^D'oh thought I recognized you you're on TWC.
Anyone remember this old article about Elite 4?
- Thread starter Shigawire
- Start date
I know what you mean, but I think it's enough that the game is being made
With the extra investment in Frontier I don't think more money from backers at this stage would make much difference to the scope of the first release. However, how well the first retail release does may well affect the game's longevity and scope of future expansions. Hopefully a release significantly in advance of SC will help?!
I know what you mean, but I think it's enough that the game is being made
with E
due to come out for commercial release 6 months or so (rumoured) before SC, Elite Dangerous will be due for it's first expansion / paid or otherwise by then..fingers crossed.
Yep - the first TW really broke new ground. Shame they're more interested in pleasing Metacritic now than producing quality games.
It would be great (if potentially a bit too honest) when ED is released, to give us a comparison of what is included in the first version on sale against what was intended at various stages over the years. There must have been a number of these preview articles over the years since FFE, at various stages of work being picked up and put aside.
Any development process like this must always be a case of finding the best compromises. It would be fascinating to know what features proved to be unworkable and, given the time that has elapsed, what it does do that would have seemed impossible when the first designs were discussed.
Any development process like this must always be a case of finding the best compromises. It would be fascinating to know what features proved to be unworkable and, given the time that has elapsed, what it does do that would have seemed impossible when the first designs were discussed.
Think that was why I gave up and consigned it to vapourware. I also was on this forum probably back in 06 or 07 but when I tried to log in in 2012 it was like it had never happened. Had to make a new login. I checked and the membership of this forum does go back that far so it has not been wiped or reset. Weird.
Anyway good to see that old article.
Like the bit about GTA being the closest thing to Elite, also the bit about leaving a rich corpse. hehehe...
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Stachel
Banned
IIRC they said it was after Outsider. Which judging from the screenshots and the fact they hired staff to work on it, was intended to be a big success for FD. The tech proof of concept, impetus and profits from which would have been a great springboard for the next Elite game.
When the Outsider got canned, again IIRC FD lost their publisher, they had to lay off a load of staff (there used to be a few disgruntled former employees posting critical comments re: FD working practices at Glassdoor.com) and that effectively put the brakes on that. With the game industry undergoing a dark age thanks to a lack of investment in high wage economies like the UK, a declining number of sales, many great game studios being gobbled up and destroyed by the likes of EIDOS, Electronic Arts and Activision etc, things looked bad. FD I believe basically gave up on it. They had lost or never had the right skills in house, had no funding and none seemed likely ..
Until mobile gaming took off. FD seems to have done alright and very steadily built things back up over a decade or so. Until they were in a position to roll the dice on an IPO (the crowd funding was just publicity, the money raised is pretty insignificant really) and, finally, another Elite game. If ED is a success I'm sure we'll see The Outsider at some point revamped and released too. And there's the other stuff they do: Tycoon series etc.
Over the very many years there have been interviews with Braben where he's basically said that they have had concepts and code and even assets for Elite sequals for a long time. The aesthetics change of course, but the fundamental underline vision was mentioned some years ago. Especially the p2p networking concept, which I believe largely predated p2p as we know it today and was designed with 56k modems in mind lol. That, I believe, was in interviews over a decade ago. He also said he envisioned releasing a single player game with multiplayer aspects AND eventually a full blown MMO. How true that remains is anyone's guess.
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