Does Braben Want to Revisit Game Mechanics from 'The Outsider' in Elite?

VR Golgot

VR Golgot
~~ CAVEAT: This thread isn't about whether or not a 'walking about' expansion is roadmapped, likely, or desired by yourself personally. Plz argue about those things in another thread of your choice ;) ~~

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Premise: Design or tech work from The Outsider may be revisited in a 'Legs' expansion:

Here are some Braben quotes that touch on this:

We will do Elite 4 after Outsider, so it will benefit from everything we've done in Outsider. In Elite, you were a spaceship, to move on to be a person, so many other things have to happen. Apologies for it taking so long, and I really mean that, but it's a game dear to my heart, and I don't want to do it badly. (source)
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I have never seen Elite as (just) a space trading game - it is way more than that - even though I realise this is how it has been classified since. What we plan to with Elite 4 is quite different, and much of what we are doing in Outsider will feed into that. (source)
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chuan (reddit): Given the unfortunate fate of the shelved "The Outsider" project at Frontier, is is likely that some of the ideas for the project might find their way into ED?

David Braben: Like with all our games, the technology is shared, so many elements have already been re-used in other games, and in Elite: Dangerous too, and perhaps more so, once you can walk about. (source)
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Background: What Was The Outsider Intended To Be?

TLDR: It was an 'Elite style' open world, with stealth & action options. Story NPCs with simulated 'motivations and aims' would, allegedly, allow players to chose their point of interaction, rather than being locked strictly into a linear 'cut scene' narrative.


Press Release:

Several key proprietary technologies, which Frontier has been developing for some time, make their debut in "The Outsider" and bring the sort of freedom of action first seen in "Elite" bang up to date.
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The game radically enriches the player's experience by abandoning the traditional, prescriptive, mostly linear story of current generation games, and replaces it by simulating characters' motivations and aims.
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Braben interview with CVG:

How did you first get the idea for the game?

David Braben: As with "Elite", I wanted a back story that did not dictate where the player has to go next; I wanted the player to have their options truly open to carve their own path through the world. Of the many scenarios we considered, I think this one works best.

The 'character-driven non-linear' game mechanic sounds fascinating, how will
this work in practice? How will it directly affect gameplay?

David Braben: It brings a great deal of freedom to the player - moving away from the gameplay-cutscene-gameplay-cutscene format, which gives the player little choice but to follow the proscribed path, and it avoids the uncomfortable problem where you might go to a location to meet a character - but the character doesn't yet exist as the cut-scene hasn't yet played.
With this new approach all the characters exist in the game from the start, and their future actions are not pre-determined - their involvement can be pre-empted by the player, making for some interesting gameplay mechanics second-guessing what is going on, and novel replay value. If you're a contrary gamer like me, who is always wanting to go down the side route, to shoot the character giving the long speech-to-camera, to do the unexpected, then this is the only way forward.

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"Outsider will offer a visceral combat experience with high tech weaponry or a more stealthy infiltration involving manipulation of the organizations arrayed against you, or combine those two elements so that you get a more diverse playing experience. One without the other would feel an empty experience before long. There is a further mechanic arching over this - one of intrigue and plotting - exploring the rich story behind your betrayal."
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"The game will of course offer gorgeous graphics - which we all expect on fifth generation titles - but more importantly it radically enriches the player's experience by abandoning the traditional, prescriptive, mostly linear story of current generation games, and replaces it by simulating characters' motivations and aims. This gives the player genuine freedom to change the story outcomes in a way that has not been seen before - each player will get a truly unique, sophisticated, visceral experience rather than simply switching between 'good' or 'evil'."

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"I think improvements in the way characters behave are going to be a key change. How many games out there now can you walk around with a gun held out, and none of the game characters bat the proverbial eyelid? Even when you shoot the guy next to them!"

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"Currently there is little characterisation in games, other than that delivered in the story dialogue and/or cut scenes. By this I mean the character cannot in general be tested by the player other than in utterly superficial ways like how quickly they shoot back at you."

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NB: I can only recover the first page of the original article, but it seems the pull quotes are accurate
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Insider talking to Joystiq:

There were some clever twists with disguises, and how the civilians behaved around you. Some really clever AI (or the illusion of cleverness if you like).
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Two Broad Takeaways:
  • The Outsider's proposed tech seems quite peculiar and experimental. And designed to do something new with the open world format.
  • There may well be frustrated ambitions there to finally realised this tech, particularly within the ED world, as planned.


