Please pardon me for this long post but let me say this about the core of Elite in relation to other science fiction games:
The genre
Dir. David Braben was right when he said that character based science fiction games do not expound well on the purposes of science fiction and cannot satisfy the needs of players for long despite the appealing behaviour of the characters, the interesting plot, the technology and vivid environments. https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel...-talks-sci-fi-politics-and-whats-next-w492781
I have noticed this too. With due respect and appreciation for EA, I checked their epic sci-fi shooter series of games, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Crysis, Dead Space and even Titanfall. Fans later frown at the updates and even go as far as criticizing the games and the makers. Braben pointed out that the creators designed the games to focus on just entertainment and not to immerse the players in the imaginative liberty of how space or advancement feels like. Jump, run, touch, engage, escape, shoot, shoot, shoot and keep shooting! It is the general set of actions present in shooters. Scifi action games has never been too different, especially from great simulated military works like Call of Duty and Battlefield series. Indeed, these two games, with their licensed in-game hardware, should look reasonable particularly to those who like military action. Well I have hardly seen real life researchers in the military sector bring any gun or suit from a scifi shooter to life. It is simply because they do not function in an explicable manner. They are just overdrawn.
The award winning Elite (in 1984) brought the future of science fiction entertainment, immersion and inspiration to the home screens of players at a time when computers were mostly useful only in the office. The dream of freedom in the vastness of space, doing what happy pilots and sailors do on this confined earth for a mission or leisure resonanated in the minds of the players even if it was on a virtual level. So influential was Elite that many other creators used it as their standard in creating similar games, Wing Commander: Privateer, Battlecruiser 3000AD, Infinity: The Quest for Earth, Flatspace and the loved and frequently updated Eve: Online, a vast and complicated MMO that has hundreds of thousands of excited players since 2003 till today despite a monthly subscription. Eve Online's universe is the kind of spatial and interactive scifi experience a lot of players seek because the reality of space, virtual or not is that endless possibilities exist and there is a lot of work to do, adventures to pursue, facts to learn, new areas to be discover and explore, races to come across and even wars to wage.
The fourth and current installment of the Elite series, Elite: Dangerous, an 8th generation game with similar and additional features to the first game thirty years ago still has the same attractive and addictive effects. Similar to activities in Eve: Online but ahead in game software generational properties, Elite returns to take the lead once again as the yardstick for space exploration, commerce, combat, simulation, science fiction genre. Updates keep coming, notably Horizons which enables players to land their spaceships on airless planets and ride rovers on them. Furthermore, Elite Dangerous has inspired contemporary games such as Stellaris, Interstellar Pilot, Eve: Valkyrie, Kerbal Space Program, No Man's Sky and a possible upcoming rival, Star Citizen.
The story
One other thing about David Braben is his realistic view of mankind's future through Elite's lore. http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Elite_Universe. We are used to an utopian human setting (which usually emerges after a man-made apocalypse) where the only real threat to us are an advanced extraterrestrial species we must all together repel and destroy when they invade. Elite concurs with this in its lore about the invasion by the Thargoids who had previously engaged the Guardians, an extinct humanoid race who were later wiped out in a civil war long before humans evolved. The archeology of the Guardians depict a humanoid race with humanlike qualities but were utterly destroyed by the same beliefs, disputes and destructive inventions of people today. Likewise in the human lore, mankind had experienced such onto World War 3 but survived. One may expect space to change mankind through its abundance and diverse opportunities but it does not because man's negative tendencies are inherent, which is my personal view. The stories about how the major societies rose and operate: the Federation, the Empire and the Alliances can be saddening and disputed because it is not the future human environment we want. I think that one who expects global peace and harmony in the future should not only pray that every one's needs are met but death gives way for immortality to all and indiscipline should be cured. However, life continues and people live and work together in spite of whatever sort of relationship.
The science
In a popular space opera franchise Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy, where there are lots of anti gravity vehicles and drones and lightsabres, pseudoscience is the normal theme in the show. A spacecraft can quickly enter or leave a planet's atmosphere without experiencing g-force or heat, and a small smart drone or a strange alien creature levitates like a phantom, immune to freefall, but can physically impact objects or be impacted; an indication that it has mass! This inexplicable displays have placed Star Wars into the genres of magical fantasy and not science fiction. Star Wars contributed significantly to the concepts of many sci-fi games like the ones described in the first segment that produce more fun rather than reason. How the pieces of tech function is not important. It's only a game!
