Progress Diary #3

Michael Brookes said:
Hi everyone,

Welcome to the third progress diary. In this diary David answers more questions from fans posting on our forums. In this diary he covers cockpits, music, maintaining ships for long range exploration and the all important question of where he gets his jumpers from!


If you’re a member of the Private Backers Forum and would like to suggest a question then visit our forums and post your question in the questions thread.

In the video David is rather tastefully modelling one of the new backers t-shirts. These have been posted out, along with the mugs and unsigned concept prints. If you’re waiting for a signed print then I’m sorry to say there has been an issue in transit to us, so we’re having new ones sent that David can sign. This should be sorted within the next couple of weeks.

There has been a slight delay with the latest newsletter, but this will be sent out next week.

Thank you for reading and watching, I’ll be back in a few weeks with a new update.

Michael
 
Love the video... still no clarification on the onesie front... will need to up the campaign now!!

Other than that thank you for the update!
 
I feel so ambivalent!

On the one hand, my question was answered by DB; on the other, I was cred-slapped :p! I blame the Elite Wiki, and not having played frontier for over 10 years :eek:.

Thanks for answering it though!
 
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I blame the Elite Wiki
Even though the Elite Wiki gives the hyperspace ranges? Riiiight! :)

The first thing that occurred to me was: glad I didn't buy a t-shirt!

EDIT: Ok, have some cred back. It was jump capable in Frontier but not in Elite...
 
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Great update.

I'm so glad its not going to turn into a multi-ship management system.
I love the idea of a 3D cockpit too. I can imagine being thrown back in my seat when entering hyperspace and being jolted forwards when coming out of it.

Hopefully many people should now have an idea of where this game is going now. It's Elite all over again with a makeover for the 21st century. Hurray!

woof woof!
 
