First glimpses of Elite:Dangerous

Riedquat For A Dream

R
First of all, unbelievable news! I found about the 'Elite: Dangerous' on the BBC News website this morning: it was the second most popular story on the video/audio list and I literally thought I was hallucinating.

As for the glimpses of the new game, I'm surprised there are no discussions here about what can be seen running on the screens SHOWING THE NEW GAME behind David in the BBC news interview. In the unlikely event that you haven't watched it yet the link is this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20165344

'Elite: Dangerous' is visible from the 1:00 mark.

So what can we see?

First, the game visually looks like a suped-up 'Frontier' which is great! Doesn't look like it's going overboard on the nebula effects, which I never get on with in space games (ideally I'd like space to look like it does 2001/StarWars, but that's just me).

The Spacestation looks brilliant. It's from a distance but it's just like what I was imagining all these years.

Large planets, the second screen from the top left looks like it is showing a ringed planet, but it is all quite hard to see from the range we're at. I assume you'll be able to travel down to the planets, but no evidence from what I can see.

There are lots more things to call out I'm sure, I'm still giddy with excitement and am finding it hard to focus on all the screens. If you can spot anything else of note then please add it to the thread!

*Faints*
 

Styggron

S
The link was mentioned by David Walsh on here on his original posts. I went to it right away and like all of you.....


WOW...AMAZING !!! Oh what's that....oh look at that !!!

:smilie:

Those from the 1984 days are reliving it all again. What a damn honour !

:D
 

The Space Pirate

The Space Pirate
Styggron said:
The link was mentioned by David Walsh on here on his original posts. I went to it right away and like all of you.....


WOW...AMAZING !!! Oh what's that....oh look at that !!!

:smilie:

Those from the 1984 days are reliving it all again. What a damn honour !

:D
Click to expand...

Ooooooh, it's like a girl that just flashes you a bit of leg and runs away!!
 

Crayfish

Crayfish
Analysis of the currently available data

One of the most exciting things about the new Kickstarter campaign is that we have actually seen Elite 4 code that is working. As this revelation was relegated to the background of the announcement, not much hs been made of it so far.

I believe this is one of the most interesting aspects of the announcement I'm going to look into what we've actually seen in more detail.

There are eight monitors that are running a build of the game, for this review I will number them from left to right and top to bottom. The top left monitor is number 1 and the bottom right monitor is number 8.

tl;dr version - Monitor 1 seems to have the most content so if you only watch one monitor, watch that one.

Monitor 1.
1:00 planet and asteroid belt with what appear to be large asteroids. Pans right to what looks to be a nearby moon.
1:09 We see a missile launched that leaves a particle trail and more asteroids, the missile does not appear to be targeted.
1:15 Monitor goes partially off screen. We see more missiles are launched and flashes on screen could be laser fire.
1:50 Still only partially on screen. Rotating view of a ringed planet.
2:08 Monitor fully visible again. A missile is launched which appears to impact upon an asteroid with a fairly generic looking explosion.
2:30 More missiles are fired and "laser" blasts are easily visible at this point. These appear to be slower than light bolts of energy rather than Frontier style lasers.
2:53 Monitor only partially on screen. More missiles being fired.
3:08 Monitor only partially on screen. Appears to be moving at speed past planetary rings.
3:40 Monitor fully visible again. More rotating views of planet, moon and asteroids.

Monitor 2. (Not a good picture on this monitor.)
1:00 Missiles being fired at a planetary ring system. Perhaps some other structure involved but difficult to make out.
1:15 Monitor goes mostly off screen. Scanner is visible but picture on this monitor seems more blurred so details are hard to make out. Classic Elite style scanner is obvious though.
2:08 Monitor fully visible again. Missile and laser fire in open space.
2:53 Monitor partially on screen. Blurry close-up of planet surface from orbit panning quickly to ring system.

Monitor 3.
1:00 Missile being fired towards a planet in open space, pans to an asteroid ring system then monitor goes mostly off screen.
2:07 Open space facing a planet in distance. Nothing much else happens on this monitor.

