Elite / Frontier microsoft releasing elite 4 ripoff

[Raven]

It will depend on how you "tweak" the ship really, on how many degrees of freedom you get and how responsive the ship is to those freedoms.

Certainly isn't like the universe is made flat like some games, meaning you fly with a definitive ground. You still have Yaw, Pitch and Roll controls that won't reset you to a "level" afterwards. The tweaking more controls aspects like, say you wanted to flip over and fire at your opponent.

In FE2, your ship would continue on the path it was until you thrust strong enough to eliminate that. You'll be able to tweak how much that is compensated against. The option itself is a setting between 0.0 and 1.0, with 0.0 meaning no compensation, and 1.0 being direct compensation.

The engines are limited to make sure that flight performance isn't compromised, but again this can be delimited and altered. The power and responsiveness of the manouver jets also can be altered, so turning is sharper or softer depending on what you prefer.

 

[Steve O B Have]

Do you mind me asking how big your Dev team is Robert and perhaps some sort of an ETA on when you expect to start Beta testing or a tentitive release date?

 

[Raven]

It is a fairly small, closely nit development team.
3 programmers, 3 artists, a musician and a sound engineer.

We aim to release Q2 2008. No planned public beta, but we will intensively test it when it reaches the final couple of months. Personally I want to aim for a Holiday 2007 release, but unfortunately the programmer in-charge of AI and scripting system is currently recovering from a major operation. So can't really push him hard. ^_^

 

[Steve O B Have]

It sounds like you have a fairly massive task ahead of you especially considering the depth of gameplay you have described.

 

[Crayfish]

It is a fairly small, closely nit development team.
3 programmers, 3 artists, a musician and a sound engineer.

Are you a professional studio working on this game full time? Are these employees on a salary?

 

[Vlodec]

Why are people so gullible ? Even if Raven is for real he should be treated with extreme scepticism. Firstly someone of weak credibility claims to have knowledge of an upcoming Elite clone . Then, when others express scepticism, a newcomer adventitiously turns up who just happens to be working on the very thing.

I'll believe it when I see it.

 

[DraQ]

Why are people so gullible ? Even if Raven is for real he should be treated with extreme scepticism. Firstly someone of weak credibility claims to have knowledge of an upcoming Elite clone . Then, when others express scepticism, a newcomer adventitiously turns up who just happens to be working on the very thing.

I'll believe it when I see it.

Chill.

I've never lost my skepticism, I'm just having some fun.

 

[Raxxla]

Fascinating...

Well if Raven is Hoaxing us, he's doing a fine damn job of it...
I googled "Robert Lettan", and found some posting of his on the MSDN Forums. Reading his messages he's well versed and knows what he's talking about on the game development side. I'm not valdating who he is, because really, anyone can be almost anyone on the internet, Especially in a forum like this...

But I'd certinaly step in line, to beta test something if you'd like to share it...

-- Raxxla

 

[whizz812]

raven hoax

Its come to my attention that this guy raven is jumping on my band wagon and stealing my fire with this daily run down of a game i told you about. The day after i blow the cover off the microsoft story, he comes in with 10 pages of clone elite info. Hmmmmm I smell a rat here folks be warned. My news team is about to break this goose egg wide open. Watch this space. Credit to the guy tho, it takes Patients to come with this tech info every day. If you ask me its time better spent on a stoll along the river than post bogus elite clone goose eggs. Tut Tut... Mr raven

 

[Raven]

Are you a professional studio working on this game full time? Are these employees on a salary?

Yes. Liandri is an independant professional studio, and a registered xbox developer. Hopefully you can understand if I decline to make note of the contracts everyone is on, because this is private information.

We have been developing Callsign since 2005, and it certainly hasn't been a bump-free development either. I won't go in to the exact details about everything, because again I feel it's private. However to answer if we're working on this full-time, then the answer is no.

The plan is to continue full-time development in August. Until then we are working on some short-term development titles to help our budget situation. Was a tough decision to put the game on hold, but necessary until we can sign a publisher to guarentee income.

It sounds like you have a fairly massive task ahead of you especially considering the depth of gameplay you have described.

Sometimes it feels like the task of completing this game will never come. This said this is a big project (although we never realised how big when we started it) and we've been developing it fulltime for the better part of 2 and half years. For the progress we've made and our team size, it has been impressive to say the least. Hopefully after the weekend you guys will be able to see and play what our efforts have taken to create.
I'm not to worried about showing something of the current engine given after our short-term projects we'll be sitting down, fully taking in what we've learnt, and take in the mistakes we've made. When added with the input from you guys, well it'll give us a very good idea of what the final design should be.

We've rebuilt the engine from the ground up several times, but usually when we learnt something new. Last time it was when we moved from ODE Physics to PhysX. Something I've personally learnt is the engine itself while very important to the actual game is not the longest development part. This is the first project I've ever worked on as a programmer, used to be an environment artist. So never realised what the biggest development hurdles were going to be, and it seems to be design. As ideas expand more needs to be done, sometime incompatible with what is already there so ripping it apart and starting over.

So, yeah this is huge.. but now, I think we're starting to understand what needs to be done. I'll continue to learn new things over the next few months, that way some features like the procedural galaxy creation will be a reality rather than a hopeful feature. Someone on the forums posted a siggraph whitepaper site that has seriously helped me take the first steps to understanding that. A big problem has probably been me with this project, moving to programming as a profession over a hobby.. and being the engine developer this probaby hasn't helped. The other programmers focus on the expanding scripting system, UI and networking. Practically everything else is me, so heh my skills probably need some well derserved attention.

