The Old Elite IV speculation thread

..

  • .

    Votes: 36 100.0%

  • .

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    36

Stefan Mars

S
hozzdutch said:
Have you guys at Frontier seen this game and do you see it as a competitor to what is/isn't planned for Elite IV? Is there even going to be any competition there?
Click to expand...
There is both a yes and a no answer to that.

We are aware of Infinity as we are aware of lots of other games - some set in space and some not. We don't really see any of those games as competition - we wish them all the best - but we also do understand that public perception of Elite IV will be based upon what the public has played before they get around to Elite IV.

We don't look at those games along the lines of game A had feature B therefor we must have it as well. But rather we see it as game A had feature B which is similiar to Elite IV's feature C and B didn't work all that well so perhaps we should rethink C... Correspondingly there is feature B worked really well, which bodes well for C and how can we make it even better?...

So no, there is no competition, but yes, they do affect us in some way or another.
 

Steve

Steve
smars said:
We don't look at those games along the lines of game A had feature B therefor we must have it as well. But rather we see it as game A had feature B which is similiar to Elite IV's feature C and B didn't work all that well so perhaps we should rethink C... Correspondingly there is feature B worked really well, which bodes well for C and how can we make it even better?...
Click to expand...
I got a headache reading that :D
 

The Space Pirate

The Space Pirate
smars said:
There is both a yes and a no answer to that.

We are aware of Infinity as we are aware of lots of other games - some set in space and some not. We don't really see any of those games as competition - we wish them all the best - but we also do understand that public perception of Elite IV will be based upon what the public has played before they get around to Elite IV.

We don't look at those games along the lines of game A had feature B therefor we must have it as well. But rather we see it as game A had feature B which is similiar to Elite IV's feature C and B didn't work all that well so perhaps we should rethink C... Correspondingly there is feature B worked really well, which bodes well for C and how can we make it even better?...

So no, there is no competition, but yes, they do affect us in some way or another.
Click to expand...

Whattttttttttzzzzzcchhh????? @@@!!!!#### (Central CPU overloads and explodes. Space Pirate taken in for extensive overhaul and repairs).
 

The Space Pirate

The Space Pirate

Sterlino

Sterlino
hozzdutch said:
I'm now curious...

Sorry to mention this game again in another post but, Infinity (http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=26) although in development looks like it's very much trying to be Elite or something very similar.

Have you guys at Frontier seen this game and do you see it as a competitor to what is/isn't planned for Elite IV? Is there even going to be any competition there?
Click to expand...


that is truly a big competitor ...btw i think that Elite4 should be better than that.
First of all there is no sign in infinity (at this stage of work) of human bodies, looks like only a space travelling and fighting by now.
I don't know yet if Elite4 it will be better in graphical contents (i think that Infinity is amazing) but for sure i think that in Elite4 we will experience something never seen before.
Overview i can say this: two possible elite are better than one :p, and if Braben don't hurry a bit there could be three possibilities instead.
 
Last edited:

Letham316

L
I played Freelancer myself (but not the Elite games). I loved some of the open ended elements of the game, and enjoyed the storyline missions. It's the type of game I was looking for. But in the year of waiting for its release, and listening to what people wanted to see in it, it got my imagination going. As much as I enjoyed the game, a part of me felt slightly underwhealmed. The nagging feeling that a space sim could be so much more.

In its defence, I put a lot of it down to technology. i.e. it would probably be years before the technology was available to pull off the type of space sim I imagined (heh, seems like Braben felt the same way). This is where Elite 4 comes in. It is now 5.5 years since Feelancer's release (can't believe it's been so long), and it'll be about another year before Elite 4 really goes into development. That said, with all those years past, and the advances in technology - e.g. the vast increase in CPU/GPU speeds and memory; and the technology that Frontier are developing to use in the game - I'm feeling quite hopeful about this.

But for now, the closest thing we have to a release date is "lol years from now!", so my attention has shifted to The Outsider. This is another ambitious Frontier game with a lot of big promises. Basically, if it turns out to be as open and dynamic as they say, and they pull it off really well, this would be a good sign for the upcoming Elite game.
 
Last edited:

DraQ

D
Letham316 said:
I played Freelancer myself (but not the Elite games). (...) The nagging feeling that a space sim could be so much more.
Click to expand...
Mend your ways by playing Frontier: Elite 2 and Frontier: First Encounters (in this order, FFE has this nasty habit of totally noobs).
Frontier games *are* much, much more than your average spacesim. If only because of the scale and physics.

In its defence, I put a lot of it down to technology.
Click to expand...
I doubt the quality of such defence if Braben could squeeze entire galaxy worth of full scale, fully simulated star systems on a single floppy in 1993.

Considering that Frontier was able to simultaneously render (in full glory including sourced coloured lighting provided by local sun), for example, a working clock tower on a earth-like moon's surface, a layer of curvilinear 3D clouds, the gas giant the moon is orbiting, system's central red giant several hundred million km away and dozens of police 'Vipers' too close for comfort, trying to blow you out of the sky because you accidentally tapped your fire button in port's space, all on machines as powerful as Atari ST, Amiga and 286, I tend to take all the claims of technical limitations with a grain of salt.

Anyway, if the Elite 4 is going to be the kind of jump Frontier was, or at least Frontier with extra content, more variety and modern dressing, then we are lucky people indeed.
 