Subtitles for translations

0:07 Hello, welcome to this, another dev diary for Elite: Dangerous.
0:11 um.. and er... thank you for following our progress!
0:14 so um... again starting off with a number of questions but before i go into those
0:18 I am modeling here one of the t-shirts that some people will already have, hopefully
0:22 if you haven't got it yet it will be enroute to you as we speak
0:26 so there we go
0:28 so starting off with KFRIMAN
0:31 will things like repair kits be available
0:34 so you can fix damage while out exploring
0:38 so.. the answer is twofold so yes there will be things that you buy
0:42 that you can use to fix problems with your ships we'll probably call them repair drones or
0:46 something like that
0:47 uh... but also you would be expected to get a ship that is much more reliable
0:51 for exploring, you know, that you will be able to pay a premium
0:55 for things that work better and have longer ranges and things like that so that's how
0:59 we expect to handle it but yes you will carry something else for emergencies
1:04 the next question from OSS133
1:07 will it be possible to own a fleet of ships staffed by npcs and given orders
1:11 to follow
1:12 so they trade trade scout or mine etc ore et cetera
1:17 so the answer is to this, is, at very least for the first game,
1:20 I'm afraid, no.
1:22 So, the reason for that is it very much changes the flavour and the scope of
1:28 the game to be one very much more of
1:30 of resource management where you end up running the game looking at tables
1:34 what we're trying to do is make sure that the most fun activities are also
1:37 the ones that generate the most money
1:39 the problem is if we create
1:41 a sort of what's basically a resource management system where you're managing
1:44 all your ships at the same time you're looking at tables you're saying oh this one's got this
1:48 rate of return
1:49 let's put that one onto mining ore
1:51 you end up being very divorced from the game you're essentially playing the game
1:54 as a spreadsheet
1:55 and that to me is is wrong
1:57 it's not how we've designed the game but also we said at the start we're making a
2:01 game here for ourselves that's not really the game i want to play there
2:05 are other things that do that sort of thing that are out there now
2:09 and that's not how we see it
2:10 I think with time we will add this sort of functionality to some degree but we
2:14 don't want it to be the be all and end all of the game
2:16 I hope that
2:17 answers that question in a
2:19 positive way even though the answer is no if you see what I mean.
2:23 okay next question from ABUELONEMESIS
2:26 will the game contain a full new soundtrack
2:30 so the answer is absolutely yes we also want to make sure that it's a very rich
2:35 soundtrack we're looking into
2:36 things like orchestration there'll be more to come on that
2:39 which we're very very excited about
2:41 when I say a full new soundtrack I'm also imagining it will embrace the obvious
2:45 classic that everyone expects with Elite which is the Blue Danube
2:49 um although it will be
2:51 reperformed from the... I think the best we ever got in the Elite games was uh...
2:56 the Roland version
2:59 of the slightly less bleepy but still very very bleepy soundtrack in the game
3:06 okay... so question four
3:07 from DRWOOKIE
3:09 in the previous games the sidewinder was too small for interstellar travel has
3:13 this been changed for this Elite or will sidewinders be restricted to jumps
3:17 between different planets in the same star system
3:21 now, i'm not sure
3:22 DRWOOKIE where you've got that from
3:24 but certainly in Frontier the sidewinder was jump capable
3:29 uh... call the sidewinder a scout ship and i think it was it was also a
3:33 playable ship it wasn't didn't have a particularly high jump range but it was
3:36 there
3:38 uh... so the the sidewinder will be one of the starting ships in Elite: Dangerous
3:42 and yes it will be jump capable, it will be a very small ship
3:46 they'll be quite cheap to buy
3:48 but it will do it is still what we are calling a general purpose ship it will
3:51 still be able to do
3:53 each of the things that you want maybe not to the degree you want to do it but then
3:56 that's incentive to upgrade it but the the ship is there
4:00 and it will have to the ability to do hyperspace jumps
4:04 right and then the final proper question from
4:08 TINMAN
4:09 How will the cockpits be presented in the first release of the game? Fully 3D or some
4:13 sort of static representation?
4:16 Right so this is something we've been thinking about a lot at the time of the kick-
4:19 starter we didn't really know
4:21 but what we've done is we've modelled some cockpits and have a good feel for them so the
4:24 answer is fully 3D
4:27 and the the principal reason for that is firstly as we're planning to be able to
4:30 move around the ship later it's important we understand the shape and the
4:34 form of the cockpits
4:35 but also the thing that i found most compelling playing around with the game
4:39 is getting the feel of vibration and g-forces of turning and all that sort of thing
4:45 if you imagine
4:46 you're sitting in the seat of anything from a car to a boat to a jet fighter
4:50 I've never been in a jet fighter by the way but I imagine what it's like
4:53 uh... you must get buffeted left and right up and down and all that sort of thing. I've
4:57 certainly been in a small plane and you don't half get thrown around
5:01 but the feeling it gets is that it feels like the plane moves slightly before you
5:05 and that
5:06 the solidity of experience in real life that that that conveys can be conveyed
5:11 in a game
5:12 if you imagine the ship is subject to some sort of
5:15 judderal trauma because you've been just been hit by some weapon
5:19 you expect the ship to to to leap and you to then slightly follow
5:22 behind
5:23 and that gives you a feeling of the direction it came from and all that sort of thing
5:26 that's a very very rich additional
5:29 set of experiences for the player that i think are very important and because it
5:33 enables us to do that that's the reason
5:35 that um.. I want us to do the cockpits in full 3D
5:39 um... as to the details of that
5:41 that will follow during development but it's something that i think
5:44 gives a richness of feel of being there and I think that's one of the things
5:48 that i certainly want
5:49 in a in a ship it makes you somehow feel a lot more vulnerable if you're being
5:52 juddered alongside
5:54 the ship if you know what I mean
5:56 okay then a final slightly more jokey question so I've not counted it as one of
6:00 the the five uh... which is from from several people
6:03 uh... which is where do you get your jumpers from?
6:07 Now i was going to make up some some uh... ridiculous story and the irony is of
6:11 course here it's it is the first uh...
6:13 video where I'm not actually wearing a jumper
6:15 but that's because it's great, you know, spring summer's here in in Cambridge in
6:19 the UK
6:20 and it's got really warm but anyway
6:22 uh... I it's the story where there is some sort of uh...
6:26 uh... maidens on some carribean beach knitting jumpers from chinchilla
6:30 eyelashes but no sadly they're from a british store called Marks and Spencers mostly
6:35 or they're presents for Christmas
6:37 I've always liked jumpers uh... and so
6:39 I'm sure people
6:41 either would tease me about it a lot of people here have teased me about it
6:44 uh... but that's where they come from sorry it's boring but there you go
6:47 if you want to tell people that they're knitted from chinchilla eyelashes that's fine.
6:51 So thank you very much for watching um this video um... I'll see you again in uh...
6:56 around two weeks time
6:57 and uh... of course we're back head down making the game so thank you all very
7:01 much and thank you all the people who've contributed and are paying attention to this. Bye.
 
What is it¿

We were so blinded by the stunning image of DB in Tshirt, most of us probably did not pay much attention to the background image.

Its killing me!!! What is it??? Each time I think I've got it, it turns into something else.
 
I got soooo excited when he said thats the end of the serious questions... I thought... I HAVE A WHOLE SECTION... now I feel dejected and discarded like a pair of paper pants!!
 
We were so blinded by the stunning image of DB in Tshirt, most of us probably did not pay much attention to the background image.

Its killing me!!! What is it??? Each time I think I've got it, it turns into something else.

Is that it?
mail_head.3.jpg
 
0:07 Hello, welcome to this, another dev diary for Elite: Dangerous.
0:11 um.. and er... thank you for following our progress!....

Thanks for the subs Quietus... :cool:

It's not just the non-native English speakers who need subs... Sometimes those of us who can't hear at optimum levels need subs to help us along and fill in the gaps!

Thanks again! Much appreciated.
 
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