How do you feel about Elite today?

[Darth Ender]

Well, good news, it's not 1984 anymore and we can have both nowadays !
Bad news, Fdev doesn't seem to know how to do it.

someone (or likely a few) that worked for them was able to do it in 2015 and later with horizons - laying the foundation for everything that's been done up until odyssey. They managed to make a game that was fast and was visually high end for it's time. It definitely made impressions in VR.

So maybe not that they dont know how to do it. It's that maybe they dont have people now who know how to do it.

 

[Erei]

someone (or likely a few) that worked for them was able to do it in 2015 and later with horizons - laying the foundation for everything that's been done up until odyssey. They managed to make a game that was fast and was visually high end for it's time. It definitely made impressions in VR.

So maybe not that they dont know how to do it. It's that maybe they dont have people now who know how to do it.

Yes but no. See, the issues we have today are partially the result of years of poor habits.
See, space is not very demanding. A pretty 2D skybox, a planet, a ship, some pewpew and boom boom, done. Fdev never worked on optimization. Station and FC didn't have occlusion culling, there was no point to it. When docked you had the entire FC and station drawn.

Fast forward to Odyssey. Now, we have actually complicated environment. And actual AI that need to do some pathfinding because, well, it's not empty like space. And suddenly, the "no need to work on optimization" comes and bites them REAL hard at the bottom. Because now you need it. And your entire game was made with poor habits, so you need to go through the spaghetti code, on a live environment because it's released ALREADY and fix it. And no, this time you can't render the entire freaking station at all time because the PC will beg for mercy.

 

[Darth Ender]

Yes but no. See, the issues we have today are partially the result of years of poor habits.
See, space is not very demanding. A pretty 2D skybox, a planet, a ship, some pewpew and boom boom, done. Fdev never worked on optimization. Station and FC didn't have occlusion culling, there was no point to it. When docked you had the entire FC and station drawn.

Fast forward to Odyssey. Now, we have actually complicated environment. And actual AI that need to do some pathfinding because, well, it's not empty like space. And suddenly, the "no need to work on optimization" comes and bites them REAL hard at the bottom. Because now you need it. And your entire game was made with poor habits, so you need to go through the spaghetti code, on a live environment because it's released ALREADY and fix it. And no, this time you can't render the entire freaking station at all time because the PC will beg for mercy.

Considering that the issues of odyssey aren't limited to complex environments, that it's half as fast as horizons in empty space where occlusion culling isn't a factor, nor is walking around or any pathfinding changes. I would think the issues of odyssey are mostly around new code replacing existing code rather than having to work on updating existing code.

There is this focus on just building on the engine and too little or not enough time spent on the customized elite dangerous engine itself, which would likely be a much more expensive development cost. The problem with elite dangerous is that it's so customized, the is almost a necessity to be good at both kinds of programming to do things in elite right, but fdev splits those kinds of developers. That's why most of what we see are re-hashes of existing game mechanics and not novel ones and things like VR get left as-is.

To me, that's less about a developer bad habit and poor practice and more of a management bad habit. And i think it's this management bad habit that we've seen ever since post-launch. But that hardly matters to players, same diff.

 

[EdzUp]

Considering that the issues of odyssey aren't limited to complex environments, that it's half as fast as horizons in empty space where occlusion culling isn't a factor, nor is walking around or any pathfinding changes. I would think the issues of odyssey are mostly around new code replacing existing code rather than having to work on updating existing code.

There is this focus on just building on the engine and too little or not enough time spent on the customized elite dangerous engine itself, which would likely be a much more expensive development cost. The problem with elite dangerous is that it's so customized, the is almost a necessity to be good at both kinds of programming to do things in elite right, but fdev splits those kinds of developers. That's why most of what we see are re-hashes of existing game mechanics and not novel ones and things like VR get left as-is.

To me, that's less about a developer bad habit and poor practice and more of a management bad habit. And i think it's this management bad habit that we've seen ever since post-launch. But that hardly matters to players, same diff.

Unfortunately i do think you hit the nail on the head here, not only is it badly optimised but over the year or so people have pointed out the major glaring issues of no culling. To be honest i would have thought that culling of unseen surfaces would have been top priority but it appears not.

