I'm sure both variants can work, and i think we all can agree it probably depends on what you want the focus to be, as long as you have a halfway competent development team.
A tale of two development approaches - "legs first" vs "space first"
- Thread starter Doozer
- Start date
Oh look.. another hate SC thread, we're short of hate for SC here, so well done for making another thread. [haha]
Regards space legs, you need them for scale if nothing else. They give you a comparison that we are all familiar with i.e. us humans. None of us have any idea what these ships we fly actually would look like close up IRL, so just for comparison legs work fine.
not that I don't want space legs too, but if you want the sense of scale you have to try Ed in VR.
I don't see the development teams being the real issue at Ci(not)G. Their problem is micro-management from the headshed (namely CR), mismanagement at the team leader level and a bad atmosphere in their working environment as a result of those factors.
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Still isn't the scale I mean. I know it's impressive in VR, but you still need to feel that scale. And yes, I know the cockpit looks large in VR, but it doesn't relay scale in the game to the player, well not for me anyway, it will for others perhaps.
I have a number of videos that show scale in SE, it interests me, having put full size planets into the game based on the in-game scale.
This however below is drilling into a stock size planet, but it still gives an idea of what I mean.
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Now I expect no one to sit through these [blah], even sped up like they were. But in-game I watched this drill down into a planet, a simple drill rig and test, just to see how far gravity could pull it down without it failing. It would have gone much further had I built it to last, however this was a quick 30min build, that took a good while to drop. It eventually failed at 4.4km down, which was very good for the lighter weight blocks used for building.
The planet is an 'Ice Planet'.
[video=youtube;GSPtwKXPW4U]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSPtwKXPW4U[/video]
[video=youtube;gIQ5qFbzT8A]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIQ5qFbzT8A[/video]
Now this video below, is where I drop my 'Bug' ship down the hole. I just couldn't resist really..
[video=youtube;_1-KFyMGk_I]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1-KFyMGk_I[/video]
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Now perhaps all that was a waste of time. But in-game
. That is what I mean by scale, for me at least.
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David Braben said in a video around 2013-14 that the ships were designed so that you can walk around them. The foundation is already there.
How to put this politely . . . um, David Braben said a lot of things.
I'm a programmer and I can say with certainty that it's best to begin with legs first. It's never a good idea to plan to add features later after development. You have to go back and rewrite existing tested code that's live in production. This can introduce an enormous amount of bugs due to the refactoring.
I don't really believe there will be space legs in ED in the same way as SC has. What you'll probably see is the ability to walk around outside your ship and eva but not the ability to walk around inside your ship and interact with panels.
I don't believe that E-D will ever have space legs...or Elite-feet...whatever you want to call them. FDev have simply left any discussion of them at all in a virtual vacuum, they're quite happy to keep fostering the wishful thinking of course...but that's all it will ever be.
Any announcement from FDev that there won't ever be Space legs in E-D would certainly drive a substantial amount of players away, especially since the wishful thinking has now almost become a tangible development direction in the minds of some...much safer for the Frontier shareholders if FDev just don't mention it at all.
Personally, I'd still like it to be a possibility, but after 4 years of playing E-D and seeing the direction FDev is consistently driving the game...the reality says different.
Any announcement from FDev that there won't ever be Space legs in E-D would certainly drive a substantial amount of players away, especially since the wishful thinking has now almost become a tangible development direction in the minds of some...much safer for the Frontier shareholders if FDev just don't mention it at all.
Personally, I'd still like it to be a possibility, but after 4 years of playing E-D and seeing the direction FDev is consistently driving the game...the reality says different.
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Have to agree. There are so many seemingly simple bugs that they are apparently incapable of fixing that space legs seem not just unlikely, but so far above their technical capabilities that it would be near miraculous.
If they cant fix the wing nav lock bug, or consistently get any mission types other than fetch and delivery to work, or get the bgs in a consistently workable state, or fix the server bank bug (these are just the bugs i encountered playing a couple of hours yesterday) space legs seem far out of the realm of the possible.
EDIT: I also encountered the guardian(1) bug last night, if i think of more i will add to the list.
I should mention that i havent played since the new patch dropped, so im thinking the next time i log in there will be even more.
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No, no legs in ED, for the reasons mentioned and for other reasons too, I feel..
I think Legs is coming to ED and probably sooner rather than later. Around two years ago there was coverage of a trip taken by Sandro to an army base where they were letting off small arms. Interestingly Sandro currently has disappeared from ED streams in recent months. My read is Legs in some "limited" form this year.
Sandro is currently working on the new Ip and no longer attached to the E-D design team.
Space Legs: Dangerous?
I wouldn't go betting too much of the rent money [squeeeee]
It would be nice, but current evidence and common sense says different.
I hope you will be here to apologise when it will happen as I will be if it doesn't.