What the new secret feature should be

angusmadmac1

angusmadmac1
Koma Pahu said:
That results in a whole bunch of negative reviews/press, a drop in share price etc…
Click to expand...
Again .... I don't think it's just an issue with Fdev but with most game developers in general ?
They have great ideas but then put in a minimal effort ( it seems to me ) to get the new stuff out then spend years fixing it and eventually it becomes good . See NMS in case or even EDO ? SF is still at the "that will do" stage .
 

jojon

J
The Limey said:
I would like bodies to not disappear after a while as they do now. I want to gloat over the carnage I’ve caused 😈
Click to expand...
Ah, the old Nemesis the Warlock game on the Commodore 64, where you had to make bodies pile up in a certain spot, to be able to reach the exit on some screens... :p
 

SergMx

SergMx
varonica said:
Yeah there's a definitely a level of thought that suggests it should be easy because other games have done it, but ED is still the only game with a fully modeled galaxy with 400b star systems and trillions of planets. Other games have toyed with the idea of procedural generated planets, I say toyed because they are either cartoonish or not serious efforts. NMS are cartoonish, not saying it's a bad game, just not my cup of tea, and SC...yes I know not a game, toyed with it but essentially abandoned it for manual planet sculpting as far as I am aware. There's a lot of manual work that goes into their planets, that simply doesn't work with a setting the scale of ED. Is it in fact impossible to do it effectively? I don't know, not my field, we will just have to wait and see.
Click to expand...
I often compare Elite and the movie Prometheus visually.
Flying over a desert planet, finding a base, then a storm ...
 

thistle

T
varonica said:
Good luck with that idea. Since we already have flora spread all across the galaxy I suspect most people are expecting a much more serious go for the next set of planets, specially if they have thicker atmosphere. Would I be willing to put up with essentially barren planets just tp get thicker atmosphere? Maybe not, are a lot of other CMDRS of the same opinion? No idea.
Click to expand...
Most planets with atmospheres will be barren in reality though, weather and atmospheres on barren landscapes would be great I think. I don't want to play NMS and scan bouncing beaked mushrooms to be honest.
 

Darkfyre99

Darkfyre99
Stealthie said:
See, I'd rather a dev' took a stab at it, made a mess of it and then fine-tuned it until it worked reasonably well instead of avoiding it for fear of failure.
Click to expand...

I think there’s a wired of difference between not doing something due to a fear of failure, and building something in stages because they can’t justify the cost of doing something all at once.

Stealthie said:
Thing is, as well, it's one of those things where I (personally) wouldn't be fussed about seeing precisely the same weather as somebody else as long as we both experienced the same type of weather.
Obviously, a PvPer, for example, might think it's a serious issue if they were, for example, trying to head into a cloud for cover when they have no way of knowing if their opponent is going to see the same cloud but, meh.
In that case, I guess the answer is to not rely on weather attributes for cover.

Seems like it would be possible to come up with a simplistic model to generate "bubbles" of dynamic weather on a planet's surface based on stuff like temperature and geography.
You fly into, say, a "heavy rain area" and you get droplets on your canopy, there's reduced visibility of distant objects and, perhaps, you get flickering on your HUDs, sensor problems and engines operate at slightly reduced power.
All players would get similar experiences in that area even if they didn't see exactly the same clouds or puddles.
Click to expand...

And that’s where procedural generation comes into play. As long as it can be calculated in real time, there’s no reason why players can’t experience the same clouds and weather.

Stealthie said:
Regarding gas giants, that's another one from my ED wish-list.
It'd be great if we needed to build especially tough ships (armoured hulls and "internal bracing" modules required) in order to get down into the atmosphere of a gas giant in order to carry out some task.
Honestly, I'd take that before surface weather-effects if I had to choose.
Click to expand...

Agreed.
 

Wily Rites

Wily Rites
varonica said:
Not new though, we already have clouds, in space yes, lagrange clouds, so the principal is there, but clouds on planets will need thicker atmospheres, so they won't turn up until they release new planets.
Click to expand...
I often wonder if the dust clouds inside of some stations is something that is tied into the way that the system is formed, I gather that the dust in space is one of the key elements in making it all realistic. But you are quite right to hi light how clouds are everywhere, I was more specifically thinking of planetary updates and clouds.
In particular the gas giants that I've heard mentioned several times about this subject.

It would be very cool to be able to get up close and experience weather effects and the likes near these beauties!
 

jojon

J
Darkfyre99 said:
...As long as it can be calculated in real time...
Click to expand...
...or just: "just-in-time", even.
Wily Rites said:
...dust clouds inside of some stations...
Click to expand...
Those are sprites - huge, single-quad billboard sprites at that (EDIT: Roll your ship, and watch the steam clouds rotate right along with it). Pretty sure the miasma at large barnacle sites is volumetric though, albeit probably not shaded for light.
 
Last edited:

Wily Rites

Wily Rites
Ian Doncaster said:
There's a specific problem that Elite Dangerous has with that which other games showing dense atmospheres can usually avoid having to deal with.

