It's been intended since inception, that's not an afterthought.
And, if you want more than 'deliver this, kill that' maybe a space trading and combat simulator wasn't the best place to look.
We were promised atmospheric planetary landings
- Thread starter amadeus1171
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It's been intended since inception, that's not an afterthought.
And, if you want more than 'deliver this, kill that' maybe a space trading and combat simulator wasn't the best place to look.
He said that? Wow, he must be disappointed, cos that is exactly what he has given us.
I don't think atmospheric planets are an after thought. The game has been designed from the ground up to implement planets and space legs in the future.
But they were not beigified when horizons came out. Hopefully this will be fixed in the future and with added stuff to do on planets in the future.
lol, seriously? You went there? "if you don't like it, play something else??" Awesome trollery, good job.
Well guys, I'm convinced, there's nothing else in the game that needs work, bring on space legs and Earth-like landings
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Which is where the 'making it suitably Elite-y' bit comes in. I strongly suspect that the new substandard 'beige-box' planet generation system is a stepping stone to ultimately richer planetary environments, once they've got the wrinkles ironed out. I think this is one of the horrible areas where in order to move forward they've had to move back first.
So the game's doing solid progress then.
Ooo... The atmospheric planets. I do want some, but I imagine it's quite hard to do them in a game like Elite. I am a person with rather limited scientific knowledge when comes to physics, chemistry or geology so please do forgive me for, what most certainly will be a very simplistic view, what atmospheric planets should entail.
Atmosphere impacts how our ship will behave during a flight. And that depends on the density and composition of the atmosphere which varies greatly from planet to planet, so you can't just flip a switch and boom, you have altered flight model. Each ship will fly differently depending on it's shape, so new variables will have to be added to every ship, and those variables, combined with composition and density of the planet, will determine how the ship behaves (and that's on top of gravity).
And since we have atmosphere, we will have wind as well. Another variable that impacts on the flight model. And please remember that wind is not constant, it changes all the time, it has different strength and direction depending on the height.
Wind also means erosion, and that means completely different way of generating ground. Right now it's "relatively easy", but with wind you have to take into account that different materials are affected in a different way by the wind. Some will erode really quickly while others will stay solid for much longer, and that will result in entirely new geographic features.
Wind also means floating dust or sand which, in strong winds, would mean sand/dust storms.
Storms mean weather that will have to be localised and dynamic (again affecting flight model), which will mean clouds.
It's not inconceivable to expect some sort of rain from said clouds (not necessarily water), and that gives new ways of erosion and therefore ground generation.
And since we have atmosphere with variable density, composition and weather, that would affect light on the planets as well. Light that passes through the atmosphere is dispersed and may change colour, and that has to be simulated by the game as well. Even on Earth the sun light is white-ish in midday but turns red by the evening or morning because the light has to pass through more atmosphere. And since we will have different colours in the game thanks to various stars and variable atmospheres, the variation in colour could be massive.
...
I'm probably missing quite a lot here and I'm not even touching here on planets with life, but I guess that if you sort out the above, adding flora should be relatively straightforward. Might be a bit messy with fauna (with pathfinding, AI, behaviour, pray/predator types, damage dealt/received, animations etc), but that's a different story.
Now... Of course FD could implement the above in stages, but I am willing to bet my T6 (I really like my T6) that within 10 minutes of staged atmospheric planets going live, this forum will be swarmed with threads like: "Why doesn't this include X, Y or Z?! This sux, you had ONE JOB Frontier!"
Oh well.
Atmosphere impacts how our ship will behave during a flight. And that depends on the density and composition of the atmosphere which varies greatly from planet to planet, so you can't just flip a switch and boom, you have altered flight model. Each ship will fly differently depending on it's shape, so new variables will have to be added to every ship, and those variables, combined with composition and density of the planet, will determine how the ship behaves (and that's on top of gravity).
And since we have atmosphere, we will have wind as well. Another variable that impacts on the flight model. And please remember that wind is not constant, it changes all the time, it has different strength and direction depending on the height.