Aspects That Might Translate to a Proc Gen Open World?:

Obviously the lack of central narrative rules out the '3 main choices' they float above. But possible overlap exists in:

  • Having NPCs be persistent, able to be 'interrupted' in their daily schedules? (Could this work for the current persistent mission givers? Could it be extended to mission targets?)
  • Being able to chose broader approaches to missions or personal objectives? IE choising between stealth, going 'loud', and taking a more 'geopolitical' approach to disrupting an organisation?
  • Using disguises to blend in with minor factions arrayed against you? For infiltration?

Stuff like that seems within the bounds of the possible. I guess we'll see if the art of the possible actually happens ;)
 
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VR Golgot

VR Golgot
EUS said:
Articles from '04 '05 '11 & '14, still relevant?
Not sure.
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Agreed :)

But it's the 2014 one that raised an eyebrow. Braben still seemed to think that some form of tech revisit was possible when nearing ED's launch.

Possibly all pie in the sky. Or a pie that smacked straight into a wall of technical nope. But I still have a suspicion that he'd like to do something in these areas. Whether because it'd make use of those otherwise wasted dev years, or because he sees it as a natural extension of the 'open world' legacy that Elite birthed. Or just because he really likes shooting NPCs mid dialogue? ;)

Ultimately I'm just suggesting it's a possible direction of travel though. Nothing more ;)
 

VR Golgot

VR Golgot
5AnaHalfHatsize said:
The outsider, another game they made big promises for that they ultimately failed to deliver on.
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Supposedly not their call. Codies new owners culled support, they sustained dev until finding a second publisher, but EA pulled out of the 'Bourne Identity' resurface in the end too. (I've no idea if these fan details are true, but they're suggestive of publishing vicissitudes more than FDev dropping the ball. Although that could be in there too ;))

But hey, it seemed to help trigger their push into self publishing. Now they can finally not do this stuff for ages on their own dime ;)
 
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zimms

zimms
Golgot said:
[...]
But it's the 2014 one that raised an eyebrow. Braben still seemed to think that some form of tech revisit was possible when nearing ED's launch.
[...]
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You're thinking of space legs stuff and David Braben was maybe talking about something more technical like parralax occlusion mapping. :D
 

VR Jay Le Chardon

VR Jay Le Chardon
I remember reading an article about "the sims", a game which I've never felt any appeal for and thus have never played, but have to admit that the "desire maps" used to add life to the occupants of those simulations were an interesting mechanism. When FDev launched their two theme park games, planet coaster and jurassic world evolution, I imagined they most likely, albeit lightly, dipped into the outsider's technologies for mapping the behaviours of the themeparks games simulated customers. Similarly I imagine a reverse of that to be in the pipeline for populating stations, whereby the background irrelevant (to the CMDR) NPC crowds milling around the stations interiors, will be using Planet Coaster/JWE "visitors" code to give them a plausible overall pattern of behaviours.

The more relevant an NPC is to a CMDR the more I expect the devs to be leaning on the patent and or "The Outsider". However regardless of the "Value" of any given NPC, I feel reasonably confident that Frontier already have some code they can build upon to make plausible characters as part of a "Legs" expansion in late 2020.
 

VR Golgot

VR Golgot
zimms said:
You're thinking of space legs stuff and David Braben was maybe talking about something more technical like parralax occlusion mapping. :D
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Yep true :)

I'd still maintain that he had some thoughts on game mechanics on the boil at the time too though. IE see this gnomic muttering about conversation trees for example:

CMDR Yan
When time for walking around comes, have you a solution to the age old problem of the boring conversation tree?
Tuesday June 17, 2014 15:27

David Braben: Yes, but we're not talking about it yet.
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I think generally I'm just more caught up in two things:

  • The peculiar nature of the Outsider's proposed tech. (And their apparent attempt to do something new with the 'open world' format)
  • The possibility that there's frustrated ambitions there. (Which could be realised within Elite's framework, or more generally now they're self-published).

