Do it, and I'll post a "why aren't the why threads all stickied together" thread? And maybe even a "Why not make a "Why?" subforum?"I swear, I'm this close to making a "Why 'why...'-threads" thread.
Do it, and I'll post a "why aren't the why threads all stickied together" thread? And maybe even a "Why not make a "Why?" subforum?"I swear, I'm this close to making a "Why 'why...'-threads" thread.
Do it, and I'll post a "why aren't the why threads all stickied together" thread? And maybe even a "Why not make a "Why?" subforum?"
Have you seen the thread about the game assets being modelled in 16k resolution of detail, and presumably downsampled to current levels of detail.
Sorry - but that sounds absolutely deplorable, and totally out of kilter with what FDev have suggested "legs" gameplay would entail.
It is widely accepted that the missions you could get from an NPC mission giver in a quet corner of a shaddowy bar would be off the books, riskier, more rewarding, possibly including first person play.
The fade to black transitions to SRV/SLF are just a place holder becaue the game doesn't allow the pilot to walk around their ship.
The idea about playing bargames to bet credits/ships etc, while potentially interesting, who wouldn't want to win a conda in a game of cards - very han solo - while entertaining, would be very unlikely in the game as introducing gambling like that would almost certainly increase the games PEGI rating age restrictions. It would also open a mechanic for gold farming, "gimme £150 via paypal and I'll throw (as in deliberately lose, not as in host the game) a game of cards with you where you can bet on my fully engineered FDL.
Do it as a documentary, on youtube, so you too can become an "influenza", you wouldn't need to do any research into it, just make stuff up and hopefully your journalistic flair would win a BULLitzer prize.We could also discuss why people always feel the need to ask 'why?'. Is it what makes us human, is it in our genes? We should do a podcast, probably call it the "Why Chromosome".
If you believe FDev have decided legs "ain't worth it", so new era is not going to be legs, what is it you think they have been working on?But...
As for the Space Legs, I am getting further from the belief point and nearer to the "I very much doubt this will come about" point.
The reason for this change of mind is that the more FDev put in the game that can be done from the seat the less likely we are to have a reason to leave the seat, and with only a (comparatively) few thousand players (many of which are happy to remain seated) the effort required from FDev simply isn't worth it.
The first sentence, that I've highlighted in orange, echoes my feelings, I often garumph about this game's target market being shifted from the more mature gamer, to twelve year olds. The revamp of conflict zones is a classic example of this, it used to be that conflict zones were intense and hazardous and, required a mature approach to them constantly interpretting scanner and situational awareness to manage the fight to keep yourself out of trouble. You had to deal with "combat attrition", there was even a combat attrition tutorial excercise when I joined the game, hang in there and rack up huge stacks of combat bonds. It was lucrative, but you had to be skilled to do it. Then they put in the progress bars nonsense, and the "wins", and "Special Forces" ("boss" ships). Ten eagles to "win" a CZ, talk about istant gratification and kiddyfying a game? So now to manipulate the BGS players have to "farm" these CZ "wins", ten kills, jump out, jump in, repeat. I mean seriously, now an interstellar battlezone is now like something out of a free to play cookie clicker game?FDev have chosen their path on the backs of new casual players for sales and fripperies, it seems that 'guns' are the chosen favoured part of a ship for many (not all) players, I see a lot of 'hero chat' in the forums about shooting this or that and the various 'combat' loadouts, and it leads me to believe that shooting stuff is the top thing to do, that leaves walking around doing 'other' stuff and staring in wonder at the shear scale of things pretty low on the list, "OHNO! it's gonna waste time"
I used to fly explorer escort missions with Iridium Wing, and I've also legitimately made explorer elite, not cheesed it with some exploit, having travelled over half a million light years, but these days I'm mostly a bubble BGS player, so I can see both sides, and the circumference of this coin. Legs won't add as much to exploration as it would do to bubble play, where you could dock and Role Playing Game with NPC's, where you could get missions / quests from them, that had to be carried out on foot. Out in the void, what are you going to do with legs, walk around repair your ship? Spacewalk in front of Sag A? That'd be the new theme on reddit, not asps in front of stuff, but space suits infront of things.Maybe if legs and atmospheres came in close succession to each other, you could have new legs mechanics to take samples of flora and fauna on planets? Or swim down to a lake bed, pry open a colonial oyster and use its pearl to synthesize a new jump boost. However in the bubble, well there are a lot of awesome opportunities for what legs could bring. If it ever comes it will be interesting to see what it does bring.There are Explorers out there that don't want combat, yes, quite a few, but many of those just wish to sit and database their collections of rares and oddballs, or make the biggest jump ever, or travel further that anyone else, there just doesn't seem to be as many players wanting a space adventure as there used to be, so really Space Legs might just not be worth it any more, the game seems to have moved further away from the dream that many (not all) of us had of 'First Encounters ++' kinda like FDev said "we decided we're not so much gonna push the boat out here, but you can have pedalo's in lots of different colours and crash into each other for fun, oh yeah we might introduce grassy banks and a 'small' wave machine too"
It's common practice to have assets made with significantly higher detail than what is at the final offer, be it geometry or higher resolution textures, the question here is, is all that stuff still saved? Because more often than not that kinda thing just gets lost.