Monitor 4.
1:00 Mostly off screen. Laser blasts and missiles visible.
2:07 More missiles being launched towards asteroids.
3:40 View flys past asteroids.

Monitor 5.
1:00 Stationary view, possibly of a planet surface from orbit, just a grey smudge really.
3:40 Monitor becomes active. Missiles being launched in orbit around planet.

Monitor 6.
1:00 Stationary view of asteroids.
3:40 Monitor is active. Missiles being launched and fairly good view of explosion effects. Explosions currently look to be sprite/imposter based as far as can be seen from this.

Monitor 7.
1:00 Stationary view with planet in distance and a windows dialog box over the top. Possibly an exception in the code?
3:40 Monitor remains stuck on same view with the dialog box visible.

Monitor 8.
1:00 Appears to be running windows explorer or a similar app, possibly the development environment. Stays on this all the way through the interview.


General comments:

All monitors appear to be showing the game in the same region of space with a planet, a moon and a planetary ring system.

Have not seen any spacecraft as far as I can tell, what we can see on monitor 2 at 1:00 could be a ship but could also just be asteroids and parts of the ring system.

Debug data appears to be visible in orange text on top right on all monitors.

On all the monitors the game appears to be running windowed with log windows visible in the background. The desktop wallpaper seems to be a view of a planet horizon from low orbit.

The classic Elite scanner appears to be there and they seem to be staying with the same dashboard style HUD as used in the previous Elite games. The dashboard is lit dynamically and lighting changes as the ship changes position.

At this point there is no evidence that the planets are anything more than background placeholders.
 

nOmArch

nOmArch
So glad it's only going to be coming out for PC and will therefore be able to look much nicer than anything the consoles could produce and won't have a dumbed down control system either.
 

The Space Pirate

The Space Pirate
nOmArch said:
So glad it's only going to be coming out for PC and will therefore be able to look much nicer than anything the consoles could produce and won't have a dumbed down control system either.
Click to expand...

Same here. In any case, how could it even work on consoles? On PC, you don't just need something to control the basic flight of the ship, you also need a load of buttons for countless other features as well.

The classic Elite scanner appears to be there and they seem to be staying with the same dashboard style HUD as used in the previous Elite games. The dashboard is lit dynamically and lighting changes as the ship changes position.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'd much rather actually feel as though I'm inside a spaceship cockpit. Having just a radar screen was fine back in the mid nineties, but this is 2012. We should feel fully immersed in the game - and there should be Track IR support as well.
 

ries

R
The Space Pirate said:
Same here. In any case, how could it even work on consoles? On PC, you don't just need something to control the basic flight of the ship, you also need a load of buttons for countless other features as well.



Yeah, I'd much rather actually feel as though I'm inside a spaceship cockpit. Having just a radar screen was fine back in the mid nineties, but this is 2012. We should feel fully immersed in the game - and there should be Track IR support as well.
Click to expand...

yesactually feel as though I'm inside a spaceship cockpit. Having just a radar screen was fine back in the mid nineties, but this is 2012. We should feel fully immersed in the game - and there should be Track IR support as well.[/QUOTE]
 

Deyu

Deyu
ries said:
yesactually feel as though I'm inside a spaceship cockpit. Having just a radar screen was fine back in the mid nineties, but this is 2012. We should feel fully immersed in the game - and there should be Track IR support as well.
Click to expand...
[/QUOTE]

Dude, why are you resurrecting this thread? :D
 

Kayweg

Kayweg
ries said:
yesactually feel as though I'm inside a spaceship cockpit. Having just a radar screen was fine back in the mid nineties, but this is 2012. We should feel fully immersed in the game - and there should be Track IR support as well.
Click to expand...

You DO realize this is 2014 (almost 2015) and you're replying to a 2 year old thread ?

No offense, but why do folks bring back these relics ? (you're far from being the only one :))
 
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