I'm aware of the size of the company. That doesn't change any of the concerns I have raised previously, and they remain valid.
The Planetary landing and planetside missions discussion Thread
- Thread starter Sir.Tj
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I'm aware of the size of the company. That doesn't change any of the concerns I have raised previously, and they remain valid.
I take you are also speaking of Liqua who no doubt put a lot more money up front than yourself, pot kettle black, immature feet
For any one who has read about software development knows that you cant just endlessly hire people and think it will go faster,it takes time to people to adjust and understand what your job is in the big picture.
also each added person to a project also has diminishing returns, there are alot of reasons but one of them is communication with all team members becomes harder as there are more essential people you need to talk to before you can make code changes or raise issues.
by having a small team doing something completely else you are as a company being more effective, as it is a smaller team they have an easier time communicating with each other, also they dont have to rely on the main game to implement features. They are free to test and break new stuff easier.
so there MANY reasons why you have a small team doing something extra for the main game as DLC/expansion.
both timed exclusive to PCOther information in the link here.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/...-e3-xbox-exclusives-and-qa-with-david-braben/
Yes a very interesting article, also present in the media thread
Well I was active on these forums 7 years ago and lots of people wanted these elements in the game if it was ever to be made. I believe David braben had grand ideas way back before Chris Roberts had decided to make a come back.
I think it would be cool if Planetary landings offered the rarest and most valuable exploration data. So let's say you are detail scanning a planet and then a message pops up saying that a really rare item has been detected somewhere on that planet's surface. Now you need to land on the planet and roam around it with your buggy using the ground scanner.
In order to keep the value of the explored data/item high it needs to be really difficult to obtain. So let's say there are violent environmental effects or dangerous wildlife that may or may be killable using your buggy's gun turret. For starters, let's say that the planet is so hot or so cold that you have limited time outside your buggy to grab an object in a deep ravine before you roast or freeze inside your space suit. Maybe the rarest treasure is hidden near an active volcano or in the lair of a gigantic worm that can't be killed by anything other than sustained fire from a battlecruiser!
As for missions I would love to see aerial bombardment of infantry and tank columns. Or defensive missions requiring the deployment of marine NPCs from your ship. The most dangerous missions would involve taking out anti-air flak turrets around major military bases or cities.
Maybe pirate missions that involve theft of property or attacks against civilian towns and cities?
In order to keep the value of the explored data/item high it needs to be really difficult to obtain. So let's say there are violent environmental effects or dangerous wildlife that may or may be killable using your buggy's gun turret. For starters, let's say that the planet is so hot or so cold that you have limited time outside your buggy to grab an object in a deep ravine before you roast or freeze inside your space suit. Maybe the rarest treasure is hidden near an active volcano or in the lair of a gigantic worm that can't be killed by anything other than sustained fire from a battlecruiser!
As for missions I would love to see aerial bombardment of infantry and tank columns. Or defensive missions requiring the deployment of marine NPCs from your ship. The most dangerous missions would involve taking out anti-air flak turrets around major military bases or cities.
Maybe pirate missions that involve theft of property or attacks against civilian towns and cities?
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Wouldn't worry too much about that. They said that the original Elite game was supposed to be impossible for the computers of the 1980s. Somehow we'll get living planets ;P
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I want to go to earth fly over my town and bomb it.
LOL! That would be pretty cool. Even if it's 3300 AD geography and towns look totally different. Would still be cool. Don't even need names. Just google Earth as a guide in one hand and joystick in the other ;P
Planetary landings is one thing, getting out and walking around is a whole other ball park!
They will most likely do planetary landings first and then walking around stations and planets after.
Planetary landing, all they need to do is the same procedural techniques as the rest of the game, the space ports on planet surfaces will be like building blocks, similar to outpost methods with some trees and random coloring depending on the planet type.
Being able to walk around is different, they would have to generate detailed textures for everything that work at multiple angles and distances, plus lighting and everything else... Oh and things to do once your out of your ship too!
No, planetary landing is easier than fps moving around.
Getting out of ships is a long way off I think, actual landing on planet's with static buildings.... Not so far off
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You do know your asking for a whole new game here don't you, what your asking for is an entire game being released as an expansion.
Doing all this alone Could probably be a stand alone game let alone having it as an expansion to elite.
I think some people are wishing for too much, these are £20 expansions not whole new games at £39.99!
They will most likely do planetary landings first and then walking around stations and planets after.
Planetary landing, all they need to do is the same procedural techniques as the rest of the game, the space ports on planet surfaces will be like building blocks, similar to outpost methods with some trees and random coloring depending on the planet type.
Being able to walk around is different, they would have to generate detailed textures for everything that work at multiple angles and distances, plus lighting and everything else... Oh and things to do once your out of your ship too!
No, planetary landing is easier than fps moving around.
Getting out of ships is a long way off I think, actual landing on planet's with static buildings.... Not so far off
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You do know your asking for a whole new game here don't you, what your asking for is an entire game being released as an expansion.
Doing all this alone Could probably be a stand alone game let alone having it as an expansion to elite.
I think some people are wishing for too much, these are £20 expansions not whole new games at £39.99!
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Ahhh man...I'm always last to the party...well, along with planetary landings I would like to interact with the planets by being able to resource planetary materials, maybe even being able to take a rover of sorts in your ship to not only explore but fit to gather said resources.
And being able to build a base of operations on your planet your resourcing would be cool so you got something that's "yours".
please Santa please !
And being able to build a base of operations on your planet your resourcing would be cool so you got something that's "yours".
please Santa please !
