This is the bit that worries me, to be honest.
The galactic level stuff we've seen so far was all done in Frontier, and the only bit that really needed extra thought on a conceptual/design level is the multiplayer aspect. And we still don't know how scalable that is right now.
But the really tricky bit is yet to come, in my view. How do you reconcile (potentially billions of) populated worlds with the multiplayer aspect in a consistent fashion?
If two players are standing in a crowded square in the same city, do they both see the same NPCs milling around in the same places? Do the NPCs follow strictly procedural behaviour on rails, or do they all have some form of AI mixed in? Do they have relationships, or is each one an island? Can they be communicated with to any meaningful level beyond "Hello Sir! May I interest you in some fruit/an insurance plan/almighty Zarquon?", with no other topics of conversation beyond that? Do NPCs have memory? If Player A kills the partner of a fruit vendor, is that NPC now dead in Player B's game? If Player A then leaves the planet and immediately returns pack to the same square, is the fruit vendor still there? Does the NPC have any idea they ever had a partner, and that Player A killed them? There are a lot of bases to cover in order to have a living city, let alone a living planet, let alone millions/billions of them. I fear that there isn't enough storage space on the planet to cover that lot, let alone in my PC.
well no one need billions of populated worlds we only need two "full" cities i mean one you can spend hours in if not most of your time in elite
and the rest just be procedural generation.
and my friend gta 5 seemed to tackle this problem. i say just have multiple servors for the cities so only 30 people max would actually be on the planet. this is a excellent opportunity to have single player(int he city) and multiple player in space.
I hope the planets are highly detailed procedurally generated, nature is not too hard to emulate with fractal algorithms. However, interacting with (modifying) the environments will probably be limited to instanced areas or dev built structures, otherwise there would be too much data to synchronize.
Any procedurally generated life will have no long term memory I don't expect, apart from special instanced actor NPCs who are part of stories or missions and probably limited to instanced/built areas.
Given that, I would still love to fly down river valleys and inspect the local wildlife on distant planets, even if the environments are mostly non-interactive/non-deformable.
I've never seen procedurally generated rivers implemented well, I wonder if they can pull that off? Edit: found something about procedurally generated terrain using hydrology on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCsj0v-wmIM
as far as interaction goes you can probably have the animals hunted and killed and sell their meat and fur (scales) or whatever.
but procedural generation outside of the 1-3 hand crafted detailed cities would be perfect.
I'm no programmer, but what I think is realistically possible in a procedurally-generated multiplayer game of this scale, is something that while being as large as a city with suburbs, really just has as its "active" region a main "downtown" area with interactive NPCs and of course a spaceport with shops or merchants. I'm personally not expecting more than that, other than lots of awesome scenery that you can walk/fly around in and explore, perhaps with alien creatures roaming around that may or may not be friendly to your avatar. I'd be perfectly happy to pay $50 for that. I think if you start talking about a gta-type city, that's like a whole 'nother game, not an expansion, and is beyond the scope of what we can realistically expect. But hey, maybe they'll prove me wrong?
On the other hand, perhaps it will be a combination of the two, where we have what I've just described for most of the systems, with one or two "proper" detailed cities in the 2 most player-populated systems? That would be cool too!
actually i was thinking more of a single player when entering the detailed hand crafted cities cities to prevent problems (and it would be better) and have multiplayer only for space or other activities like (fps games)
but still i would love a huge detailed futuristic city
Keep in mind that it isn't really just two expansions we are talking about here.
Planetary landings have been clarified to be split into several parts.
- Planets without atmosphere, but still outposts, mining...maybe the possibility to drive some land based (pressurized) vehicle and who knows what more...
- Planets with atmosphere. This will probably also include flying into the clouds of gas giants.
- Planets with atmosphere/life and cities with everything that might entail.
Avatar gameplay will also probably be split up into different parts.
- Spaceship interiors and space walking.
- Flying ships together with friends.
- Boarding other ships, both currently used ones and abandoned ones.
- Controlling capital ships.
- Moving around stations
- Walking/driving around planets with everything that could potentially mean.
This is of course just examples of how they could break these things down to manageable parts in terms of development. The point is that doing everything in a focused way to ensure high quality for each game element is something that David Braben has pointed out as a really important part in how they want to develop this game.
