Much, er, clearer.
The Planetary landing and planetside missions discussion Thread
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Much, er, clearer.
Well, this wasn't really a thought was it?
I think we 3 knows what has been said when gamma was released
I also say Christmas this year
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What I would like:
Procedural creatures you can capture and sell. Plants also. When walking around ships is introduced, I'd like to be able to visit captured aliens in the ships containment area. Imagine pirating someone who's just come back from a planet no-one else has been to, and ending up with their super-rare, one of a kind aliens. That would make pirating very interesting.
Larger procedural creatures you could be assigned missions to destroy (they are upsetting the colonists). Your basic 'big game' hunting.
Human habitations which grow and change over time, as reflected in the visuals, level of services, missions, commodities and outfitting.
Ability to terraform planets.
Scanning for 'points of interest'. May be mining opportunities, anomolies, life signals, distress beacons, etc.
Ability to 'buggy around' in some kind of vehicle, maybe with a trailer of some sort for loading in captured creatures (which you might sedate with a gun of some kind).
Beautiful and detailed landscapes to fly around in.
Landing sequence takes an appropriately longish time, nothing like the insta-land of NMS.
Procedural creatures you can capture and sell. Plants also. When walking around ships is introduced, I'd like to be able to visit captured aliens in the ships containment area. Imagine pirating someone who's just come back from a planet no-one else has been to, and ending up with their super-rare, one of a kind aliens. That would make pirating very interesting.
Larger procedural creatures you could be assigned missions to destroy (they are upsetting the colonists). Your basic 'big game' hunting.
Human habitations which grow and change over time, as reflected in the visuals, level of services, missions, commodities and outfitting.
Ability to terraform planets.
Scanning for 'points of interest'. May be mining opportunities, anomolies, life signals, distress beacons, etc.
Ability to 'buggy around' in some kind of vehicle, maybe with a trailer of some sort for loading in captured creatures (which you might sedate with a gun of some kind).
Beautiful and detailed landscapes to fly around in.
Landing sequence takes an appropriately longish time, nothing like the insta-land of NMS.
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If you say so, Iskariot. I don't believe we were dealing with general absolutes like that.. but it is the answer to massive dynamic environments, on the cloud, where they can be updated as needed and downloaded as needed.. as we're seeing with games currently, tho in static 'containers'. Pun intended.
Thinking outside the box and problem-solving come second-nature to me, so no need to worry there. I'm sure an accomplished group of devs like the lads at Frontier Developments can come up with something.
Why? Life on Earth is a complex self-replicating, environment-sustaining platform which is made from 4 primary amino-acids. Content creation is being updated and recycled all the time. Development time is substantially reduced. Automated model creations, powerful software to generate textures and apply transform channels and effects. Your argument may have been valid 10 or 20 years ago, but PG will be awesome when it is implemented. Correctly.
Word. Specifically here.
The human-apes sure do have one thing right tho. When Hansel gets the little ED Tracker. Can't wait to get mine. ;-)
You say 'human' a lot. God, but civilizations out there must be laughing at us.
Baaaaaaaa Ba Black Sheep.
Try to do to much in one game, losing focus on what it should be SPACE. not some form of populous/spore..
Yes, I believe that could work. It would be good enough.
But only if they added much more variety of flora and fauna and artificial constructions like bases and perhaps settlements than was in the Mass Effect 1 game.
Those bases in ME1 looked too samey. and there were only 2 or 3 sorts of animals if I remember correctly.
It would be a piece of cake to improve upon what ME1 had.
If on top of free roaming planets like that FD added restricted hubs with star ports for heavily populated planets I'd be very content.
But perhaps in 5 years or so when the space sim side of the game is fully developed FD could start thinking about creating an open world city or two. It would take them years to do it right.
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Yes I think those are good ideas and very doable too.
I believe that would be terrible. It would reduce planets to mere objects in space.
I am therefore glad FD already committed to planetary landings. They are necessary.
The incredible charm of Frontier Elite 2 was that those planets were 'real' planets. It gave an incredible important extra dimension to the game.
I agree with that too. I think also that it should be a number one priority to make the current space of ED feel more alive with a greater variety of assets like:
Military fortresses,
Prison installations,
large scientific complexes with huge radio dishes and telescopes,
true shipyards and space docks,
industrial complexes,
mining complexes et. etc.
But also more npc ships like tugs, repair and maintenance vehicles, tankers, al larger variety of npc military vessels etc.
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The level of interactivity I'm thinking of for things like terraforming would be just flying terraform equipment down to a base somewhere, basically just another commodity run. I also think that to have cities which don't change their population levels over time would be kind of weird. That's one way to create diversity and variety- through density, and would be an easy enough variation to achieve with a procedural system.
I'd be surprised if buggies didn't come in with moon landings, since that's something which DB has often referred to. The whole procedural creatures thing is something which hasn't really been touched on at all though, it's a big unknown. Obviously if there's going to be life on planets, that life will need to be varied, and a procedural system along the lines of NMS would probably need to be developed. Because that would be such a big thing, finding ways to fit that into the larger game would be crucial imo, and trading could be a natural fit. Just blowing up aliens would be a wasted opportunity. These things should have a real impact in the world, on trade, on politics. People could fight over them, for them, against them. Planets could be known through them, a bit like certain stations are known for selling various rares.
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I don´t expect much actually, I think they can take it gradually, as to be able to land, like in Elite 2, where there was not much in the way like terrain, but you could see the atmosphere if there is one.
Walking outside the ship = no, I don´t expect that.
The challenge to generate landscapes is much greater than in No man´s sky since we have planets that are really extreme when it comes to size, temperatures and pressure.
