Someone is going to be disappointed

[VR Golgot]

Some additional clarity from Zac via Reddit. 31st Aug '18:

"The 100 is based on the majority of the team who work across a number of departments. Programming, Art, Animation, Production, Design, Tools, Engine and a number of other technical departments that I'm not really qualified to talk about. Then in addition to that we have a number of other areas such as our online services/server teams and QA"

So with regard to:

This is very dependent on what you mean by 'devs' - the quote from Zac indicates what he meant - which includes Art, and Animation, both of which someone else might count as 'creatives', for example.

For clarity - the context of Zac's quote pertains to the number from the time, which was still in in the 3.3 production period, it wasn't a description of the numbers now working on 2020. Pretty reasonable to take the general breakdown of the types of roles/departments involved to be similar.

In addition to what Zac described there, we've also been told that Narrative resource has been prioritised towards 2020 - another example of something that some might not necessarily think is covered by 'devs'.

(Given how these things sometimes get misinterpreted, I'm just also going to add that there is zero incompatibility between the quote from Zac that I've just provided and the other ones in the quoted post from Zac and Stuart.)

Sure absolutely. As far as I'm aware loads of non-engineering positions are classified as devs. That's how I'm thinking about the '100+' at any rate. Art, game design etc etc. I'd happily include narrative guys in that too, as they're normally imbedding their stuff using in-house tools at minimum, and their role can get way more technical + creative than that. (Doubly so if FDev add NPC interactions with any Legs DLC ).

The Mobile Mechanic: Legs + Multicrew [Gallery] is awesome.

Cheers!

(It was really just a deranged experiment in thinking 'How could a Leg multicrew role ever compete with Helm'. But it was fun to do )

 

[StuartGT]

Actually, I may not be disappointed, but rather distracted. You want landable atmospheric and earth-like worlds? The most amazing atmospheric ELW is coming out in 2020, except that I'll be flying a Cessna instead of a Cobra. #MFS2020

I've heard that the flight duration from London to New York in that game makes the Hutton Run look like a simple stroll to the corner shop

 

[Thatchinho]

Sure absolutely. As far as I'm aware loads of non-engineering positions are classified as devs. That's how I'm thinking about the '100+' at any rate. Art, game design etc etc. I'd happily include narrative guys in that too, as they're normally imbedding their stuff using in-house tools at minimum, and their role can get way more technical + creative than that. (Doubly so if FDev add NPC interactions with any Legs DLC ).

Cool, and though it was a reply to your post, I hope it didn't sound like the second half of that message was being directed at you specifically.

In addition to the predicted disappointment, I think another thing that can be predicted with 100% certainty is that a small number of people will treat the 100 as being all coders and cry foul of the numbers on that basis!

 

[znôrt]

So we have 100 devs working at it for almost 2.5 years.
I'm not a software developer and I don't work in this business but I would be curious to know, according to the manpower advertized by FDEV, what could be feasible or not for this update considering the long wishlist of the community:

i am a software developer and there's no way you can predict that with even remote accuracy. not even frontier can and they have all the info. for us that "100" figure is completely meaningless plus we have also no clue about what depth and difficulty those features involve. plus who is saying that the wishlist of the "community" (which one? you don't represent me!!! etc ...) has any overlap with the roadmap at all? anyway, speculate away!

there's one rational expectation, though: in general expect their output to be consistent with what you have seen so far. ymmv, i'm not thrilled.

 

[VR Golgot]

i am a software developer and there's no way you can predict that with even remote accuracy. not even frontier can and they have all the info. for us that "100" figure is completely meaningless plus we have also no clue about what depth and difficulty those features involve. plus who is saying that the wishlist of the "community" (which one? you don't represent me!!! etc ...) has any overlap with the roadmap at all? anyway, speculate away!

there's one rational expectation, though: in general expect their output to be consistent with what you have seen so far. ymmv, i'm not thrilled.

