Should Frontier continue labouring over Elite Dangerous? Or call it time and work on Elite Dangerous 2?

[Han Zulu]

It's the internetz - 6 billion engine designer at your fingertips, dude.

There are so fraggle many. I've studied (am studying) Unity and Unreal both, and one of my kids has a degree in game design/narrative writing, and there's just so much out there. And these two, Unit and Unreal are both rather complex today, and even more so with UE5... you need a ' PhD degree on the level of space rocket surgeon or brain engineer or such. It's rather overwhelming. So for many it's kind'a easier to get hooked on a smaller and simpler engine that doesn't do as much and doesn't have all the bells-and-whistles-and-fireworks built-in.

 

[TheSisko]

You know they use UE4 for the production of Mandalorian, right? UE5 is just going to make it even easier and faster for production.

Yep, there's a reason Sony (who own their own movie studios) invested $200M into Epic/Unreal.

To me, Cobra Engine is looking dated. No HDR, DLSS or ray-tracing support compared to the likes of Unreal.

Also (and I've mentioned this in another thread), you have a LOT of experienced developers who have experience of working with Unreal, a massive pool of talent to pull from. Can't say the same with Cobra with no-one using it apart from FDEV.

 

[Han Zulu]

I'm speaking videogames, not movies. They are very different.
Everytimes a new Unreal engine appear, it's suddenly the revolution for videogames. Also, right now, most what has been shown is basically marketing.
So I'll wait and see for this.

There are already a bunch of games in the making in UE5. Since I've been following what they're doing, I can tell it will speed up the production a lot. No need for making different LODs. Straight in dropping assets with millions of polys. Engine handles it for you. Extremely nice.

 

[Han Zulu]

Yep, there's a reason Sony (who own their own movie studios) invested $200M into Epic/Unreal.

To me, Cobra Engine is looking dated. No HDR, DLSS or raytracing support compared to the likes of Unreal.

Exactly. That's basically my point. There are now game engines that can do what the Cobra engine can do, but do it faster, better, more modern, and supporting the latest GPU APIs and Vulkan, etc. (and 128 slots for controller inputs ) It's going to be a huge challenge for Frontier to keep up.

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

I would keep what there is with a means to fix and improve the base and further incorporate Horizons and Oddyssey together.
The whole thing reminds me of what Horizons was like when it launched. I'm sure there are plenty here who remember the bad review spam that happened around that time but they just kept on working on it and the reviews improved over time.
It's still early days and things take time to be changed or fixed so i would give them some time yet. They do seem to listening though.
'dons tin helmet'.

 

[TheSisko]

Exactly. That's basically my point. There are now game engines that can do what the Cobra engine can do, but do it faster, better, more modern, and supporting the latest GPU APIs and Vulkan, etc. (and 128 slots for controller inputs ) It's going to be a huge challenge for Frontier to keep up.

Yep, Unreal 5 (or even 4 at this rate) gets my vote for ED: Deadly.

If Glassdoor is any indication, at least some artists at FDEV hate working with Cobra, I'd bet money that the corresponding tools for Unreal are much easier to use and produce quicker results.

 

[Han Zulu]

Yep, Unreal 5 (or even 4 at this rate) gets my vote for ED: Deadly.

If Glassdoor is any indication, at least some artists at FDEV hate working with Cobra, I'd bet money that the corresponding tools for Unreal are much easier to use and produce quicker results.

I'd bet on it. UE4 and U3D are the most popular engines for a reason. Unity got its boost with a free version and the large multiplatform support, but now UE does the same thing and has a large platform support as well. A few years ago, I tried UE and it wasn't too great. Really hard to use, and required a highest-top-of-line computer to do dev on. Now, I can do it on a laptop. They're very comparable, except the way you're scripting. Unity you do it in C# (which I now have realized I prefer) vs UE's Blueprints (which takes a lot to learn, but is much more approachable for designers, but I'm a programmer), and then we have educational material, tutorials, the courses you can get for free from the companies. I mean, anyone can learn these tools. But how do you learn Cobra engine? There's a start cost, and most game degrees now use one or both of the U-engines, so any designer or programmer you get will now know those, but not know Cobra. So even if the Cobra engine is the most amazaballz in existence, there's a threshold and learning curve that must be creating friction and resistance in many ways regardless.

Just for fun, here's a sizzler for all the game coming out on UE5:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlQrQkqtGvI

 

[Erei]

There are already a bunch of games in the making in UE5. Since I've been following what they're doing, I can tell it will speed up the production a lot. No need for making different LODs. Straight in dropping assets with millions of polys. Engine handles it for you. Extremely nice.

I didn't say it was unusable either. Just that some engine are more suited for some game, and others for other game. We have yet to have a "one engine" rule them all.


Plus it's all marketing as of now, we don't know yet how it will actually run and the true limitation. It's all bell and whistle until it becomes a reality.

 

[Han Zulu]

I didn't say it was unusable either. Just that some engine are more suited for some game, and others for other game. We have yet to have a "one engine" rule them all.

