Elite / Frontier Sooooo - what do we need to do...

[Steve O B Have]

We have a forum here that we have the perfect opportunity to make into a nice little community. It strikes me that we're all playing something of a waiting game and, if we're being honest, there are only so many ways that we can rework the 'Sooo when is E4 coming out' or 'Anyone care to hazard a guess as to when E4 is coming out?'.

I think there are enough semi regular people here to expand on the forum a little; find some subjects that we can expand the conversation on and get some frequent contribution going on. It'd be nice to get know some of the others on here a bit more - get a bit more personality out there.

Conversely I might be totally off target and fully abusing the intended purpose of the Frontier Forums. I know that the welcome details the following:

Welcome to the Frontier forums. These are here to discuss our current and forthcoming games, for us to help you get the most out of the games, and to make constructive suggestions on how best to do this. We will be adding sections for some of our other games by popular demand, over time. Please be polite and courteous to users and to the moderators, and if you feel the need to criticise, please be constructive.

Is this the final word on the scope allowed or does building something of a community fit? Michael, David?

I personally think that there is quite a bit of scope out there for discussion, current events, artwork, technology etc. I for one would like to see the Frontier Forums grow into something that is more than a waiting room and have tried a few times with limited success to get some threads moving, anyone else game?

 

[Michael Brookes]

The scope of the forum isn't final, like anything it will evolve as required. However, as it stands there probably isn't the need to expand the scope as yet. This is a forum for Frontier (the company and fans) and our games. We already allow threads for associated subjects, providing they relate in some way to the existing scope.

So there's no immediate plans to expand the current scope of the forums, but we're always happy to listen to suggestions for improving the forum.

Michael

 

[Steve O B Have]

Fair enough.

From my personal perspective, it'd be nice to see a bit more info heading our way along the lines of The Outsider and some of the artwork coming out of Frontier, maybe some future projects that might be in the pipeline. Things to keep the juices flowing. Maybe if we were really lucky concept art for E4 and characters (I know... in my dreams )

It'd be cool to see some Dev diarys or something to follow that we can actually provide feedback on.

I understand that there is a need to keep these things under wraps and that it is very unlikely that anything along these lines would ever eventuate. I also understand the reasons why but if you don't ask then you'll never get

The waiting room is a little more bearable if there are some nice pictures on the walls and some decent magazines to peruse

 

[Pom]

having read the forums since their inception steveO i propose that the "When post" should be banned.

I will wait patiently for Elite 4 and hope it meets my desires.

Have you or any one else had a look at Evochron Renegades as a possible filler until it is released? I have just discovered its predessesor *Spelling * and have crashed it into a planet a couple of times.

I think you will have difficulty getting a comunity spirit running until the game is actualy availiable o a deffinate date is set. My tuppence is find something to do until it arrives.

Cheers


Pom

 

[Steve O B Have]

having read the forums since their inception steveO i propose that the "When post" should be banned.

I will wait patiently for Elite 4 and hope it meets my desires.

Have you or any one else had a look at Evochron Renegades as a possible filler until it is released? I have just discovered its predessesor *Spelling * and have crashed it into a planet a couple of times.

I think you will have difficulty getting a comunity spirit running until the game is actualy availiable o a deffinate date is set. My tuppence is find something to do until it arrives.

Cheers

Pom

Welcome Pom

Heh I would agree whole heartedly. A simple search brings up more than enough info on where the when question stands (Approx 35 instances ).

It seems that the initial posting of new people here is along the lines of "Hi I'm Steve/Bob/Richard/etc and I'm and I am an Elite addict... ...soooo when's it comin' out????".

I agree also that getting a community spirit going is going to be a struggle that I should maybe just give up on. Aat the same time I think that at this early stage it's the people that are showing the intial interest in the game and have the past history with the previous releases that potentially have the most to offer towards mantaining some of the nostelgia in the new game.

