Solo is a poor substitute, compromised as it is by the requirements of the multiplayer game.Hi cupcake
not really sure what you are talking about... the game has always had single player mode (Solo)
The time has come
- Thread starter h4r4s3r
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More than enough to get the KS over the line as I recall
Careful with the revisionism there.None of the things you've listed cannot be replicated offline. Wings? AI buddies, that's easy enough, Rebel Galaxy has proven you can do that. Multicrew, again, can be replicated offline, no problems there. Factions? Done as well by multiple games.
They might not be done by other -players-, but to suggest they can't be done is disingenuous to say the least. So far nothing in the Elite universe cannot be safely translated to a solo offline experience, and I do mean that honestly and sincerely. There is nothing as yet that absolutely -requires- player interaction, which is where the distinction between this and say, EVE is important. EVE forces you to interact with other players, whether you like it or not, Elite doesn't.
Solo online is proof of that, yes you can make arguments that the background simulation still exists, but frankly you can make a scaled down version that would fit readily into a few gigs and it would run happily on most Desktop computers, indeed, there's other games that have -already done it-, just not as Elite initially promised.
Again, the one thing that stops it being a realistic prospect is that Frontier can't sell you paint jobs for an offline game.
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Ian Phillips
Volunteer Moderator
OH. Still moaning about that? After 18 months? WOW.
There is no horse, just a stain in the earth...
Now, they anger the Earth Goddess.
Probably won't end well.
lol
or.... just a possibility here to throw into the mix - could it be that it's actually more difficult than you (and i'm guessing you're not a top end games developer) think.
It's a chance isn't it?
And considering what you're asking for a whole different other game, and not the one many signed up for - where do you think the extra funding for that game is going to come from?
I'd suggest you go to another game, this one's "fate" is decided. What do you possibly imagine you'll achieve here other than making a lot of folk think you're pointless bitter?
More than enough to get the KS over the line as I recall
None of the things you've listed cannot be replicated offline. Wings? AI buddies, that's easy enough, Rebel Galaxy has proven you can do that. Multicrew, again, can be replicated offline, no problems there. Factions? Done as well by multiple games.
They might not be done by other -players-, but to suggest they can't be done is disingenuous to say the least. So far nothing in the Elite universe cannot be safely translated to a solo offline experience, and I do mean that honestly and sincerely. There is nothing as yet that absolutely -requires- player interaction, which is where the distinction between this and say, EVE is important. EVE forces you to interact with other players, whether you like it or not, Elite doesn't.
Solo online is proof of that, yes you can make arguments that the background simulation still exists, but frankly you can make a scaled down version that would fit readily into a few gigs and it would run happily on most Desktop computers, indeed, there's other games that have -already done it-, just not as Elite initially promised.
Again, the one thing that stops it being a realistic prospect is that Frontier can't sell you paint jobs for an offline game.
that and the fact that you would need access to your own downloaded version of the amazon web services and databases utilised for the galaxy and all the transactions we perform every time we hyperjump, dock, trade, bounty hunt, pirate, outfit our ships, put our name on a stellar body etc etc etc...
People do need to remember that on the back end side of the game is, from what I understand, a fairly complex arrangement of amazon web services and backend databases that are required for the game.
lol
or.... just a possibility here to throw into the mix - could it be that it's actually more difficult than you (and i'm guessing you're not a top end games developer) think.
It's a chance isn't it?
And considering what you're asking for a whole different other game, and not the one many signed up for - where do you think the extra funding for that game is going to come from?
I'd suggest you go to another game, this one's "fate" is decided. What do you possibly imagine you'll achieve here other than making a lot of folk think you're pointless bitter?
The original elite managed to cram a galaxy onto a floppy disk. Something tells me that people really forget their history in these matters. I should also point to the disaster that was EA's Simcity, when they went "oh no no no, it -needs- to be online, we have this amazing backend that cannot be replicated locally".
Then they go and release an offline patch that, guess what? Manages everything locally.
Nothing's set in stone, and the only reason Frontier aren't doing this, as I said, is because gold paint jobs cost money, if it was local, you'd be able to mod them in for free
As for me, not bitter, I just drop by to correct peoples' somewhat erroneous perceptions on what is, and is not possible technically.
Fella each 'galaxy' only had 256 stars each with a single planet. Something tells me your sense of scale and perspective is way way off.
Yes, and that was designed for computers with a miniscule fraction of the power of the desktops we run now, back then games had to run in, and I'll give you an example - a Commodore 64 (I have fond memories of this particular mammoth), which had the beastly sum of 64 Kilobytes of ram, not Megs, K's, and a whopping 1 megahertz processor.
Now, fast forward to present day. The generally accepted standard for a gaming PC is somewhere around a mid level i5, 8-16 Gigs of RAM, and a 700 series Geforce graphics card.
So we've gone from a 1mhz 8 bit CPU to a 4 core 64 bit CPU with additional instruction enhancements, 64 kilobytes of RAM to 8 to 16 Gigabytes of RAM, and graphics that were at the time expressed in nice easy to parse blocks to complex multi stage draw calls and shader algorithms using a graphics card that would put most PC's from even about 5-7 years ago to shame.
