Elite Dangerous Game Engine / Ship Interior question.

[R-Irish]

Hi All,

Yes, this is another daily thread discussing ship interiors (I already forgave you for rolling your eyes).

Yes, we all know Frontier has consistently given a flat NO to ship interiors (essentially). Also looking at the comms from Elite and the Elite community management guys (who are legends and do an amazing job!) there has been a clear emphasis on downplaying the issue and dismissing it as a complete non starter.

So, why am i digging this up again?

Well, Frontier has clearly taken the logical choice towards increased monetization which thankfully has clearly helped improve things and also helps encourage more investment into the game we all love/hate/love. Overall the way they have handled monetization has been really fair towards the community as a whole (the option to buy ships with credits etc) and has maintained a symbiotic relationship with all players.

Monetization in Elite is a goldmine, and looking at the early financial data the proof is in the pudding. Obviously, they need to manage it wisely because they don't want it to back fire and harm their long standing core player base who traditionally do not expect to fork out money. Especially considering that Elite (I could be wrong here) is not as big in the US where culturally there is more willingness to financially invest in games. I would presume that Elites playerbase is highest in Britain, Ireland, wider Europe and then the USA, Canada etc I dont think the financial potential would match a similar game who's core audience is based primarily in the US, or Asia where the market is much bigger and the culture of investing in video games is much greater. In other words, culturally I believe Americans and the Asian gamer market would see more people willing to spend for ingame items than your average European (again, that may be inaccurate).

So with ship interiors, I'm sure many of us have asked ourselves, 'what would it take for Elite to introduce ship interiors'.

The obvious answer? (especially now): The opportunity for monitization.

If we could walk around the inside of our ships, lets be honest, it would be very tempting to spend 10, 20, 30 euro to make a ship feel like YOURS. Think of all the things frontier could sell: Seat covers, alternative control layouts, tables, window tints, beds, posters, weapon racks, internal light colours, different styles (pirate / trader / warrior / explorer / specific to your power).. just about anything, to customise the interior of your ship. Right now we can buy things for the cockpit, but imagine if you could do the same thing in your ship interior.

Look at games that use that logic, Fallout 76 springs to mind, they make a lot of money selling trinkets they roll out every few days. People spend a lot of time and money customising their base. Even if you had unlockable things associted with certain achievements / gameloops, it could add to the overall experience.

With all that said I have one specific question that keeps me awake at night, and is the main reason I started this thread:

Is it a case that Frontier are not able to implement ship interiors (Engine constraints and so on)
Or is it a case that they simply chose not to? (Costs too much to design and implement)

Is there anyone literate in game development that would have a fair idea? Because I think its obvious that it would be a big opportunity for them to increase their financial returns from Elite.

 

[mtfatboy3006]

Can't get that StarCitizen-level money without putting in StarCitizen-level work.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Can't get that StarCitizen-level money without putting in StarCitizen-level work.

FD chose to actually release a game... Foolish, I know.

And, yes, I paid money into the ponzi scheme years ago... A moment of weakness giving Chris even a penny...

 

[Gabriel H]

Can't get that StarCitizen-level money without putting in StarCitizen-level work.

"Braben had previously discussed crowdfunding as a possible solution in April 2012. Public fundraising commenced in November 2012 using the Kickstarter website, the campaign lasting 60 days, with the aim being to raise £1.25m and deliver a finished game by March 2014 ...Following the end of the Kickstarter, further public funding was sought through the developer's UK website, via PayPal. By April 2014, £1.7m had been raised ... Elite Dangerous was released for Windows PC on December 16, 2014"

"The game [Star CItizen] was announced via a private crowdfunding page in September 2012 ... It is noted for being one of the highest-funded crowdfunding projects, having raised over US$700 million as of May 2024 ... Expected release is now 2026."

 

[varonica]

Is it a case that Frontier are not able to implement ship interiors (Engine constraints and so on)
Or is it a case that they simply chose not to? (Costs too much to design and implement)

Successfully implementing ship interiors the way players want, that is the way Star Citizen does, is far harder than it appears to the average player. There's a reason Fleet Carriers make you all sit down in a seat before jumping, because what people want is not easy.