I first played Elite at the tender age of 6 on my dads BBC B+ off a tape drive and would play it till the poor little Micro started screen corrupting and then freezed. Firing up Frontier and being able to actually do all the things I used to dream about in playing Elite, like planet landing and buying other ships, was a fantastic experience. Even just having an outside view and seeing 'my' ship for the first time was pretty cool.

I don't doubt that Frontier and DB have every intention of re summoning that kind of nostelgia again but I would love to be able to lend a hand as I'm sure would many others. The best way I see that happening is through the tools provided here - i.e. on this forum.

Regarding finding something to do - that's a tough one - Evochron Renegades looks kind of interesting but seems a little 'old'. I've been getting a little joy out of the Infinity Combat Prototype but spend most of my time either playing the Crysis Beta or BF2142.

I try to get in on the Beta testing side of things as much as possible - it makes for some interesting opportunities to contribute.

 

[Pom]

I think i was a bit older when playing on the BBC B and tape drive with the old B&W tele @ 5am so that i wouldnt interupt the rest of the families TV viewing. My mate had the DISK version which offered the missions that i was right jelous of. I think his dad had been in the beta testing or something because he was a Cambridge Lecturer or something. My mum used to live in fen ditton and i always ment to make a pilgramage to the man but never got round to it. Beer called etc.

I'll let you know on the evechron renegades as its just been released today. my games of preference at the moment are Counter strike source and Battlefields 2 so no relation what so ever to elite

 

[Steve O B Have]

I meant old as in visually dated, like it's been built on the Freespace engine or similar. I have a pretty powerful PC - Core2Duo E6750, 2GB RAM and an 8800GTS 640MB so I'd kinda like a game to push it a little.

Heh - I did end up getting a new fan-dangled 40/80 track disk drive and was finally able to play the missions and save the game, something that I couldn't do with the tape game. I have no idea of the number of times that I restarted that game Poor old Beeb got a thrashing.

If you have read some other parts of the forums you'll have noticed that Frontier are using much of The Outsider development as use toward some of the E4 AI and environmental gameplay. I am curious as to how it will translate to scenarios like landing on a planet or on a massive space station and being able to get out and wander around and how interaction is going to occur. It's that oh so fine balance between playing the Elite game and getting bogged down running around on a planet or station. At what stage does the novelty or relevance of not being in your ship become a hindrance to the flow of gameplay.

It's odd. Playing Elite myself and my brother spent so much time talking about landing on planets and imagining what it was actually like to see your ship pull into a space station dock. To a certain extent a number of these questions got answered with Frontier but in answering them it unfortunately opened up a whole bunch of other possibilities and 'what ifs'. I look forward to seeing how DB and Frontier interpret the new 'what ifs' and how many more questions they will open up.

If you want a bit of fun at the sake of nostelgia get the PC download version of Oolite: http://oolite.aegidian.org/ it's a barrell of laughs

 

[Pom]

SteveO

Imagine landing just outside of some military complex and having to sneak in and nick something, assasinate or plant a bug.

missions senarios would be endless not just find a ship shoot it come back but fight your way through space, land, sea, caves etc.

 

[Steve O B Have]

SteveO

Imagine landing just outside of some military complex and having to sneak in and nick something, assasinate or plant a bug.

missions senarios would be endless not just find a ship shoot it come back but fight your way through space, land, sea, caves etc.

Yeah I see what you mean - I think I mentioned in one of the other threads that I would quite enjoy going to something along the lines of an underwater city/station or a sky city type station. The problem is that in generating these things you either have to be extraordinarily clever about procedural generation as there are potentially hundreds of thousands of these things spread around the known galaxy or have someone with little or no life plugging away creating 'city maps'.

I am very keen on seeing what the redevelopment of the Elite classic ships are going to be like. There is a 3D artist called Steven 'Coolhand' Tyler who has made a very interesting interpretation of the Asp Explorer but in my opinion messed up the scale a tad not to mention removed pretty much any and all resemblence to the original conception - something that I personally found bothersome. Still what an amazing artist!!!