DraQ

D
Steve O B Have said:
LOL oh if I had a penny :D
Click to expand...
Hehe. One of my best Frontier memories ever is of such incident:

I was flying a Viper then and carried some urgent parcel for the Feds from Sol or Barnard's to Ross 154. On my way to Sirocco Station (the only and very small port in Ross 154, for non-Frontier-savvy) some pirate in small fighter crashed into my butt damaging primary thruster. It didn't bother me that much, as I have already began decelerating and had a lot of time left, but it turned out that there were no free landing pad. Carefully manoeuvring on my retros I landed rough near the station determined to wait several days if necessary - I still had time. Alas, none of the two ships seemed to be willing to depart, annoyed as my time was growing short I started to fly around the spaceport on my retros, which eventually ed the traffic control enough to make them send police after my crippled craft. Needless to say, single crippled Viper flying around backwards, engaged in all out shoot out with multiple police craft was quite a sight.
I did manage to deliver the parcel in time, though.
 

Alien

Alien
Elite IV Specs ?

Assuming (dangerous I know !) that Elite IV is being made, is there any info on what PC specs the game will need.

The reason I ask is so that I have a few years to get a machine together that will play the game smoothly and knowing what specs to aim for would help.

I realise it may be a bit early in the devlopment to know for sure, but you could always tell us here when you know what specs we would need.

I'm not asking for info on the game (I know you won't give it!), but maybe you would tells the specs needed.;)
 

Stefan Mars

S
Determining spec is always among the last thing that occurs and usually consists of someone playing the game on a wide variety of machines and deciding which ones that could run it and which could not.

When we know we will tell you.
 

Steve O B Have

Steve O B Have
smars said:
Determining spec is always among the last thing that occurs and usually consists of someone playing the game on a wide variety of machines and deciding which ones that could run it and which could not.

When we know we will tell you.
Click to expand...

Interesting - so game developers don't aim for a specific hardware spec max but tweek the end result to fit the current hardware range? I guess it does have quite a bit to do with how rapidly hardware changes and advances in capability during the process of writing the game. Out of curiousity tho are the games generally written on windows boxes or are there propritory OSs for these kind of things?
 

zmurf

zmurf
Steve O B Have said:
Interesting - so game developers don't aim for a specific hardware spec max but tweek the end result to fit the current hardware range? I guess it does have quite a bit to do with how rapidly hardware changes and advances in capability during the process of writing the game.
Click to expand...
This is almost correct. When developing for a locked platform specification, for example a gaming console or a specific brand and model of a cellular phone, the optimization for that platform is a part of the requirement specification done in the systematization. Which is the first thing you do in a developing project.

This generates the demand of doing manual code optimization and setting down the desired features of a game.

Steve O B Have said:
Out of curiousity tho are the games generally written on windows boxes or are there propritory OSs for these kind of things?
Click to expand...
We do all our developing in Visual Studio on Windows machines. I believe this is the most usual way. But I can't say for sure. And I can't speak for how Frontier Developing work.
 
Last edited:

Steve O B Have

Steve O B Have
zmurf said:
This is almost correct. When developing for a locked platform specification, for example a gaming console or a specific brand and model of a cellular phone, the optimization for that platform is a part of the requirement specification done in the systematization. Which is the first thing you do in a developing project.

This generates the demand of doing manual code optimization and setting down the desired features of a game.


We do all our developing in Visual Studio on Windows machines. I believe this is the most usual way. But I can't say for sure. And I can't speak for how Frontier Developing work.
Click to expand...

So there must be some great grunter of machines to run the unoptimised code whilst the dev process is going on.
 

zmurf

zmurf
Steve O B Have said:
So there must be some great grunter of machines to run the unoptimised code whilst the dev process is going on.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. But we try to write so optimized as possibly from the beginning, and test the code on emulators.

Most often the compiler do most of the optimization, even tough we do some manual optimization. Things you can think of is how to traverse matrices, making so as much as possible always is executed in L1 cache, unroll for loops, not do unnecessary comparisons if the unit got a slow CPU and not use to many variables if the unit got very little of RAM, and so on. The biggest problem is that most systems demands that you talk through a software kernel of some kind. And this force you to code things in certain ways. For example, if you code for the Xbox you are almost forced to code with the XDK, which includes a API for programing 3D graphics. Using this you lose the ability to optimize at an hardware level.

I also do some hobby programming to my Amiga1200 at home. This developing is quite similar as to other weak hardware, such as phones, setup boxes, and so on. But on the Amiga you have direct access to the hardware giving you total control. No OS kernel you have to talk through. This make even harder optimization possible and you have almost no restriction how you can do to optimize things.

What I'm trying to conclude here is that even without manual optimization, the program will not become that slow that you will need a fast computer to test it. Especially since such hardware that you have to write optimized code for most often is so much slower than your average laptop this days, that even if you emulate the platform your code is going to be executed on, the emulator will run equally fast as the real hardware.
 

Steve O B Have

Steve O B Have
What I mean is that when the game is at a playable state and it has not been set to play on a specific level of hardware then surely they would need a machine that is capable of running the game at a useable framerate.

I don't have a particularily clear understanding of how the game dev process works so forgive me my questioning. It's all pretty interesting stuff.
 

zmurf

zmurf
Steve O B Have said:
What I mean is that when the game is at a playable state and it has not been set to play on a specific level of hardware then surely they would need a machine that is capable of running the game at a useable framerate.
Click to expand...

Oh, now I understand your question.

I can't say how Frontier do since I don't work there. But for us it's not a problem running the advanced 3D graphic applications we develop (such as 3D game engines) on older slower systems since the number of polygons, screen depth, number of objects shown on the screen at one time, and other things that matter to the speed of the application can easily be altered by changing variable values. Meaning that while developing the setting can be turned down to function on the hardware that it's developed on. And as we get more modern hardware, or at release , we can turn up the variables. If we want to we can easily turn the values far beyond what a modern state-of-the-art gaming PC can handle today.
 

DrBaggy

DrBaggy
Thanks for a fascinating insight! I like the end-result but know nothing about the process of getting there, so found your post very interesting
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom