Roadmap leaked??

thistle

T
babelfisch said:
So essentially what they've been doing since day one. :)
Almost all areas of Elite have seen rewrites.
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Pretty much! But I imagine there's an argument for going back and reworking some core parts that have developed into a state where adding huge new features might break everything going forward.

But who knows? I suspect it's not what they are doing. That will be for "Elite Dangerous-er : Beyond The Return".
 

babelfisch

babelfisch
thistle said:
Pretty much! But I imagine there's an argument for going back and reworking some core parts that have developed into a state where adding huge new features might break everything going forward.

But who knows? I suspect it's not what they are doing. That will be for "Elite Dangerous-er : Beyond The Return".
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If there is some legacy code in certain areas that doesn't allow new features they are going to rewrite it. But as said above, I believe that happened before on several occasions. The game we are playing today might look similar to the game we played at launch, but it is not the same. The lighting model (which still isn't perfect) is a good example. An even better one are the old planets, the beige planets and the current planets. That's three iterations of rewritten code.
 
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thistle

T
babelfisch said:
If there is some legacy code in certain areas that doesn't allow new features they are going to rewrite it. But as said above, I believe that happened before on several occasions. The game we are playing today might look similar to the game we played at launch, but it is not the same. The lightning model (which still isn't perfect) is a good example. An even better one are the old planets, the beige planets and the current planets. That's three iterations of rewritten code.
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True. We really have no idea whether it's a genuine problem or not.
 

Six6VI

Six6VI
babelfisch said:
If there is some legacy code in certain areas that doesn't allow new features they are going to rewrite it. But as said above, I believe that happened before on several occasions. The game we are playing today might look similar to the game we played at launch, but it is not the same. The lightning model (which still isn't perfect) is a good example. An even better one are the old planets, the beige planets and the current planets. That's three iterations of rewritten code.
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Alas, such is the nature of an ongoing research and development prototype phase...

Twenty odd years ago I designed and built a tool to do a specific job, which it did, but as soon as I had the MkI version in my hand and tested it, several improvements sprang to mind. 18 months and five more prototypes later I had something that still does that specific job perfectly, every time, two decades later.

Recently however, I had a chat with a friend with a 3D printer about using the computer to manufacture quantities instead of spending 10 hours each making them by hand. And discovered a massive problem there was no way to predict for back when I was making critical design decisions on the earlier versions.

It's entirely possible that FDev have put teams on expanding aspects of the game several times and hit a roadblock due to the existing substrate. Investing more time in it's current state would be pointless so it's shelved until an engine level change can be integrated with all of it's dependent subsystems and facade.

To deliver a product, decisions must be made today, without the benefit of hindsight.

[Perfect example of this is the orange HUD requiring a significant rewrite to update.]
 

-VR- Max Factor

-VR- Max Factor
DimMak546 said:
Quick question - for all the peeps with a HOTAS setup - how is space legs gonna work??

I have a HOTAS setup but its currently in a cupboard (using a PS3 controller and a mouse atm) - the switch to FPS won't bother me with that, but just using the HOTAS will v.difficult for FPS style gameplay. On top of that I've seen people have quite complex custom built cockpits and gaming chair setups for this game - are they going to have to quickly switch to something else whenever the game goes First person?

I actually don't mind either way, just had a funny image of people madly swapping controllers mid game.
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I have an Xbox controller on my lap for that.
 

knowles2

K
No one can argue that this update isn't 100% real now. At Least for their existing franchises .

Looking forward to seeing this new building part of the game. An the walking around element. I hope they combine it with ships having to deliver the modules to the locations you are building, instead of them just appearing out of nowhere. Or least a mixture of the two, small modules can be 3d printed, larger ones need to be ordered and delivered on site.
 

IamMe

IamMe
amigacooke said:
Taking the holistic view, Elite Dangerous is way short of the features trailed at its inception. That's what I donated for, we don't have space legs (yet), atmospheric planets of any sort to land on, damage models for ships, or flying through the atmostsphere of gas giants.

Frontier have improved what there is, but they've had five years to do that, so no great achievement. The 'biggies' stay firmly in the realm of hopefully rather than actually.
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Imo reason for that is obvious;
FD was growing as a company so they moved experienced devs on other titles and hiring new devs while those new devs had to learn FD's inhouse Cobra engine mak8ng them newbies regardless of previous experience.
That's why we had 4 years of poor updates, now when FD gained financial stability and teams evolved now they bring back focus on ED project.
That's business, imagine they said few years ago; hey community we're going to work on other titles so ED is going to suffer a bit......no one is that crazy!
Yes it wasn't nice to community after all those KS/DB interviews but that's how things work.
So invest in what you like in current form and don't fall for "we'd like to do" things!
(ED, SC and some others learned me that)
I invested 60€ in ED so far and it will stay that way until they deliver something in my opinion worth buying....again that's business and how things work....seller and consumer....no need for love between each other!
 

Kaocraft

Kaocraft
Barking_Mad said:
As I've repeated many times (and make no apology for repeating again) gamers don't see the mess behind the scenes of games released in a largely complete state. Sure, many come out with bugs and first day patches but their dirty laundry is kept in development because they don't have to worry about releasing a working version of the game several times a year for their player base to play.

RDR2's second delay of 6 months (after an original 12 month delay iirc) was purely to 'fix' over 1 million bugs. Nothing else*. Yet people playing Elite want more content, more often and with less bugs.

True, this choice was partly Frontier's, but it was also forced on them due to the fact they couldn't develop the game for 5 years and then publish it because it was their first real self funded game and it required a significant amount of dev time and investment they needed to recoup before reinvesting.

The change of delivery imo is the best thing they could do. Back to more traditional long term behind closed doors development where they can hopefully release a significant update whilst tidying up what's gone before. Yes it will be a challenge to do spacelegs and basebuilding (if that's what it is) but at least it can break and consist in a broken state behind closed doors. Hopefully they then get a good run at squishing lots of bugs before release.

*as told to me by ex-employee
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TL,DR; "Game Dev is hard so if you're disappointed it's your fault for ever expecting any of these people to do anything."
 
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