Why is 'space legs' so technically difficult?

[Ignition]

Its difficult because FD is doing several games at the same time instead of focusing on making Elite a GREAT space game.

They will add walking around but we will shoot rocks and press a button to scan things. The gameplay will be exactly the same for 2 to 3 years until they make another beyond II to add a few mechanics.

It will be free yes, because we already paid for it.

 

[Cosmo]

Its difficult because FD is doing several games at the same time instead of focusing on making Elite a GREAT space game.

They will add walking around but we will shoot rocks and press a button to scan things. The gameplay will be exactly the same for 2 to 3 years until they make another beyond II to add a few mechanics.

It will be free yes, because we already paid for it.

Elite Dangerous is already a great game. They're saving the major Beyond season improvements and new features for Q4 2018. I'm sure it will have more depth than that. EVA will probably be a series of paid DLC. Maybe buy once to get a bunch of future updates.

 

[Ignition]

Elite Dangerous is already a great game

Sadly I don't think so. I've been saying since 2015 Elite was VERY lacking in gameplay and nothing has changed. I pray for this to change at the end of this year.

I'm sure it will have more depth than that.

Whenever FD releases new feature they release only a framework and they take literaly YEARS to develop them to be playable. You say FD learnt the lesson and will release a somewhat complete gameplay?

EVA will probably be a series of paid DLC. Maybe buy once to get a bunch of future updates.

I'm sure of that, I was saying only beyond II will be free once the paid framework of walking was released.

I HOPE FD has changed their development roadmap and focus more on the gameplay rather in more empty stuff.

 

[Devari]

I just read the article you linked earlier and Roberts says that 'most' other games don't share first and third person models and animations. He also said that only a few other developers are doing it. Before you call my post utter nonsense again it would be great if you could read and understand your own sources.

You need to read more than just that article. Essentially no one except CIG has properly unified the perspectives using a commercially available engine (i.e., CryEngine, Unreal, etc.) and absolutely no one is doing it to the level of fidelity that Star Citizen needs. Some indie developer making a rudimentary unified engine at a basic level is completely useless for a game like Star Citizen. The level of fidelity that Star Citizen uses is absolutely insane. It goes far beyond simply unifying the basic character animations. They actually project all of the HUD elements onto the inside of the helmet visor. It's not a graphical UI overlay that is only seen from a first-personal perspective, it's literally projecting the necessary HUD elements onto the visor in a manner where they can be read by someone looking at the helmet externally in a third-person perspective without any distortion or loss of detail. Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

The HUD elements are faithfully represented so that they are visible and legible both from inside and outside of the helmet.

No one else even attempts to do that with a unified first and third-person fps perspective because no one has ever had to program that type of detail into a game. Star Citizen needs that level of fidelity for what Roberts is doing and that is why they had to do it that way. You really have absolutely no idea what Star Citizen has been able to achieve with their CryEngine rebuild or how technically challenging that process was.

Next time actually read up on an issue thoroughly before making nonsensical comments. Mmmmkay?

 

[Kaltern]

Pretty sure noone cares either, considering SC is never going to be a 'finished game'.

Sometimes ambition doesn't mean great things. Frontier, to their credit, have never really overstretched themselves. Unfortunately, when it comes to the 'killer' feature, ED is just lacking it. Legs might help, but unless they design something AROUND the ability to leave the pilot chair, it'll be another wasted opportunity.

I'd much rather the game focused on really ramping up things to do in game - other than mindlessly shooting at things.

 

[Devari]

Pretty sure noone cares either, considering SC is never going to be a 'finished game'.

Are you suggesting Elite will ever become a "finished" game? It's relied on rudimentary placeholders for core game mechanics for over 3.5 years since launch.

Sometimes ambition doesn't mean great things. Frontier, to their credit, have never really overstretched themselves.

They may not have overextended themselves but they have also underperformed severely by only developing a tiny fraction of the potential that Elite had as a game and as a franchise. The only thing worse than trying to do too much is not even making a proper effort to reach your potential, and for Horizons and Beyond it's clear that FD isn't going to develop Elite to anywhere close to the potential the game could have reached.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the 'killer' feature, ED is just lacking it. Legs might help, but unless they design something AROUND the ability to leave the pilot chair, it'll be another wasted opportunity.