True. I like both U engines, for different reasons, and I agree there's no single one-engine-to-rule-them-all. But my point isn't that UE5 is the great and one-and-only, but rather that Frontier has a tough uphill battle against these cheap, public, and extremely powerful engines in the market that are just getting better and better.

Plus it's all marketing as of now, we don't know yet how it will actually run and the true limitation. It's all bell and whistle until it becomes a reality.

Well, actually it's been out in alpha and beta for studios since last year (if I'm not mistaken). I saw previews of some of the tech last year. Also, some of the features have been trickling out in parts in the latest patches of 4 already as well (I tried one or two of them, like having a seamless transition between planet side environment all the way out in space and watching a planet with dynamic clouds). And they released a pre-release a few weeks back.

 

[Han Zulu]

Installing UE5 early access right now, just to check it out. And to see if it totally bogs down my computer, which would sux big time.

 

[Lone_star]

LOL, It may have sold well due to nostalgia, but did you play it (when it released)?

The gameplay loop consisted of...Repair this fence, Refill this feeder, Inject / airlift this dino.
Every now and then, do it all 10x quicker in an emergency and turn back on some power, then back to the daily grind of refill this feeder.


The game had lots of potential, great graphics, great foundation, the building was ok if not limited, but the things to do where as imaginative as those in Elite... repetition with timers. I can't speak for it now, been a while since I looked back, but Frontier need some new gameplay people, preferably with fun imaginations.

Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 is another example. Being able to ride the coasters is neat, but the gameplay is decidedly inferior to RCT 1 and 2

 

[Pigletslastand]

Frontier are doing Lemnis gate in Unreal

 

[milligna]

I love condescending nonsense from backseat project managers, it's the best!

As if there wouldn't be an effortless pivot to whining about the stuff in the original that didn't carry over to the sequel.

 

[Erei]

Frontier are doing Lemnis gate in Unreal

They publish it. Ratloop Games Canada develop it. According to steam.

 

[Pigletslastand]

I love condescending nonsense from backseat project managers, it's the best!

Must love your own comment then if that's what you like to see in others... go on, give it a like!

 

[Pigletslastand]

They publish it. Ratloop Games Canada develop it. According to steam.

Ah ok, sorry I wasn't aware! Cheers for the correction

 

[rcdcce]

True. I like both U engines, for different reasons, and I agree there's no single one-engine-to-rule-them-all. But my point isn't that UE5 is the great and one-and-only, but rather that Frontier has a tough uphill battle against these cheap, public, and extremely powerful engines in the market that are just getting better and better.


Well, actually it's been out in alpha and beta for studios since last year (if I'm not mistaken). I saw previews of some of the tech last year. Also, some of the features have been trickling out in parts in the latest patches of 4 already as well (I tried one or two of them, like having a seamless transition between planet side environment all the way out in space and watching a planet with dynamic clouds). And they released a pre-release a few weeks back.

I do wonder if game engines will become so complex that in house development will eventually be unfeasible, as this is a common pattern in software. But I wouldn't write Cobra off just yet. It will probably always trail an engine like UE5 (which is not technically released yet), but they have been more or less keeping current for decades so the sky may not be falling. The flip side of in house development is you can bend the engine much more to the game specifics. SC thought Cry Engine would do the job and ended up rewriting half of it.

I dont blame them for not running out and implementing DLSS - which has only received major hype this year - but I do really hope they look at FSR, being an open standard and much easier to implement.

 

[Crash101]

Everyone,
very disappointed to read some of these posts. It shows a lack of understanding what you have had in elite dangerous. I have been critical of the quality of the UIs but they are making rapid improvements and I think at the end of the day the game will be much better. A lof of things go into a game's development and it has to work with a complete copy of our own milky way set of planets of which we only have explored 2% of the galaxy. The planets look the same to any two players, the way asteroid belts are produced are the same. The quality of reproducibility in the game is pretty darn good, so think of your glass as half full instead of half empty. It is improving and I am sure we will be surprised in the future.

If you think the game is a load of pants, I for one certainly dont think so, you are welcome to go play something else. I dont like all the whining on the forum and there are lots of people just giving an uneducated opinion and not remembering that this all has to be engineered into the mechanics of how elite works etc. Not an easy thing to do. However, I am not saying I am letting them off the hook in how the game was released but they are fixing it, so life goes on!!.

Crash

 

[GJ51]

Bottom line

I'll continue to play ED until there is a better alternative...

 

[lefty1117]

I don't think there's a point unless they go all in as an MMO. just my opinion. But that would mean dedicated server-based architecture, none of this peer to peer stuff. Fully interactive player economy, all the social stuff, hundreds of players in an instance. Pay for it with a sub scheme + ARX store (with much more stuff) for unsubbed players in a F2P model. ESO is a good example of how it can work. Voice acted, directed content in addition to the open gameplay. Player guilds, base building, galactic market, etc. Go big!

I just don't think we need to see a simple "revision" of the current game running on new technology. Though you can start to see some of the seams in the current graphics engine. But maybe that's just an issue of reinvestment to modernize it, which again brings me back to the point above: go big for the next version of the game, or don't do it. ED2 would just mean a split playerbase. You want to build something grand enough to pull the majority if your players into the new game.