 

[mtfatboy3006]

"Braben had previously discussed crowdfunding as a possible solution in April 2012. Public fundraising commenced in November 2012 using the Kickstarter website, the campaign lasting 60 days, with the aim being to raise £1.25m and deliver a finished game by March 2014 ...Following the end of the Kickstarter, further public funding was sought through the developer's UK website, via PayPal. By April 2014, £1.7m had been raised ... Elite Dangerous was released for Windows PC on December 16, 2014"

"The game [Star CItizen] was announced via a private crowdfunding page in September 2012 ... It is noted for being one of the highest-funded crowdfunding projects, having raised over US$700 million as of May 2024 ... Expected release is now 2026."

And? Client side game file is 10% bigger than ED. 1300 employees are working full time to develop one game type. Graphics are more sophisticated. FPS movement is more sophisticated, including recently reworked EVA mechanics. The salient point is this, though: 154 flight ready ships are in game (Cobra Mk V will make 42 for ED), with navigable, functional interiors (where relevant) boarded seamlessly from outside, utilized seamlessly with on-foot gameplay. ED is selling ships now, too. They want that Star Citizen money. Gotta put in that Star Citizen work, though.

I think Elite could bury that game with a fraction of the cost and effort because it has a better map, a better flight model, and the resources in place to handle itself (although it has obviously pared those down over the years the way it is struggling this month), but a fraction of Star Citizen cost and effort is still a whole lot of cost and effort. One might hope they are selling ships now with an eye on expansion, but blind hope is foolish. They might just be milking every last ounce of income the old girl can generate before she goes to her final pasture.

Successfully implementing ship interiors the way players want, that is the way Star Citizen does, is far harder than it appears to the average player. There's a reason Fleet Carriers make you all sit down in a seat before jumping, because what people want is not easy.

There is that. Star Citizen's aims are so ambitious that they definitely might fail. ED could do what ED does, though. A separate instance with a load screen. Still a ton of work, but it would throw players a bone.

 

[Narfiam]

A lot of people claim that it would be hard and expensive, but I don't think so, I mean, a guy did this thing in his free time for the Viper MkIII:

Source: https://youtu.be/pxPkrWe7Q88


Recently in Reddit a guy told me that it would be hard "engine-wise" because moving all that things along the ship while travelling would need a lot of coding and so on, but it doesn't have to be available while in supercruise, only when the ship is parked, while travelling it can simply disappear and not be rendered.

 

[varonica]

A lot of people claim that it would be hard and expensive, but I don't think so, I mean, a guy did this thing in his free time for the Viper MkIII:

Source: https://youtu.be/pxPkrWe7Q88


Recently in Reddit a guy told me that it would be hard "engine-wise" because moving all that things along the ship while travelling would need a lot of coding and so on, but it doesn't have to be available while in supercruise, only when the ship is parked, while travelling it can simply disappear and not be rendered.

That's.......that's a cad demonstration of space availability, not a functioning ship interior we can walk around in. Let's see him drop it into a space sim with legs and have people walking around in it while they are in SC and jumping from system to system. That is not a ship interior. It's like claiming a 3d house model generated from a plan is an actual house, it's not, it's a model to show space and nothing else!

 

[Rat Catcher]

FPS movement is more sophisticated, including recently reworked EVA mechanics.

Yes, it certainly is more sophisticated!
Getting those T-poses right is difficult.
Drawing the fall through space when getting out of bed is a masterpiece of design...

The salient point is this, though: 154 flight ready ships are in game

Really?
If one had the funds they could actually choose to fly 154 ships? (I wouldn't know, I had to buy my only ship with real money)

(Cobra Mk V will make 42 for ED)

And every ship (bar the Cobra IV) will be purchaseable, with in-game credits, with a short delay with Arx bought ships.
Is the Idris in game and flyable yet?

with navigable, functional interiors (where relevant)

with a fully functional 'emergency exit' into the depths of space triggered by random events?

boarded seamlessly from outside, utilized seamlessly with on-foot gameplay

Amazing itsn't it?
"Never done before" level of gameplay.