Having said that. I guess either landing on planets without atmosphere or an expansion with gameplay around spaceship interiors will come first. Hard to say which since both have their pros and cons. Spaceship interiors on one hand might be partly done since they already blocked them out to some degree, but on the other hand this would require a lot of gameplay development around first person gameplay in a zero G environment. Landing on planets without atmospheres might therefore be "easier" to get out faster since the outposts could be built with the same mechanics as the stations and the surfaces themselves being PG and lifeless.
ok, so like the 1-3 handcrafted detailed huge cities then have other procedural generated areas right?
I know GTA5. I played it and finished it. I liked it though I was surprised at how awfully done and boring the main story was, with Trevor being the only interesting thing about it (Nikko in GTAIV was much better as was every other Rockstar game really)
You and I obviously have different definitions of detail and 'alive'.
GTA is 90% just painted on. The houses/buildings are solid boxes.
And the people aren't actually doing anything. They are wandering aimlessly with no purpose.
In Bethesda games (which also take 5 years to make...) the buildings are all accessible, have an interior and the NPCs all have AI routines. If you want to stalk an individual person you can follow him to bed at night, getting up in the morning, going about his day, etc....
But I think Frontier will be more like GTA style, with things that look pretty without being interactive and NPCs that aren't really doing anything, as that's all we need from the game. The point of Elite: Dangerous isn't to raid people's chests in their bedrooms while they sleep
i will have to agree with you on the story part but that is not what the game is about. ive spent hours and hours i gta just ****ing around and enjoying the view.
btw the A.I. in gta 5 is very good it's very hard for a person to find someone doing something the same. i'm always finding new animation on the A.I. and been playing it for months. the game is a masterpiece when it comes to that.
on the note of the fallout yes you are right they get up, they go to work then they stand in place for hours. and there animations are the same, they never do anything human aside from the routine. and nothing new happens. the game A.I. is nothing to talk about at all.
and what do you expect these NPC's to actually be alive? do you want them to have ambitions, and fears? maybe we can follow a couple around and watch their inevitable divorce then we can follow them to all the court hearings (this was all sarcasm)
gta is one of the best A.I. and they are not just painted on boxes btw.
I would be extremely surprised if we would be able to walk around in highly detailed GTA sized cities with interesting npc's and enough sensible stuff to do.
Making those hundreds, if not thousands of cities feel truly alive without being simple copies of each other would be an impossible task. Generating diverse city blocks with PG is not the problem, but activities would feel very generic as well as the AI behavior.
I feel it would not work and FD should not even try it. Just look at the resources Rockstar has to pour into one single GTA game to create a vibrant living believable city (with disappointingly few accessible buildings). This is impossible for FD in this huge Elite universe.
I think it would be best to have concentrated space station hubs on highly populated planets with large cities. No government would allow all those spaceships to move freely around densely populated planets anyway.
Perhaps a few smaller cities/towns/settlements could be accessible, but even that seems an enormous task considering the enormous number of populated planets in the Elite universe.
I am extremely curious about how FD will tackle this. It is one of the most difficult things they will have to do.
It is much easier to create thousands of unpopulated alien planets with diverse alien flora and fauna than to create one populated civilized planet with many densely populated areas, if we are to have free access to all these areas. We are deeply imprinted and familiar with how a human civilization/culture should look like and behave, even taking into account the civilizations we are not part of our selves. FD cannot reproduce thousands of believable diverse civilizations and cultures. So they will have to restrict player access. Otherwise immersion will get destroyed very quickly and going into such cities will feel like a boring repetitive embarrassment.
ok not hundreds of thousands of detailed handcrafted cities i'm really talking about procedural generated places (nature,towns, villages ect.) things that we wont care or remember about just simply there to mess around with.
but then there will be 1-3 detailed hand crafted cities like gta5 or watchdogs and it's totally possible to do. and i know everyone here would pay 100$ for that.
and for docks and ports i hope they do a mass effect 3 style kind of thing just enough space for merchants and shops. nothing fancy needed for that (except that port with the rings that have habitats on them) that would be awesome to walk around in and it would do good with procedural generation since there is more than one of them
i remember seeing a while back concept drawings/renderings of the different building styles for the different factions as in it showed how the architecture varied from federation, empire, independent.
I wonder if a lot of the city/outpost/planetary areas will be procedurally generated based on faction specific variables.
where!!??? Please link it for us elite:dangerous addicts.
