A Call For Frontier To Put VR Legs On The Upcoming Road Map

[VR StarLightPL]

Let's call it: "Braben's last known publically expressed thoughts about...", then, shall we?

As for Cobra as a show piece... I may be dumb, but I would have thought the more feathers in your cap the better, but what do I know -- perhaps we're talking repositioning it as a pure theme park management game creation kit...

You know I think I would pay for a second planet zoo copy (one was for my wife who quickly got frustrated by the clunky mechanics) if I could hang out with the animals in VR. So I think VR would be perfect fit for theme park "tabletop" type of games. Same for JWE which I don't have. They probably didn't include it because it would expose all the shortcuts they made, rotating sprites etc. VR commanders were pointing out literal holes in ships visible when they get up from the cockpit . It was silently dismissed as an edge case, so make out of that what you will.

And it's not only related to VR. In @Bigmaec video about on-foot vs ship balance you can clearly see that the effects were thought only to be seen from the ground (explosions are flat and rotating), and not from ship. Spheres of combat my arx The engine is clearly not ready, project is heavily underdelivered, and the roadmap for the foreseable future is "actually releasing the thing through MAny FIxes And improvements (MaFiA)"

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq2lcTKo4wU

 

[[VR] James Constantine]

I missed this announcement from FDev. Do you have links?

Pay attention.

 

[INSTG8R]

The way I see it.
If Odyssey has VR support it trumps Star Citizen without VR support Star Citizen trumps Odyssey.

Star Citzen can barely maintain playable framerates maybe another couple more years of the development black hole it’s in they may be able to even consider VR…

 

[[VR] Merkir]

Pay attention.

You said they "Created a new engine from scratch and recreate all the pre-existing Horizons functionality using this new framework."

The link you gave says nothing of the sort. In fact it completely contradicts what you said, ie. "Cobra has been carefully planned, developed and evolved since 1988." And no, just because they say it's fourth generation doesn't mean it was created from scratch for Odyssey.

 

[[VR] James Constantine]

You said they "Created a new engine from scratch and recreate all the pre-existing Horizons functionality using this new framework."

The link you gave says nothing of the sort. In fact it completely contradicts what you said, ie. "Cobra has been carefully planned, developed and evolved since 1988." And no, just because they say it's fourth generation doesn't mean it was created from scratch for Odyssey.

"Carefully planned, developed and evolved since 1988" is something we know of as marketing. If you don't belive me, find me a reference to Cobra prior to that press release. Truth is, you won't find one because while there was likely some code or algorithm reuse since perhaps as far back as 1988 (and you'll see I actually mentioned that above), Cobra is a recent development when they finally decided to productize it.

As for forth generation, generation of what exactly? What is the relationship of the forth generation with the previous three generations? Seeing as you understand what they are talking about, explain to us what that statement actually means. Feel free to use technical terminology. I'm actually quite well versed in it.

 

[VR StarLightPL]

Actually it doesn't matter if they rewrote 5%, 50% or 100%, what matters is that currently without "MAny FIxes And improvements (MaFiA)", they are staring into the abyss. It might as well be that they have this work planned already, and optimistic estimations land them near console release (which means it probably will slip into 2022). You can see the state of the engine, it's not up to par to anything currently on the market, even low-budget efforts. I mean rotating sprites, what is it, 2007? It's jarring in 2d, not to mention VR.

I'm much more worried (figuratively speaking, I'm not losing sleep over it ) that there are "no plans for anything". But that's the old way, no amount of talking about "honesty" is going to change that. OTOH if they would now announce that they're moving a significant portion of the team to work on full atmospheric planets, I really wonder what reaction there would be. I mean meltdown would occur, but some would be melting down from sheer joy of another carrot being dangled in front of them, and others would be annoyed by the fact that not 110% of devforce is invested into patching Odyshiy. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

 

[Ettanin]

ManyMaybe fixes and improvements

 

[[VR] Merkir]

"Carefully planned, developed and evolved since 1988" is something we know of as marketing. If you don't belive me, find me a reference to Cobra prior to that press release. Truth is, you won't find one because while there was likely some code or algorithm reuse since perhaps as far back as 1988 (and you'll see I actually mentioned that above), Cobra is a recent development when they finally decided to productize it.

