FDEV: Are there any space legs prototypes?

IndigoWyrd

IndigoWyrd
=71st=RuSh said:
Don't you need to pee or poo? Are you Rocket Man? :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzt0IACxlFA
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He has no need for one because he is one. But that's another matter entirely.

I'm more inclined to wager the only time we'll actually be walking around our ships is when they've landed or docked, not while they're in flight, save perhaps in an emergency situation, but that's fine.
I see a tremendous potential for all manner of game play, but yes, this is a long way off still. Right now the time is best spent working on current items, like getting beta accounts rolled back so we don't have to reset our saves to compensate for a bug in engineering - and of course, fixing that fatal bug.
 

killerofstars

killerofstars
Snarfbuckle said:
Star Citizen. ;)
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Star Citizen [probably won't happen.] FTFY. :p

SC is another thread entirely. I backed SC (and didn't back ED something I kick myself about to this day) but after reading some really good breakdowns of the tech and what cloud imperium games are doing, I think SC is at minimum very poorly managed and I no longer have confidence that it's going to come together in any kind of cohesive way. SC ships really don't feel...GOOD to fly. Something about walking around in SC feels off. Like, your taste and mileage may vary, and at least on paper Chris Roberts is shooting to make exactly the game *I* would try to make but...I just personally dont think it's ever going to get there, or even close to there.
 

milligna

milligna
Star Citizen? What a cruel thing to say to someone clueless about it in 2018. What a terrible thing to inflict on the unwary.

Unless you mean it as a sepulchral warning...

Star Citizen... (organ chord)
 

krylite

krylite
killerofstars said:
Star Citizen [probably won't happen.] FTFY. :p

SC is another thread entirely. I backed SC (and didn't back ED something I kick myself about to this day) but after reading some really good breakdowns of the tech and what cloud imperium games are doing, I think SC is at minimum very poorly managed and I no longer have confidence that it's going to come together in any kind of cohesive way. SC ships really don't feel...GOOD to fly. Something about walking around in SC feels off. Like, your taste and mileage may vary, and at least on paper Chris Roberts is shooting to make exactly the game *I* would try to make but...I just personally dont think it's ever going to get there, or even close to there.
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Good to hear you saw the light re: SC. I didn't back either which I regret not backing ED too. I saw the early trailers, but I was kind of out of gaming for a while and decided to wait for either to release then a year or so to "clean up the bugs". So I waited too long and forgot about ED and then it was too late for me to get the Cobra Mk 4 [sad]

Seeing the Beyond beta's graphical improvements, the better crisper textures of the ships, the new planetoid colors and textures, better lighting, better antializing, "smoother" feel, I almost lost any residual remaining "envy" today for SC's slideshow ptu's and their myriad third party ad trailers and techdemos i.e. cig-arrets' marketing illusion. Pretty soon, it seems like Frontier will improve the cobra engine for ED so greatly that any cryengine advantage SC was supposedly supposed to have will be so forgotten and obsolete (if it's not already). SC and in particular CR screwed up big time by not admitting his mistake and ditching cryengine early on and scoping the game to a realistic build with a mmo capable engine and now they have over 100 million to answer for when it all boils over. Glad the DS blog informed me before I ever took another look. Well, I was really only curious concerning the cutscenes. I have a copy of WCIII /w Hamil from gog.com, but haven't bothered to play it from the intro yet, and my whole history with WC was a few hours with WC2 on a friend's computer. Never played Privateer or Freelancer. I played FFE, Frontier, and then X1 to X3 instead, FSX series, and now ED :)
 
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Franc Kaos

Franc Kaos
killerofstars said:
Star Citizen [probably won't happen.]...SC ships really don't feel...GOOD to fly. Something about walking around in SC feels off.
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I've noticed that on the free weekends, the walking feels glitchy or something, maybe I'm too used to first person shooters (and the space flight wasn't great - an old version admittedly), but to answer the OP, definitely there are space legs prototypes, pretty sure everyone in the Frontier offices has it on their build of the game (it's only a camera thing), there are probably no NPC assets to render, just the surrounds and ships. But; I don't think anyone's actively working on it, maybe someone in their spare time. atmospherics and gas giants are probably the next big to sell item.
 

Sandmann

Sandmann
Miko said:
It will be nice to be able to walk around the ship, so long as they get the walking mechanic done right.
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*float*. There's no artificial gravity in Elite, so there's no *walking* through your ship.

People don't seem to understand the gravity of the request. It's not as simple as unbolting you from the seat so you can float around. Basically there's *nothing there to see or do* so they'd have to recreate the entire universe. Every door, window, button, lever, switch etc is just painted on right now, they're not real objects. Even in your ship the only internals it has are the cockpit and enough to see up the legs, cargo scoop, etc. If you COULD get up and walk around your ship once you got out of the cockpit it'd just be a grey mess.. there's no textures, no surfaces, etc, because why put them in now? Every texture, surface etc is something else the game has to keep track of and it's resource hungry enough as it is. Then when you get out of the ship it's the same thing... there's nothing out there. Everything is just painted, there's no buttons to press, doors to open, or objects to move. Even if you COULD get inside some rooms or other, again it'd just be a grey featureless mass since there's no textures or surfaces anywhere other than where you can see now. Even more so there's no other people to interact with, other than other players. Even then there's no way to interact with them - chances are you couldn't even bump into them since I strongly doubt anyone's worried about making avatars solid yet and programming object collisions .There's no guns, flowers, doors, or food to interact with, even if there was there's no way to pick it up since the only things your hands are capable of right now is moving the controls in the ship.

