I'm also dreaming something like that but we need to be realistic. Lone echo is a game that does only one thing and does it damn good.. Elite on the other hand tries to do a lot of things so it will always be as large as a galaxy and one inch deep
Which is harder to program? Walking on a planet or on the ship?
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Couldn’t the makers of the Elite universe just make up whatever they want and then it’s now in the Elite universe?
They could, but it'd be better received if there was a background for the new technology in the lore and the events in the Elite universe.
Looking at the various VR portrayals of the ships, there would need to be (as far as I can see) an awful lot more detail, even interactive terminals, than are currently present inside the most detailed of ships. So that's one issue they would have to address, as well as Stealthie says all the extra stuff requiring interaction that might be going on outside.
The new cruise control flies the ship once we have set a target planetary or stellar body in a system, and that may contribute to our being able to walk the ship while it automatically takes care of the steering and jumping out of supercruise. It would be a logical step to provide stellar route control, to allow us automatically to jump along a Galmap route until we have to refuel. That would give us more time to make use of the coffee/tea dispensers in the ships and to munch the cookies. But then, what if we get interdicted? Do we rush back to our seats to grab the controls? Probably ! Tough luck for Anaconda pilots
Other game play provisions would be to repel boarders, seek out damage and repair it, make running repairs, try to get the ship to a safe port by jerry-rigging .... and so on. Possibly, this is going too deep for on-board Legs. All of that will take an awful lot of coding, and the devs might have taken a preferred route of introducing game-play outside the ship, with which they are more familiar ..... as Stealthie has said, Legs is similar to the SRV .... only with legs
Either way, the easiest coding from the perspective of a player (not a coder) would seem to be Atmospherics !
But maybe FD are adopting the Kennedy approach to putting a man on the moon: "We choose to go to the moon, not because it is easy, but because it is hard."
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But then, what if we get interdicted? Do we rush back to our seats to grab the controls? Probably ! Tough luck for Anaconda pilots
Much as I wish it wasn't a thing, if somebody can telepresence themselves onto the bridge of my ship from half a galaxy away, I should bloody well hope I can telepresence myself onto the bridge from elsewhere in my ship.
Just think, we'll be able to pilot our ships via telepresence while sitting on the bog.
Even star citizen has some real clunkiness to the transition of free floating in space to when you enter your ship and "gravity" takes over , if ED goes the same route i really hope they can overcome little gripes like this.
Half the time it'll spew you back into space or kill you when transitioning fro. Space walk to ship.
Half the time it'll spew you back into space or kill you when transitioning fro. Space walk to ship.
There is "game lore" detailing why CMDRs are not allowed to exit their ships on stations and atmospheric planets with life, supposedly because of the chances for "contamination" and I think that is an acceptable excuse but, it does not explain why CMDRs cannot leave their seats and move about within their own ships. As I understand it, the Anaconda is the only ship that has anything approaching a fully modeled interior. I think the reason there are no "space-legs" even within our own ships is that FDev does not want spend time and effort to model the interiors of all the ships.
Sure, they just write it in and roll it out. Scientists working on technology...breakthrough in anti gravity....being adopted by ship manufacturers...whatever their imaginations want.
While a fine ideal, i still think the concept of no artificial gravity will be the worst idea ever... think about every other game where you've had 6 degrees of freedom in an fps context.. they've always been an annoyance or novelty at best.
They should just keep that for specific eva activities imo.
Ie, please get over the no fake gravity ideal... it can only be bad. Sure moonwalking on low g planets would be okay.
They should just keep that for specific eva activities imo.
Ie, please get over the no fake gravity ideal... it can only be bad. Sure moonwalking on low g planets would be okay.
To be fair, properly mapping the ship interiors would be a gigantic undertaking.
I think most of us are aware that the estimated sizes of the core modules and optional modules would easily fit inside the ship models we currently have.
Physically fitting, say, 3x C4 slots (probably around 16m³ each), 3x C2 slots (~4m³ each) and a couple of C1 slots (~2m³ each) into the hull of a Cobra, along with the core internals (which wouldn't actually need to adhere to the volumes used for internal slots) would be a piece of cake.
