An observation about the 2020 update...

[Stealthie]

I keep reading speculation that the 2020 update might be a "complete rewrite" of ED.

The people suggesting this should probably bear in mind that "Project 2020" is a paid-expansion that will operate in conjunction with the current game.

Whatever it turns out to be, there will be people who choose not to buy it and they will still be able to play the game alongside those who do buy it.

Sure, FDev might decide to rewrite the entire game but, if they do, they'll have to provide that update to everybody for free so that everybody can continue to play ED on the same servers.
In that case, having spent a significant amount of time completely rewriting the game, it seems unlikely that they're also going to have time to produce anything substantial that they can charge money for.

That is all.

 

[Boff'in]

As I have said previously:
Walking around the ED stations and planets is it’s own experience. To honor that experience and gameplay correctly you must built it from the ground up as that experience as it will need to be a First person RPG that is plugged into the background sim with crafting looting and rep etc etc

So you have the pilots federation. (Elite dangerous)

And the guild of mercenaries. “Space Soldier something cool”

If You own both core games (like the LEP) it’s a seamless transition. You can get out of the ship and walk around a station. Which is a first person RPG experience with npc faces, factions, guilds

Walking around space ships is additional “cross over” gameplay for both package owners. Which is released a year prior to the main IP so fdev can fine tune controls mechanics etc etc and get feedback before the main Mercenary IP launches.

So us pilots can hire in first person junkies to defend our passengers or carry out a pirating attack/ salvage on another vessel, and even man the multi-crew guns.

The soldiers can book passage on ships to get around.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I keep reading speculation that the 2020 update might be a "complete rewrite" of ED.

The people suggesting this should probably bear in mind that "Project 2020" is a paid-expansion that will operate in conjunction with the current game.

Whatever it turns out to be, there will be people who choose not to buy it and they will still be able to play the game alongside those who do buy it.

Sure, FDev might decide to rewrite the entire game but, if they do, they'll have to provide that update to everybody for free so that everybody can continue to play ED on the same servers.
In that case, having spent a significant amount of time completely rewriting the game, it seems unlikely that they're also going to have time to produce anything substantial that they can charge money for.

That is all.

Yup. While they will likely rewrite some stuff, it won't a be ED2. It's gonna be a big expansion to the current game. There will likely be a number of changes to the base game too which everyone will get.

Pretty much standard expansion fodder really.

 

[dognosh]

We have been blocked from landing on many planets, so adding Atmospherics as an expansion would be easy and accepted readily.
We haven't even had "partial legs" , so putting it on a paid expansion might ruffle some feathers.

My prediction : Atmos in 2020(paid) , Legs soon after(free)

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

We have been blocked from landing on many planets, so adding Atmospherics as an expansion would be easy and accepted readily.
We haven't even had "partial legs" , so putting it on a paid expansion might ruffle some feathers.

My prediction : Atmos in 2020(paid) , Legs soon after(free)

I do not expect legs to be free. If it is to contain meaningful gameplay, it's a huge amount of work. I can see that another 2 years down the line after atmospherics, if the next exapnsion is atmospherics.

 

[Old Duck]

I keep reading speculation that the 2020 update might be a "complete rewrite" of ED.

The people suggesting this should probably bear in mind that "Project 2020" is a paid-expansion that will operate in conjunction with the current game.

Whatever it turns out to be, there will be people who choose not to buy it and they will still be able to play the game alongside those who do buy it.

Sure, FDev might decide to rewrite the entire game but, if they do, they'll have to provide that update to everybody for free so that everybody can continue to play ED on the same servers.
In that case, having spent a significant amount of time completely rewriting the game, it seems unlikely that they're also going to have time to produce anything substantial that they can charge money for.

That is all.

Playstation consoles may be an outlier here, as rumor also is that PS5 will be coming out in 2020, and it would not surprise me if the game "Elite: She's Got Legs" is written solely for the new Playstation...