I'd much rather the game focused on really ramping up things to do in game - other than mindlessly shooting at things.

Elite will never be truly competitive once a game like Star Citizen launches. They're too far behind and can't possibly catch up. That doesn't mean that Elite won't benefit from space legs, even in a rudimentary form, because at least then it will offer something for players who want more immersion than Elite can currently provide. It might not be much, but even rudimentary space legs would breathe some new life into the game for another couple of years.

 

[Kzak]

not that difficult egosoft is a small german software company look whats in the next parts of x comming this year, a view bugs will come too but they allways great at fixes.

If egosoft can do frontier can if they want

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuIeKMYaIAk

The walking-about part of X: Rebirth was pretty mediocre at best, with a very clunky implementation. I'm going to check out X4 when it releases, though.

 

[ilo]

Elite will never be truly competitive once a game like Star Citizen launches.

Star Citizen is not even a game, and Elite: Dangerous is already a game. Not many games make people put 1k hours in them, and ED has some good numbers.

Meanwhile, I'd like to compare existing games, not just concept art. Blender makes good pose and images as well, and does not qualify as a game.

 

[Ignition]

I remember I saw this a long time ago. One of the features of first person view in Star Citizen.

https://youtu.be/_7GG0y8Jmcs?t=747

 

[Asp Explorer]

The HUD elements are faithfully represented so that they are visible and legible both from inside and outside of the helmet.

Devari, my friend, no - in 3.2 they are not

 

[cheesenbiscuits]

Elite will never be truly competitive once a game like Star Citizen launches. They're too far behind and can't possibly catch up. That doesn't mean that Elite won't benefit from space legs, even in a rudimentary form, because at least then it will offer something for players who want more immersion than Elite can currently provide. It might not be much, but even rudimentary space legs would breathe some new life into the game for another couple of years.

It sounds like you've been hanging around in an echo chamber for a while their.
When someone calls Elite a buggy mess,it's orders of magnitude less of a buggy mess than SC.
If anything Elite shows when SC actually is a game,they've literally just started.

 

[Devari]

Devari, my friend, no - in 3.2 they are not

I didn't realize the HUD changed since I haven't logged in since 3.2 launched. With the absolute debacle we got with the 600i I don't think anyone is paying attention to the HUDs right now anyways. I really did think that CIG learned their lesson with the massive backlash they got from the 600i Q&A, then when the 600i becomes flight ready they give us a ship that is slower than the Reclaimer. It's like they don't even read their own brochure and concept sale details and a random intern generates the ship specs just before it launches. They basically need to stop selling ships and focus on fixing the flight model and making the ships they currently have bear at lest some resemblance to the concept sale descriptions. At this point I would trust a used car salesman to give me more accurate information than SC does for their concept ships. I'm currently boycotting SC right now over their decision to remove LTI for non-warbond concepts but when I do eventually open my wallet back up I'm going to be VERY careful about what future concept ships I decide to buy into. I had hoped they would turn the 600i into a useful ship but it's clear that they don't make any real effort to stick to the original concept descriptions any longer.

It sounds like you've been hanging around in an echo chamber for a while their.
When someone calls Elite a buggy mess,it's orders of magnitude less of a buggy mess than SC.
If anything Elite shows when SC actually is a game,they've literally just started.

Suggesting that Elite is "less buggy" than SC is not actually true. Not only is Elite full of bugs, but the same bugs keep occurring over and over again because they were never fixed properly. With SC, the bugs are related to ongoing development rather than to recurrent underlying problems that were never fixed.

 

[babelfisch]

You need to read more than just that article. Essentially no one except CIG has properly unified the perspectives using a commercially available engine (i.e., CryEngine, Unreal, etc.) and absolutely no one is doing it to the level of fidelity that Star Citizen needs. Some indie developer making a rudimentary unified engine at a basic level is completely useless for a game like Star Citizen. The level of fidelity that Star Citizen uses is absolutely insane. It goes far beyond simply unifying the basic character animations. They actually project all of the HUD elements onto the inside of the helmet visor. It's not a graphical UI overlay that is only seen from a first-personal perspective, it's literally projecting the necessary HUD elements onto the visor in a manner where they can be read by someone looking at the helmet externally in a third-person perspective without any distortion or loss of detail. Here's an example of what I'm talking about:



The HUD elements are faithfully represented so that they are visible and legible both from inside and outside of the helmet.