Basically you're flying around in a PICTURE of a galaxy in which you can't actually DO anything, and the only objects that are "real" are the stations, ships, and planetary bodies. Seriously, unbolting you from the seat and letting you float around is the easy part - creating an entire galaxy for you to interact with is a whole different thing.
 

Soopyyy

S
Iskariot said:
If you think FDev is going to enlighten you on this premature topic then you don't know them well :).
We just entered the first chapter of the 'Beyond' season. Do not expect to hear them talk about anything beyond 'Beyond'. That is not their way of doing things.
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I'll be shocked if they talk about anything at all before its already public knowledge.
 

Fosdyke

Fosdyke
Miko said:
Space legs will be weird. Imagine your ship comes under attack and you're in the engine room of a Cutter enjoying the look of some rivets... What do you do? Quick sprint to the bridge! Haha.

It will be nice to be able to walk around the ship, so long as they get the walking mechanic done right.
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That's why NPC crew are made for, to take the helm while you are doing ship maintenance.
 

killerofstars

killerofstars
Sandmann said:
*float*. There's no artificial gravity in Elite, so there's no *walking* through your ship.

People don't seem to understand the gravity of the request. It's not as simple as unbolting you from the seat so you can float around. Basically there's *nothing there to see or do* so they'd have to recreate the entire universe. Every door, window, button, lever, switch etc is just painted on right now, they're not real objects. Even in your ship the only internals it has are the cockpit and enough to see up the legs, cargo scoop, etc. If you COULD get up and walk around your ship once you got out of the cockpit it'd just be a grey mess.. there's no textures, no surfaces, etc, because why put them in now? Every texture, surface etc is something else the game has to keep track of and it's resource hungry enough as it is. Then when you get out of the ship it's the same thing... there's nothing out there.
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I'm a modeler and CG generalist. Trust me, I'm aware. I fully understand I'm asking for the ship interiors to be modeled with any necessary animation added. For me, merely being able to explore ship interiors "on foot" would be worth a 60$ upgrade (but experience tells me many other players wouldn't.) Space legs would absolutely add an entire extra game's worth of ASSETS, including the ship interiors, and whatever station/starport side areas they create for the game. (maybe a station side area and a planet side area at first, with more variation added in later.)

But that's always been the goal, as the objective isn't that you're ship, but a pilot.
 

Soon(TM)

Soon(TM)
dumbo said:
I think most people play ED for the space-flight sim, so making space-legs "compulsory" is a potential problem. But, if it's entirely optional then it may go the way of Eve's "space legs".

So the biggest challenge for the game is probably working out what 'space legs' means for the current game.

Note: I believe the forum-agreed terminology is 'Elite Feet'.
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Space legs is a must imo and FD need to get a move on with it.
I'm so bored of being glued to my chair, after playing star citizen 3.0, ED feels so limited in what you can actually do.

FYI, performance in star citizen is affected by your hard drive and ram more than anything at the moment.
Decent SSD and 16gb RAM and I get 30+ FPS, so definitely playable at this time.
 

DanGriswold

DanGriswold
killerofstars said:
For me, merely being able to explore ship interiors "on foot" would be worth a 60$ upgrade (but experience tells me many other players wouldn't.) .
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I'm with you on that score. I love Elite enough that I'd be willing to tack on the cost of a whole new game just for a cool feature (like space-legs or (oh please oh please oh please) atmospheric landings). But, as you say --and you're likely correct-- most wouldn't be willing. So is it worth it for Frontier to do it? Well, maybe. Knowing them, they would want to have robust gameplay options attached to a features like these, and that requires lots of planning and lots of resources. Hopefully, since this was on their list of things to include since the beginning, they've been using the years to steadily (albeit slowly) develop the frameworks on the side while the core stuff was given the full dev resources.

I guess the best way to help them keep developing cool stuff would be to purchase from the store. I only wish there was a guarantee that the proceeds from the store purchases went directly to ED and not their other properties (which I don't play, as cool as they sound). However, I'm pretty confident that ED is their favourite and will keep it alive and kicking as long as possible.
 

Dooguk

D
Soon(TM) said:
Space legs is a must imo and FD need to get a move on with it.
I'm so bored of being glued to my chair, after playing star citizen 3.0, ED feels so limited in what you can actually do.

FYI, performance in star citizen is affected by your hard drive and ram more than anything at the moment.
Decent SSD and 16gb RAM and I get 30+ FPS, so definitely playable at this time.
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Take this to the correct thread.
 

dannysquid

dannysquid
I think a problem with spacelegs (as witnessed in some of the SC videos) is that if they let us get out of our ships completely freely then there are huge amounts of weird unpredictable multiplayer situations that I can't see a clean way of getting around. So I do wonder if drip-feeding limited situations (wander around your ship, EVA, space docks) and thoroughly playtesting them one-at-a-time over months or years might be the way to go.
 

Kaltern

Kaltern
Interestingly, when in VR, you kinda DO have legs. Of course, your 'body' just stays rooted to your seat, but you're free to walk around your ship. (and out the window if so inclined...)

The concept of walking around to a computer display to use it as part of a 'feature' - such as special scanning tools - would somehow be very interesting. Of course, this was done in one of the long running YT ED shows (I can't remember who it was.. sorry), which utilised this feature to 'pretend' to be looking at something for the story. But it does show that theoretically, we already HAVE space legs.

Oddly, if you took this to the extreme, and somehow hacked the VR ratio of movement (or had a VERY large space, and many VR trackers), you could probably walk around a whole station if you wished. In fact... one wonders what MS MR headsets would be like if you had a laptop on your back and you were in a field... I wonder if you could literally walk everywhere.... <ponder mode on>
 
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