Wind also means erosion, and that means completely different way of generating ground. Right now it's "relatively easy", but with wind you have to take into account that different materials are affected in a different way by the wind. Some will erode really quickly while others will stay solid for much longer, and that will result in entirely new geographic features.
Wind also means floating dust or sand which, in strong winds, would mean sand/dust storms.
Storms mean weather that will have to be localised and dynamic (again affecting flight model), which will mean clouds.
It's not inconceivable to expect some sort of rain from said clouds (not necessarily water), and that gives new ways of erosion and therefore ground generation.
And since we have atmosphere with variable density, composition and weather, that would affect light on the planets as well. Light that passes through the atmosphere is dispersed and may change colour, and that has to be simulated by the game as well. Even on Earth the sun light is white-ish in midday but turns red by the evening or morning because the light has to pass through more atmosphere. And since we will have different colours in the game thanks to various stars and variable atmospheres, the variation in colour could be massive.
...
I'm probably missing quite a lot here and I'm not even touching here on planets with life, but I guess that if you sort out the above, adding flora should be relatively straightforward. Might be a bit messy with fauna (with pathfinding, AI, behaviour, pray/predator types, damage dealt/received, animations etc), but that's a different story.
Now... Of course FD could implement the above in stages, but I am willing to bet my T6 (I really like my T6) that within 10 minutes of staged atmospheric planets going live, this forum will be swarmed with threads like: "Why doesn't this include X, Y or Z?! This sux, you had ONE JOB Frontier!"
Oh well.
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Rep for you, sir.
The Console port should use virtually 95% of the same code as the PC version. I suspect it is the client that needs most of the testing, but that will have nothing to do with gameplay development. As to the reasons why Horizons has taken longer then expected, well there could be a lot of reasons. One possible reason is that when they want to release the next expansion, they now want it fully feature, they have already hinted this, therefore there may be a sizeable dev team working on the next expansion (not the core gameplay improvements as I suspect these will be free), which has cut into the development time of horizons (made it longer).
We shall see in october what is planned.
We need more stuff to do on airless worlds for sure.
Also they should already be working on Atmospheric planets. I think they are doing that.
Agreed. Landing on living planets is a whole new game if it is to be interesting rather than look a bird thing with 5 legs or whatever. The enormous programming effort is far greater than the effort required to make the game as it is much deeper and interesting to play. Like realistic missions that are part of mini stories or make powerplay meaningful.
Also a lot of the walking around work has been done, eg home and interiors of spaceships, so that should be first. With obvious game mechanics including a first person shooter mini game. That would help with developing atmospheric landings long term.
But best fdev ask for good game play ideas first. They seem lacking in that creativity department!
My best guess atmospheric landings in 2025
Well guys, I'm convinced, there's nothing else in the game that needs work, bring on space legs and Earth-like landings
I don't think anyone has said that. No reason why they both cant be done at the same time.
I for one would be happy if they at least hand us some more vehicles to roam around in.
Having the same ground vehicle for almost 2 years starts getting a bit stale.
I hope so, but I honestly think earthlike landings are a pipedream. I pray I'm wrong for all those players who seem to think it's important.
We have a winner, the first person blaming the consoles. If I had a prize I would give you it.
Oooh, prizes.
How about trying to get FD to give the community a more up-to-date comment about atmospheric landings? Or any development info tbh. Or cake, I love cake! Anyway, I wasn't actually blaming consoles per se. I was merely asking if there could be some limitations where consoles just can't handle the pressure at this time. (Have you heard the PS4 when playing "Horizons: Zero Dawn"?) The way I see it, atmospheric landings could be so far down the line that we would need a brand new PC or console just to play it anyway. And, just like DB waited until technology was at a level to approach another version of Elite, perhaps FD are applying the same philosophy here. If so, it can only be a good thing for all.
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The way I see it, atmospheric landings could be so far down the line that we'd need a brand new PC or console just to play it.
I'm afraid you're right.
Look, we got Braben's boss in the forums!