No one else even attempts to do that with a unified first and third-person fps perspective because no one has ever had to program that type of detail into a game. Star Citizen needs that level of fidelity for what Roberts is doing and that is why they had to do it that way. You really have absolutely no idea what Star Citizen has been able to achieve with their CryEngine rebuild or how technically challenging that process was.

Next time actually read up on an issue thoroughly before making nonsensical comments. Mmmmkay?

You are moving goal posts.

 

[Devari]

You are moving goal posts.

Sorry, but you simply had no real understanding of what I was describing about unifying the first and third-person perspectives. The goal posts were always there, that was the vision that Roberts had for Star Citizen from the start, which you would have known if you actually followed Star Citizen development. You just didn't properly appreciate what I was describing because you haven't encountered any other game designed to that level of detail.

 

[babelfisch]

Sorry, but you simply had no real understanding of what I was describing about unifying the first and third-person perspectives. The goal posts were always there, that was the vision that Roberts had for Star Citizen from the start, which you would have known if you actually followed Star Citizen development. You just didn't properly appreciate what I was describing because you haven't encountered any other game designed to that level of detail.

And you just called my post utter nonsense without understanding what I said. Which is quite an accomplishment if you consider that it only consisted of one or two sentences. I simply pointed out that sharing the same first and third person models and animations is not unique to SC.

This is the post I replied to:

All other games have cheated from a design perspective and what one players sees from a first-person perspective and what another player sees from a third-person perspective are completely different in terms of the character models.

 

[Red Fox Four]

I don't get it. It's not as if walking around with a first-person view ground-breaking in the video game industry. I would have thought by 2018 most developers would be able to do it quite easily.

The real question is... what does space legs add to the game?

So you can walk to the back of your Type9, see the cargo hold, see the sleeping quarters or whatever.

So you saw that.

Afterwards you would be in your cockpit 99.9% of the time and not think twice about how your cargohold looked.

While it's "cool" to be able to see the insides of the ships, or maybe wander about a station, I can't let go of the real question: What would it add to the game?

Would it be a gateway to some FPS thing?

Are we expecting to be able to walk over to some bar and talk with an agent or something? How long until people would get bored of walking back and forth to the bar?

What exactly, besides just being a floating camera to inspect some visuals, do we expect or want "space legs" to be?

Also, scientific side-note, we wouldn't really be using our legs in space. We'd be floating around and moving primarily by using our hands and arms to pull or push ourselves around in zero/micro-G. So technically we're asking for "space arms".

 

[Stamford Rider]

How long until people would get bored of walking back and forth to the bar?

Well, I've been doing it IRL for about 45 years and I'm not bored with it yet.

 

[Devari]

And you just called my post utter nonsense without understanding what I said. Which is quite an accomplishment if you consider that it only consisted of one or two sentences. I simply pointed out that sharing the same first and third person models and animations is not unique to SC.

You still don't understand the level of fidelity that SC is using to unify the perspectives. You seem to think it's just limited to the character animations and there are so many more details that are being unified. Despite explaining this in detail and showing you a picture as an example you still don't seem to get it for some reason.

 

[babelfisch]

You still don't understand the level of fidelity that SC is using to unify the perspectives. You seem to think it's just limited to the character animations and there are so many more details that are being unified. Despite explaining this in detail and showing you a picture as an example you still don't seem to get it for some reason.

And you still don't understand that I am not even talking about it. Your claim was that no other games shares the same first and third person models. That's factuality wrong. Since then you moved goal posts because you are unable to admit it. It's one thing to misunderstand what I said. But you even manage to forget what you said yourself. I added your initial post in my reply above.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

I think people don't realize what bag of tricks first person games use to do it all. That makes people think it is something easy to do in multiplayer setting.

First of all, ED follows realism of gravity quite close. Thus it means it is not simple space legs in space ships - it is gravity according to your and your ship's location in space and magnetic boots. Then there's content and gameplay you need to add to the ship to make it interesting, mechanic alone won't do anything. Also then there's incredible amount of animations of the ship you should have to even have walking around.