¯\(ツ)/¯
 

5AnaHalfHatsize

5AnaHalfHatsize
Golgot said:
Supposedly not their call. Codies new owners culled support, they sustained dev until finding a second publisher, but EA pulled out of the 'Bourne Identity' resurface in the end too. (I've no idea if these fan de Tytails are true, but they're suggestive of publishing vicissitudes more than FDev dropping the ball. Although that could be in there too ;))

But hey, it seemed to help trigger their push into self publishing. Now they can finally not do this stuff for ages on their own dime ;)
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I remember reading the promo stuff they put out about the outsider back in the day and thinking "ok, well this isn't elite 4 but at least if they do this game they'll have some cool tech that they can put in elite later"
But looking back at it, and looking at where Elite Dangerous is now compared to all the hype they built up in the Kickstarter about what the game could be, not to mention all the great ideas from the DDF that ended up in the too-hard basket, the phrase "bit off more than they could chew" is the one that keeps coming back to me.

At least it does if I'm feeling generous.
 

NeilF

NeilF
Can I just mention that with all this hint of deep involved first person gameplay, that the core space flight scenarios and gameplay is still rather shallow, much of it still harking back to what was released/developed 4-5yrs ago.

Consider for all this talk of involved first person gameplay, we cannot even undertake what we'd consider the most basic of combat scenarios from back in 1990s space games such as escorting a convoy of ships say though an asteroid field with a wing of NPC ships which we can give basic commands to. Or utilise stealth (via cold/silent running - remember those much discussed mechanics?) to sneak into location for military recon, assissinations, or cargo collection/dropping off. We're 5+ years into ED, and we can't even do that!

So it concerns me if 5yrs in, FD now consider the core gameplay "good enough" such that they need now open up a new Eastern Front risking rather simplistic bolt on gameplay affair being created for that area too?
 

VR Golgot

VR Golgot
Jay Le Chardon said:
I remember reading an article about "the sims", a game which I've never felt any appeal for and thus have never played, but have to admit that the "desire maps" used to add life to the occupants of those simulations were an interesting mechanism.
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Yeah, it seems to me that systems like that, written in the same engine, and potentially relatively divorced from other physics / graphical aspects of the game, could still have some chance of being re-used in part. (I'm sure there are a ton of nightmares even on that front though: What form does the NPC output take, is the game tick the same, etc etc).

Or at very least 'lessons learnt' could make their way over. What not to try. What actions / prompts / interrogations can be registered and modelled in resource-light way etc.


Jay Le Chardon said:
When FDev launched their two theme park games, planet coaster and jurassic world evolution, I imagined they most likely, albeit lightly, dipped into the outsider's technologies for mapping the behaviours of the themeparks games simulated customers. Similarly I imagine a reverse of that to be in the pipeline for populating stations, whereby the background irrelevant (to the CMDR) NPC crowds milling around the stations interiors, will be using Planet Coaster/JWE "visitors" code to give them a plausible overall pattern of behaviours.
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I'm still slightly sceptical on the utility of the theme park crowd tech. It just feels like the use case is fairly different. (I don't expect them to generate truly high volume crowds etc in a station environment, and that seems to be the core focus of that tech). The way they handle unpredictible spaces could well be useful in a modular / 'proc gen' environment though I guess. And I'm sure they could pare it down to simulate a lighter version of 'grouping' etc ultimately. It just wouldn't be a straight-forward port or anything.
 

VR Golgot

VR Golgot
MadDogMurdock said:
FD should revisit the mechanics in ED before worrying about content from another genre.
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NeilF said:
Can I just mention that with all this hint of deep involved first person gameplay, that the core space flight scenarios and gameplay is still rather shallow, much of it still harking back to what was released/developed 4-5yrs ago.
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I'm going to assume you guys cannot see words in italics. You have my condolences.

(You're going to miss out on some particularly gaudy sale offers over Xmas ;))
 

VR SenseiMatty

VR SenseiMatty
NeilF said:
Can I just mention that with all this hint of deep involved first person gameplay, that the core space flight scenarios and gameplay is still rather shallow, much of it still harking back to what was released/developed 4-5yrs ago.

Consider for all this talk of involved first person gameplay, we cannot even undertake what we'd consider the most basic of combat scenarios from back in 1990s space games such as escorting a convoy of ships say though an asteroid field with a wing of NPC ships which we can give basic commands to. Or utilise stealth (via cold/silent running - remember those much discussed mechanics?) to sneak into location for military recon, assissinations, or cargo collection/dropping off. We're 5+ years into ED, and we can't even do that!

So it concerns me if 5yrs in, FD now consider the core gameplay "good enough" such that they need now open up a new Eastern Front risking rather simplistic bolt on gameplay affair being created for that area too?
Click to expand...
We can't even land on most of the planets 🙄
 
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