FWIW, this would not bother me personally, as I plan to grab a PS5 as long the price is competitive.

 

[PiLhEaD]

....We haven't even had "partial legs" , so putting it on a paid expansion might ruffle some feathers. My prediction : Atmos in 2020(paid) , Legs soon after(free)

Sorry, but i don't think that anything as significant as 'legs' will be free.

As for a complete rewrite of Elite, it's worth noting that FDev have already registered/reserved the name 'Elite: Deadly' for a future computer game.

 

[insanephoton]

We have been blocked from landing on many planets, so adding Atmospherics as an expansion would be easy and accepted readily.
We haven't even had "partial legs" , so putting it on a paid expansion might ruffle some feathers.

My prediction : Atmos in 2020(paid) , Legs soon after(free)

I disagree. My feeling is if they went that route we might have the same issue as Horizons Kind of 'Hey isn't this exciting we can land', followed very shortly by
'Ok so what can we do here?' There are limits to what additional gameplay they can add while still restricted to the SRV

 

[Thatchinho]

I keep reading speculation that the 2020 update might be a "complete rewrite" of ED.

The people suggesting this should probably bear in mind that "Project 2020" is a paid-expansion that will operate in conjunction with the current game.

Whatever it turns out to be, there will be people who choose not to buy it and they will still be able to play the game alongside those who do buy it.

Sure, FDev might decide to rewrite the entire game but, if they do, they'll have to provide that update to everybody for free so that everybody can continue to play ED on the same servers.
In that case, having spent a significant amount of time completely rewriting the game, it seems unlikely that they're also going to have time to produce anything substantial that they can charge money for.

That is all.

Also, Will’s clarified that it will be in-game content.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...date-(01-03)?p=7460198&viewfull=1#post7460198

 

[Robert Maynard]

As for a complete rewrite of Elite, it's worth noting that FDev have already registered/reserved the name 'Elite: Deadly' for a future computer game.

More likely Frontier registered Elite: Deadly due to this: http://www.elitedeadly.com/

 

[insanephoton]

Which

Sorry, but i don't think that anything as significant as 'legs' will be free.

As for a complete rewrite of Elite, it's worth noting that FDev have already registered/reserved the name 'Elite: Deadly' for a future computer game.

I wouldn't necessarily go that far. It might just be a matter of protecting IP rights without having any plans to use them in the foreseeable future.

 

[BirdWisdom]

I keep reading speculation that the 2020 update might be a "complete rewrite" of ED.

The people suggesting this should probably bear in mind that "Project 2020" is a paid-expansion that will operate in conjunction with the current game.

Whatever it turns out to be, there will be people who choose not to buy it and they will still be able to play the game alongside those who do buy it.

Sure, FDev might decide to rewrite the entire game but, if they do, they'll have to provide that update to everybody for free so that everybody can continue to play ED on the same servers.
In that case, having spent a significant amount of time completely rewriting the game, it seems unlikely that they're also going to have time to produce anything substantial that they can charge money for.

That is all.

The question is if we will have our stuff left or restart from the beginning, my concern with regard to all time everyone has spent just by grinding

 

[krylite]

I'd think even if the underlying engine and much of the infrastructure was revamped or even rewritten, the aim would still be a seamless transition for the base and overall game. For example, a lot of the UI and background graphical changes from Beyond are also now in the base game when played without horizons where every patch event seems to occasionally upgrade the base game and core features to a planned extent and not only post base dlc content.

 

[thistle]

Sure, FDev might decide to rewrite the entire game but, if they do, they'll have to provide that update to everybody for free so that everybody can continue to play ED on the same servers.
In that case, having spent a significant amount of time completely rewriting the game, it seems unlikely that they're also going to have time to produce anything substantial that they can charge money for.

That is all.