On this backdrop its easy to see ehy consoles couldnt handle odyssey and why the next big dlc will push requirements through the roof

 

[Terry Daniels]

To be honest i would have thought that culling of unseen surfaces would have been top priority but it appears not.

Dr Kay spoke of that in some stream pre release that when they implemented culling it threw up all sorts of wierd bugs, like floating eyeballs and it was something they were still working on. My guess: They never managed to fix it.
Plus the NPC pathing (which explains the semi static NPCs in concourses) seems to suck up a lot of CPU cycles.

 

[EdzUp]

Dr Kay spoke of that in some stream pre release that when they implemented culling it threw up all sorts of wierd bugs, like floating eyeballs and it was something they were still working on. My guess: They never managed to fix it.
Plus the NPC pathing (which explains the semi static NPCs in concourses) seems to suck up a lot of CPU cycles.

Must have missed that one, pathing has been around since the days of Doom surely they could do it the way they used to do it years ago and have points of movement so the NPC whos in the bar can go to the bar or exits etc. Each room having the exits marked so npcs can choose where to go depending on the target destination.

 

[Erei]

Dr Kay spoke of that in some stream pre release that when they implemented culling it threw up all sorts of wierd bugs, like floating eyeballs and it was something they were still working on. My guess: They never managed to fix it.
Plus the NPC pathing (which explains the semi static NPCs in concourses) seems to suck up a lot of CPU cycles.

Lots of issue on release. The culling was worked on though, and I don't think it's as much an issue if at all.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Yes but no. See, the issues we have today are partially the result of years of poor habits.
See, space is not very demanding. A pretty 2D skybox, a planet, a ship, some pewpew and boom boom, done. Fdev never worked on optimization. Station and FC didn't have occlusion culling, there was no point to it. When docked you had the entire FC and station drawn.

Fast forward to Odyssey. Now, we have actually complicated environment. And actual AI that need to do some pathfinding because, well, it's not empty like space. And suddenly, the "no need to work on optimization" comes and bites them REAL hard at the bottom. Because now you need it. And your entire game was made with poor habits, so you need to go through the spaghetti code, on a live environment because it's released ALREADY and fix it. And no, this time you can't render the entire freaking station at all time because the PC will beg for mercy.

Yes, but wouldn't it be obvious you need that before release? As in: it'd be a basic thing to know about when someone designs it.

 

[Erei]

Yes, but wouldn't it be obvious you need that before release? As in: it'd be a basic thing to know about when someone designs it.

OFC. But people don't do what they don't need to do, unless forced to. And stuff like culling when it wasn't needed was not something players would have liked (let's be honest), so instead we had whatever feature they made.
And there is probably a good case of not knowing it would come and bite them in the back later. Hindsight and all that.

 

[Darth Ender]

OFC. But people don't do what they don't need to do, unless forced to. And stuff like culling when it wasn't needed was not something players would have liked (let's be honest), so instead we had whatever feature they made.
And there is probably a good case of not knowing it would come and bite them in the back later. Hindsight and all that.

I dont think the issue was unknown. I think it's a primary factor in why ship interiors were never on the plate and focus was instead kept elsewhere.

and culling is still a major issue. It's still not being done properly and results in a significant hit to rendering performance. That's why you still will see significant resistance to ship interiors despite it being a highly popular player request.

Fdev just has a convenient "this would be expensive to design for little gameplay reasons" excuse to fall back on, but really it's about the current game would become unplayable for even more players and make space combat quite unfun due to the performance hit of unculled geometry and features.

edit: because in reality, if ship interiors were just cosmetic features as they suggest they would be, they could charge arx for each ship interior they implement and players would buy them up no problem. I doubt they would have any trouble paying for the work needed for the assets. The real reason is the rendering pipeline is so wrong that culling just cant' be done properly and ship interiors would do serious harm to game performance in space rather than just inside buildings.

 

[Erei]

Interiors are a whole different kind of mess. It's mostly due to how instancing works in the game. Also, no game that I know of like to have a moving vehicle with people inside that are also moving part. It's really difficult to do, and even space engineer, who do it, took years to make it happens, and it's still janky at times. You still get smashed regularly for barely touching a wall.


