This thread is kinda twofold - explaining to potential players why frontier HAS TO do some things as it does them currently, purely for technical reasons..... and on the other hand, adding salt to what frontier is NOT doing, even though it could regarding "Elite: Dangerous" product presentation, especially towards fundraisers.
Initially, i was inspired to write this post, because of another post i wrote back here:
http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?p=28399#post28399
Basically, i thought this post of me may warrant more detail.
Why frontier is publishing so little artwork, while others publish more:
In a traditional handcrafted game, you create one game object after another. One base after another, one planet after another. So, it is a "sequential" creation approach: Stuff gets "near complete" one after another.
This towards interested players means: Even if you had only one or two locations already designed near completely, you could already show to players footage of something close to the finished game - despite of i.e. 80% of the game havent even been modelled yet. More importantly, if you do one thing after another, you will be able to constantly publish new "near final" visual footage, as you complete more game content.
The downside to this is: Even though this looks nice while presenting your game in development, you as the player can be sure, that there will not be much more than what you already saw in presentations, in the final game. Reason being that to add any new location to the gameworld, it has to be handcrafted. And for the few people left having any sense of efficiency: All this handcrafted content, will burden your hdd, your ram, your cpu and your gpu - because every object, every texture, will be unique.
For a game where most visual content is generated procedurally (except of some exceptions where procedural visual design doesn't work so well - like ships, stations or individual buildings) this works COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.
If you generate visuals procedurally, you do not "finalize" one object after another. Instead, EVERYTHING during the course of development, slowly goes from looking like ****, to (optimally) looking good. And the "looking good" phase usually is only reached at about the halfpoint until release.
Basically, with handcrafted content, you work on perfecting one object at a time. With generators, you work on generators slowly over time making EVERYHING continiously look better.
The problem regarding marketing is, that the procedural approach means, that you will only be able to publish a significant amount of visuals, that represent almost the final game, when you have already finished about 50% of development of the game. So, to "early potential funders", you will not be able to show any near final footage, except of the handcrafted stuff. And showing those funders the current state, is bound to do more harm than good, because the current state (in early dev) will look really bad and inferior, compared to other games.
That's why you see those asteroids and stuff so much in elite footage - it apparently is one thing, for which they already got the "generator" almost near final, while the generators for everything else - visually - are probably in "you don't want to show this as it is now" stage.
------
So, does this mean that frontier is just fine with what it is doing now? Or does it mean that it cannot do any more than it is doing currently?
NOPE.
Even if you can only show a very limited amount of visuals at the current time, that doesn't stop you talking in detail about gamedesign. Heck, E4 has been a "thought" for more than a decade.... SURELY, braben must have come up with a lot of ideas - discarded a lot of ideas - and in the end crystalized some very detailed thoughts about what could work? We're talking 15+ goddamn years!!!!
Now, one may argue, that some of their ideas may perhaps not work out exactly as they are now - so they don't want to make any promises? I'm sorry, but that won't work. If you are completely handicapped regarding publishing media, you will HAVE to compensate some other way! And if you only have things that MAY work out, you'll have to risk explaining those ideas, and saying that they may not work out exactly like this. And if the competition may steal from your ideas, you will have to risk that - because to get funding/hype, you have to show off SOMETHING to make people excited.
And this doesn't mean, that Braben has to speak on a blank background. As in some of your vids, you can simply fade in basically powerpoint presentations, that are just there to explain IDEAS, not visuals. If your ideas are good, unique and groundbreaking enough, they will get attention. Perhaps not as much as someone waving fancy gfx, but surely more than you presenting nothing more than nostalgia, very generic concepts and nothing else.
A starting point regarding the supposed already established "fanbase" (which got no updates in a decade, even for gamebreaking bugs requiring reloads (hello, autopilot), but was asked to pay a full shareware price to get a decade old game, instead of a purely symbolic price of like 2$ (yes, i understand the current copyright and trademark laws, and that you have to enforce them to not lose them - doesn't explain at all milking your CORE audience in a clearly unfair way not required by any law at all)). Oh, i drifted off... where was i?
I guess giving blame where blame is due. Anyways, regardless of what frontier and braben did in the past, the thing is that even if you cannot show "near-final" visuals now, that doesn't stop you from giving more than just a very vague picture of what E4 is supposed to be. And if a weekly presentation on this cannot be financed with the current kickstarter pledge, then maybe you'd better add 2000$ more to do efficient marketing... given the multimillion target right now, surely a few thousand dollars would be worth efficient marketing towards funders, right?