And you're suggesting that any of what I'm pointing at is in any way tricky? I think you sir, have an issue with perspective. *Grins*
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Yes. And no.
Remember you're still arguing for an entirely different game that'd need developing totally separately with a whole other storyline/lore/galaxy so you can play it at your pace and pause and set difficulty levels without messing up the multiplayer 'mother' game. The simple direct storyline version would take a lot less power it's true, and you could probably do without 3/4 of the stars in the galaxy etc - but it's a different game.
THIS game requires this. It's much more complicated and if you think your local pc can manage what takes a farm of servers then I really dunno what more to say.
No, the time has NOT come...... yet.
ED back then wasn't developed enough, and it still isn't, to sustain itself in an offline mode and grant a "completed single player game" experience.
I think we'll get there sooner or later, but it'd probably need at least 2-3 more seasons.
The original elite managed to cram a galaxy onto a floppy disk. Something tells me that people really forget their history in these matters. I should also point to the disaster that was EA's Simcity, when they went "oh no no no, it -needs- to be online, we have this amazing backend that cannot be replicated locally".
Then they go and release an offline patch that, guess what? Manages everything locally.
Nothing's set in stone, and the only reason Frontier aren't doing this, as I said, is because gold paint jobs cost money, if it was local, you'd be able to mod them in for free
As for me, not bitter, I just drop by to correct peoples' somewhat erroneous perceptions on what is, and is not possible technically.
really, so I would be totally wrong in saying that the whole stellar forge sitting on an amazon web services backend, the transaction servers running on the elastic beanstalk and the instance servers, all interfacing with redis and mongo databases to manage different aspects of game data could all be managed locally on the one PC and still be able to have enough processing power to give us an enjoyable playable game? I gather then in your opinion your perception that the fact Frontier stated that the game could not be made to work in an offline mode due to 'technical reasons' a few weeks before launch is simply so they can milk money through their online store selling skins and merchandise? Hmmmm... Seriously... I think your perception is flawed...
This has nothing to do with EA's Sim City as I get the idea it's backend was probably no where near as interwoven with a 3rd parties web services when compared to ED, chances are EA had their own backend and so had control of all the code to that backend, compared to AWS which owns the services it provides to frontier (and other developers)
I miss my vic 20... and my amiga... and my zx spectrum at times... I have the amiga and a c-64 in emulator form these days for when I am feeling like a bit of retro gaming action
As for the comparisons of computer hardware, the original at the time made maximum use of the hardware it had available to it... it was written for a single platform... later versions and ports where then done to other platforms utilising more of the 'features' of those plaforms... Much the same as ED today I guess in that one regard... the difference now is the amount of back ground data generation (such as the stellar forge, missions across the galaxy etc etc) and lets not forget the background sim... in the previous versions being offline meant that the BGS was coherent for a given machine but if they were to have an offline mode, how would you be able to allow the commander to join in the online mode when they choose to - remember the game allows us to play across modes
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And I never said that the local version requires a 1:1 translation of the AWS code. I said that to spin up a proc gen galaxy of around 200k stars with say 5% of those inhabited and to have certain SP friendly modifications would be soup and nuts to achieve locally, read my posts. This is not hard to achieve. Considering that the vast majority of the supposed 1:1 galaxy that is run is almost certainly proc-gen as is (because there's no way Frontier can accurately map the entirety of the universe, we barely even have accurate observations for 1-2% of it as it stands) you could comfortably scale that down to a point where it would fit inside a database that could be managed locally, and with only one player entity to deal with, the processing load goes right through the floor. You only need to update elements that are relevant to the player, not the entire galaxy all at once.
Again, the only thing preventing this, and what I've stated above would be as simple as having a set of scripts set up a local 127.0.0.1 server instance with it spin things up locally plus associated patching every so often is that Frontier can't sell you paint jobs for a local server
Incorrect, EA's back end was also running on AWS at the time (oh how people forget so quickly) and they'd not set up enough space, pretty much everyone these days uses either AWS or Azure or some form of cloud because it's cheaper than hosting your own space (Unless you're Blizzard), and regardless of who you go with to host the back end, you still hold all the code, that's also an erroneous assumption. All you're doing is renting processor and storage space for the relevant database and whatnot. There's no handing over of control to Amazon in that regard, and as proven with the offline patch, it's eminently possible to re-engineer the back end once there's enough motivation.
If you think the reasoning is anything other than commercial, you're seriously not looking at this clearly. Any game that goes "online only" does so for one of two reasons, one is to prevent piracy, although with the advent of Denuvo that's no longer a real concern, and the other is to ensure there's other revenue streams available. Generally this is the domain of MMO's or F2P enterprises, although any game with a "cash shop" falls into this category, Elite being in the latter.