It seems to me they spend WAY more time than planned on making the expansion, and many things had to be cut to make it happen. Interiors are probably part of it. Then they invented some lame excuses that doesn't make sense (you'll get bored going through the ship, as opposed to getting bored going the length of the ship, but outside ?).

 

[Mogen Teras]

Interiors are a whole different kind of mess. It's mostly due to how instancing works in the game. Also, no game that I know of like to have a moving vehicle with people inside that are also moving part. It's really difficult to do, and even space engineer, who do it, took years to make it happens, and it's still janky at times. You still get smashed regularly for barely touching a wall.


It seems to me they spend WAY more time than planned on making the expansion, and many things had to be cut to make it happen. Interiors are probably part of it. Then they invented some lame excuses that doesn't make sense (you'll get bored going through the ship, as opposed to getting bored going the length of the ship, but outside ?).

I have an Early Access shipbuilding game named Starship Evo that does moving ships with interiors that functions just fine in a multiplayer environment since you can designate a custom artificial gravity zone in the building process.

The technology is definitely there to make it happen, it's just Elite is far too spaghettied to ever make use of it

 

[Neilski]

moving vehicle with people inside

Which vehicle are you thinking of? Carriers don't move, as such, they just teleport...

 

[Matt_BLJH]

Genuine question: Does SC handle players moving in moving ships or are they using some kind of work-around. Watching Drew Wagar doing some SC ship tours on you tube, another player was telling him that if the pilot pulled a high G maneuver they would be thrown to the floor because of the force.

 

[Old Duck]

Genuine question: Does SC handle players moving in moving ships or are they using some kind of work-around. Watching Drew Wagar doing some SC ship tours on you tube, another player was telling him that if the pilot pulled a high G maneuver they would be thrown to the floor because of the force.

Spoiler: OffTopic

In SE (Space Engineers), you can move around the ship while it's in flight. I absolutely love this feature, especially on long and otherwise boring flights. Artificial gravity is optional - without it you rely on mag boots, which feel quite different than AG (walking is a bit 'janky'). You can even walk on walls and the ceiling with your mag boots, as long as there is no gravity present.

As for being thrown around, if you are not anchored down, you'll get thrown around if the ship is doing angles and dangles. I've used this against a boarding party who was trying to take my ship from me once. And if you are not seated with the ship jumps to hyperspace, you'll be left behind, floating in the vast emptiness of space.

 

[JetsonRING]

6 - Tons and tons of wasted potential and development pipe dreams that went up in smoke, what FDev created was an outstanding video game environment that needed somehow to have a game written into it. FDev wanted players to create the game.

 

[EdzUp]

6 - Tons and tons of wasted potential and development pipe dreams that went up in smoke, what FDev created was an outstanding video game environment that needed somehow to have a game written into it. FDev wanted players to create the game.

Without giving them the ability to do so

 

[Fizzatron]

6 - Tons and tons of wasted potential and development pipe dreams that went up in smoke, what FDev created was an outstanding video game environment that needed somehow to have a game written into it. FDev wanted players to create the game.

Elite is still in development, the potential many of us see isn't realized yet due to that. Only when development stops can it be said to have been wasted potential. Best thing is to keep encouraging Frontier to continue developing the game if you don't want to see this potential going to waste.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

6 - Tons and tons of wasted potential and development pipe dreams that went up in smoke, what FDev created was an outstanding video game environment that needed somehow to have a game written into it. FDev wanted players to create the game.

Pretty much. It is a world too big for the gameplay, with not enough going on. It is a galaxy for the sake of being a galaxy - but that doesnt make gameplay. Pretty good precgen, very good ideas about network structure. But gameplay-wise it didn't keep up.

 

[Erei]

I have an Early Access shipbuilding game named Starship Evo that does moving ships with interiors that functions just fine in a multiplayer environment since you can designate a custom artificial gravity zone in the building process.

The technology is definitely there to make it happen, it's just Elite is far too spaghettied to ever make use of it

Your EA games is different than ED. It's like saying Stellaris allow for Empire management why ED wouldn't ?

The technology to make the avatar move in a moving place exist, but it's a VERY difficult thing to do. And perhaps your Starship Evo did sacrifice other things to make it happen, or perhaps it's key to their development.