ObsidianAnt: 3305 Elite Dangerous - New Player Minor Factions, Frontier's AGM, Scourge Decal
- Thread starter StuartGT
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I dunno, it could be.... and i am fine with it if it is.
There are better examples but i cant think of them, however pinball FX2 had a complete rewrite to become pinball FX3..... (almost) all tables were ported from number 2 to number 3 however and owners got them for free along with some niceupdates.
other games have had huge overhauls and owners of old game just got it for free. thing is my memory is toast and i cant remember them!. (bioshock 2 and 3 maybe?)
The actual quote is "David assured me that the codebase will be renewed via a paid expansion. This is great news, as the QA team aren't picking up bugs, it seems. This may be a CI/CD pipeline issue, but I feel after speaking to the board, modern engineering practices are very well embedded, and this is rather that the product codebase needs to be rationalised, and the paid update will fix current and future ills."
Let's remember that he is talking to shareholders, so just telling them that the codebase will be renewed without mentionining the paid expansion that accompanies it wouldn't put much confidence in the company (...so you are wasting two years of dev time for a rewrite of the game without making a penny with it?!). So the paid expansion enables them to renew the codebase because that's how they are going to pay the devs who have been busy creating it, makes perfect sense in my opinion.
The next part is about how bugs make it into the game, apparantly it's not a result of lacking QA or their development approach, but the codebase itself became so spaghettified that it needs to be replaced, which is what will happen when the paid update gets deployed.
If we would assume that owners of the base game wouldn't benefit form the renewed codebase, we would also need to assume that they no longer have access to the game, or that they would be seperated from owners of the expansion, effectively creating two different games. That's a lot of nonsensical assumptions in my opinion.
Sure, the statement isn't clearly worded. That's no excuse to create random doom scenarios though. It's not an official announcement and if people feel the need to read tea leaves they should try to concentrate on stuff that makes sense.
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I am just a gamer which doesn't make me understand game development, but years of delay, the admitted coding issues (especially with introducing new features), the bugs, those surely means it is easier to rebuild the game than constantly patching up.
And if legs are really 'the' feature - just consider remastering all assets. Hell, even ship cockpits might need rework as in VR Chat the Anaconda's interior doors are simply too small. Don't quote me that, but as if someone said peer-to-peer multiplayer is being reconsidered too...?
By trimming features I meant that the new game will be designed to have all the bells and whistles of the 'new era', so by default the base game would be a de-contented version.
If you consider that Non-Horizons owners get code updates for the game as a whole, without the Horizons content being made available by the update, it isn't too much of a stretch of the imagination to consider #New Era' to be a complete rewrite and that the update on release is there to bring every client online with new coding, and being 'modular' (as the current code must also be) will only activate content that the player has bought.
Seems reasonable enough a proposition. Hence my comment in another topic that FC's coming next Summer may have been delayed to allow new code base to be in a state to release the update in readiness for 'new era' - but minus the forthcoming content.
The thing is though, why clean a redundant branch of the game (our version) when the same is going on for the 2020 codebase? Are FD using the 2020 rationalised base early in the form of patches in December onwards, or is it FD applying dead end fixes while we wait currently?
The team for the current stuff is apparantly pretty small anyway. Considering we'll have to wait another year until the 2020 update gets released it's not unreasonable to fix the current stuff even if some parts of it aren't needed anymore in the future. On the other hand, some fixes might be beneficial for the renewed codebase.
I'm very tempted to believe the former of your question rather than the latter
With 'considerable' time developing New Era already it is possible that 'modules' have been completed - wouldn't it be nice to get 'optimised' code inserted over the next year?
Well...
Firstly, that reinforces what I said; that any rewrite would most likely be a free update that's available to all
Secondly, and closely tied to the first point, the nature of an online multiplayer game means it's incredibly unlikely that it'd be possible to operate two substantially different versions of the same software in parallel.
ED is a product - a multiplayer, online game - that people have paid for.
It would be completely unethical to simply stop supporting the original version of the game and only support an updated version that required further payment.
Equally, it'd be incredibly difficult (and still pretty unethical) to attempt to operate two different versions of the game in parallel.
Basically, it'd be kind of like Tesla selling a car for $50k then creating a software update and telling customers they have to pay another $20k for the update and then bricking any cars that aren't updated.
If FDev stopped supporting ED completely, and only supported ED+, it'd ruin their credibility as a developer.