 

[VictorT]

city maps.. huh..

perhaps if cities were also laid out procedurally.. so when you revisited a planet, maybe a store has moved or is closed, or a new street or neighborhood has sprung up (or burnt down, got foreclosed, repurposed, destroyed from orbit, ad nauseum). Hell maybe even a new city. Planets are huge, scanning for power signatures, and discovering new settlements (near resource rich geologies, or whatever) to trade with/shop at would sure as hell open many cool open-ended, dynamic plot construction possibilies, living economies, if you will; Settlement X needs resources (e.g. in order to grow) from Major City Y on another continent/moon/orbital station, etc... (haha, only to return to Settlement X to discover it's too late, died of starvation)

starting the game on some random planet somewhere with just enough inheritence to visit the local docks and buy an Interplanetary Shuttle(tm) would certainly be a reasonable starting point then..

pilfering some of the abilities from the X series (i've only played X2, since it came out for linux) like ship software for trading prices, and remotely commandable fleets, ability to hire NPC pilots.. that'd rule

oh, and a dedicated server daemon, so we can host persistent worlds for our friends. =)

going waaay out on a limb, perhaps just persistent galaxies, with a remote IPC standard so we can link galaxies.. seems kinda silly tho. galaxies are gargantuhuge. nevermind that part. =)

maybe we need a dedicated wishist thread.. for the last decade everything even remotely resembling alt.fan.elite has had wishlistisms as a recurring theme =)

And with that, .02 more cents for the pile!

 

[steve tyler]

I am very keen on seeing what the redevelopment of the Elite classic ships are going to be like. There is a 3D artist called Steven 'Coolhand' Tyler who has made a very interesting interpretation of the Asp Explorer but in my opinion messed up the scale a tad not to mention removed pretty much any and all resemblence to the original conception - something that I personally found bothersome. Still what an amazing artist!!!

Thanks for the compliment Steve, its one of my favourites and i cant believe how long ago it was that i built it. I always intended to build more and that Cobra 3 redesign is long overdue.. i keep putting it off in the hope that frontier developments will beat me to it

 

[Steve O B Have]

Hi Steve

I really hope you do have a go at re-working the Cobra - your other work is breathtaking, especially the Foxhound and my personal fav the Tigon Class. They sit on the first pages of my reference book as something to aspire to in 3D work (I know dreams are free).

I apologise if my scale and resembelence comments sound derogitory (I could've worded it better) they are not ment that way. I did love how you have kept a feeling of 'humanity' in the Asp - it feels like it has elements from the Space Shuttle and several other current space vehicles, even a bit of a Soyuz feel to it.

I'm floating around in scifi-meshes.com as well - as a result of stumbling on your work - great inspiration!

 

[steve tyler]

not at all steve, it is intentionally quite different from the asp in the game and as a result it won't appeal to everyone as being an asp. Smoother than the blocky old models because i felt it should be, rounded like a snake head but it retains the same weapons, engine (apart from the rear) and landing gear layout as the old design. There's merit in detailing the old blocky shapes as most of these redesigns seem to, the old shapes work well but i wanted to make the design my own as much as anything - if i hadn't called it an asp then most people would probably not get the connection without a close inspection, and that was the intention. so, definately no offense taken mate!

 

[Steve O B Have]

not at all steve, it is intentionally quite different from the asp in the game and as a result it won't appeal to everyone as being an asp. Smoother than the blocky old models because i felt it should be, rounded like a snake head but it retains the same weapons, engine (apart from the rear) and landing gear layout as the old design. There's merit in detailing the old blocky shapes as most of these redesigns seem to, the old shapes work well but i wanted to make the design my own as much as anything - if i hadn't called it an asp then most people would probably not get the connection without a close inspection, and that was the intention. so, definately no offense taken mate!

Fair call - It stands on it's own as a brilliant ship - definitely a fan!