Hey, we can have a stab at guessing the wage bill

All fair stuff znort. Do you not see any promise in the end of seasons / having one long dedicated run though?

Seems to me it could help with some of the disappointments of deliveries to date. (Half-baked arrivals, lack of complementary overlap etc).

Certainly this juicy second hand quote suggests Seasons weren't that popular internally, at any rate:

Horizons having the roadmap publicly laid out for the entire expansion (major features at least) meant they were locked in to specific promised feature set with no wriggle-room for deviation if they thought of better/more important things along the way, or certain features turned out to be not as fun as expected, etc.

So this time they're completing the entire mega-update in advance and not telling anyone what's in it until they're absolutely sure about what is going to be delivered.

EDIT: This is what I gleaned from talking to a very drunk Sandro Sammarco (nice chap) at Lavecon the other year.

Not a panacea or anything. But grounds for turning expectations up one notch maybe

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

i am a software developer and there's no way you can predict that with even remote accuracy. not even frontier can and they have all the info. for us that "100" figure is completely meaningless plus we have also no clue about what depth and difficulty those features involve. plus who is saying that the wishlist of the "community" (which one? you don't represent me!!! etc ...) has any overlap with the roadmap at all? anyway, speculate away!

there's one rational expectation, though: in general expect their output to be consistent with what you have seen so far. ymmv, i'm not thrilled.

Unfortunately we're not aware of how many devs have been working on ED up to now. It seems that the full game was developed with more or less the same manpower (less people in a longer period). That's why I don't think we can't base our assumptions on the Horizons Season (that had definitely much less manpower).

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

I've heard that the flight duration from London to New York in that game makes the Hutton Run look like a simple stroll to the corner shop

Hutton run would be comparable to London-Milan
In the previous version of FS you could accelerate the time in cruise (autopilot was allowed up to 4x), but don't say this to puritists
I remember I did some transoceanic flight over night and I woke up in the morning just in time to start the descend, which is not so unrealistic if you consider that for long flights there are 4 pilots onboards with specific shifts. I think this can be confirmed by @777Driver.

 

[Soron Silin]

Hutton run would be comparable to London-Milan
In the previous version of FS you could accelerate the time in cruise (autopilot was allowed up to 4x), but don't say this to puritists
I remember I did some transoceanic flight over night and I woke up in the morning just in time to start the descend, which is not so unrealistic if you consider that for long flights there are 4 pilots onboards with specific shifts. I think this can be confirmed by @777Driver.

Weakling.
Desert Bus simulator.
8 hours on a straight road but the steering pulls a little to the left.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

Weakling.
Desert Bus simulator.
8 hours on a straight road but the steering pulls a little to the left.

That's how a friend of mine described his pilot life: 1% adrenaline, 99% boreness (he was flying a MD80, I guess now is 100% boreness only )

 

[znôrt]

Hey, we can have a stab at guessing the wage bill

always! and then we can go for a petition!

Do you not see any promise in the end of seasons / having one long dedicated run though?

indeed. i like that approach anyway, but i honestly can't see much of a technical problem with the seasons approach either. it wasn't a bad idea per-se, it just speaks of insecurity. they themselves hyped those features and set the deadlines and the pressure on themselves. they could have delayed, reduced scope, etc ... that's what many do in this case, but that would have been a stain in their pristine financial brochure. so they just went on and burnt out. now, will simply making the run longer increase their ability to get that right? we will wait until the end to see, but in the end it's still the same people at the wheel. better if something else has changed too.

otoh, the handling of the current game state is not a good indication either. while this could be explained by them being all focused on new era, that's not reassuring at all. even less when one of the stated goals is to 'nurture the community' for a prolonged experience (and revenue). if that's all there is to be then those statements are either empty claims or they are having some serious problems in keeping up.

but to end on a positive note ... i do expect it will include some pretty impressing stuff. looking forward, but i'm ok with it being a mystery

 

[IndigoWyrd]

According to FDEV, the 2020 update went in full production somewhere around Q2 2018 and it is expected to be released around Q3-Q4 2020.
So we have 100 devs working at it for almost 2.5 years.