ED has procedurally-generated planets, multiplayer, seamless planetary landings, and a relatively high level of graphical detail.

So: if we both visit the same planet at the same time, how does the game guarantee that:
- weather systems look consistent at all scales (e.g. you don't dive down through a massive dense cloud visible from orbit, and then it's sunny and clear on the ground)
- we see the same weather as each other (e.g. I'm not trying to shoot at you in this CZ through dense fog while for you it's a nice sunny day)
- ideally this is done without the weather being completely static in either time or space (e.g. "It was raining at Davies Base. But then, it was always raining at Davies Base.") ... though of course for some of the less habitable planets that might be fairly realistic
- for bonus points the weather should be vaguely plausible to at least match a non-expert's expectations from the terrain (e.g. "that's the tenth day in a row it's rained in this desert")
...and all while taking as little power of a consumer-grade PC as possible so this weather sim can actually run

I don't think this is an impossible challenge, but every other game I can think of where you explore somewhere with weather takes some shortcut that ED has already ruled out to avoid the challenge of faking N million planet-wide weather simulations, so I'd be surprised if Frontier went straight for it without trying something simpler first.

(Gas Giant upper atmospheres would be my expectation for the "next planet type" if they do one - upper atmosphere circulation is a lot simpler than lower-atmosphere, there's no terrain interactions to model, and the weather can to some extent be approximated as "cloudy" - so they can get some of the technology needed for ELWs and similar in place without going all the way there, while also bringing in a completely new environment type with its own very different gameplay options)
Click to expand...
I was thinking along the lines of the Gas giants and their navigable surface as clouds, as I've heard it mentioned in some old videos and it does sound as though it really could add some extra interesting backdrops for the game play.

Great point about the complexity, this would be an area of the game where you want to have somewhat more dynamic variant of randomness and yet still have it repeat between computer systems, which is a really interesting conundrum! Very cool, I'd not considered this before, thanks for raising the point.
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
thistle said:
Most planets with atmospheres will be barren in reality though, weather and atmospheres on barren landscapes would be great I think. I don't want to play NMS and scan bouncing beaked mushrooms to be honest.
Click to expand...

Yep.

It'd be nice if "weather" was just part of a giganttic package of "living planet" stuff, with seas and biomes and vegetation and animals but that's a BIG ask.

More reasonably, I think we could have "weather" take the form of dust-storms, gas-clouds and similar stuff.
I mean, "rain" doesn't have to involve dihydrogen oxide.
Depending on the pressure and temperature of a planet, it could be raining methane, chlorine, nitrogen or whatever.
And, if FDev didn't want to do the science to realistically determine what might cause "rain" on any given planet, I'd be happy to accept that it's caused by elements we don't know about.

There's a whole argument related to the sandstorm at the start of "The Martian" and how the low atmospheric pressure on Mars means that you're just not going to get that sort of thing but, IMO, a bit of artistic license is fine as long as it adds something to a movie... or game.
 

Wily Rites

Wily Rites
Kzak said:
Indeed, rain can take the form of liquid metal on certain planets. Hot hot hot.
Click to expand...
Hey maybe we could clean off the thargoid corrosive gunk and reconstruct the hull, all whilst gathering the materials needed to do so; Win win situation here, bring on the metal rain!
 
Last edited:

thistle

T
Stealthie said:
There's a whole argument related to the sandstorm at the start of "The Martian" and how the low atmospheric pressure on Mars means that you're just not going to get that sort of thing but, IMO, a bit of artistic license is fine as long as it adds something to a movie... or game.
Click to expand...
Yeah the NASA website mentions there are "intense dust storms" and every few years "planet-encircling storms" on Mars, but because of the lower atmosphere they aren't all that intense, 60mph tops.
 

aRJay

aRJay
Stealthie said:
Yep.

It'd be nice if "weather" was just part of a giganttic package of "living planet" stuff, with seas and biomes and vegetation and animals but that's a BIG ask.

More reasonably, I think we could have "weather" take the form of dust-storms, gas-clouds and similar stuff.
I mean, "rain" doesn't have to involve dihydrogen oxide.
Depending on the pressure and temperature of a planet, it could be raining methane, chlorine, nitrogen or whatever.
And, if FDev didn't want to do the science to realistically determine what might cause "rain" on any given planet, I'd be happy to accept that it's caused by elements we don't know about.

There's a whole argument related to the sandstorm at the start of "The Martian" and how the low atmospheric pressure on Mars means that you're just not going to get that sort of thing but, IMO, a bit of artistic license is fine as long as it adds something to a movie... or game.
Click to expand...

thistle said:
Yeah the NASA website mentions there are "intense dust storms" and every few years "planet-encircling storms" on Mars, but because of the lower atmosphere they aren't all that intense, 60mph tops.
Click to expand...
The problem with the dust storm in The Martian wasn’t that it happened or that it killed visibility it was that even at high speed the low pressure on Mars means that there is no momentum compared to Earth, so the wind wouldn’t be knocking down masts or people it would be struggling to move a newspaper.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom