Elite / Frontier FE 2 Remake - Who would be interested?

m1rkd1rk

M
Who would be interested in a remake of Frontier Elite 2?

I am not capable of writing one myself (programming bores me) but I am more than capable of getting a team together to work on it.

FE2 was generally more playable than Elite mainly because of Autopilot and a more diverse economy etc.

It would be great if there was. Of course it would have to be freeware.

If I were to start a dev team, who would join?
 

caol

caol
Some questions:

What language(s) (please don't say 250,000 lines plus of 68000 Assembly! ;-) )? How close would it be to the original? What's wrong with the original? Would it be the same game but graphically updated? Would you need 3D artists/modellers as well as programmers? Would you include some of the features that the fan sites have been screaming out for for years? Is there any point when Elite IV will be out soon(ish)? Will Elite IV be released in our lifetimes? ;-)
 

VictorT

VictorT
Secretly, I'd still like to get [the rights to manipulate and fork and/or re-release] the source code to the original E2. I did like the physics better than FFE, even though joyriding over the rich terrains in FFE couldn't really be beat.

I can't code [very well] either. but I'd happily waste a few years trying to get better with that as a textbook. =) Certainly watching others make it better would be most educational [and it'd be fun to play. =)]..

anyway, [copyright] reality sucks.
 

Matt

M
From what I've heard from people who have been, er, "tinkering" shall we say with Frontier and FFE, they probably aren't the best things to learn from.

I've not seen any code so I cant really comment, but for learning to code you'd probably be better off with the Java development kit and reading the Sun website! Also, if you want to programme these days you ideally need to know about OO and all the related stuff (unless you are just coding yourself for fun and dont plan to share or use other's code); as far as I know Frontier et al were all done in plain C and assembly. Might have been some C++ in Frontier/FFE actually, but the less said about C++ and OO the better :D
 

caol

caol
Quite right. And I whole-heartedly agree with you about C++ and OO! :) Java is the way forward for big projects in combination the correct software engineering methods. C++ is ok if you program in a Java-like way but it'll still turn around and bite you unless you're really, really careful.

As for Frontier Elite 2 - I was under the impression that it was coded entirely in Assembly for the 68000 and took David Braben 5 years to do alone. I guess he could clarify that one?
 

ToadMan

T
Yes I'd love to see it made over.

For me, keeping everything as it was with a bit of a graphical make over would be fine. In fact, just some higher res modes to make it easier on the eyes would be fine - with monitors as they are now, it looks terribly blocky and pixelated.

A graphics update akin to OOlite would be fine. Doing something like privateer remake would be excellent!

I suspect you'd need Source code to really do the trick although I haven't looked around the files in there.

As for the DS version of FFE - count me in, although I'd prefer a PSP version!

Toad.
 

Darkman

Darkman
Although I'm partial to having FFE remade myself, I would still be interested in a Frontier remake. Since I don't have a DS or PSP the PC version would be for me, although having a remake would make me feel compelled my to buy one of those hand-helds - I also like a number of games I've seen on them too, but I have plenty of games to get through on my PC yet. After that, we'll see.

I'm also sure that if Frontier were remade that a number of features from FFE could be incorporated such as the extra ships, planetary texturing and terrain etc but updated of course. Just keep the best elements of both so we have a fusion of the two.
 
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