I'm not a software developer and I don't work in this business but I would be curious to know, according to the manpower advertized by FDEV, what could be feasible or not for this update considering the long wishlist of the community:

• Atmospheric Worlds
• Space Legs: combat and ships interactions, social areas in starports.
• Base Building
• New Missions (for legs and atmospehric worlds)
• New Ships
• New SRV's
• Universal Limpet Controller
• New gameplay on planets (SRV's AI)
• New exploration contents
• Black holes with accretion disks
• Thargoid motherships combat scenario
• Powerplay v.2
• BGS v.2
• NPC Multicrew visible and operating in cockpit
• New graphical engine

The answer is simply no - Atmospheric Landings will be their own separate entity. Powerplay and BGS updates will also be their own separate entity.
A new "graphical engine" doesn't exactly make sense, since all of Elite is run by the proprietary Cobra Engine, including the graphics. They're not exactly modular. Not that upgrading the graphics isn't possible - it certainly is, but there upper limits. If you're hoping for a 1:1 galaxy sized, photorealistic game, you best be ready to dig deep into your pockets for the PC that will be capable of running it, because it's going set you back well into the 5-digits.

Professional workstations for structural engineers to do real-time simulations for things like high-rise buildings and bridges, to see what it takes for them to collapse run a good solid $10,000-$12,000 and they're only rendering out a very select region a few hundred feet at most.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

always! and then we can go for a petition!



indeed. i like that approach anyway, but i honestly can't see much of a technical problem with the seasons approach either. it wasn't a bad idea per-se, it just speaks of insecurity. they themselves hyped those features and set the deadlines and the pressure on themselves. they could have delayed, reduced scope, etc ... that's what many do in this case, but that would have been a stain in their pristine financial brochure. so they just went on and burnt out. now, will simply making the run longer increase their ability to get that right? we will wait until the end to see, but in the end it's still the same people at the wheel. better if something else has changed too.

otoh, the handling of the current game state is not a good indication either. while this could be explained by them being all focused on new era, that's not reassuring at all. even less when one of the stated goals is to 'nurture the community' for a prolonged experience (and revenue). if that's all there is to be then those statements are either empty claims or they are having some serious problems in keeping up.

but to end on a positive note ... i do expect it will include some pretty impressing stuff. looking forward, but i'm ok with it being a mystery

I agree that there is technically nothing wrong with the seasons approach, but they made big errors in the horizons season, which was all the updates after planetary landings had virtually nothing to do with planetary landings, which just seemed completely bizarre. It was a hodge podge of different mechanics with very little game cohesion.

Hopefully they have learnt their lessons from horizons. Beyond was better, hopefully the next expansion will also be better.

 

[VR Golgot]

always! and then we can go for a petition!



indeed. i like that approach anyway, but i honestly can't see much of a technical problem with the seasons approach either. it wasn't a bad idea per-se, it just speaks of insecurity. they themselves hyped those features and set the deadlines and the pressure on themselves. they could have delayed, reduced scope, etc ... that's what many do in this case, but that would have been a stain in their pristine financial brochure. so they just went on and burnt out. now, will simply making the run longer increase their ability to get that right? we will wait until the end to see, but in the end it's still the same people at the wheel. better if something else has changed too.

otoh, the handling of the current game state is not a good indication either. while this could be explained by them being all focused on new era, that's not reassuring at all. even less when one of the stated goals is to 'nurture the community' for a prolonged experience (and revenue). if that's all there is to be then those statements are either empty claims or they are having some serious problems in keeping up.

but to end on a positive note ... i do expect it will include some pretty impressing stuff. looking forward, but i'm ok with it being a mystery

Ay fair play. I guess they did try a delay at least with the Horizons schedule, but even that couldn't make the difference it seems.

