how about a dlc for modders to create a earth people can walk around on and interact with each other such as WOW to the level of Skyrim just one planet at first concentrating on earth and all the beauty we have. skyrim is going to be around in a decade because it is moddable.
mod oriented dlc
- Thread starter quiet riot
- Start date
Can't see FDEV going for that in any way, shape or form.
Elite is an MMO (even if it allows you to play Solo, all players share and influence the same galaxy).
Modding is generally out of the question in games like that.
Does anyone know if David Braben's "promise" to release ED as open source when it hits end-of-life has any legal binding? As in, is he legally required to do this since it was part of the original Kickstarter terms? I just have a hard time picturing him doing this, as it feels like he's extremely protective of his IP, yet I've read in the forums multiple times that this is exactly what he promised to original backers. There is OOLite, so I guess it's not unheard of Elite IP being made available as Open Source..
Disclaimer - I wasn't there in the beginning, so everything I know of this "promise" is based on hearsay and may be inaccurate. I welcome correction if I'm wrong.
Disclaimer - I wasn't there in the beginning, so everything I know of this "promise" is based on hearsay and may be inaccurate. I welcome correction if I'm wrong.
I don't know anything about making ED Open Source promise - never heard of it (but I wasn't there from the start also), but I recall some video, where DB said that when Elite reaches The End (in some really far, unforseeable future - at least at the time of the video), Frontier will make Galaxy "snapshot" available - meaning that it will be possible to play offline somehow, but galaxy will be in frozen, unchangeable state. That's how I remember message from that video anyway.
Oh.. Okay, well that's way less exciting than releasing the source code.
No. From memory, it wasn't part of the Kickstarter, it was part of "offline-gate" as an answer to the "but what if this means we can't play Elite later" questions that understandably raised.
It obviously only ever applied to a "clean shutdown" scenario even at the best of times - Frontier is losing money on Elite Dangerous but the company itself remains viable and wants to keep its remaining ED customers' goodwill for a potential Elite V in some decades time. If everyone there suddenly gets conscripted into the Duke of Cambridge's army for the final assault on Bakewell in the Pudding Wars of 2032, we're probably not getting anything.
Oolite is a completely independent ground-up reimplementation of Elite-like gameplay, though - none of the original Elite's code or models is included.
In that respect anyone could legally make an open source game (or a closed-source commercial competitor, for that matter) which played a lot like Elite Dangerous with some obvious IP removed any time they liked ... the technical barriers on the other hand would be substantial, which is presumably why no-one is.
Skyrim is a single-player game, ED is an MMO with player instancing and a galaxy that is shared across all game modes and platforms, so I can't see that kind of modding being possible.
... and even if ED were not an MMO - fdev haven't supported modding in any of their games AFAIK (at most it is tolerated). So there's that ...
If you want a fully moddable ELW then you might be better off making an ED mod in skyrim
If you want a fully moddable ELW then you might be better off making an ED mod in skyrim
I can confirm this, he obviously never talked about going open source, and this wasn't even part of kickstart, but rather a response to the offlinegate, so, i don't think they have any legal bindings.
I'd add that i don't think this could actually happen even if they wanted, i mean, as client-server structure i think that ED grown beyond the ability to do so, but mine are just speculations
Last edited:
Even barebones mod support to create stuff similar to the tutorial scenarios without any new assets would be awesome for so many things.
Honestly I think this suggestion might actually be viable. Not exactly a mod but a scenario editor of sorts. I remember back in the day Halo 3 had a "forge" that could let you make basic edits to a map. It completely revolutionized the game. Fdev could keep a list of player made scenarios you could download and play or you could do it the way Halo did it and keep the scenario on your system in your own file and share it with others if you wish. Bonus points if you get to use your own ship in those or have the option of using a preselected ship.