Walking outside the ship = no, I don´t expect that.
The challenge to generate landscapes is much greater than in No man´s sky since we have planets that are really extreme when it comes to size, temperatures and pressure.
Really hard to guess at, the Elite team have given no clue as to how skillful they are at making this part of the game.
But with I-Novae studios version that is pretty old by now and No mans sky, i don't think the team would be satisfied with doing it too simple really.
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Demos like kkrieger and other PG city generators demonstrate that believable city structures are more than feasible with current technology. The difficulty lies in giving them a feeling of population without having to generate thousands of humanoid characters with which players can interact, or at least watch; any attempt to do so risks falling somewhere between the technologically overwhelming or the visually disappointing, with a wide uncanny valley in between.
I think the answer is, as others have suggested, limiting the flight options near population centres. Ships could be directed to outskirts starports, or landing pads atop corporate skyscrapers, with the player avatar either never leaving his ship, or being limited to a few internal corridors or rooms and only directly interacting with a slack handful of NPCs. The illusion of a living city could then be achieved using distant aircraft, ground vehicles and even pseudo-people as long as they player couldn't get close enough to "see the strings". Similar things have been done with flight simulators for years, with results ranging from passable to surprisingly immersive. Don't underestimate the power of audio either; a few sirens and other street noises can go a long way towards convincing a player that there's more going on than what he or she can see on the screen.
Another advantage of limiting player/NPC interaction to interior offices and similar structures would be that the same routines could be used regardless of whether the meeting point was in a city, a starport, in an Orbis ring or even on board a larger starship if ship-to-ship docking ever becomes a reality. The engine wouldn't care.
Anyone hoping for a full, open-world FPS experience on every planet may be aiming a bit high for now. But limited interactions with restricted freedom might be enough to maintain the illusion.
I think the answer is, as others have suggested, limiting the flight options near population centres. Ships could be directed to outskirts starports, or landing pads atop corporate skyscrapers, with the player avatar either never leaving his ship, or being limited to a few internal corridors or rooms and only directly interacting with a slack handful of NPCs. The illusion of a living city could then be achieved using distant aircraft, ground vehicles and even pseudo-people as long as they player couldn't get close enough to "see the strings". Similar things have been done with flight simulators for years, with results ranging from passable to surprisingly immersive. Don't underestimate the power of audio either; a few sirens and other street noises can go a long way towards convincing a player that there's more going on than what he or she can see on the screen.
Another advantage of limiting player/NPC interaction to interior offices and similar structures would be that the same routines could be used regardless of whether the meeting point was in a city, a starport, in an Orbis ring or even on board a larger starship if ship-to-ship docking ever becomes a reality. The engine wouldn't care.
Anyone hoping for a full, open-world FPS experience on every planet may be aiming a bit high for now. But limited interactions with restricted freedom might be enough to maintain the illusion.
Problem with many of those fractal base engines in the market today is that they are trying to simulate Earth like planets with water. We will be visiting planets with lakes of methan or molten iron. And planets that with extremly long or short rotation. Planets with volcanoes but no tectonic plates, etc. That is some major chemistry and physics issues that needs to be considered.
And then we have the whole issue of terrain and landing... If they put in mountains those regioms are off limit for actual landing, unless the ship just hovers.
It's the other way.
The planetary landings are just less work then a FPS like add on.
Basically they just need to put in a new layer to the game beneath the normal space one. One "level" with just the planet.
I't is still a good amount of work i think, Landscapes, textures, buildings, vegetation etc. but there isn't much to do on the basic game.
You still sit inside the cockpit of your ship and fly it like inside a station.
My guess:
Announcement on the GDC and Beta in October, Release in November.
But, who knows...
I will also say Christmas of this year.
And as OxKing points out, the First Person mode will be a lot harder to make, it needs entirely new assets, new control methods and new game mechanics.
Planetary landings on the other hand, can use what we already have in the game. I'm sure it's still a whole ton of work - but the much of what is needed is already there...
And as OxKing points out, the First Person mode will be a lot harder to make, it needs entirely new assets, new control methods and new game mechanics.
Planetary landings on the other hand, can use what we already have in the game. I'm sure it's still a whole ton of work - but the much of what is needed is already there...
*raises hand* what year is september?
I will put my hand up as one of those few players who wouldn't be upset if Planetary Landings don't happen. But I know they will, I am just dreading the backlash. What I see happening is that some will love it but the forums will be full of Commanders complaining that you can't do this or can't do that. Things like 'I want FPS combat, give me weapons', 'I want to have dogfights in canyons, but there are no Commanders there, this game sucks', 'All the planets look the same, I want variety', 'The physics is wrong, a type 9 shouldn't be able to fly in atmosphere, I demand a refund', - well you get my drift.
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It seems now days that there are a percentage of people who will never be satisfied, and to give them an expanded universe like this, it will just all them to , whine and moan more. Yes I know it was in some of the previous Elite games, never played them myself except for the original so I can't and won't comment on how it played. I am just going by the forums and the plethora of comments here from Commanders requested and in some cases demanding some pretty weird and obscure additions.
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Personally I am more interested in how they introduce Thargoids - I think that will be the next big 'thing' and be a damn sight easier to integrate.
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It seems now days that there are a percentage of people who will never be satisfied, and to give them an expanded universe like this, it will just all them to , whine and moan more. Yes I know it was in some of the previous Elite games, never played them myself except for the original so I can't and won't comment on how it played. I am just going by the forums and the plethora of comments here from Commanders requested and in some cases demanding some pretty weird and obscure additions.
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Personally I am more interested in how they introduce Thargoids - I think that will be the next big 'thing' and be a damn sight easier to integrate.