I take a bit of succour from the fact that guys who did gameplay stuff I like (flight model, SRV, CQC etc) seem to still be in the mix, and are liable to do something I like again ¯\(ツ)/¯

And yeah, I'm assuming things are thin now for the reasons they say: small team. Which means the GAAS thing has taken a massive hit. Personally I'm relatively cool with that being the pay-off (I just don't play it as an MMO, so it doesn't burn me that much to drop it during the gruel times ). Something clearly had to give ultimately, going by output. I'll take the dripfeed content being put on ice rather than lose multiplayer support, or the expansion agenda, or some other key pillar.

It is a crazy long downtime they've got going though. Never expected them to spool out to late 2020. Does make the DLC feel like a hail mary pass for sure...

Guess we'll see what they've got between Carriers and then. (I could see a big DLC / mini-GAAS system just about working, on a 2 year cycle, down the line. Gotta get that engine going with a big strike first though...)

Never straight forward with FDev...

 

[Soron Silin]

Guess we'll see what they've got between Carriers and then. (I could see a big DLC / mini-GAAS system just about working, on a 2 year cycle, down the line. Gotta get that engine going with a big strike first though...)

The closer they get to big DLC time, the more they've got two separate code-bases to work with. Every fix and feature has to be applied to both the current version and the new version, and then tested on both. There comes a point where it doesn't make sense to implement new features on a code-base that's only going to live a few more months.

At least it isn't as bad as industry, where you can be still bug-fixing and even implementing new features on a version that is five years out of date because some important customers refuses to upgrade, retrain all their staff, and worry about new bugs.

 

[Crimson Kaim]

I don't believe leaks. I'll wait for the FDEV announcement.

If you believe Fdev then there is no hope for you.

 

[Voracity_T]

In the grand scheme of things this is a fairly old game now so the issue for a dev team to patch and update, afaik would be the fact some of the guys who wrote the original codebase might not work there meaning that the newer devs have to wade through what is probably a huge amount of code just to change small things.

I hope the 2020 udpdate is a good one, but I cant blame them if its not this groundbreaking thing people seem to expect of them.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

The answer is simply no - Atmospheric Landings will be their own separate entity. Powerplay and BGS updates will also be their own separate entity.
A new "graphical engine" doesn't exactly make sense, since all of Elite is run by the proprietary Cobra Engine, including the graphics. They're not exactly modular. Not that upgrading the graphics isn't possible - it certainly is, but there upper limits. If you're hoping for a 1:1 galaxy sized, photorealistic game, you best be ready to dig deep into your pockets for the PC that will be capable of running it, because it's going set you back well into the 5-digits.

Professional workstations for structural engineers to do real-time simulations for things like high-rise buildings and bridges, to see what it takes for them to collapse run a good solid $10,000-$12,000 and they're only rendering out a very select region a few hundred feet at most.

If I remeber correctly when new graphical engine was guessed it was more about multiple light sources and other new effects introduced by nVidia that wouldn't probably be compatible with the actual version of the Cobra Engine (only speculation of course).
Considering computers required for engineering simulation I remember I've run few transient thermal analysis on a cluster that is much more expensive than that
Quadrics

 

[Stigbob]

If you believe Fdev then there is no hope for you.

Is hanging out on the forum of a product by a company you don't trust the new "normal" then ?. That's a crazy bandwagon I'll make rude gestures at.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

Hello Games made No Man's Sky in 3 years with a team of 13, with far less prior expertise than FDEV as a long standing company have. And while it wasn't all that was promised initially, they pulled through, delivered a much more polished game a year later and have been pushing high content updates on a regular basis since.

 

[Voracity_T]

Hello Games made No Man's Sky in 3 years with a team of 13, with far less prior expertise than FDEV as a long standing company have. And while it wasn't all that was promised initially, they pulled through, delivered a much more polished game a year later and have been pushing high content updates on a regular basis since.

Unfortunatley true, but then I would imagine they had retained the entire, or at least most of, the original team.

I bet the same can't be said for ED and FDev's team.