If, OTOH, they decided to support both games it'd be okayish but it'd mean the player-base was split in two and that they'd have to continue to develop both versions of the game or still face the loss of credibility.
The only sensible course of action would be to offer ED+ as a free update for everybody and then provide additional features for those who paid to buy whatever expansion ED+ was part of - in much the same way Horizons does.
It seems a waste of time if the desk next to you is doing the very same job though. Since our branch is now 'frozen' and nothing new is going to be added, I'm thinking FD have or will swap in improvements from the 2020 branch.
I'm very tempted to believe the former of your question rather than the latter
With 'considerable' time developing New Era already it is possible that 'modules' have been completed - wouldn't it be nice to get 'optimised' code inserted over the next year?
I'm thinking and hoping the same, because in essence we then are pre beta testing the 2020 update which in itself is a genius move from a management POV- it would mean the 2020 update is / will be rolled out over time and tested in chunks, no extras included to muddy things etc.
If this is true it would be nice to have some regular teasing for 2020. FD kind of spanked us all really hard (for example my game is too unstable to play now) and I want something nice to look forward to.
Well, yeah. That's what I said.
To be fair, I suspect (hope) Braben's comment that "the codebase will be renewed with a paid update" is being misunderstood.
People seem to be reading it as "There will be a paid update that comprises a renewed codebase".
It's far more likely (again, I hope) that he meant "There will be a paid update and the codebase will be renewed in conjunction with that".
I don't doubt that there are things FDev want to implement but the Cobra engine can't manage it.
In that case, I can see them working on a new version of the Cobra engine and working on new content.
That would turn out a lot like Horizons did.
Everybody would get the updates to the Cobra engine and they'd get to carry on playing the existing game on it but only people who bought the paid update would get the new content.
I very much doubt that's going to happen for "The New Era" though.
Given how long Horizons took, and what we got, and how long Beyond took, and what we got, it doesn't seem realistic that FDev will be able to rewrite the codebase AND produce a worthwhile paid update in 18 months.
If it'd turned out that the reason Beyond was a bit weak was because the team was also working on a rewrite then I guess it might be feasible but we were told that they only started woking on "The New Era" after the bulk of the work on Beyond was completed.
indeed.. in which case i agree with you
perhaps i got the wrong end of the stick. i blame lack of coffee
The other looming issue is will FD bundle Horizons with Core when StarFeetBase is the new add on? If they don't its going to fracture the game even more.
I think the statement has been misunderstood and people are confused.
There will not be 2 games, but an update as large as the weight of the game that will rewrite the entire game. For those who pay for the expansion they will have access to all the new content, including the new code, but those that do not, will receive the same update but with the new features locked. The community update at the end of October has to do with what I just said to make it happen, I do not rule out that between the current game and the update of the new era, add the FC in an update and continue working on the new code until said update.
It would be logical and illogical it would be to have 2 games as some cite...
There will not be 2 games, but an update as large as the weight of the game that will rewrite the entire game. For those who pay for the expansion they will have access to all the new content, including the new code, but those that do not, will receive the same update but with the new features locked. The community update at the end of October has to do with what I just said to make it happen, I do not rule out that between the current game and the update of the new era, add the FC in an update and continue working on the new code until said update.
It would be logical and illogical it would be to have 2 games as some cite...
That's the other thing that's always seemed a bit short-sighted to me - and we've already seen the game compromised as a result of a single optional expansion.
We've already had CGs that required mat's to be gathered and, IIRC, one CG cancelled entirely because something about it required players to be able to land on planets.
At the risk of sounding heartless, it doesn't really matter if players can't participate in stuff because they haven't bought whatever's required.
If you want to do that stuff, buy the content.
What does matter, though, is if FDev can't/won't develop stuff that incorporates all available resources for fear of reducing the amount of players who can participate in it.
Exactly right. FD have the odd way of only developing popular features- but they are in danger of not developing newer things because the cutting edge expansions are not as popular as the base game.
I think Exeider might have meant synthesis, which was introduced in 2.0 (before engineering). Not sure how that works without Horizons.
indeed. it is vital imo that horizons - or the new all shiny 2020 equivalent of it is all bundled in witht he base game.
the more "optional" separate expansions there are, the less the game can gel together seamlessly and there will be kind of a hard border of features rather than everything being in the mixing pot.. i would much rather missions have wrinkles where anything and everything can happen potentially..... but this is kind of unrealistic if the game cant assume that all players will have specific content.
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