The hard part (the really, really, hard part) would be making it happen in a way that always produced a plausible ship layout, regardless of what configuration of modules a player chose.
For example, if the interiors were just arbitrarily designed with physical spaces of suitable sizes in preset locations, a player could choose to fit a C4 SRV hangar and it'd end up stuck somewhere which meant there's no apparent way for the SRV to be delivered to the cargo hatch for deployment.
Or, perhaps the interior of a Beluga is designed with a luxurious interior that includes corridors with red carpets and gold fixtures... and then a player fills all the interior slots with cargo racks or mining equipment which, again, would have no apparent connection to the cargo bay or cargo scoop.
Ideally, the whole thing would need to be completely "fluid" so you could bung in whatever modules you wanted and the game would have to figure out a plausible internal design that catered for all your chosen modules.
More simply, perhaps it might be best to just allow players to design their ships manually, so the game shows you a plan of the ship and it'd be up to you to drag & drop modules to place them wherever you wanted.
That way, at least, if you ended up with a 1st class passenger cabin stuck between a refinery and a limpet controller, it'd be your own fault.
I guess the outright easiest way to model ship interiors would just be to ignore internal slots completely and only ever grant players access to a small area consisting of, say, crew quarters, a mess and, perhaps, some kind of systems control room.
That'd be a bit of a cop-out and a lot of people would probably be salty about it but it would be the easiest solution.
Do you think frontier are going to try that realistically? No idea.
I agree with Riversides (i think) idea that its just going to be fade to black transitions between different areas.
Some of the ships are a few hundred meters long, most of it will be redundant space anyway.. it would take a few minutes walk to the end of a cutter.
I honestly have no idea how it might work.
I'd like to say that I'd be okay with stations/outposts taking you into a different instance but, honestly, I'm not really okay with that.
If I can wander around the habitation ring of an Orbis station, for example, I'd really like to be able to look up at the transparent roof and see ships flying around outside in a persistent manner.
If I'm having tea and biscuits in the mess of an orbital platform, I want to be able to look through a window and see you landing your ship on a pad outside.
As for the interiors of ships, the same thing applies even more-so.
If I can't be sat in the forward observation lounge of my Annie and see a bunch of mates fighting in a CZ I'm going to be disappointed.
If my ship gets shot at, I want to hear sirens and see flashing red lights and then look out of a window and see who's attacking me.
I'm not sure but I don't think that'd be possible if all the interiors (or, even worse, if individual areas of a ship's interior) were modelled as separate instances.
Like I said, I have no idea how it might be done but making a proper job of it will be a gigantic task.
....which is why I suspect we'll just get (if anything) a limited "living space" that we can walk around, as well as, perhaps, more interactive stuff in the actual bridge/cockpit of our ships.
Depends on the level of detail of the planet.
It will be always "grav assist on" and we won't we be walking on our ceilings or walls or anything. It will be normal FPS movement (more or less).
How about "they invented artificial gravity"?
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I'd expect the opposite as planets have higher slopes and rugged terrain, ships have almost flat floors with the exception of stairs though you can custom make an animation to walk on them, not quite with planet surfaces.
As I said, if they have the proper lore background and events for it, no problem. In my opinion, a major discovery such as artificial gravity isn't something that should appear overnight as this would change a lot - for example, there'd be no reason to have Coriolis, Ocellus etc. space stations any longer since they base their gravity on rotation.
In the past I've used No Man's Sky and Subnautica as examples of how to properly implement space legs. I had barely even heard of Space Engineers, let alone play it, but getting a PC (and a nice sale on Steam) has changed all this. I'm still early-game survival mode, but I did try some space combat in creative mode just to see what it's like, and I'd say SE has true "SPACE" legs that probably serves as the best model for ED to borrow from.
In SE in space, gravity is optional (your ship needs a functional AGG). Without gravity you can use magnetic boots or just drift around. Both are awkward in their own ways. Magnetic boots are fine, but you can walk on walls and ceilings and it can be kinda weird! It's nice for walking on the outside of your ship, but again, kinda weird!