I mean, as it is now, the supposed funders don't even know very basic things. Like, if the game can be played offline at all.
Initially, i was inspired to write this post, because of another post i wrote back here:
http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?p=28399#post28399
Basically, i thought this post of me may warrant more detail.
Why frontier is publishing so little artwork, while others publish more:
In a traditional handcrafted game, you create one game object after another. One base after another, one planet after another. So, it is a "sequential" creation approach: Stuff gets "near complete" one after another.
This towards interested players means: Even if you had only one or two locations already designed near completely, you could already show to players footage of something close to the finished game - despite of i.e. 80% of the game havent even been modelled yet. More importantly, if you do one thing after another, you will be able to constantly publish new "near final" visual footage, as you complete more game content.
The downside to this is: Even though this looks nice while presenting your game in development, you as the player can be sure, that there will not be much more than what you already saw in presentations, in the final game. Reason being that to add any new location to the gameworld, it has to be handcrafted. And for the few people left having any sense of efficiency: All this handcrafted content, will burden your hdd, your ram, your cpu and your gpu - because every object, every texture, will be unique.
For a game where most visual content is generated procedurally (except of some exceptions where procedural visual design doesn't work so well - like ships, stations or individual buildings) this works COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.
If you generate visuals procedurally, you do not "finalize" one object after another. Instead, EVERYTHING during the course of development, slowly goes from looking like ****, to (optimally) looking good. And the "looking good" phase usually is only reached at about the halfpoint until release.
Basically, with handcrafted content, you work on perfecting one object at a time. With generators, you work on generators slowly over time making EVERYHING continiously look better.
The problem regarding marketing is, that the procedural approach means, that you will only be able to publish a significant amount of visuals, that represent almost the final game, when you have already finished about 50% of development of the game. So, to "early potential funders", you will not be able to show any near final footage, except of the handcrafted stuff. And showing those funders the current state, is bound to do more harm than good, because the current state (in early dev) will look really bad and inferior, compared to other games.
That's why you see those asteroids and stuff so much in elite footage - it apparently is one thing, for which they already got the "generator" almost near final, while the generators for everything else - visually - are probably in "you don't want to show this as it is now" stage.
------
So, does this mean that frontier is just fine with what it is doing now? Or does it mean that it cannot do any more than it is doing currently?
NOPE.
Even if you can only show a very limited amount of visuals at the current time, that doesn't stop you talking in detail about gamedesign. Heck, E4 has been a "thought" for more than a decade.... SURELY, braben must have come up with a lot of ideas - discarded a lot of ideas - and in the end crystalized some very detailed thoughts about what could work? We're talking 15+ goddamn years!!!!
Now, one may argue, that some of their ideas may perhaps not work out exactly as they are now - so they don't want to make any promises? I'm sorry, but that won't work. If you are completely handicapped regarding publishing media, you will HAVE to compensate some other way! And if you only have things that MAY work out, you'll have to risk explaining those ideas, and saying that they may not work out exactly like this. And if the competition may steal from your ideas, you will have to risk that - because to get funding/hype, you have to show off SOMETHING to make people excited.
And this doesn't mean, that Braben has to speak on a blank background. As in some of your vids, you can simply fade in basically powerpoint presentations, that are just there to explain IDEAS, not visuals. If your ideas are good, unique and groundbreaking enough, they will get attention. Perhaps not as much as someone waving fancy gfx, but surely more than you presenting nothing more than nostalgia, very generic concepts and nothing else.
A starting point regarding the supposed already established "fanbase" (which got no updates in a decade, even for gamebreaking bugs requiring reloads (hello, autopilot), but was asked to pay a full shareware price to get a decade old game, instead of a purely symbolic price of like 2$ (yes, i understand the current copyright and trademark laws, and that you have to enforce them to not lose them - doesn't explain at all milking your CORE audience in a clearly unfair way not required by any law at all)). Oh, i drifted off... where was i?
I guess giving blame where blame is due. Anyways, regardless of what frontier and braben did in the past, the thing is that even if you cannot show "near-final" visuals now, that doesn't stop you from giving more than just a very vague picture of what E4 is supposed to be. And if a weekly presentation on this cannot be financed with the current kickstarter pledge, then maybe you'd better add 2000$ more to do efficient marketing... given the multimillion target right now, surely a few thousand dollars would be worth efficient marketing towards funders, right?
I mean, as it is now, the supposed funders don't even know very basic things. Like, if the game can be played offline at all.
Last edited:
