Section 8?
So, we're actually on schedule?
- Thread starter Good Whiskey
- Start date
Section 8?
No- luckily I can say it in jest now, although from a previous time I was quite close to losing my marbles. But, as they say:
I was not talking about the graphics, but about creating diversity in the human part of the Galaxy that looks the same wherever you go.
FDev can significantly improve our experience with relatively simple and carefree additions and changes.
False - just because something is not implemented at the start does not mean it has not been designed in a way that the same something could not be easily added later.
As far as SC is concerned, they are dealing with a different architecture and SC is STILL not even a released product yet, so it is a bit ridiculous to compare it with ED. As far as ED is concerned, seamless transitions do not make much sense overall but that does not mean it would not be feasible to do so.
The SLF is done as a remote control mechanic, you die in the SLF then you just lose the SLF but if the main ship dies while you are in the SLF then you will likely see the rebuy screen for the main ship.
The SRV is seemingly not a remote control mechanic by comparison but making that seamless would make no sense at all - at least prior to space legs being implemented in terms of full artwork and mechanics. Even with space legs implemented, a jump to SRV mechanic does make ALOT of sense, you only have to look at space legs in X-Rebirth/X4 to appreciate that not everyone will want space legs foisted on them - regardless of any alleged "immersion" feel gains. The handling of death in the SRV is a bit gamey but it is a reasonable compromise.
Where space-legs and ED is concerned, we do not know enough about the implementation to draw any conclusions either way but I disagree that entirely seamless transitions are either necessary nor should be pushed as a community driven mandate for them.
So I take it that you disagree with Sammarco when he said "I think it's also fair to say Space Legs is effectively dovetailing a whole new game into Elite"? I ask, because it seems like Frontier themselves understand that Elite was designed as a spaceship game and nothing more. The foundations are what we see today.
I don't find any problem with comparing the development approaches of the two games. At all. My point was that SC, unlike Elite, is being developed with these different things - flight, vehicles, player-owned planetary installations, vehicular and FPS combat - as native elements. Elite was not designed this way, which is why Space Legs will have to be grafted onto it. There's just no other way of looking at it, because this is objectively what must be done by Frontier's own admission.
From a mechanics/gameplay perspective it effectively would be (there are ALOT of factors to consider wrt space-legs and ED) BUT that does not mean it is true from an engine perspective.
I suggest people making such claims as "it was not done in the beginning so it must be hard to do now" actually learn about proper software design and development, if they had that knowledge/experience then they should realise how stupid such claims are.
The difference is ED ships have always been large enough to walk around in, except the tiddlers. In SC they had to rework them to add little crawl spaces that leave your bum poking out into space.
On the one hand future proofing on the other baffled by their own thing.
I appreciate the backhanded insult, but as I've pointed out, I base my assertion that it is very hard to do on what actual Frontier developers have said, not on outside experts such as yourself. When Frontier says "It's dovetailing a new game into Elite" and explain that this process isn't easy and is therefore part of an "end vision", I take that seriously, and I base my assessment of how quickly it will be delivered on that.
Quoting Sandro Sammarco at this distance (in time) is not especially profitable. We know what he meant: Space Legs is big, like a whole new game. But Legs were said to be part of the "10 year plan" and did feature in the early artwork for the kickstarter. And the ships themselves allow for integration of "Legs in Ships" as well as climbing and descending steps or elevators. Even the recent Discovery Scanner video with the art team describing ship design hinted strongly at this requirement (without actually mentioning Legs).
The point is that just because it may be considered by some as dovetailing a new game does not necessarily mean it is technically challenging to do so, it just means there are lots of factors to be considered.
We have a game that is primarily focused around space flight (SRV excepted) and as such adding an FP/Legs element would naturally pose a few concerns regarding consumer expectations. It is one thing to implement space legs, it is another to make such an experience add sufficient value - you only need to look at the (IMO largely unjustified) bad press over the space-legs element of X-Rebirth to understand how negative people can be over space legs type features that have been implemented primarily from a secondary feature standpoint.
Overall, the problem is people in general (not everyone and possibly not even close to the majority) have grandiose and IMO unjustifiable expectations with respect to what space-legs in ED can be expected to provide going forward. It is delivering something that comes even close to meeting those expectations that will be the greatest challenge for FD. I am sure they have the technical side buttoned down.
I'm not disagreeing. I'm saying that in SC, even at the alpha stage, players are flying, jumping, running, interacting, shooting, pulling tarps off surface vehicles, driving them, and so on. In Elite, 5 years in, we're sitting in spaceships. One development process is broad and open. The other is narrow and closed. This is not a criticism of Frontier, but they are objectively not building out their world the same way that Cloud Imperium has been.
So "there are lots of factors to be considered" does not mean it is "technically challenging". Is that correct?
I'm not disagreeing, but we're not talking about that. We're talking about development and implementation, not consumer reactions.
Well, we'll have to agree to disagree. I don't think Space Legs has been slow to hit the ground running because Frontier are shaking in their boots about how it will be received. These are professional developers. I think they have a technical mountain to climb, because they are scheduled to implement a feature that the game was intended to contain, but one that was not designed beforehand nonetheless. I think they knew this 4 years ago, which is why 4 years later we still don't have it.
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You dont think this community has already proved there will be an uproar no matter what is done?
I do agree with your broader points: That Legs are super-difficult, that they'd take a long time to integrate into the game as a result, and that they weren't 'designed' at the point of ED's launch.
I think you're stomping some important details with the above phrasing though. FDev claim Legs skunkwork pre-dates launch, has continued at points after it, and that they have designed elements of the current flight sim to accommodate their eventual introduction.
Here's a handy little collection of apparent design decisions in the live game.
And on past pronouncements:
- Braben on a damaged Anaconda prototype: "I mean eventually you'll be able to see from inside this, you'll be able to walk around this, you'll see this being unloaded. This is designed so that all of the cargo tessellate, so they touch each other well, but there's also room for them to be offloaded, which will happen automatically" ](Jan 2013)
- Cabin legs prototype (Feb 2013) [right panel]
- Braben on ship design: "It still makes sense for there to be some sort of general orientation to the ship where people walk around inside and you need to have a concept of up. But also we design it in mind the fact that it will spend some of its time in zero-g, so there are some interesting design philosophies that come from that, and you'll see that over the period of development" (Feb 2013)
- Newsletter: "We also plan to allow you to get up out of your seat and walk around your ship. You can see the level of attention and thought that has already been given to the ship interiors from these ship cockpit views in this video" (July 2014)
- Jo Taylor - Cockpit Artist: "One of the things that we've implemented on some of the larger ships is based on a grid system of meter squares so the cockpit is of a certain size and within that there's a lift shaft and that shaft will then channel down and be the same position throughout the ship on all the lower decks" (Nov 2014)
- Braben: We do have rough layouts of how the ships work. (May 2015)
- Braben: We have ongoing work on planets, including atmospheres, planetary life, walking about and lots of other very exciting things for the future. (May 2016)
You could also throw in:
Depending on whether it's for Legs gameplay or not. (The 'leak' would suggest so, but it's all more provisional
)The point would be though: They claim to have been building the current game 'with Legs in mind' essentially. It's a subtle difference perhaps (and one that's no less difficult to implement than the pure post-bolt-on you're suggesting, I suspect). But it seems to be a more accurate take on what they're attempting. And one which your above phrasings don't accommodate
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That was a fantastic and very informative post. It does appear that there has been some forethought, which frankly I wasn't anticipating that much of. However, if we remove everything that isn't just something that someone said, we are left with a few animations that appear to feature some dynamic models that speak to Space Legs, but nothing more. In all these years, we have never actually seen a player walk around their ship outside of cinematics, nor has there been any indication that anything close to the same amount native programming has gone into Elite as has gone into Star Citizen. This is simply an observation, not a conviction. Players haven't been able to test out any Legs-related features, I suspect because the bulk of them do not exist, but also because Frontier don't have an open alpha/beta approach to making new content available for continuous testing when it comes to Space Legs. So if they are far along, we have no evidence of it. All we have are vague statements from newsletters.
I am taking my time to go through everything you linked again. I do appreciate the post. Lots of depth.
wouldn't they just have to remove the ship from your view and then scale your perspective down to make you seem a lot smaller? I'm not even understanding how it would be that much different than the game the physics of how you move on foot would be slower than the how you move in the SRV so maybe take away some of the sliding butt in your spaceship you're still shooting in first person in your SRV you're still shooting in first person. How much different of a game would it really need to be?
my usage of coding extends to one time I used c++ about 15 or 20 years ago
my usage of coding extends to one time I used c++ about 15 or 20 years ago
I used to think that maybe Legs was further along than everyone thought, and that the reason it wasn't in the game was because the environments weren't ready, but then why wouldn't we be able to walk around the ships yet? Unless those environments weren't done.
See, we can't sign on to test out content in development and provide feedback. That's not how Frontier do things.
See, we can't sign on to test out content in development and provide feedback. That's not how Frontier do things.
I guess it's already been said here (probably multiple times as usual), but I think that the main reason why the legs (and atmo planets and other things, of course) take so long is not as much technical dificulties, un-prepare-ness of the engine or other core stuff, but rather the lack of purpose - a gameplay around those features.
I suspect that adding the ability to walk around the ship could be a matter of months (after all, we've heard multiple times that the interior of the ships has been designed around this possibility from the get-go so it would be just the matter of creating assets) but it would be a couple months of work resulting in each player using this feature... I don't know, once or twice and then getting bored of looking at things.
They need to design, code and create the actual gameplay loops around every feature they're adding and incorporate them into the game in a way that makes sense globally. There have already been multiple features that were added just for the sake of having them in game and it's not the right way to go.
So I think they are mainly focusing on that.
Personally, if I am ever to use legs, it's going to have to be for a good reason, gameplay-wise, otherwise it's just a fluff and that would be a shame.
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Thats pretty good advice. Im never leaving my couch again if its not for a good reason
Yeah, all we need is to look at real life.Thats pretty good advice. Im never leaving my couch again if its not for a good reason
Now, I'm not saying that we should have mandatory toilet breaks and going to the fridge for a beer in the game, but as a concept - we usually tend to avoid things we don't HAVE TO do IRL, too.
Hell I even tend to avoid things I do have to do. In favor of flying spaceships if we're being honest