Is the release date still 2125?

 

[Kaocraft]

I dunno but we already have Fleet Carriers which have full interiors and they seem like an obvious test bed for this kind of thing, yet we have zero customization of the interiors.

To me this seems insane. Frontier tries to sell us paint jobs for our rocket launchers and we can purchase a million different flight suits which nobody sees anyway, but we can’t pick out uniforms for our crew or play Barbie Dream House with the potted plants and posters and seating arrangements on the carriers?

There’s an entire Animal Crossing’s worth of “customize your space and show it off to your friends” opportunity here but . . . nothing.

I personally know people who would have absolutely 100% for sure already have spent a ton of money customizing their Fleet Carrier interiors by now if this had been a thing. It seems like there would be a lot of people like that out there and it seems like Frontier is leaving money on the table with this one.

But what do I know?

 

[Kaocraft]

Yes, it certainly is more sophisticated!
Getting those T-poses right is difficult.
Drawing the fall through space when getting out of bed is a masterpiece of design...

Really?
If one had the funds they could actually choose to fly 154 ships? (I wouldn't know, I had to buy my only ship with real money)

And every ship (bar the Cobra IV) will be purchaseable, with in-game credits, with a short delay with Arx bought ships.
Is the Idris in game and flyable yet?

with a fully functional 'emergency exit' into the depths of space triggered by random events?

Amazing itsn't it?
"Never done before" level of gameplay.

Is the release date still 2125?

the collective hate-on people in these forums have for Star Citizen is embarrassing. Nitpicking character animation bugs and clipping through level geometry like that doesn’t happen all the time in Elite also is just ridiculous. The amount of side eye folks cast towards every little thing, and then fully flop on the issue when Frontier jumps on the bandwagon, is sad. Can’t wait for Elite to get a janky asymmetrical ship which they sell for real money and for you to call it genius.

 

[varonica]

I dunno but we already have Fleet Carriers which have full interiors and they seem like an obvious test bed for this kind of thing, yet we have zero customization of the interiors.

Well yes, and after much development work what did FDEV decide to do? They decided to force you sit in a chair stationary while the Fleet Carrier moved, if this isn't a hint I don't know what is!

 

[Arioch]

Is it a case that Frontier are not able to implement ship interiors (Engine constraints and so on)
Or is it a case that they simply chose not to? (Costs too much to design and implement)

You will* get people confidently telling you the engine can’t do it, while ignoring that the game already does similar things (multiplayers walking around rotating stations that are in orbit around planets/moons that are in turn orbiting around other bodies) and much more knowledgeable forumites than me have described how it’s just a case of maths and vectors - something FDev have shown they are more than capable of.

You will* get people asking “where is the gameplay” while ignoring the many, many suggestions from players over the years (and FDev concept art from the KickStarter) for things that can be done with ship interiors.

You will* get people pointing at the infamous KickStarter video and others saying “but ten years ago!”

Your second question is the probable reason - it will cost a lot and be expansion pack-worthy, and Odyssey didn’t do that well.

*possibly

 

[varonica]

154 flight ready ships are in game

For a price of $48,000!

 

[mtfatboy3006]

Yes, it certainly is more sophisticated!
Getting those T-poses right is difficult.
Drawing the fall through space when getting out of bed is a masterpiece of design...

Really?
If one had the funds they could actually choose to fly 154 ships? (I wouldn't know, I had to buy my only ship with real money)

And every ship (bar the Cobra IV) will be purchaseable, with in-game credits, with a short delay with Arx bought ships.
Is the Idris in game and flyable yet?

with a fully functional 'emergency exit' into the depths of space triggered by random events?

Amazing itsn't it?
"Never done before" level of gameplay.

Is the release date still 2125?

Are people still buying ships and funding development? Yep.
I've only been playing this year, so I don't know where the idea that ships over there eject you through the hull on a regular basis came from. I tested one ship that is bugged that way; most are working fine. Besides the amazing concept of boarding s ship and walking on it, they also practice this amazing concept of working on bugs and occasionally fixing them--two things a lot of ED players would like to see.

