My love letter to David Braben and to FD
My story begins with a magazine.
In the 90, I was a proud, but a rare French Canadian to have an Atari ST computer and one day, I’ve stumble to a review of Frontier Elite and I was amazed. I was already a young adolescent influenced by a father who was a very passionate amateur of science, especially astrophysics. There was a floppy disk with the introduction demo of this game and instantly, I felt deeply in connection with this game…, or I should say, this universe.
I have never been able to find a copy of this game in my local store and I have continued to dream until a couple of years later, when I’ve found Frontier First Encounter by accident in a computer convention. Back then, no game could do this and still today. What David did with his friend an later on, with his own company is totally amazing and have survived time and the industry game trend. This is not simply a game; it’s a story with soul and science, a rare gem that come from a long legacy of hard work.
Elite Dangerous for me is the pinnacle of what a great game can be. Of course, at first I was disappointed that there would not have Newtonian physics, but I understood that for the multiplayer perspective, that would be not fun. Still, everything I liked about Frontier Elite and Frontier First Encounter was there, better than before.
I am very happy that David decided finally to make Elite 4. A lot of us were almost giving hope that one day this would come true. I understand that there is a couple of player that complains, but I see that almost every one of them plays the game… When a game is bad, we don’t play it! Of course, me too I wish this or that, but we have to understand the scope and the complexity that this kind of game demand. Again, David and his team have made something that has never been made before.
There this guy, a genuine type of guy that makes kids game with animal, park attraction game and have a vision to put game in school to help children learn while enjoying learning. He has won awards in the game industry for that! Yes, I am speaking about David Braben! For you that don’t know, he is a pioneer, making a game in the eighties when nobody thought it would be possible. I continue to think that he is still doing this today.
Of course Elite Dangerous is a grind type of sandbox game, like it has always been… I am pretty sure that they are working behind the scene for space legs and atmospheric planet landing, but this need a lot of work and this need time, a lot of time. Meanwhile, we can see the Milky Way becoming alive with the return of Thargoids, be able to do multicrew, be able to engineer our ships and of course, we need a more stable multiplayer experience.
Nobody does this, except Chris Roberts, but we can altogether agree that even with money, you cannot do everything in one day, or years… Star Citizen will be great, another dream game from another rare pioneer, but never it will be in the same scope as Elite in term of vastness, scientific approach, lore (we have Novel’s of lore) and a lots and lots of things. Star Citizen will be an action packed Skyrim like in space, whereas Elite is an adventure in space with a touch of simulation.
I can continue to write about this game, it is a part of my passion in life like music and science. Until a couple of months, I was not thinking to play the game because I didn’t think I had a strong enough computer to run it. I am a humble person, I have survived a lot of hard things in life. I just have an old laptop (my other computer rig for music). One day, I decided to borough from a friend, with his agreement, his steam account for one day to test if I could play ED and by surprise, I was able to play on the edge…
So, I have done a lot of things to play this game. I have changed my thermal paste, drill hole in the back of my Laptop, build a cool pad with wood, put four fans under it, underclock the gpu because it was cooking, and a lot more in the software department! After all of this, I had 20 to 70 fps, but near planet everything was dropping to single digit. But, frontier have decided to help us, people with old graphic card even if we were to be forgotten and now, I can play on planet with around 30 fps… Thank a lot FD!!!
I am a very humble and glad person. I hope for a good future for a couple of years with FD, we are just in the middle of the season.
I write this letter to say thank you mister David and all off you that are working at FD. Thank you to all passionate player, like Obsidian Ant, The Yamiks, Down to Earth Astronomy, Scott Manley, MassiveD, Radio Sidewinder, and everyone here in the forum.
Sorry for my English, see you in the dark,
Cmdr SadSky
Paul
My story begins with a magazine.
In the 90, I was a proud, but a rare French Canadian to have an Atari ST computer and one day, I’ve stumble to a review of Frontier Elite and I was amazed. I was already a young adolescent influenced by a father who was a very passionate amateur of science, especially astrophysics. There was a floppy disk with the introduction demo of this game and instantly, I felt deeply in connection with this game…, or I should say, this universe.
I have never been able to find a copy of this game in my local store and I have continued to dream until a couple of years later, when I’ve found Frontier First Encounter by accident in a computer convention. Back then, no game could do this and still today. What David did with his friend an later on, with his own company is totally amazing and have survived time and the industry game trend. This is not simply a game; it’s a story with soul and science, a rare gem that come from a long legacy of hard work.
Elite Dangerous for me is the pinnacle of what a great game can be. Of course, at first I was disappointed that there would not have Newtonian physics, but I understood that for the multiplayer perspective, that would be not fun. Still, everything I liked about Frontier Elite and Frontier First Encounter was there, better than before.
I am very happy that David decided finally to make Elite 4. A lot of us were almost giving hope that one day this would come true. I understand that there is a couple of player that complains, but I see that almost every one of them plays the game… When a game is bad, we don’t play it! Of course, me too I wish this or that, but we have to understand the scope and the complexity that this kind of game demand. Again, David and his team have made something that has never been made before.
There this guy, a genuine type of guy that makes kids game with animal, park attraction game and have a vision to put game in school to help children learn while enjoying learning. He has won awards in the game industry for that! Yes, I am speaking about David Braben! For you that don’t know, he is a pioneer, making a game in the eighties when nobody thought it would be possible. I continue to think that he is still doing this today.
Of course Elite Dangerous is a grind type of sandbox game, like it has always been… I am pretty sure that they are working behind the scene for space legs and atmospheric planet landing, but this need a lot of work and this need time, a lot of time. Meanwhile, we can see the Milky Way becoming alive with the return of Thargoids, be able to do multicrew, be able to engineer our ships and of course, we need a more stable multiplayer experience.
Nobody does this, except Chris Roberts, but we can altogether agree that even with money, you cannot do everything in one day, or years… Star Citizen will be great, another dream game from another rare pioneer, but never it will be in the same scope as Elite in term of vastness, scientific approach, lore (we have Novel’s of lore) and a lots and lots of things. Star Citizen will be an action packed Skyrim like in space, whereas Elite is an adventure in space with a touch of simulation.
I can continue to write about this game, it is a part of my passion in life like music and science. Until a couple of months, I was not thinking to play the game because I didn’t think I had a strong enough computer to run it. I am a humble person, I have survived a lot of hard things in life. I just have an old laptop (my other computer rig for music). One day, I decided to borough from a friend, with his agreement, his steam account for one day to test if I could play ED and by surprise, I was able to play on the edge…
So, I have done a lot of things to play this game. I have changed my thermal paste, drill hole in the back of my Laptop, build a cool pad with wood, put four fans under it, underclock the gpu because it was cooking, and a lot more in the software department! After all of this, I had 20 to 70 fps, but near planet everything was dropping to single digit. But, frontier have decided to help us, people with old graphic card even if we were to be forgotten and now, I can play on planet with around 30 fps… Thank a lot FD!!!
I am a very humble and glad person. I hope for a good future for a couple of years with FD, we are just in the middle of the season.
I write this letter to say thank you mister David and all off you that are working at FD. Thank you to all passionate player, like Obsidian Ant, The Yamiks, Down to Earth Astronomy, Scott Manley, MassiveD, Radio Sidewinder, and everyone here in the forum.
Sorry for my English, see you in the dark,
Cmdr SadSky
Paul
