Asking the Hard (Technical) Questions

[Ian Doncaster]

1. Is an offline mode for ED possible/How dependent is the game on its servers to run at all?
What would the technical hurdles look like to make something like that possible? What's the rough size of the seed needed to generate the Milky Way simulation? Conversely are there any factors that make such a thing impossible or at minimum impractical from a technical standpoint? I do know an offline mode was at least considered by Frontier at one time, but I have no real information on if that was cancelled for technical reasons.

Anything is "possible", so let's talk "vaguely plausible": making ED run entirely offline in the sense of "no servers" probably isn't practical without access to the source code, a team of developers, and a massive amount of extra work; providing emulated servers capable of supporting a single player that can also be run locally on their own PC probably is technically plausible in theory but also incredibly difficult (see answer to Q3).

2. Has there been any work done by the community to catalogue and preserve the game?
In other words, have any specific individuals or groups explicitly said that they've collected older builds of the game in attempt to 'reverse engineer' them down the line? With this question considered, I'd like to further ask...

No-one's going to admit to it if so!

Certain server-side game mechanics - the BGS, the commodities markets, etc. - have been openly and fairly reverse-engineered because understanding their operation is part of playing the game. But you're not going to get a functioning game system out of that data and knowledge, not by a long way.

3. Is there any possibility that when the last servers are taken offline, that the community can keep the game running without any technical support whatsoever from Frontier?
This question assumes that when the day comes, Frontier will not release the source code of Elite Dangerous to the public.
What kind of work would need to be done to get the game running again? With or without servers to facilitate online play.

Broadly speaking, someone would need to:
- reverse engineer the game client sufficiently to change which servers it talked to
- reverse engineer the game client sufficiently to work out all its protocols for talking to servers
- implement servers which returned valid responses to those protocols in at least enough circumstances that the game was basically playable
- do so in such a way that they didn't get hit with IP infringement claims by Frontier

It's not impossible, but in terms of actual likelihood, let's just say "not happening".

If Frontier were to provide migration support but not ongoing technical support then it could possibly be done ... but I can't think of a situation where it makes sense for them to spend money doing that where just keeping the game running in a permanent maintenance mode wouldn't be easier.

 

[Zak Gordon]

If Frontier were to provide migration support but not ongoing technical support then it could possibly be done ... but I can't think of a situation where it makes sense for them to spend money doing that where just keeping the game running in a permanent maintenance mode wouldn't be easier.

Well David has said they would do something like that rather than just 'switch it off'. It was mentioned in a direct quote just up the thread.

 

[metatheurgist]

Well David has said they would do something like that rather than just 'switch it off'. It was mentioned in a direct quote just up the thread.

Yes. So I dunno why there are so many potshots at the answer. They have already been given by Braben himself.

1) No it's not possible to run an offline version of the game as it is. The reason "Offline-gate" was a thing was because they came to the conclusion that the dynamic BGS and changing galaxy would be impossible to do offline. At best they could just take a snapshot of the galaxy at a given time and run an offline game off that unchanging, fixed snapshot.

2) No

3) Braben has already said that they plan to release the code to allow people to be able to run a static galaxy as per 1) if and when the servers are shutdown. But that was many years ago and who knows what their position on that is now.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Well David has said they would do something like that rather than just 'switch it off'. It was mentioned in a direct quote just up the thread.

Be very careful about interpretation, there, though.

If it were ever to happen, we would be able to release an archived version of the game, including the servers, but of course this would not evolve any further,"

"would be able to" is not the same as "will" - clearly they'd have the technical capability to do this, but this is not a guarantee that they will, even excluding "if the company suddenly goes bankrupt its creditors won't care"

And the original poster's questions were fairly clearly about the case where Frontier don't release "Elite Dangerous: Final" to run at home.

(I mean, in the short term it's probably irrelevant either way)

 

[amigacooke]

I think that pretty much says it all, if the creators say it's possible with that degree of certainty, then I can't see a good argument to refute that point.

They said they'd be releasing Odyssey on consoles?

What Frontier say and what actually happens can be quite different (plans change etc.)

 

[amigacooke]

Well David has said they would do something like that rather than just 'switch it off'. It was mentioned in a direct quote just up the thread.

I'd love to think that was the case, but what David says then doesn't always translate into reality now. In other words, don't rely on what Frontier say, only on what they've done.

 

[Zak Gordon]

I'll give him the chance to do what he said he'd like to do before writing off his words on the subject. I know, but i'm an optimist by nature and i also know how much Elite means to him personally.

 

[amigacooke]

I'll give him the chance to do what he said he'd like to do before writing off his words on the subject. I know, but i'm an optimist by nature and i also know how much Elite means to him personally.

Frontier's had a decade, that's a fair chance.

I don't say that ship interiors and ELWs aren't going to happen, I just haven't seen any evidence to make me think that they will.

 

[Zak Gordon]

Still ED is not yet dead, and when that time comes to pass i will give Sir David some time to see if we get the 'community release' version he talked about in those interviews. In short i don't think he said those things while meaning they would never happen.

 

[Morbad]

I have a couple of old versions backed up (from back when the game was small enough to easily run off a RAM disk on a PC with 16GiB of system memory) that don't run because they can't connect to Frontier's servers, but which I use as reference with regard to asset sizes and configuration files. I'm not really reverse engineering anything as I have essentially zero programming experience and a similar lack of inclination. That said, if anyone wants a copy of the ED 1.3.0.7 client, I've got one.

Anyway, I think the most straightforward way for Frontier to create and offline mode would be to release the server software, as is. It would require far less work to just run everything on the same PC and connect to 127.0.0.1 than it would to make an offline build with a faux BGS that did essentially the same thing. Such a leak is about all I think is reasonable to expect once FDev shuts down the game...as others have mentioned, it's one thing to promise or hint at an offline release as a gift and quite another to find people who are going to make it for free.