The time has come
- Thread starter h4r4s3r
- Start date
"There is no technical reason" OK, I'll use small words.
Just the database for the stars (as a modest and conservative estimate I did earlier) is 27TB in size. 27TB on a 1.544MB connection would take a transfer time of (d:h:m:s): 1619:04:06:13 Or 1600+ DAYS. You could literally travel to Alpha Centuri at the speed of light before the file finished downloading. Again, that's a conservative estimate. It's probably a lot larger.
This does not include commodity market info (which changes continually), stations / outposts, factional relationships, outfitting, yadda yadda yadda. Then there is the issue of you sitting there for hours to upload all of your discoveries, sync exploration and mission data, etc. back up to the servers. You and 1.25 million others simultaneously.
Pause button? What does that do? Stops planets orbiting stars and moons from orbiting planets? Freezes all NPC's in place, locks the countdown clock for your mission in a REAL TIME simulation? How do you suggest syncing time back up when you reconnect to the servers?
There are actually several solid technical reasons; people just tend to ignore them for their own selfish reasons.
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I don't think anyone asking for an Offline version is expecting to sync to the Online version.
Indeed. FE2 fitted on a single floppy disk, after all. A modern equivalent of that game would not need hard drives the size of aircraft carriers, no matter how often people assert it.
Frontier apparently used this mode for live demos at shows on some occasions before release. If I remember correctly there was a video showing it briefly but I can't find it at the moment.
may i suggest you look for another game then, because what you are asking for isn't actually elite dangerous, in fact, what you are asking for isn't even what was considered for an offline mode in the original ddf. you are asking frontier to give you a copy of the galaxy they so masterfully reproduced, so you can do what you want with it, under the guise of asking for the originally discussed 'offline mode'
how unbelievably 'something something something' of you
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This is worth a view, if anyone's interested in the "behind the scenes" stuff going on...
AWS re:Invent 2015 | (GAM403) From 0 to 60 Million Player Hours in 400B Star Systems
Published on Oct 12, 2015
Elite Dangerous is a Kickstarter-backed, massive-scale space MMO by Frontier Games. With no prior experience with AWS, Frontier have used EC2, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, Elasticache, and CloudFormation to deploy a cross-platform PC & Console MMO experience that is sold and distributed worldwide. Every action made by each of the 825,000 (and counting) Elite Dangerous players drives the combined game's story forward, and impacts a live galactic commodities market running on EC2 and RDS in real-time. Frontier uses AWS to create a simulation of the entire 400 billion star systems of the Milky Way galaxy using physics engines running on Amazon EC2. Finally, learn how Elite distributes updates and DLC to game clients using Amazon S3 and Amazon CloudFront.
AWS re:Invent 2015 | (GAM403) From 0 to 60 Million Player Hours in 400B Star Systems
Published on Oct 12, 2015
Elite Dangerous is a Kickstarter-backed, massive-scale space MMO by Frontier Games. With no prior experience with AWS, Frontier have used EC2, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, Elasticache, and CloudFormation to deploy a cross-platform PC & Console MMO experience that is sold and distributed worldwide. Every action made by each of the 825,000 (and counting) Elite Dangerous players drives the combined game's story forward, and impacts a live galactic commodities market running on EC2 and RDS in real-time. Frontier uses AWS to create a simulation of the entire 400 billion star systems of the Milky Way galaxy using physics engines running on Amazon EC2. Finally, learn how Elite distributes updates and DLC to game clients using Amazon S3 and Amazon CloudFront.
I'm curious how you reached this 27TB figure? The client we are running doesn't download the galaxy from the servers as you fly around, everything is generated on your own PC. Only 1 system at a time is ever loaded into memory. The next system you jump to is generated while you sit and watch the hyperspace animation which is actually a loading screen.
You mention syncing exploration data, etc. We don't want to sync anything back to the server, ever. Neither do we want to download anything from the server.
before release? as in not live? like the galaxy map with a few active systems so they could demo?
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but you would still need the full galaxy on your pc, including the bgs, as you wouldn't be connected to a server that gives you all that data when you arrive at any given destination.. you really haven't thought this much past.. i want!! have you? it doesnt matter where we are as players.. the bgs is still managing everything within the entire galaxy, that we have interacted with, are interacting with, or will ever interact with.
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Just like any game with a BGS. I mentioned an example higher up in the thread with Rebel Galaxy. It has fluctuating markets and states that are both tied into scripted game events and player input. Or look at Civilization or Stellaris, BGS doesn't mean server required.
I can't take you seriously with a typo. Also, I'm pretty sure Elite would not function without the servers, which is why offline mode was done away with... I was plenty annoyed with this, since I too wanted to play around with the game's internals, but I've gotten over it.
Sounds like we have a deal!
You already have the entire galaxy on your PC. It's generated for you every time you jump to another system by your own PC, but only 1 system at a time. When you jump your PC sends a position update to the server but it's not doing a lookup in a database to determine what stars and planets to show.
Take a look at one of the X series games if you want to see a space game that is fully offline and still has a BGS.
I think it's just far away...
You otha brotha's can't deny
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It's a procedural galaxy. It's all stored in an algorithm not in a database. When I go HERE, the math generates what is HERE. When I go THERE, that math generates what is THERE. It's essentially a fractal space with a cockpit slapped on. Only the assets (ships/stations/buildings/textures) require disk storage and load time. The only non procedural systems that I'm aware of are SOL and SAG A (I suppose there might be a handful of others).
Small words. It's math on top of math on top of math. It's not a directory full of stars and planets and moons and all their specific orbits and compositions line by line eating TBs of cloud space. It's very very small math and it ensures that what I see and what you see will always be the same.
Space Engine (10 Trillion galaxies with basic life) and NMS (18 quintilion planets with complex life and multiple economies (plural)) both do the same thing (different and more advanced procedures obviously) and run locally in a small HDD footprint and are many orders of magnitude bigger than ED. So no there is no technical reason offline mode isn't a thing.
Small words. It's math on top of math on top of math. It's not a directory full of stars and planets and moons and all their specific orbits and compositions line by line eating TBs of cloud space. It's very very small math and it ensures that what I see and what you see will always be the same.
Space Engine (10 Trillion galaxies with basic life) and NMS (18 quintilion planets with complex life and multiple economies (plural)) both do the same thing (different and more advanced procedures obviously) and run locally in a small HDD footprint and are many orders of magnitude bigger than ED. So no there is no technical reason offline mode isn't a thing.