Yes, and I understand some people believed them.
The curse of Elite as Online game
- Thread starter ralf_maeder
- Start date
Yes, and I understand some people believed them.
Is there not one computer science major or working programmer among the folks here?
for us to have the same Elite
game we play online but as a static galaxy offline - ignore all other possible issues and just answer this:
with a galaxy of over 400 billion stars, assuming the smallest byte storage simply for just the minimum 9 digit name of each star, what is the total terrabytes of storage needed for you to have the same galaxy now offline and on your personal computer?
this is ignoring other data such as explored planets, not explored, the economy, etc - just the minimum bytes to store each star catalog name for a galaxy of 400 billion.
I am not a fan of must play online games, i am not excusing frontier....but if you can see the issue with just the star catalog storage above, then any offline galaxy stored on our computers or sold ad stand alone product would be shall we day - massive.
not impossible - some of us probaby have home storage networks that could fit the data requirements. But its not going to be a simple buy or download this disk if elite ever goes offline thats for sure.
for us to have the same Elite
game we play online but as a static galaxy offline - ignore all other possible issues and just answer this:with a galaxy of over 400 billion stars, assuming the smallest byte storage simply for just the minimum 9 digit name of each star, what is the total terrabytes of storage needed for you to have the same galaxy now offline and on your personal computer?
this is ignoring other data such as explored planets, not explored, the economy, etc - just the minimum bytes to store each star catalog name for a galaxy of 400 billion.
I am not a fan of must play online games, i am not excusing frontier....but if you can see the issue with just the star catalog storage above, then any offline galaxy stored on our computers or sold ad stand alone product would be shall we day - massive.
not impossible - some of us probaby have home storage networks that could fit the data requirements. But its not going to be a simple buy or download this disk if elite ever goes offline thats for sure.
Is there not one computer science major or working programmer among the folks here?
for us to have the same Elite
with a galaxy of over 400 billion stars, assuming the smallest byte storage simply for just the minimum 9 digit name of each star, what is the total terrabytes of storage needed for you to have the same galaxy now offline and on your personal computer?
this is ignoring other data such as explored planets, not explored, the economy, etc - just the minimum bytes to store each star catalog name for a galaxy of 400 billion.
I am not a fan of must play online games, i am not excusing frontier....but if you can see the issue with just the star catalog storage above, then any offline galaxy stored on our computers or sold ad stand alone product would be shall we day - massive.
not impossible - some of us probaby have home storage networks that could fit the data requirements. But its not going to be a simple buy or download this disk if elite ever goes offline thats for sure.
Roughly, with 400.000.000.000 stars, you can have 1000 bytes for each star on one 4TB disk. So, I would say that 32TB can be sufficient for the data.
kreuzbichler
Banned
there are no servers, it´s peer to peer, just look at the stuttering and insane network lag. And I bet they could patch in offline within half a month but that would cut back their cash shop profit as people would start modding (which was also promised and is as of today undelivered) plus it would be pirated, more loss of cash. They already revised half of what they said on Kickstarter, wonder what´s next
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the systems are generated/randomized on the fly, the whole game is on your HD, it´s only about 3 Gigabyte, probably mostly sound and textures and code, it´s all there. Don´t believe the hoodoo about a galaxy server calculating anything, it´s not. Pretty sure it´s just synching what you buy/sell and keeping track of Powerplay
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the systems are generated/randomized on the fly, the whole game is on your HD, it´s only about 3 Gigabyte, probably mostly sound and textures and code, it´s all there. Don´t believe the hoodoo about a galaxy server calculating anything, it´s not. Pretty sure it´s just synching what you buy/sell and keeping track of Powerplay
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There are servers. They exist for matchmaking, authentication, and server side stuff such as the background sim (trade prices, faction strengths, etc), tracking payments, galaxy and system information.
Depending on the system and who else is around, I haven't had much problem with the P2P aspect of the game. Did have one fight with a commander who jumped around a bit, but most interactions were lag free. They still need to work on the net code of course and keep making improvements.
No, there are both client side patches and server side patches, so there definitely IS a server side. Plus, the data about the whole galaxy are not on the clients PCs, they are in the FD's datacentre.
Another disguised "offline mode" bleat..... can we not just push all these threads into one pile. .. to be easier to ignore ?
