combinations is irrelevant.

It's like saying inventing card games is impossible because the number of possibilities of ordering a 52 card deck is 8x10^67.

 

[CaptainPugwash]

Th

And orbit around multiple bodies at once in a way predictable for a long time, however they don’t change direction on the whim of some player.

As far as I can see the main issue would occur if trying to visualize internal ship assetts from outside while the ship is widely spinning, if it is a problem at all. Most gameplay would occur within the ship and I’m sure frontier can waiver a few rules of physics such as g-forces to allow us to do stuff in ships while they are moving.

 

[CaptainPugwash]

Agreed. Frontier have done enough things which individual players confidently asserted were "impossible in the Cobra Engine / a P2P networking solution / etc" that I can't think of anything which could reasonably be expected to be impossible (as opposed to undesirable!) given sufficient time and budget.

The spire sites successfully combine on foot, SRV and ship gameplay in a large scale environment where instances of 50+ players have been created. I think it’s actually quite impressive technically, and shows what the game engine can do. Maybe frontier still needs to understand better how to monetize Elite while keeping a sufficiently sized team to develop the game above a level that would be classified as ‘maintenance mode’ while still below ‘major DLC’ investment.

 

[sidereal6]

i would like landable earthlikes

What's astounding to me is that they did those Jurassic Park games, which featured procedurally-generated animals (you could breed new dinosaurs). Those games used the Cobra engine. Surely that means they literally have the code written that could give us moving animals. They could give us a new class of planets with thicker atmospheres and occasionally, rarely, some critters.

Planet Coaster has procedurally-generated clouds. Same deal. Give us a new class of planets with thicker atmospheres, clouds, and (rarely) herds of animals.

That doesn't mean they have to unlock Earth itself or render whole cities. This could apply only to uninhabited worlds. They could also make (and probably, they should make) animals incredibly rare - like only 1/50 ELWs would have them. Most would be the size of rats, maybe dogs. Large animals could be as rare as green gas giants. New gameplay could involve stunning the animals to collect DNA, or even capturing them for zoos.

Which, by the way, some of the existing plants should have harvestable fruit, just like how crystalline structures give us materials. But these would go through a combine (it's like a refinery, but for an SRV) and result in cargo. Fly out to one of these planets, harvest some fruit, deal with some pirates - it's a new game loop.

It also seems like a super easy "win" would be a flying SRV that uses those rings that skimmers use. It's different from a fighter. It can't go very high, but it can land. Zero cargo capacity would be fine. It'd be a godsend for exobiology ...and a lot of fun.

 

[Arioch]

What's astounding to me is that they did those Jurassic Park games, which featured procedurally-generated animals (you could breed new dinosaurs). Those games used the Cobra engine. Surely that means they literally have the code written that could give us moving animals. They could give us a new class of planets with thicker atmospheres and occasionally, rarely, some critters.

I remember when Planet Coaster came out and I looked at all the crowd mechanics and thought, “I can’t wait to see the bustling concourses of stations in Elite when we get the Feet expansion.” And then looking at the fluffy clouds in the JP game and thinking similar thoughts about Earth-likes.

Yeah.

It was nice to have those dreams for a few years

 

[Fizzatron]

I think Super Mario 64 was built as a 3D game from the ground. 3D wasn't added later to an existing 2D game.

Not that I would disagree with your very astute observation, but the comparison was in relation to the conceptual nature of taking a 2D platform game and bringing that to a 3D world.

 

[zimms]

What's astounding to me is that they did those Jurassic Park games, which featured procedurally-generated animals (you could breed new dinosaurs). Those games used the Cobra engine. [...]

Do you mean JWE? The dinosaurs weren't procedurally generated in that game.

 

[Astrnn]

I just want to add that the big problem with comparing station/FC interiors with ship interiors is that the former are stationary and the latter are not. That could complicate things A LOT.

But design questions are probably just as much a problem as implementation details.

Absolutely no difference. Already explained it in another forum thread. There are incredibly many difficulties, from the fact that they need to completely redesign the model of each ship, to creating really interesting gameplay. But regarding the position of the player in the ship space - it's not a problem at all.

 

[Fizzatron]

I dont feel any 'responsibility' or 'obligation' to look up things for you.

There's nothing personal about it, definitely not on my end, but the onus is on the one who made the claim to back it up. I'm not a puppy dog and we're not playing fetch.

I admitted i could be wrong and apologized, but seems like there were some unresolvable bugs somewhere in the posts after all huh. You feel that 'unresolvable indicates technical problem', i think unresolvable means problem that wasnt (and most probably will not be) resolved, for whatever reason. Cos as a player i really dont care in the end what the reason for not resolving is.
Imo what it boils down to is
I know there are unresolved bugs.
You know there are unresolved bugs.
Fdev (hopefuly) knows there are unresolved bugs.
If you want to haggle over impressions and feelings go ahead for all i care.

I guess if you want to resort to semantics, that's fine but I'm not going down the path of explaining to an grown adult the difference between unresolved and unresolvable.

But the game is old and feels and looks and behaves funcionally as a weasley house from harry potter. Just patches and addons and patches held together by magic. When i have to relog for.my cargo to appear and relog in the middle of ody mission cos some item didnt spawn and then softlock on the concourse terminal and then cant plot a course to my carrier as it plots to random location and then im sent to rebuy from ground cz because the cz didnt load when i got tgere with frontlines...
... then i really dont care for ship interiors.

All of these things happened in that sequence? I doubt that, but if you say so I'm fine to leave that question unresolved, or maybe it's unresolvable..

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Not that I would disagree with your very astute observation, but the comparison was in relation to the conceptual nature of taking a 2D platform game and bringing that to a 3D world.

Yes, but you can't really do that with an online game unless you completely replace the old game, rewrite it and republish it.

 

[Northpin]

What's astounding to me is that they did those Jurassic Park games, which featured procedurally-generated animals (you could breed new dinosaurs). Those games used the Cobra engine. Surely that means they literally have the code written that could give us moving animals. They could give us a new class of planets with thicker atmospheres and occasionally, rarely, some critters.

Planet Coaster has procedurally-generated clouds. Same deal. Give us a new class of planets with thicker atmospheres, clouds, and (rarely) herds of animals.

I remember when Planet Coaster came out and I looked at all the crowd mechanics and thought, “I can’t wait to see the bustling concourses of stations in Elite when we get the Feet expansion.” And then looking at the fluffy clouds in the JP game and thinking similar thoughts about Earth-likes.

It's a matter of size.

JWE2 and PZ have performance issues with the size of their parks - imagine if things are implemented planetary wise?

Also, keep in mind that a certain degree of performance issues in EDO was solved by limiting the pathing posibilities for the 20 something odd personnel from the Settlement you're just visiting.

Do you mean JWE? The dinosaurs weren't procedurally generated in that game.

Nope, i dont think they were

 

[Arioch]

It's a matter of size.

JWE2 and PZ have performance issues with the size of their parks

Also, keep in mind that a certain degree of performance issues in EDO was solved by limiting the pathing posibilities for the 20 something odd personnel from the Settlement you're just visiting.

For me it’s a matter of time - I gave up hope years ago