However there's a difference between a) rewriting the entire game as if from scratch with no existing knowledge, which let's assume might take 2 years, and b) taking what you have now and rewriting those areas to fix the technical debt, fixing the structural problems 5 years of development has created, without throwing out the majority of the code. It's surely likely that the design of such a new version would include the new features at design stage, rather than bolting them on, and this project might also only take 2 years?

Put it this way - doing atmospheric landings, all those planet types, weather, perhaps gas giants, the generation of the galaxy, ie the core of the game, is going to need rewritten in any case. No?

But who knows.

 

[Vasco Sapien]

I agree a re-write is not the case.
Improvements and additional content on a scale not seen previously in ED, yes.

There is a thread floating about on one of the Facebook channels about ED hitting its end of life in 2021, one year after the 2020 content drops. But this is also scare mongering IMO. based on nothing but conjecture.

 

[Thatchinho]

It’s going to be in-game content.

 

[zarrazee]

OP. IIRC Blizzard had to redesign WoW zones 1-60 to accommodate flying mounts when Cataclysm came out. If Space legs is in the works, it could be that FDev have to do something similar with the existing engine. Just speculating.

 

[Stealthie]

Playstation consoles may be an outlier here, as rumor also is that PS5 will be coming out in 2020, and it would not surprise me if the game "Elite: She's Got Legs" is written solely for the new Playstation...


FWIW, this would not bother me personally, as I plan to grab a PS5 as long the price is competitive.

See, this is a slightly thorny topic, given the whole "PC master-race vs console peasants" thing.

I wouldn't be opposed to FDev choosing to substantially revise ED on consoles (especially given the rumours surrounding next-gen consoles' VR capabilities) but, again, it presents the same issue as my OP - if FDev are spending their time doing that, they aren't going to be spending their time creating an epic update which players on PC and consoles will be terribly thrilled about paying for... although, knowing the ED comminity, we'll all buy it anyway.

Fundamentally, existing customers on PC, XBox and PS4 MUST be able to carry on playing the game even if they decide not to purchase the new DLC.
FDev can't sell DLC which would render the current game completely obsolete.
They''d have to give that part of the update away for free, which'd mean the thing they'll be charging for would be something that only received a limited portion of the dev-team's attention.

Seems far more likely that FDev looked at the game as it stood in 2.X, figured out what needed to be changed so it could support what's coming in 2020 and then provided all those updates for free, along with all the baubles we can see, during Beyond.

I wouldn't be surprised if 4.X does make big changes to the game for those who buy it but the game's also still got to carry on working for those who don't.

 

[babelfisch]

Parts of the game have been rewritten several times and the Cobra Engine is under continuous development since 30 years or something like that...
.
So I wonder what people actually mean when they are saying rewrite? It's entirely possible that they remove legacy 32 bit support from older parts of the game, which is essentially a rewrite. It's also possible they replace some old code with newer versions where we don't even see the difference in-game. Which is also a rewrite.
They could also continue doing what they always did and rewrite various features and mechanics.
What's certainly not going to happen is that they are replacing the entire game involving our savegames and discoveries.

So what is a rewrite? Do you consider the new Skyrim a rewrite?

 

[Old Duck]

So I wonder what people actually mean when they are saying rewrite?

Me personally, a rewrite would be keeping the same APIs to Cobra but looking at the source, and if the classes and methods for certain game features are a royal mess due to developer turnover, midnight-hour code, etc., just tossing out that code and rewriting it from scratch (to the same API) with fresh talent and minds. I've done this with my own code in the past, because sometimes things become unmanageable for the reasons I just gave.

The other advantage to rewriting certain parts is that the Cobra engine is so old. There are bound to be better ways of achieving certain things (cough shadows cough) with today's hardware and programming practices than what was originally introduced many years ago.

And finally, I'm sure Frontier will need to add new APIs, but since new will reference old (legs cast shadows, too), then it's smarter to fix the old before finalizing the new, so that the new is using the best tools available.

All that said, "Hello World" functions are timeless and need not be rewritten