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And I never said that the local version requires a 1:1 translation of the AWS code. I said that to spin up a proc gen galaxy of around 200k stars with say 5% of those inhabited and to have certain SP friendly modifications would be soup and nuts to achieve locally, read my posts. This is not hard to achieve. Considering that the vast majority of the supposed 1:1 galaxy that is run is almost certainly proc-gen as is (because there's no way Frontier can accurately map the entirety of the universe, we barely even have accurate observations for 1-2% of it as it stands) you could comfortably scale that down to a point where it would fit inside a database that could be managed locally, and with only one player entity to deal with, the processing load goes right through the floor. You only need to update elements that are relevant to the player, not the entire galaxy all at once.
Again, the only thing preventing this, and what I've stated above would be as simple as having a set of scripts set up a local 127.0.0.1 server instance with it spin things up locally plus associated patching every so often is that Frontier can't sell you paint jobs for a local server
Incorrect, EA's back end was also running on AWS at the time (oh how people forget so quickly) and they'd not set up enough space, pretty much everyone these days uses either AWS or Azure or some form of cloud because it's cheaper than hosting your own space (Unless you're Blizzard), and regardless of who you go with to host the back end, you still hold all the code, that's also an erroneous assumption. All you're doing is renting processor and storage space for the relevant database and whatnot. There's no handing over of control to Amazon in that regard, and as proven with the offline patch, it's eminently possible to re-engineer the back end once there's enough motivation.
If you think the reasoning is anything other than commercial, you're seriously not looking at this clearly. Any game that goes "online only" does so for one of two reasons, one is to prevent piracy, although with the advent of Denuvo that's no longer a real concern, and the other is to ensure there's other revenue streams available. Generally this is the domain of MMO's or F2P enterprises, although any game with a "cash shop" falls into this category, Elite being in the latter.
So by your own words in the first paragraph a totally diffferent game... Good that is settled...
I personally would not have a clue what kind of backend Simcity had / has because it never really was my kinda game... There is at least one other reason why ED is online only that I can see as well, beyond DRM, beyond web shopping, is the fact that we all influence the BGS, by design that is what the developers want for the game, maybe they had fleshed out an idea of a way to give an offline experience but could not resolve it into code.
I paid for a 1:1 representation of the galaxy yada yada and I would not be happy with a cut down version for offline play... I would love an offline mode for times when I do not have internet access... but not at the expense of it not affecting the online aspect of the game such as doing missions for my faction while offline not counting, making credits while offline not carrying over etc and that then raises issues with data validation when mode switching from offline to online play...
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Do it then - if it's any good, I'll buy it.#
Edit: Again, this may as well be an 18-month-old necro thread for all the new information it contains.
Just theorising, not offering judgement or backseat moderating, but perhaps some of those responsible for dealing with this stuff are also bitter they didn't get their offline mode, and like keeping these kinds of threads open way past the point they offer any benefit to the community simply to cause mischief, using the excuse of promoting free and open debate?
(Let's watch how quick I get an wrist-slap for that edit while this bile duct of a thread stays open.)
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That's fair and reasonable. I do by nature of my argument make it clear that offline and online would have to be seperate beasts to some extent, the underlying concepts and mechanics would be clear mirrors of each other (i.e. you could very easily have feature parity between the two in so much as everything that's in Engineers would be in the offline version), but you'd have to have a distinct "offline" toon and an "online" toon, for the sake of data integrity. That would be the only way to prevent cheating (even moreso than exists at present).
What offline would allow for however is user modding and access to markets which currently are no-go areas for Frontier (because internet access isn't universal) as well as being able to testbed features in the offline game as a form of effective beta without needing to run an online beta, instead they could simply have an opt in for people on local servers where they get to test out features on their local games and provide feedback in a sandboxy environment. Again, this would obviate the ability to -charge- for beta access, but hey ho
I lack direct access to Frontier's server code, so to achieve it right now I'd have to reverse engineer the client (not easy), dissect the netcode (not easy), replicate the responses the client expects (not easy), and then create a server much like the private servers of WoW (very much not legal, so I really do not advocate doing it).
Yes, I'm going to do something that's entirely not legal and technically very difficult on my own with no help at all because you say so, when whilst the demand would exist, it's a great way for me to wind up homeless and bankrupt. No, no thank you.
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This different game could give them access to other markets - but are they worth as much when the whole world pretty much has net access now?What offline would allow for however is user modding and access to markets which currently are no-go areas for Frontier (because internet access isn't universal) as well as being able to testbed features in the offline game as a form of effective beta without needing to run an online beta, instead they could simply have an opt in for people on local servers where they get to test out features on their local games and provide feedback in a sandboxy environment. Again, this would obviate the ability to -charge- for beta access, but hey ho
More tin-foil nonsense about charging though - dunno if you noticed but the main bug in 2.1 was due to multi-user based code, so your testpool wouldn't have helped at all. Heck if people are willing to pay for beta why not - it's only more money going into the game we love rather than being paid out to beta testers to sit there and do what so many are actually keen to do themselves.
Promised in alpha? A fantasy right there. That's always good for a laff. A massive ever changing galaxy offline? I couldn't see how. Guess I was right at least once.