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It has nothing to do with Star Citizen and No Man's Sky.
As others have said, it was discussed in the initial Kickstarter campaign, but in reality goes back far beyond that.
Seamless full planetary atmospheric flight and landing was part of Elite 2: Frontier and Elite 3: First Encounters.
For many of us, the ability to not be stopped at an arbitrary point above a planets atmosphere and to go wherever we want, whenever we want, is a critical part of the Elite series.
It would be great if we could land on planets and drive around in something like Mako from Masseffect, then scan and explore widelife, chemicals or even mine precious metals and stones, alloys etc. Maybe even come into contact with primal intelligent species or remnants of extinct life.
Then proceed to run over any non sentient life too slow to avoid your vehicle...
Count me in!
From what I hear, pieces of the interiors of ships and stations are already assembled so they would need to add the ability to get up and walk.
As for my planet mission suggestion, it doesn't need to be as 'high end' as I described it. Objects with simple scripts would still be amazing. The procedural generation does the rest of the work.
NMS has nothing BUT planetary landing as its main feature, while Frontier has to split work between that feature and the rest of the game. And looking at the current track record of ED I expect the landings to be a) horribly underwhelming and b) meaningless in the context of the rest of the universe.
The existing game is paper thin - Most of the occupations, missions and procedural galaxy in truth are bare minimum. That needs to be fleshed out (a lot) first.
The last thing we need (IMHO) is paper thin planetary landings where you can land simply to do even more paper thin activities.
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Hurricane Moon
Banned
we need planet landings badly....well first off the abillity to walk around ones ship would be a start,followed by leaving the ship and exploring the hanger...maybey theres a bar in every hanger or a bounty office so we can collect it there as opposed to walls of text all the time.
then evolving into finding derelict abandined ships that we have to dock to and go through the air locks to explore it...maybey find salvagable parts or worse...a thargoid!
then progress onto planet surfaces where we may have more landing pads and areas to explore on foot with teams and do missions alone or together.
i really dont understand why some of the commanders here dont want to see it?...you never played frontier?.......its the logical next step in making the game more realistic.
i dreamed of being a proper space adventurer since the original on the bbc.....and still do.....we have the technology these days...so lets use it to the full potential.
i pledged to sc this last weekend just to see what the fuss was about.....not a lot going on until SQ42 but the ideas are there already.......if only the 2 games merged to make the ultimate space epic.
screw the money fellas...make it out of love...like you did back in 84 and through the early 90`s `with the amiga gen.....
make your dream game Sir Braben.
then evolving into finding derelict abandined ships that we have to dock to and go through the air locks to explore it...maybey find salvagable parts or worse...a thargoid!
then progress onto planet surfaces where we may have more landing pads and areas to explore on foot with teams and do missions alone or together.
i really dont understand why some of the commanders here dont want to see it?...you never played frontier?.......its the logical next step in making the game more realistic.
i dreamed of being a proper space adventurer since the original on the bbc.....and still do.....we have the technology these days...so lets use it to the full potential.
i pledged to sc this last weekend just to see what the fuss was about.....not a lot going on until SQ42 but the ideas are there already.......if only the 2 games merged to make the ultimate space epic.
screw the money fellas...make it out of love...like you did back in 84 and through the early 90`s `with the amiga gen.....
make your dream game Sir Braben.
I don't think it's as bad as you make out here. I can see the following as the progression for planetary landings, building on existing game mechanics and going from what - to me - seems the simplest to the most complex.
First off you'd want to start with atmospheric flight and ground facilities that you can land at. No getting out of your seat still, so exactly like the landings and atmo flight in Frontier and First Encounters. This uses the systems already built into the game - a supercruise like transition from planetary orbit to in atmosphere with a 're-entry' type loading screen for the instance loading. Flight mechanics would be mostly unchanged, but top speed might be capped differently by ship to account for gravity, mass and air resistance. Surface structures and details can be procedurally generated using the existing algorithms with minor modifications for surface topology and geography.
Could even simplify this stage by starting with airless rocks, barren planets and asteroids so you don't even need to worruy about extreme gravity or air resistance physics.
Ground vehicles could come next. we already have fully rendered 3D cockpits, a buggy 'cockpit' isn't that much different. The control scheme would be similar but operate based on the fact that there's no perpendicular movement, lateral thrust or roll, just acceleration, deceleration and yaw effectively. Ground scanning could be done similarly to the existing Discovery Scanner 'honk' mechanic, as well as detailed scans by getting within range of an object - exactly as we scan planets as is. Could even use a similar piece of functionality to the existing cargo scoop mechanics to collect objects for sale to Universal Cartographics or the Commodities markets.
Then you can start thinking about first person walking around. That's the kicker as the mechanics of that are potentially sufficiently divorced from the control scheme where we operate based on velocity and relative movement. However, once you've got the collision physics and other thigns in place for a solid piece of ground beneath the player then you can build the rest up from there. Again, as with atmospheric flight, start with contained areas. Inside your ship, then within a station, and then potentially full free-roam on planets.
If it's all done in stages you could build it one block at a time. Staged development seems to be the way Frontier like to do things, and with good reason. They have the core of a game at the moment, they've added structures to add to that with the back-end mission system revamp. Then they can add more variety late. The same can be said of any feature to come. Start with a baseline and build up from there.
That's the point of a long-term development cycle. Build the basics, test it, release it, fix it if needed, then build the next block to put on top while your users have the basic thing to play with in the mean time.