Even if they have those models with much higher triangle counts and textures at a much higher resolution, they still were never made to be used up close and would lack the granular detail.
I doubt anyone ever at FDev sat down to 3D model a desk with a bunch of props that would sit inside a control tower, or a rug for the floor, or keypads, etc, etc before getting these assets retopolised for the final game, and that is what I mean here, more than likely no stuff was ever made to be used in a first person game, so even if they still have the high triangle counts, they still wouldn't look good from a perspective that they were (apparently) not intended to be used at.
So we are talking about significant work in either case to make something that would work from a first person perspective on the ground, and again, all this would mean not just time and money but also higher system specs to run it.
Maximum 3D texture size in D3D11 is 16k and many parts of the game can already be set to this level and see at least some improvement to textures all the way up. Galaxy backgrounds are probably the most obvious example of this as it fills the entire skybox, but planet textures, the environment map (reflections and the like), as well as shadow slice sizes scale to 16k.
Some of you clearly need to do somedumpsterdata diving in the Elite folders.. Have a look at the data files for some of the models, have a look at the skins for those models - some in various resolutions..
There are textures up to 16k-type resolutions, hints that models do or will contain LOD's for high detail stuff.
As is you simply cannot get up and close to these assets.
So everything would have to be reworked
It's common practice to have assets made with significantly higher detail than what is at the final offer, be it geometry or higher resolution textures, the question here is, is all that stuff still saved? Because more often than not that kinda thing just gets lost.
Genuinely cannot comment on that, you've seen the link, presumably watched the video of David Braben CEO of the company and god almighty of this game stating they had done the assets in such a way as they were suitable for upto 16k resolution, I'm taking that on face value. I have absolutely no way of knowing if they accidentally threw out that hard drive or reformatted it to store zoo planet back ups on. However I'd operate on the presumption that if tehy had digital assets for a flagship IP of theirs built to 32x 1080p levels of fidelity, that they would take good care of those files, which would have taken a lot of time to create.
Even if they have those models with much higher triangle counts and textures at a much higher resolution, they still were never made to be used up close and would lack the granular detail.
I doubt anyone ever at FDev sat down to 3D model a desk with a bunch of props that would sit inside a control tower, or a rug for the floor, or keypads, etc, etc before getting these assets retopolised for the final game, and that is what I mean here, more than likely no stuff was ever made to be used in a first person game, so even if they still have the high triangle counts, they still wouldn't look good from a perspective that they were (apparently) not intended to be used at.
I genuinely don't get how assets that are equivalent resolution to being 32x supersampled would lack detail, or look bad from certain perspectives - can you explain this to me? I seem to remember putting the free camera through the walls of one of those buildings inside the docking bay and there were floor tiles and internal walls with doors etc.
So we are talking about significant work in either case to make something that would work from a first person perspective on the ground, and again, all this would mean not just time and money but also higher system specs to run it.
The problem with all the spectacular suggestions posted here is time and money to develop them, you have to convince the money people.
It's not what you wanna have, is what you can have.
While my suggestion is very limited in scope, that doesn't not come from the lack of personal ambition or vision in regards of what something might be, but rather what it could feasibly be achieved.
This game is the, or at least was, the pet project of the CEO, and is arguably their flagship IP, I don't think the money will be a problem, but I also think from watching various kickstarter updates and interviews with key people through they years that the required metadata/structure/details for legs to be "doable; someday" has been baked into the game since inception.
This goes with what I said when I mentioned the inside of the stations would have all the services.
For these NPCs I say don't even include audio dialog and just stick to text. More versatile and way cheaper to produce.
OK, I I've got mixed feelings on this one, we could and should have had that already, if you played FE2 or FFE you could commnicate with NPC's and select from multiple choice conversation branches. But if we end up with legs and mute text only NPC's, its going to be incongruous and lame. Multiple choice inputs for us speaking to the NPC's, and AWS TTS generated voice packs for the NPC's utterances.
Since I'm elaborating, having these modular rooms that could be stitched together would mean a controlled angular environment, easier to make sure players wouldn't be caught on geometry.
Because they would be instanced and closed off, they would be easier to render in comparison with the wide open inside of a station for example or just a surface planet base with assets reworked for up close detail.