Yeah, this. Getting pretty boring now.
kreuzbichler
Banned
that´s up to some coder/miner to find out, if they had a 5 kilobyte game with a galaxy decades ago, why would the same thing suddenly need a server?
Sorry I don´t buy it,the whole point of generating the universe with code is having a small size, there is no super server with terrabyte of galaxy data, no Sire. And by the way, how is No Mans Sky and Limit Theory doing the exact same thing (insane number of arbitrary systems) with the same tech not requiring a server?
Well, the discussions about server updates are here:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=74
And, if there is no central Galaxy server, how are they doing rollbacks (like last time, when there was a problem with explorers names in star systems after one patch) ?
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Systems are procedurally generated but there will need to be data that is saved for ownership and influence for all factions/systems/stations, exploration data for first discovered, all of the Power Play data, even just think of all the data saved for your specific CMDR (i.e. which objects in which systems you have scanned, all of your standings with each of the 1000s of factions, etc,). All of this is saved to a server not procedurally generated.
Exactly why I was so disappointed when a true standalone client was scrapped, the potential if this game was moddable would be fantastic.
Want a densely populated universe? Here you go.
More Pew Pew? Got you covered.
New ships? Take your pick.
Thargoids? How about Thargoids on Steroids? Or non at all?
There were never any promises a mod friendly single player client of course, but given all the talk of PC lovin', old school development, I had high hopes.
Could have been so good.
Yes for me the benefits of an off line mode would outweigh the benefits of online by far.
Although I like the evolving aspect of online I do not care much for other players in my game. I won't miss them for a sec.
I still have hope FD will eventually add a static offline mode after they implemented the major expansions.
Patience is needed and I have more than enough of that.
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I was thinking more along the lines of 4TB x factor of ~8-12, because the name catalog for all the planets in each star system would need to be stored. And the couple hundred actual inhabited systems would require far greater storage of field and data values.
As I said, lots of have SAN networks at home probably pushing 40+ TB. But I don't really see an efficient way to push out even as a one time basis a stand alone static galaxy of something close to that even if we're both wrong and it's somewhere in the middle, say even 20 TB.
People have a hard time with 60+ GB games, I'm not sure there's ever been a commercial home stored 1 TB+ game? Maybe there has, but for sure this one would be the whopper that beats that by a mile.
I'm pretty sure the vast majority of star names are procedurally generated. I would be absolutely amazed if FD were hosting a 20+ TB SAN.
Make ED server components available on a player's machine.
When X3 first came out, I didn't play it for a few years. Just two years ago I spent a lot of time with X3 and enjoyed every bit of it, though development had stopped a long time ago. The only reason I could do that was because I could play offline.
When X3 first came out, I didn't play it for a few years. Just two years ago I spent a lot of time with X3 and enjoyed every bit of it, though development had stopped a long time ago. The only reason I could do that was because I could play offline.
I really don't understand why people are talking about storing this game.
- Elite 1 had thousands of star systems and fit inside 22k of memory. This included all the planets, ships, stations, NPCs and market data.
- Frontier: Elite 2 fit on 880 KB on the Amiga. It had fully simulated galaxy with planets, ships, stations, NPCs and market data.
- Space Engine as billions of galaxies. It all fits in around 1.5gb of data.
Procedural generation does not require huge volumes of storage!
(And if you guys are talking about individual player made changes, then that would be calculated the same way as all other online games, which is by the number of player made changes rather than the size of the gameworld).
- Elite 1 had thousands of star systems and fit inside 22k of memory. This included all the planets, ships, stations, NPCs and market data.
- Frontier: Elite 2 fit on 880 KB on the Amiga. It had fully simulated galaxy with planets, ships, stations, NPCs and market data.
- Space Engine as billions of galaxies. It all fits in around 1.5gb of data.
Procedural generation does not require huge volumes of storage!
(And if you guys are talking about individual player made changes, then that would be calculated the same way as all other online games, which is by the number of player made changes rather than the size of the gameworld).
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In any business venture products and services evolve over time. It is extremely rare to find a startup selling goods or services that become an overnight success and headline news. FD anyways has been around for decades and ED is one of many titles and probably one of the most successful that the company has launched. So a 10-year plan is like any other product plan, to grow and improve the product over time. Any software, not just games, evolve over a long period of time. I use software at work that was born just before the dotcom boom and after 19 years goes from strength to strength.