As for forth generation, generation of what exactly? What is the relationship of the forth generation with the previous three generations? Seeing as you understand what they are talking about, explain to us what that statement actually means. Feel free to use technical terminology. I'm actually quite well versed in it.

Which tells me you're completely fabricating all of this nonsense about FDev building an engine from scratch. I prefer to believe FDev. Their description was clear. "Evolve" does not mean "create from scratch", however much you may wish to believe otherwise.

 

[[VR] James Constantine]

Which tells me you're completely fabricating all of this nonsense about FDev building an engine from scratch. I prefer to believe FDev. Their description was clear. "Evolve" does not mean "create from scratch", however much you may wish to believe otherwise.

Actually, it's pretty clear you don't have a clue what you're talking about. You seem to be reading a marketing release at face value, without any understanding of what it actually means from an engineering point of view, because you lack any knowledge in software engineering.

There's nothing 'clear' about the term 'evolve'. Evolve could mean iterations of code (highly doubtful given they trace back from 1988). It could mean that design paradigms that have worked successfully in the past and built upon have been employed - I've no doubt there is some truth there and could imagine that they're still employing Fibonacci numbers in their galaxy generation as they did back in 1984. But that doesn't mean that Cobra is an iteration or evolution of an existing framework - that's not how software development works. It may be based on previous software, it may even involve code reuse from recent software, but essentially they did a rewrite on their engine with a view to making it independent of any individual game.

It's a commonplace strategy, especially when a software company specializes in a type of software. Eventually, they find they're repeating or reusing the same code so often that they eventually turn it into a 'product'. Now if you want to continue to pretend that a press release somehow is not using marketing hyperbole, from your position of ignorance, feel free to make a fool of yourself.

 

[[VR] Merkir]

Actually, it's pretty clear you don't have a clue what you're talking about. You seem to be reading a marketing release at face value, without any understanding of what it actually means from an engineering point of view, because you lack any knowledge in software engineering.

There's nothing 'clear' about the term 'evolve'. Evolve could mean iterations of code (highly doubtful given they trace back from 1988). It could mean that design paradigms that have worked successfully in the past and built upon have been employed - I've no doubt there is some truth there and could imagine that they're still employing Fibonacci numbers in their galaxy generation as they did back in 1984. But that doesn't mean that Cobra is an iteration or evolution of an existing framework - that's not how software development works. It may be based on previous software, it may even involve code reuse from recent software, but essentially they did a rewrite on their engine with a view to making it independent of any individual game.

Now if you want to continue to pretend that a press release somehow is not using marketing hyperbole, from your position of ignorance, feel free to make a fool of yourself.

Pay attention.

 

[Lysette]

The fibonacci sequence is quite common in nature though - they could have used it in plant generation for example, but they didn't.

 

[[VR] James Constantine]

Pay attention.

Try using a coherent argument rather than mindlessly posting trash.

 

[[VR] James Constantine]

The fibonacci sequence is quite common in nature though - they could have used it in plant generation for example, but they didn't.

I only used that example as I know it was used in the original 1984 Elite. Such algorythms are often reused, modified and iterated upon, but they're also rewritten, from scratch each time as the platforms, processors and languages change. To read a press release and take from it that Cobra is somehow still originally something written back in 1988 is just utterly idiotic.

 

[VR StarLightPL]

Irrelevant bickering tbh. If history teaches us anything is that words are cheap, it's actions that matter. Unfortunately with is timewall gameplay that matters, and we're probably staring at a few months of "nothing to announce", until console release. We can bicker and argue about who rewrote who but it won't change the fact that Odyshiy is broken and they have to fix it pronto, otherwise no sweet sweet console money. And I doubt we will see any action in Odyssey either. It is consistent with their previous MVP releases which were always overpriced. Arx store prices are also outrageous tbh, especially considering the shoddy quality of it (clipping, wrong colours etc.).

A long term roadmap (with VR on it, of course) would help us mentally, but doesn't care. That's not what publicly-traded companies do.

 

[Lysette]

Irrelevant bickering tbh. If history teaches us anything is that words are cheap, it's actions that matter. Unfortunately with is timewall gameplay that matters, and we're probably staring at a few months of "nothing to announce", until console release. We can bicker and argue about who rewrote who but it won't change the fact that Odyshiy is broken and they have to fix it pronto, otherwise no sweet sweet console money. And I doubt we will see any action in Odyssey either. It is consistent with their previous MVP releases which were always overpriced. Arx store prices are also outrageous tbh, especially considering the shoddy quality of it (clipping, wrong colours etc.).

A long term roadmap (with VR on it, of course) would help us mentally, but doesn't care. That's not what publicly-traded companies do.

have you seen their new IPs?- a warhammer game, a formula 1 game - space is dead for FDev, because they might have realized, that they'll have absolutely no chance to compete in this genre anymore. Their current goal is getting the console release ready to get approved - so it has to run well enough to get this approval. I doubt that a lot more will be done, but we will see what their outlook is end of this month. It better be good, otherwise a lot will just abandon ship.

But then again, what can they promise - knowing well enough, that ED is in it's decline phase and this is more or less the last bigger cash grab possible with ED.

 

[VR StarLightPL]

Well, The Honest CM (THC!) promised that at end of June they will have a better outlook of things and will say something, I hope it's not MoMaFiA (More Many Fixes And improvements). But I agree with what you said. I fully expect something like we fixed this that and that and now we're entering the optimization period which at the end will also benefit pc cmdrs, so long and thanks for all the fish. Don't think they're organisationally capable of delivering anything more.

Plus as @[VR] James Constantine mentioned already, Odyssey is sooo MVP it hurts. All that potential, squandered. What happened FDev? What happened? Though as I have written, maybe it's simply overpriced and it is what it is - a few multiplayer shooting modes with dumb AI. Will buy for 16€. Maybe.

 

[VR StarLightPL]

But then again, what can they promise - knowing well enough, that ED is in it's decline phase and this is more or less the last bigger cash grab possible with ED.

Big game hunting on lush atmospheric worlds with your friends stealing gold from each other's ships maybe? Or gas giants surfing? Or per-ship-interiors paid DLC? The cashgrabs are stronk with FDeafs Also: ED Mobile in 2022 ;-)

 

[Lysette]

Big game hunting on lush atmospheric worlds with your friends stealing gold from each other's ships maybe? Or gas giants surfing? Or per-ship-interiors paid DLC? The cashgrabs are stronk with FDeafs Also: ED Mobile in 2022 ;-)

The game is in a hospice state - terminally ill, the care it will get is just minimal and with the end in mind. Of course they could tell us, that ED isn't dying, but it would be a lie.

ED mobile is a possibility though - but then again, how big are the chances that they can do an android or iOS client with proper performance?

 

[VR jefranklin18]

The game is in a hospice state - terminally ill, the care it will get is just minimal and with the end in mind. Of course they could tell us, that ED isn't dying, but it would be a lie.

ED mobile is a possibility though - but then again, how big are the chances that they can do an android or iOS client with proper performance?

The only way they could possibly show that ED isn't dying is to be open and honest about what Frontier is working on in the long-term: show prototypes for ELWs being worked on, the gas giant play that Braben spoke about when talking to Lave radio. Not going on about fixes and porting to console (as I expect from the upcoming monthly updates) but the stuff that shows there is a future to this game.

But it is , and they won't do any of that, so the playerbase will continue to be disillusioned and rightfully consider the game to be in maintenance mode post console launch.

 

[Lysette]

The only way they could possibly show that ED isn't dying is to be open and honest about what Frontier is working on in the long-term: show prototypes for ELWs being worked on, the gas giant play that Braben spoke about when talking to Lave radio. Not going on about fixes and porting to console (as I expect from the upcoming monthly updates) but the stuff that shows there is a future to this game.

But it is , and they won't do any of that, so the playerbase will continue to be disillusioned and rightfully consider the game to be in maintenance mode post console launch.

there are no future plans - they did not even test their new planet tech well enough to see, that it is crap on a lot of planets - not even that was done well enough. The "huge leap forward" was not even tested well enough. I expect nothing from FDev in regards to ED anymore. There is no future, but if EDO is performant enough, i might buy it nevertheless.