This is another part of the smaller projects for a few months. So I can get used to coding simple engines from start to finish.

 

[Raven]

Its come to my attention that this guy raven is jumping on my band wagon and stealing my fire with this daily run down of a game i told you about. The day after i blow the cover off the microsoft story, he comes in with 10 pages of clone elite info. Hmmmmm I smell a rat here folks be warned. My news team is about to break this goose egg wide open. Watch this space. Credit to the guy tho, it takes Patients to come with this tech info every day. If you ask me its time better spent on a stoll along the river than post bogus elite clone goose eggs. Tut Tut... Mr raven

I read you're first post, and that was it. So whatever you've said since is beyond my knowledge cause couldn't really be bothered to read several pages of what I felt was probably .

I would love to know about your whole, "news team" who have links to Microsoft. I'm also sure my account manager Alistair Bodin, would also be interested in knowing about employees breeching their NDAs

 

[DraQ]

I have but two questions:

Does your studio work with NEG, by any chance?

"John Harmony" is such an unusual name, does the full name have "Elton" somewhere, as well?

 

[Raven]

Does your studio work with NEG, by any chance?

Nope.

"John Harmony" is such an unusual name, does the full name have "Elton" somewhere, as well?

In the 6 or so years I've known John, can't say that I've ever felt his name was unusual. No idea if any of his middle names are "Elton" or if he even has any. If it helps, he's American and is from California. Met him while I was working in San Francisco, through a mutual friend. His family is big in the oil industry.

You could always contact him directly if you have questions for him: j.harmony@puffinteractive.com (it's the only e-mail account he regularly checks)

 

[Steve O B Have]

Hopefully after the weekend you guys will be able to see and play what our efforts have taken to create.

Colour me very interested to see this.

When added with the input from you guys, well it'll give us a very good idea of what the final design should be.

I'm sure we'll all be very happy to check this out, certainly as a 'pass-time' before Elite 4 comes to the fore.

This is another part of the smaller projects for a few months. So I can get used to coding simple engines from start to finish.

Is there anything in general circulation that you or your dev team have been responsible for that we can look at? Any games or artwork etc?

 

[Crayfish]

The plan is to continue full-time development in August. Until then we are working on some short-term development titles to help our budget situation. Was a tough decision to put the game on hold, but necessary until we can sign a publisher to guarentee income.

Heh, a familiar story, considering where we are.

 

[Steve O B Have]

Heh, a familiar story, considering where we are.

True - but at the end of the day I'd prefer that Frontier take the time to create what they intend to create rather than create what they can within the publishers time constraints. For me what Frontier Dev and DB are doing make sense to me and are more likely to produce something as momentus as the original Elite rather than a snapshot and shadow of what could have been.

 

[whizz812]

I read you're first post, and that was it. So whatever you've said since is beyond my knowledge cause couldn't really be bothered to read several pages of what I felt was probably .

I would love to know about your whole, "news team" who have links to Microsoft. I'm also sure my account manager Alistair Bodin, would also be interested in knowing about employees breeching their NDAs

Well its seems you read my first post and my last post. Since you responded to it. My "news team" consists of 3 people working on rumors and other leads i deem worthy of further examination. As far as ms staff breeching their nda's, They did not, A friend of mine who is a friend of a guy working in the ms r&d department saw the memo at his house regarding the elite clone game "space trader. With the tech info i have related in subsequent posts. So take this memo and my reporting it as you will. I am here to report not defend myself against other people coming up with bogus elite games because of the elite game i have heard about.

Not much else i can say, its just funny all these poelpe buying into page after page of your " elite clone" game. Very amusing. Like i said credit to you, as bogus stories go yours is way way up there my friend with the very best....

 

[HKu]

Hello people.

This is my first reply here.
I noticed the date on the original post.....
A few days before April 1st....!?
Could this be a joke, allowed to simmer on?

 

[Steve O B Have]

Hello people.

This is my first reply here.
I noticed the date on the original post.....
A few days before April 1st....!?
Could this be a joke, allowed to simmer on?

If it were an April Fools joke then surely the joke would be on the joker for getting the date wrong.

 

[Raven]

whizz812, if they release ANY information that is not their own. (i.e. what they get from a memo) then that is an NDA breech. No matter how you personally want to look at it, unless it comes from an official channel they're in breech. If you actually do know these people, then I'd suggest you warn them that there might be an investigation as I have let Alistair know about this thread and the potencial leaks.

Hopefully you're lying, and no one will get in trouble.

Is there anything in general circulation that you or your dev team have been responsible for that we can look at? Any games or artwork etc?

As a team unfortunately we've not released any public media yet. We have to be quite careful about what we do release, and the information we provide. Although I'm happy discussing and eventually show things we have planned or are developing for Callsign. Would like everyone to know that this is not so much an official "this WILL be in Callsign", as "these are the idea's we have and are trying to impliment".

Think of it more as a visual brain-storming. Based on reactions from different types of gamers, we will then develop the actual title based on what we think is the best options. All official press releases will be done via the Microsoft Marketing Dept.

So feel free to make suggestions.

Over this next week my personal focus is on a game that I'm developing on my own simply dubbed "Planet Cute", so sorry if I don't respond as quickly as you would hope but most of the weekend I've been blitzing making 3D artwork and a multi-platform engine.