But enough about that. I'm not here to promote that game, I'm using it to illustrate the point that people dig ship interiors and pay through the nose, apparently, to walk around in their ships, customize their own hangars, etc, as the OP has said. ED wants to sell ships now too. Great. The more developed those ships are, the more they will sell.

the collective hate-on people in these forums have for Star Citizen is embarrassing. Nitpicking character animation bugs and clipping through level geometry like that doesn’t happen all the time in Elite also is just ridiculous. The amount of side eye folks cast towards every little thing, and then fully flop on the issue when Frontier jumps on the bandwagon, is sad. Can’t wait for Elite to get a janky asymmetrical ship which they sell for real money and for you to call it genius.

Elite gets the same treatment over there, and I'm constantly pointing out the ways SC would be wise to be more like Elite.

 

[varonica]

You will* get people confidently telling you the engine can’t do it, while ignoring that the game already does similar things (multiplayers walking around rotating stations that are in orbit around planets/moons that are in turn orbiting around other bodies)

You do recall the incidents of people just drifting through space station walls and into space during the beta? These motions are predictable and unchanging, a very different thing to what is being proposed, and even then it took some time and effort to get all the problems sorted.

 

[Arioch]

You do recall the incidents of people just drifting through space station walls and into space during the beta? These motions are predictable and unchanging, a very different thing to what is being proposed, and even then it took some time and effort to get all the problems sorted.

In the Alpha? Yes, and how many incidents do you recall since Odyssey release?

I’ll link this post by Ian Doncaster in a previous Interiors thread for others to read as I’m sure you’ve already seen his explanations there. I’m off for a walk around my cockpit in VR

 

[Nowski]

Is it a case that Frontier are not able to implement ship interiors (Engine constraints and so on)
Or is it a case that they simply chose not to? (Costs too much to design and implement)

Is there anyone literate in game development that would have a fair idea? Because I think its obvious that it would be a big opportunity for them to increase their financial returns from Elite.

Informed opinion says it's not impossible.

It's at least questionable whether it would represent the best return on their investment of development time compared to other gameplay they could add though (IMO).

(ETA: )

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Can't get that StarCitizen-level money without putting in StarCitizen-level work.

/s/work/grift

 

[Narfiam]

the collective hate-on people in these forums have for Star Citizen is embarrassing. Nitpicking character animation bugs and clipping through level geometry like that doesn’t happen all the time in Elite also is just ridiculous. The amount of side eye folks cast towards every little thing, and then fully flop on the issue when Frontier jumps on the bandwagon, is sad. Can’t wait for Elite to get a janky asymmetrical ship which they sell for real money and for you to call it genius.

Well, the word hate is too much, people rightly criticize Star Citizen.
Chris Roberts is a terrible manager and terrible creative. I remember that years ago I read that the development of one of the Wing Coommanders was a hell because of him, his excessive ambition and his terrible management skills, which entailed to a money sink for the company, all this is not very encouraging.

Also I read interviews of former employees of Cloud Imperium Games and they said that they frequently spent a lot of time developing a thing following his orders, but one day he would come and say that he didn't like that, that it had to be done another way, behaving like a spoiled kid, wasting weeks of work, scrapping everything and making a thing again from scratch. They also said that a lot of talented developers left the project, fed up of that kind of things, and the devs hired instead were less talented or rookies, even some of them were hired because they're mega-fans of the project, not by qualification.
A few years after the project started there were already things that looked wrong. For example the eye tracking technology of the avatars or the realistic liquids of the beverages when the characters hold the glass and that kind of thigs. That the kind of things anyone expect to be in the tail of a road map and released in future patches when the game is already finished. That is like starting a building and when only the foundations are built, starting to place the electrical installations, some walls here and there, painting that lone walls and hanging pictures.
Also, have you seen the studio offices? Roberts has wasted a lot of money to make them look like the architecture of the game buildings, aesthetics over functionality in something unnecessary.