I mean as is they already look simplistic enough from SRV view, walking around in them would only exacerbate the problem.
As I said earlier, I think the graphical assets are already done for this, albeit in a data valult in FDev's offices not necessarily in our game clients.
And that is not a bad thing, besides saving actual time it saves on having to develop everything "walking around" would entail. My whole point is to propose something that would be low cost to develop and thus get approved by the accountants, yet still deliver some value to the game, and by value I specifically mean more opportunities to interact with other players, which brings us to...
Well aye and nae... walking around for the sake of walking around to do the same stuff would be a waste of dev resources and our time, but if there are the RPG elements, and actual first person gameplay mechanics, a couple of mintes walking could be part of the experience, why don't we split the difference, and have the option to actually properly walk between cockpit and the first gate in the starport, with walking either being done fully by player control, or on "autopilot", or a keystroke/binding/menu command to fade-to-black-teleport to the first gate?
I'm not intimately familiar with how the PEGI rating system works, but if it would increase the age rating that would be a problem. Then again, this would only be for an hypothetical expansion so it wouldn't affect previous purchases.
Nor I, but if you look at the games current pegi rating it mentions "brugs references and fantasy violence", and I'm sure a while ago it was suggested to repurpose the wheel of fortune code from the original engineering special effects roulette thingy into a credits casino mini game accessable from ships menu and the PEGI guidelines were cited as a big reason for that being a no go.
And isn't that whole gold farming already possible? As is people are already trading Imperial Slaves for other stuff in game, there are groups dedicated to that. Not as much now - there used to be a trade for engineers unlock / crafting cargo like modular terminals, or even some out of game cash for iSlaves in game for folks wanting to buy credits, but theres never been a way to buy engineer mats.
Since I mentioned Guild Wars 2, that is a game that specifically embraced gold selling with their Gems system and it worked out really well, for the 4 years I played that game I never heard anyone complaining about it or referring to it as pay to win.
With FDev introducing Arks, maybe it's about time they open trading following the MMO blue print. I can maybe see veteran players dropping a billion credits on a new user (which isn't necessarily a good thing) but as long as the option is there to reject the offer I don't see a problem. Anyone that wants to skip ahead too quick already can with wing missions.
Would be an interesting concept, but I'm not sure it would end well with elite's players. I had hoped the squadron mechanics would have allowed us to pool resources, so a combat player could contribute manufactured materials to the pool, a miner could bring raw materials to the pool, and when I needed cadmium for buffing my thrusters I'd effectively swap you cadmium for core dynamics composites you needed for rolling a mod on your bulkheads. I thought/hoped this sort of stuff would be accessable using the carriers station menu, then they changed from Squadron Fleet Carriers to Personal Fleet Carriers, and it became obvious they were going to be little more than wendy houses for FDev to sell interior and exterior skins and trinkets for.
I genuinely don't get how assets that are equivalent resolution to being 32x supersampled would lack detail, or look bad from certain perspectives - can you explain this to me?
Why? Why Not?The interminable 'why [feature]' threads are missing the true question that may yet be answered by the forthcoming New Era update:
Personally I have yet to hear a good reason to have space legs. I would much rather see new ships on a regular basis.
How do you see legs being implemented, and immersion aside, what will legs add without taking anything away?
Note: Star Citizen is a unique snowflake in this list. It's got a $300,000,000 budget and has been in Alpha Test since 2013. Not release, not beta... ALPHA. ED is not going to compete with some of its mechanics, nor will any other game.
Games that already had space flight models/mechanics in their game/series beforehand and added in walking later tended to do a poor job of it, not because the developers did a bad job necessarily but because there are limits to what you can accomplish when your main focus is space flight and walking is a side thing. In these games, the walking's main purpose was simply to show that you are actually a person, and give some aesthetics to look at, but that's it (Examples: Eve Online, X Rebirth, X4).
A lot of players end up immediately asking "how will I be able bypass walking to accomplish this goal without needing to do so?" (Examples: X Rebirth, X4 Foundations)
While I think it would be cool to have it add in-flight and in-combat mechanics to work alongside multicrew, like allowing a multicrew player to repair your ship using a welding tool in flight, not every game has been able to pull off the synchronization needed in networked games to walk while flying. To my knowledge, only Star Citizen has. Other games will let you move around in flight but you'll be jittery, bounce all over the place or flat out disappear (Examples: Empyrion, Space Engineers, Pulsar). Other games with networking will only allow you to walk when the ship is sitting perfectly still. (Examples: Star Trek Online, EVE Online, No Man's Sky).
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You mean like this?
There would still be base building. And you know 'open only' threads would still be around and teleporting....If Frontier truly cares about their forum members, they won't ever release space legs, because if they did, what would we even talk about anymore?