Is JWE good or bad for ED?

[Kaocraft]

I only recently (about a year ago) became interested in Frontier because ED was announced for the PS4, so I don't really know the company like some of you do. That's why I'm looking for your insight.

Optimistic view - Jurassic World Evolution is a good thing for Elite Dangerous, because it will infuse more money into the company and perhaps provide the software routines needed to give ED landable earth-like worlds with living creatures running around NMS style, but better! [yesnod]

Pessimist view - JWE is a shift in the company's focus, and resources are being diverted away from ED to focus on this new project. It seems like Frontier "spared no expense" in creating JWE, whereas ED feels like a back-burner project these days..

So what do you think, is JWE the beginning or the end of ED?

The optimistic perspective is that they're doing a Rockstar Games type thing where they develop a bunch of specialized genre games as a way to fund the build-out of their tech which they later integrate into their "main" game. Rockstar did LA Noire (which feature at the time groundbreaking motion capture and face tech), a weirdly realistic ping-pong game, a stealth game (manhunt), a brawler game (the warriors), a street-racing game (midnight club), Bully (a game heavily based around reputation and NPC interaction at specific places and times), a cover-based shooter(Max Payne 3); and over time they integrated all of the technologies and competencies from these other games into their one gigantic Uber-Game which is GTA V.

It's entirely possible that Frontier is trying to do something similar. When you think about the types of tech they're developing with each of these new games, and think about the types of tech they would *need* to build in order to deliver on some of the more far-fetched long-range goals for Elite, a lot of it lines up pretty well. Planet coaster does a lot of things but in particular it excels in simulating crowds of people who move around with a purpose and react to changes around them. And JWE is building what looks like a modular, framework for animal behavior and movement, as well as foliage and weather systems. It's not crazy to think that some of these projects are being chosen not just for their sales potential alone but also as a way to fund further development of the Cobra engine and all of the different types of procedural systems that would be needed to give us populated space stations or cities, atmospheric worlds with flora and fauna, and dynamic weather systems, etc.

I dunno that's what I like to tell myself they are trying to do. Who knows?

 

[killminster]

I don't know the answer to this. One thing that feels like a 'red flag' to me is progress in ED compared to JWE. Frontier just created an amazing-looking game (JWE) from scratch, and during that same time period, the additional content added to ED has been "meh" in comparison. Now if Frontier starts using JWE features to create ELWs in ED, then that's a different, more optimistic story.

I don't think JWE has been created from scratch. I think FD have re-purposed quite a lot of the work that went into Planet Coaster, and this is the genius of the whole thing. They're similar styles of game and have very many common features such as the building tools, park management, simulated crowds etc.

If I was to be very unfair I'd call it a reskinned Planet Coaster. I think the bulk of the work would have been the new artwork, sound design and dinosaurs and maybe lighting and rendering because it does look great, but not having played either this is just uninformed guess work like most everything else on here.

And like everyone else I hope that as much of the new stuff from JWE makes it into Elite where appropriate.

 

[Jenner]

In that Frontier is a business and they need to sell games, yes. Yes it's a good thing all around.

 

[Chorda]

Elite is Braben's baby. He wants to see it improve as much as we all do.

I think FDev are trying to be smart about how they develop parallel games, using prior code as a platform for further development, with the potential to feed it back into older titles down the line. I could see the dinosaur stuff in JW:E being used as a basis for alien life in Elite, if populated Earthlikes ever become viable.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Unless the Dinosaurs team up with the Thargoids, then we'll really​ be in trouble!

Predators, Aliens, Thargoids, Dinosaurs. Choose your death.