Elite Dangerous, though also just a game, still portrays abstract astrophysics, both in practical and theoretical aspects. In many sci-fi works, generational megaships have multitudes of passengers hibernating in individual hypersleep pods, resting for centuries waiting to awaken as soon as they reach their destination aeons later. Regardless of how slimly possible it is, it is still ridiculously frightening because hypersleep pods are like coffins. What happens in the interval is not a serious problem compared to the energy source that supplies life into the pods. Will it last? However, if you read through the lore of generation ships in Elite Dangerous, http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Generation_ships, you will learn that people developed societies inside the ships while on the long journey to colonise habitable worlds to permanently call them home. They bore, grew, lived, aged and died on those ships. But as expected, bad things do happen; not every ship made it. Some colonists died due to terrifying causes, some ships went missing. These events happened before the discovery of hyperspace travel.
It is still far from our current position, warp drives and jump drives belong to the realms of the theory of relativity. It is not seen to many as impossible but requires astronomical amount of power to initiate. But it is the only sure way we can cross the enormous gulf to reach any point that is just beyond the Oort cloud of our solar system, talkless of lightyears around the milky way and forsake the expensive and slow generational ships. To claim space and make a home country of it, we must get that 'frame shift drive.'
Instead of levitation, all ships in the game move using thrusters and fuel. Space stations revolve around their axes to cause the artificial gravity, after all that is how gravity organises the cosmos. Different space stations have their use: agriculture, residence, commerce, tourism, manufactory, facilities and so on.
One more fact I want to commend Dir. Braben for that many sci-fi developers fail to cohere in their works is thermodynamics. Of course, they do sometimes include consumable energy but not at a very calculated or consistent level. When any machine operates, it must emit heat which can later stop or damage the machine, depending on the work output. The capacitors of ships determines how much energy can be consumed by many operating modules and weapons for a period of time. When overloaded, it stops some functions and lets the heat to fade and then recharges. The use of heat sinks to obfuscate the thermal signature of a ship is a good idea.
In summary, I salute Frontier Developments, the developers of the Elite Dangerous under the creators, David Braben and Ian Bell for their good and professional work in producing a simulating game that can not only excite gamers and inspire space enthusiasts but can positively improve science fiction and gaming culture at well. Thank you and "fly safe."
The genre
Dir. David Braben was right when he said that character based science fiction games do not expound well on the purposes of science fiction and cannot satisfy the needs of players for long despite the appealing behaviour of the characters, the interesting plot, the technology and vivid environments. https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel...-talks-sci-fi-politics-and-whats-next-w492781
I have noticed this too. With due respect and appreciation for EA, I checked their epic sci-fi shooter series of games, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Crysis, Dead Space and even Titanfall. Fans later frown at the updates and even go as far as criticizing the games and the makers. Braben pointed out that the creators designed the games to focus on just entertainment and not to immerse the players in the imaginative liberty of how space or advancement feels like. Jump, run, touch, engage, escape, shoot, shoot, shoot and keep shooting! It is the general set of actions present in shooters. Scifi action games has never been too different, especially from great simulated military works like Call of Duty and Battlefield series. Indeed, these two games, with their licensed in-game hardware, should look reasonable particularly to those who like military action. Well I have hardly seen real life researchers in the military sector bring any gun or suit from a scifi shooter to life. It is simply because they do not function in an explicable manner. They are just overdrawn.
The award winning Elite (in 1984) brought the future of science fiction entertainment, immersion and inspiration to the home screens of players at a time when computers were mostly useful only in the office. The dream of freedom in the vastness of space, doing what happy pilots and sailors do on this confined earth for a mission or leisure resonanated in the minds of the players even if it was on a virtual level. So influential was Elite that many other creators used it as their standard in creating similar games, Wing Commander: Privateer, Battlecruiser 3000AD, Infinity: The Quest for Earth, Flatspace and the loved and frequently updated Eve: Online, a vast and complicated MMO that has hundreds of thousands of excited players since 2003 till today despite a monthly subscription. Eve Online's universe is the kind of spatial and interactive scifi experience a lot of players seek because the reality of space, virtual or not is that endless possibilities exist and there is a lot of work to do, adventures to pursue, facts to learn, new areas to be discover and explore, races to come across and even wars to wage.
