I am very sure that everything is reloaded from scratch in the alpha, all games with fixed levels/scenarios usually do that. For the persistent universe, I expect significant amounts of caching, and some stuff, like all ship models, would only have to be loaded on startup and never unloaded again anyway.
Alpha Part 2 - What do you want to see?
- Thread starter ATARI.
- Start date
I am very sure that everything is reloaded from scratch in the alpha, all games with fixed levels/scenarios usually do that. For the persistent universe, I expect significant amounts of caching, and some stuff, like all ship models, would only have to be loaded on startup and never unloaded again anyway.
Philip Coutts
Volunteer Moderator
I think Frontier have, from the start, been very canny about what they have shown. Remember the Damocles video, that was conceived at least a month before we saw it to allow the composers to work with it. The Alpha we have seen so far is really polished stuff but I'm guessing they are even further on that we have so far seen.
For the next phase I'd like to see either hyperspace, docking, trading or the frame shift drive. I think we might actually see multi-player combat. Whatever it is it will be good that is for sure.
For the next phase I'd like to see either hyperspace, docking, trading or the frame shift drive. I think we might actually see multi-player combat. Whatever it is it will be good that is for sure.
I think your last point is right...the alpha is broken into scenarios...each no doubt testing different or more complex cases together from a dev point of view. None of these scenarios would require a load in the beta release (IMHO).
Alpha Part 2.
- New combat mission to further test ship balancing: You and other Sidewinders vs a few Viper Mk2
- New combat mission 2: Imperial Fighters vs you and Sidewinders wingmen to test fighting ability against fast ships (speed gamplay balancing)
- mission 3: Cobra Mk3 test flight and new weapons
- mission 4: Cobra Mk3 vs a few Eagle Mk2
- mission 5: Cobra Mk3 with other NPC Cobra wingmen vs Imperial Capital ship & Imperial fighters
- mission 6: Docking with a station
- mission 7: Multiplayer (drool) Sidewinders and Cobra Mk III (random spawning)
Couldn't afford the Alpha but loving all the Movies around ..Game looks Stunning !!
Space station and Docking would now be something I would love to see
Space station and Docking would now be something I would love to see
Big ships won't be usable by players on release only after the first expansion where you can walk on space stations and on you own ship. Big ships don't make sense if we don't have an avatar
Yeah if they gave us maybe 5 systems to travel around between mine and trade that would be cool. Maybe a few more ships to upgrade to.
As for the loading times and the lag spikes - they generally put a whole crap load of debug code in there that adds overhead to the game in case something goes wrong it gets logged. Once the debug code is out it will improve performance and overhead. They'll still need to run optimizations at the tail end of beta though.
As for the loading times and the lag spikes - they generally put a whole crap load of debug code in there that adds overhead to the game in case something goes wrong it gets logged. Once the debug code is out it will improve performance and overhead. They'll still need to run optimizations at the tail end of beta though.
Im not sure but I think people are too easy in expecting multiplayer next. Consider the current state of the alpha and how multiplayer will work in the full game. Would they really waste time in making a completely different multiplayer system just so players can do dog fights against each other(matchmaking etc how to find another player to play with?) instead of working towards completing the game.
nats
Banned
I would like to see the navigation interface, jumping, inter system scanner mechanics with stealth/heat/silent running, plotting interceptions etc so you can see how pirating/bounty hunting will work. I think that could be the best bit of the game for me. I also would love to see what navigating around inside a star system would be like ie travelling past planets, stars, moons, etc.
nats
Banned
I'm not convinced Beta will start before May/June they probably have a long long way to go to get feature complete, although as far as I know they could be feature complete already, but I suspect not.