Without the boots, you can free-float around using your jet pack to get where you need to go. This is fine unless your ship is changing velocity, in which case you get thrown up against walls. All of this is realistic, however, so aside from some of the clumsiness of SE's mag boots (your character bobbles a bit too much on uneven ground instead of adjusting their legs as one would do IRL), it works.
As for actual gameplay, the big reason to get out of your seat in SE (single player mode) space flight is to implement repairs and repel borders. I find repairing the ship to be great fun, even though it's done in a magical "Borg-healing" sort of way. For those not familiar, your hull deforms as it takes damage, and your welder will cause the deformation to magically reform into perfect plates. You can also plop down new armor and components if you have the materials and weld them into place. Of course SE has a sort of Minecraft feel to it, in that you do things in blocks, but ED could borrow the welder to patch holes and replace broken glass, etc.
As to modeling the interior of ships, SE does this really well albeit in a block-based way. Something that interior modeling gives SE is a far superior damage model to ED. SE is just like Braben's Diary video of where the interiors can be exposed and chunks of actual debris fly off the ship. Disabling or destroying a ship is not about bringing hull points to zero, but rather taking out critical systems. I've had my bridge / cockpit completely blown off, yet I was able to bolt a command chair down somewhere else and still fly the ship. How the ship flies is totally dependent on which thrusters are operational, whether the gyroscopes are still working, etc. It feels way more real and immersive than ED, which is funny since it's often equated to "Minecraft in Space". Anyway, the point is that space legs and modeled interiors can radically change the game not just for those who want to walk around, but also for those who want much more realistic and immersive ship-to-ship combat, due to improved damage modeling.
In SE in space, gravity is optional (your ship needs a functional AGG). Without gravity you can use magnetic boots or just drift around. Both are awkward in their own ways. Magnetic boots are fine, but you can walk on walls and ceilings and it can be kinda weird! It's nice for walking on the outside of your ship, but again, kinda weird!
Without the boots, you can free-float around using your jet pack to get where you need to go. This is fine unless your ship is changing velocity, in which case you get thrown up against walls. All of this is realistic, however, so aside from some of the clumsiness of SE's mag boots (your character bobbles a bit too much on uneven ground instead of adjusting their legs as one would do IRL), it works.
As for actual gameplay, the big reason to get out of your seat in SE (single player mode) space flight is to implement repairs and repel borders. I find repairing the ship to be great fun, even though it's done in a magical "Borg-healing" sort of way. For those not familiar, your hull deforms as it takes damage, and your welder will cause the deformation to magically reform into perfect plates. You can also plop down new armor and components if you have the materials and weld them into place. Of course SE has a sort of Minecraft feel to it, in that you do things in blocks, but ED could borrow the welder to patch holes and replace broken glass, etc.
As to modeling the interior of ships, SE does this really well albeit in a block-based way. Something that interior modeling gives SE is a far superior damage model to ED. SE is just like Braben's Diary video of where the interiors can be exposed and chunks of actual debris fly off the ship. Disabling or destroying a ship is not about bringing hull points to zero, but rather taking out critical systems. I've had my bridge / cockpit completely blown off, yet I was able to bolt a command chair down somewhere else and still fly the ship. How the ship flies is totally dependent on which thrusters are operational, whether the gyroscopes are still working, etc. It feels way more real and immersive than ED, which is funny since it's often equated to "Minecraft in Space". Anyway, the point is that space legs and modeled interiors can radically change the game not just for those who want to walk around, but also for those who want much more realistic and immersive ship-to-ship combat, due to improved damage modeling.
I'd say telepresence is a greater technological discovery than artificial gravity. It's not simply remote control and reaches across the galaxy instantly.
I wouldn't worry about artificial gravity fitting the lore. They can simply say it's been discovered and is part of the ED world and leave it at that. They can also say something like it's been invented and retrofitted to all ships but is insufficient at this time to meet the needs of stations.
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Why do you think that is the case, since we can already freely roam on planets without issue?
@OP: The issues I see is, what there will be meaningful to do when on foot?