Hello Games Exploring worlds Vs Elite Dangerous.

[-VR- Max Factor]

I played other games by FD including planet coasters and Jurrasic one, and I refuse to believe that big studio like that cant pull NMS like planetary experience in ED. Engine can do it, they have talented programmers more than capable to do it, the only reason I can think of why we still dont have atmospheric worlds to land on is because ED is not money maker and its simply not profitable to put work force to make content like this possible at this time. Its a business decision, not tech limitations imo.

I doubt that it isn't a money maker otherwise they wouldn't do beyond for free.

I wish the community would make up their mind. There are some that are saying ED is a cash cow and there are others like you saying ED is a dog. It can't be both.

I don't think it's either, it is somewhere in the middle.

Personally I think they reason why they don't have atmospheric planets is because they want them to be as realistic as possible and that is going to take time.

According to FDev ED is doing better then ever and there are more people playing the game then at anytime in it's history. Right now would be the perfect time to bring out a new paid for expansion. I see atmospherics as that expansion. May not be earthlikes or planets with complex life though. That will take longer.

 

[Zetta]

ED needs a bonanza to get back what it once had, it is losing players steadily as they are frustrated at the endless grind and more over the time you have to spend doing it, is a massive thing right now.

Any actual proof to back this up?

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

I played other games by FD including planet coasters and Jurrasic one, and I refuse to believe that big studio like that cant pull NMS like planetary experience in ED. Engine can do it, they have talented programmers more than capable to do it, the only reason I can think of why we still dont have atmospheric worlds to land on is because ED is not money maker and its simply not profitable to put work force to make content like this possible at this time. Its a business decision, not tech limitations imo.

it is actually hard to pull this off at level FD aims for. HG throws dices together and rolls with it. FD however reaches for higher level. So there are lot of technical debt to overcome to add something like this to ED. Yes, it is possible. Just not that easy.

As for business decision it is not that simple neither. FD don't want to put all eggs in one basket. ED being big seller or not, having different franchises going on is just smart choice.

ED needs a bonanza to get back what it once had, it is losing players steadily as they are frustrated at the endless grind and more over the time you have to spend doing it, is a massive thing right now. By Q4 they need to produce something bigger than anything they have shown so far.

Yeah, you will need actual prove to this claim. It might be your personal experience though.

 

[Iskariot]

The ai behaviour in NMS is getting much better.

But that kind of flight reflex is the most basic and simplistic ai behaviour there is.

If ED's potential alien creature lifeforms are to be truly amazing and interesting for an explorer, then we will need to see very species specific behaviours.
For example creatures feeding their young in a myriad of possible ways.
Or very specific hunting and feeding behaviours, or grooming behaviour, etc. etc. etc.

This is what is lacking in NMS and it is that what makes the animal life feel terribly fake and staged.
You do not feel like you are on a living and breathing world with a unique ecosystem in NMS. You feel like you are in an amusement park that has been generated for you, the observer.

I sincerely hope that FDev is striving to do better, and that it is for that reason why we have to wait this long for it to be added.

 

[cpbtrading]

But that kind of flight reflex is the most basic and simplistic ai behaviour there is.

If ED's potential alien creature lifeforms are to be truly amazing and interesting for an explorer, then we will need to see very species specific behaviours.
For example creatures feeding their young in a myriad of possible ways.
Or very specific hunting and feeding behaviours, or grooming behaviour, etc. etc. etc.

This is what is lacking in NMS and it is that what makes the animal life feel terribly fake and staged.
You do not feel like you are on a living and breathing world with a unique ecosystem in NMS. You feel like you are in an amusement park that has been generated for you, the observer.

I sincerely hope that FDev is striving to do better, and that it is for that reason why we have to wait this long for it to be added.

Come on... You implement a lot of that nonsense and you'll get 10fps. I have no interest in creatures grooming themselves and nor have you, I'm sure.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Come on... You implement a lot of that nonsense and you'll get 10fps. I have no interest in creatures grooming themselves and nor have you, I'm sure.

That kind of complexity has nothing to do with FPS, at all. Anyway, I doubt it'll come in ED either. However, there is a ton of improvement that is very low hanging fruit. In NMS I discoved a 'stalking' creature who, according to the description 'stalks his prey for many days'. What this means in practice is that this creature follows another creature. Fine, no problem. But it follows it with a distance of 5, while it is larger than that itself. It is super silly, immediately. When you look at the dinosaurs in JWE, you see all kind of interesting, at first glance immersive and believable, behavior. Even though the AI itself is very rudimentary. NMS isnt there, or at least not yet. Lets wait and see.

As for 'not caring', I dont see why not. Animal behavior is to me infinitely more interesting to observe than just checking whether creature 172564 has randomly received beak 163 or beak 46. If there is no behavior attached to it, you might as well just boot an asset viewer and skip the game. But thats a general distinction between gamers: some dont care at all about astronomy, planet generation, creature behavior, flight characteristics, it can all be safely ignored as long as new assets are randomly thrown together for the player to enjoy watching in wonder. To other people all the stuff just ignored is precisely what makes a game interesting. In that sense NMS will never appeal to most in one group, and ED is very unlikely to appeal to most in the other. And both types of players will feel their preferred game is obviously better.

Anyway, I'll continue with NMS for a bit now, and will play ED some more later.

 

[Iskariot]

Come on... You implement a lot of that nonsense and you'll get 10fps. I have no interest in creatures grooming themselves and nor have you, I'm sure.

You might be right. I have no idea, but if FDev adds creatures then they will have to assign acceptable and interesting behaviour to them. Otherwise it will feel like a farce. In a cartoony spacesim like NMS this is much less of a problem, but for ED this would be disastrous.

Obsidian Ant showed a very nice video of the great Jagras in Monster Hunter World.
I think that is a good example of fascinating creature behaviour:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOLp1FtUAk8

Of course this is handcrafted and not PG, but perhaps FDev could add a few very interesting handcrafted beasts with awesome behaviour patterns to the universe. I bet everybody would travel to those planets because we would feel like these are a special treat.

 

[cpbtrading]

You might be right. I have no idea, but if FDev adds creatures then they will have to assign acceptable and interesting behaviour to them. Otherwise it will feel like a farce.

Obsidian Ant showed a very nice video of the great Jagras in Monster Hunter World.
I think that is a good example of fascinating creature behaviour:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOLp1FtUAk8

Of course this is handcrafted and not PG, but perhaps FDev could add a few very interesting handcrafted beasts with awesome behaviour patterns to the universe. I bet everybody would travel to those planets because we would feel like these are a special treat.

It is your right, fascinating behaviour, but for NMS ? not saying everything would be nice but play Rogue System, then play Elite. RS goes through the whole startup of a ship, whereas ED is basically press and go. There have to be limits on everything game wise surely. Plus does it really take away from the emmersion ?

Yes, it does effect fps, I worked on an ai mod for another game, it made a number of differences. If in engine it impacts and if scripted, impacts more. Not me saying this but a dev I worked with on the project.
Thereagain most things in games effect fps one way or another.

 

[Iskariot]

It is your right, fascinating behaviour, but for NMS ?

NMS is fine, although it would be great to see some creature AI improvements in the future. As I added to the previous comment: In a cartoony spacesim like NMS unconvincing creature behaviour is much less of a problem, but for ED this would be disastrous.

not saying everything would be nice but play Rogue System, then play Elite. RS goes through the whole startup of a ship, whereas ED is basically press and go.

Oh, man. I completely agree about that. I have been advocating for a simplified boot phase sequence for our ships since the beginning. I think the press-and-go mechanic ED has now is completely and utterly wrong. I truly dislike it.

 

[cpbtrading]

NMS is fine, although it would be great to see some creature AI improvements in the future. As I added to the previous comment: In a cartoony spacesim like NMS unconvincing creature behaviour is much less of a problem, but for ED this would be disastrous.



Oh, man. I completely agree about that. I have been advocating for a boot phase sequence for our ships since the beginning. I think the press-and-go mechanic ED has now is completely and utterly wrong. I truly dislike it.

I think FDev are in the right ground area for their space game. Not sure adding any other aliens would be a good thing. I'm not sure adding the one they have was a good idea, because I don't think they really know where to take it. Mainly because DB likes to keep it semi realistic.
Its a balance that they may be pondering on.

Human rogue factions on the other hand, even ai driven ones, might work. More believable for ED I think.

 

[Lordxenu]

I jumped into nms last week and whilst there is undoubtedly loads of stuff there isn't loads of detail. What I mean by this is, things like cockpit interiors or spacestations are there but are sparsley populated with visual detail. The flight model is, well is it a flight model? Ultimately it's a totally different game.

Nms is a very good game, but very different. Adding what nms has to elite would be a huge let down we've grown to love elite because of its complexity in doing the basics and attention to detail, nms adds complexity through the tasks you need to do (like looting and crafting).

Now if hello games had done everything they've done in nms AND included fdevs level of detail then I would agree but, as it stands, I think fdev have achieved more in their goal for elite than most give them credit for.

 

[Cheapchips]

Animals in NMS are super silly show offs. Which is great. You can go down to a planet and see the five types of fauna the planet has offer by just jumping out a cockpit.

It'll be interesting how Elite handles presumably more realistic wildlife. Real animals are really good at hiding. Even the big game like Elephant and Rhino are surprisingly sneaky blighters. They don't want to make it too easy with some sort of ultra scanner.

 

[Flash_Baggins]

Not sure whether its been mentioned, but one thing is the flight model

Semi-realistic atmospheric flight is difficult to pull off properly, how do the ships feel in an atmosphere, how do they handle, do some handle better than they do in space depending on the shape etc.

I think getting that right is very difficult (but Im not a games developer so I dont entirely know. I just know the physics behind fluid dynamics is quite ridiculous)

 

[Kaocraft]

Animals in NMS are super silly show offs. Which is great. You can go down to a planet and see the five types of fauna the planet has offer by just jumping out a cockpit.

It'll be interesting how Elite handles presumably more realistic wildlife. Real animals are really good at hiding. Even the big game like Elephant and Rhino are surprisingly sneaky blighters. They don't want to make it too easy with some sort of ultra scanner.

I dunno man I've never been able to claim that "scan all fauna for big cash and prizes!" bonus. There's always one or two rare creatures I can't track down. Some only come out at night, others are in the oceans. I'm sure there's some other place I need to look or trick I need to figure out. It's your basic 80/20 situation.

 

[Kaocraft]

Actually, that is not true. You can seamlessly go from planet to space to another planet as long as you dont change instance. It has been done by people daft enough to fly from one non-atmo planet to its non-atmo moon without using supercruise. [haha] Planets arent in a different instance on itself, you just automatically switch instance when going from SC to normal flight and visa versa. This is done because you need to check for AI/cmdr flying in the flight-mode you are transitioning to. Within a system, everything is perfectly seamless within the engine. The only thing that requires a loading screen is going to a different system.

And yes, people tried that without hyperjump too!

No. All the POIs, NPC ships, USSs, and 3d models for everything except the planets are missing in SC, and it spawns new ones in/out every time you change from Supercruise to Normal flight and vice versa. If you drop into a CZ or RES, there often aren't even any ships in there when you arrive, and they aren't doing anything. When you drop in on a military installation or megaship or any of those new CQC structures, the whole dang thing spawns in *after* you show up. In fact, if you're going fast enough when you arrive, the structure can spawn On Top Of You. Can you fly from a planet surface to seamlessly arrive at an orbiting station? Can you seamlessly fly from one station to another station? Pretty sure you can't. And it's a moot point anyway because you have to use SuperCruise to get anywhere since regular physics-based flight is restricted to extremely low velocities. If you could have *real* FA-off and just keep accelerating from one place to another? That would be amazing but sadly you can't do it.

 

[Kaocraft]

Do you have any links about how gravity works in NMS? The Wiki entry on gravity, albeit probably old, seems to indicate that gravity doesn't work like it does in our universe.

Gravity is the same on all planets Buuuuuuut there are "non-atmospheric" worlds which have less air resistance and so you will go way way higher with your jetpack. However you fall just as fast and walk/run exactly the same and all falling objects fall the same as everywhere else. And as far as I'm aware it's one or the other. You either have "normal" jetpack performance or the "non-atmospheric" jetpack performance. There's nothing like varying degrees of gravity. Would be super cool if NMS had yet another big giant revision sometime down the line which modeled and accounted for gravity, and even skewed the growth patterns of plants and animals in accordance with those different constraints.

Before that point should probably figure out stuff like erosion, valleys/canyons, and rivers flowing downhill first. And vulcanism would be good, too.

 

[Kaocraft]

You might be right. I have no idea, but if FDev adds creatures then they will have to assign acceptable and interesting behaviour to them. Otherwise it will feel like a farce. In a cartoony spacesim like NMS this is much less of a problem, but for ED this would be disastrous.