The fourth and current installment of the Elite series, Elite: Dangerous, an 8th generation game with similar and additional features to the first game thirty years ago still has the same attractive and addictive effects. Similar to activities in Eve: Online but ahead in game software generational properties, Elite returns to take the lead once again as the yardstick for space exploration, commerce, combat, simulation, science fiction genre. Updates keep coming, notably Horizons which enables players to land their spaceships on airless planets and ride rovers on them. Furthermore, Elite Dangerous has inspired contemporary games such as Stellaris, Interstellar Pilot, Eve: Valkyrie, Kerbal Space Program, No Man's Sky and a possible upcoming rival, Star Citizen.
The story
One other thing about David Braben is his realistic view of mankind's future through Elite's lore. http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Elite_Universe. We are used to an utopian human setting (which usually emerges after a man-made apocalypse) where the only real threat to us are an advanced extraterrestrial species we must all together repel and destroy when they invade. Elite concurs with this in its lore about the invasion by the Thargoids who had previously engaged the Guardians, an extinct humanoid race who were later wiped out in a civil war long before humans evolved. The archeology of the Guardians depict a humanoid race with humanlike qualities but were utterly destroyed by the same beliefs, disputes and destructive inventions of people today. Likewise in the human lore, mankind had experienced such onto World War 3 but survived. One may expect space to change mankind through its abundance and diverse opportunities but it does not because man's negative tendencies are inherent, which is my personal view. The stories about how the major societies rose and operate: the Federation, the Empire and the Alliances can be saddening and disputed because it is not the future human environment we want. I think that one who expects global peace and harmony in the future should not only pray that every one's needs are met but death gives way for immortality to all and indiscipline should be cured. However, life continues and people live and work together in spite of whatever sort of relationship.
The science
In a popular space opera franchise Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy, where there are lots of anti gravity vehicles and drones and lightsabres, pseudoscience is the normal theme in the show. A spacecraft can quickly enter or leave a planet's atmosphere without experiencing g-force or heat, and a small smart drone or a strange alien creature levitates like a phantom, immune to freefall, but can physically impact objects or be impacted; an indication that it has mass! This inexplicable displays have placed Star Wars into the genres of magical fantasy and not science fiction. Star Wars contributed significantly to the concepts of many sci-fi games like the ones described in the first segment that produce more fun rather than reason. How the pieces of tech function is not important. It's only a game!
Elite Dangerous, though also just a game, still portrays abstract astrophysics, both in practical and theoretical aspects. In many sci-fi works, generational megaships have multitudes of passengers hibernating in individual hypersleep pods, resting for centuries waiting to awaken as soon as they reach their destination aeons later. Regardless of how slimly possible it is, it is still ridiculously frightening because hypersleep pods are like coffins. What happens in the interval is not a serious problem compared to the energy source that supplies life into the pods. Will it last? However, if you read through the lore of generation ships in Elite Dangerous, http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Generation_ships, you will learn that people developed societies inside the ships while on the long journey to colonise habitable worlds to permanently call them home. They bore, grew, lived, aged and died on those ships. But as expected, bad things do happen; not every ship made it. Some colonists died due to terrifying causes, some ships went missing. These events happened before the discovery of hyperspace travel.
It is still far from our current position, warp drives and jump drives belong to the realms of the theory of relativity. It is not seen to many as impossible but requires astronomical amount of power to initiate. But it is the only sure way we can cross the enormous gulf to reach any point that is just beyond the Oort cloud of our solar system, talkless of lightyears around the milky way and forsake the expensive and slow generational ships. To claim space and make a home country of it, we must get that 'frame shift drive.'
Instead of levitation, all ships in the game move using thrusters and fuel. Space stations revolve around their axes to cause the artificial gravity, after all that is how gravity organises the cosmos. Different space stations have their use: agriculture, residence, commerce, tourism, manufactory, facilities and so on.
One more fact I want to commend Dir. Braben for that many sci-fi developers fail to cohere in their works is thermodynamics. Of course, they do sometimes include consumable energy but not at a very calculated or consistent level. When any machine operates, it must emit heat which can later stop or damage the machine, depending on the work output. The capacitors of ships determines how much energy can be consumed by many operating modules and weapons for a period of time. When overloaded, it stops some functions and lets the heat to fade and then recharges. The use of heat sinks to obfuscate the thermal signature of a ship is a good idea.
In summary, I salute Frontier Developments, the developers of the Elite Dangerous under the creators, David Braben and Ian Bell for their good and professional work in producing a simulating game that can not only excite gamers and inspire space enthusiasts but can positively improve science fiction and gaming culture at well. Thank you and "fly safe."