Obsidian Ant showed a very nice video of the great Jagras in Monster Hunter World.
I think that is a good example of fascinating creature behaviour:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOLp1FtUAk8

Of course this is handcrafted and not PG, but perhaps FDev could add a few very interesting handcrafted beasts with awesome behaviour patterns to the universe. I bet everybody would travel to those planets because we would feel like these are a special treat.

Frontier can't do AI. Look at skimmers. Look at ship dogfighting. Look at the absence of NPC SRVs. If they ever do animals it's gonna have to be super simplistic. Could still work, though: look at Minecraft. Every creature in minecraft has extremely simple but highly distinctive behaviors, and the interplay between all these creatures and the player is what makes them interesting.

 

[Ian Skippy]

No. All the POIs, NPC ships, USSs, and 3d models for everything except the planets are missing in SC, and it spawns new ones in/out every time you change from Supercruise to Normal flight and vice versa. If you drop into a CZ or RES, there often aren't even any ships in there when you arrive, and they aren't doing anything. When you drop in on a military installation or megaship or any of those new CQC structures, the whole dang thing spawns in *after* you show up. In fact, if you're going fast enough when you arrive, the structure can spawn On Top Of You. Can you fly from a planet surface to seamlessly arrive at an orbiting station? Can you seamlessly fly from one station to another station? Pretty sure you can't. And it's a moot point anyway because you have to use SuperCruise to get anywhere since regular physics-based flight is restricted to extremely low velocities. If you could have *real* FA-off and just keep accelerating from one place to another? That would be amazing but sadly you can't do it.

You are wrong, and you can fly from station to station in normal flight. Or from station to planetary base. Or wherever.

Frontier can't do AI. Look at skimmers. Look at ship dogfighting. Look at the absence of NPC SRVs. If they ever do animals it's gonna have to be super simplistic. Could still work, though: look at Minecraft. Every creature in minecraft has extremely simple but highly distinctive behaviors, and the interplay between all these creatures and the player is what makes them interesting.

Ship dogfighting is the best spacesim AI I have ever seen. Record me a vid of you fighting an elite eagle in your own eagle, without relying on OP engineers.

 

[CMDR Crumpeteer]

Can you fly from a planet surface to seamlessly arrive at an orbiting station? Can you seamlessly fly from one station to another station? Pretty sure you can't.

Incorrect. I've personally flown from Cupinook 1 up to Selous Orbital in normal flight. You can travel to anything that exists in normal space, so if someone else entered a signal source from Supercruise, technically you could fly there and meet up with them without entering Supercruise, provided you can instance with them (otherwise you wouldn't see anything, obviously), and know exactly where they are. Not realistic I know, but possible.

One of my big biggest wishes for ED is that they completely overhaul Supercruise into something more seamless. The signal sources can stay, but I'd love to have something similar to the original, where you occasionally just stumble into a POI and be required to deal with varying situations.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

No. All the POIs, NPC ships, USSs, and 3d models for everything except the planets are missing in SC, and it spawns new ones in/out every time you change from Supercruise to Normal flight and vice versa.

Ship models are visible in supercruise. You are moving too fast even at slowest speeds for POIs and USS to be seen. Same for stations. Really does tell nothing about engine capabilities, considering you can travel from point to point in system in normal speed.

If you drop into a CZ or RES, there often aren't even any ships in there when you arrive, and they aren't doing anything. When you drop in on a military installation or megaship or any of those new CQC structures, the whole dang thing spawns in *after* you show up.

Content of POIs are hosted on our computers, with exceptions for larger structures and stations. Thus NPCs arrive or are spawned in.

Can you fly from a planet surface to seamlessly arrive at an orbiting station? Can you seamlessly fly from one station to another station? Pretty sure you can't.

Yes, you can. Local flight uses peer to peer session merging mechanism along with loading assets in background. Easy way to test it is to drop 2 clicks out of station and fly normally to it. It works.

Basically all that fancy instancing is because of supercruise.

And it's a moot point anyway because you have to use SuperCruise to get anywhere since regular physics-based flight is restricted to extremely low velocities. If you could have *real* FA-off and just keep accelerating from one place to another? That would be amazing but sadly you can't do it.

Newtonian discussion is that direction. Considering network model and gameplay appeal for simpler flight it makes sense. However there are gome to fill that seamless flight niche using semi Newtonian flight and that's Infinity Battlescape.