Elite / Frontier Will the game fiction be as "real" as in Fronter/FFE?

[boringnick]

I see, that there is still a chance for Elite 4... And I am really happy about this. The Elite games are one of my favourites.

I am a bit concerned about the old Elite 4 FAQ though:

http://web.archive.org/web/20040216024811/http://www.frontier.co.uk/games/elite4/faq.html

"3. How will Elite 4 relate to First Encounters?

The two are entirely independent. "

Is this still planned?
And what does this mean? Does it mean, the universe will be completely overhauled?

That would be a shame. I still think that the Frontier universe was one of the best fictional game universes. It felt "real". Yes, you could really imagine that this could be the future of humanity. It had the right mix of joy and despair.

No other space game universe came close imho. See my posting on the X3 forum to see what I mean in detail:

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=203045

What about short stories by the way? Can we hope for those as well in Elite 4?

 

[Steve O B Have]

Heh - get writing I think a fair few of those original stories were Fan Fiction. I quite enjoyed the ones that came with FE2 as well.

Welcome to the forums - hope you enjoy your stay!

 

[fierfly]

2. Will Elite 4 be based around realistic physics?

Yes, substantially (ie except hyperspace, and general relativity), though the actual flight behaviour will feel more like Elite than Frontier.

i don't know if this is a good or bad thing. when you first start playing the games in elite you can easly move and kill other ships where as in FFE you feel like your not moving at all while the ship fly all around you. but as you get better you soon learn to forget your real speed/direction and just focus on your relative speed/direction in relation in terms of the other ships. once you have this understood you can start owning imperal explore's instead of being turned to space dust from the plasma accelerator.

i will be sad if e4 loses this aspect which makes the frounter games so unique.

 

[DraQ]

I'm somewhat uneasy about this part too. I just hope that it means something like set speed mode in FE2/FFE, only actually usable in combat and that it can be deactivated in favour of full manual mode, where you have full controll over all thrusters.

Lack of any of the following: FE2/FFE scaled systems, truly newtonian flight with full controls, singleplayer without additional payments and requirement for net connection; is a No Go for me.
(Their inclusion, on the other hand, pretty much guarantees that I'll buy this game, unless it's Vista exclusive, uses some DRM scheme or is generally botched beyond recognition)

 

[fierfly]

i hope they don't make it vista exclusive
vista is bad (couldn't think of a stronger word that wouldn't be blocked)
i have vista on one of my computer and quite frankly i would rather use dos

 

[DraQ]

DOS wasn't bad and, with some frontend like NC, it was even quite user-friendly.

 

[fierfly]

dos was all right it was just a matter of knowing all the comands i still use it a bit with Dos-box (old school computer emulator) to play clacicks like the original elite quake worms descent and much much more from the the good old days where they made good gamesnot just fancy graphic we get now

 

[fierfly]

"clacicks"
sorry what happend there i mean clasic games

 

[Sir.Tj]

From the information given by David and the others at Frontier developments E4 is on its way It's just a case of being very, very patient.....thankfully theres no-one (except us) pushing them to release the game early this time.

I think the old E4 FAQ may be slightly out of date now, maybe the guys at FD will update this when more information is avaliable.

I would think one of the major priorities will be creating a universe with depth and meaning giving us lowly pilots a sense of Its a big universe out there and look at the size of that planet/sun and why is Steve O B Have heading towards Phobos again???

The subject of newtonian physics is a very pertinant point, as E4 is a part of a series of games which defined the space exploration/trading/fighting genre, I would be very surprised if the programmers did not spend a lot of time getting the feel and control right.

And hopefully when the game is ready Vista will be a long and distant memory.

 

[Steve]

And hopefully when the game is ready Vista will be a long and distant memory.

My current PC came with XP, but with a "free upgrade to Vista" offer. I sent away for the upgrade and now the Vista CD is sitting in a cupboard, with me too scared to install it

 

[Sir.Tj]

My current PC came with XP, but with a "free upgrade to Vista" offer. I sent away for the upgrade and now the Vista CD is sitting in a cupboard, with me too scared to install it

To be honest I've only limited experience with Vista. My work PC with Xp on died and I was given a new one with Vista. none of the software we use worked with it and it seemed geared too much towards looks than function. bit like some of the other space exploration games out there!

Cue me and a screwdriver heading towards the old PC with a determined look on my face.

 

[Steve O B Have]

I use Vista Ultimate on my home PC and to be honest unless you are intending to make use of DirectX 10 on a reasonable high end gaming machine I wouldn't stress about it.

It's fairly bloated as far as operating systems go but in every day use I don't have too many problems, it looks nice and has some half decent features.

Really install if you want it, don't if you're happy with XP. MS is supposed to be coming out with Windows 7 in around 2 years time anyway and XP has just had SP3 put into production (should be released in a couple of weeks) and that is supposed to have a 10% speed increase included. XP is more than sufficient for current machines.

 

[Steve O B Have]

I would think one of the major priorities will be creating a universe with depth and meaning giving us lowly pilots a sense of Its a big universe out there and look at the size of that planet/sun and why is Steve O B Have heading towards Phobos again???

LOL i don't know what you could possibly be getting at

I entirely agree - it's the phenomenal feeling that you are in a massive universe that made Frontier the game that it was/is. To lose that and the quite frankly brilliant control system in favor of the old arcade Elite feel would be in my opinion criminal.

As an aside making it Vista only would be fairly suicidal from a marketing standpoint. There are still more than enough people out there that are sticking to their XP guns for it to be a seriously viable platform.

 

[Sir.Tj]

LOL i don't know what you could possibly be getting at

Couldn't resist that one

 

[DraQ]

Cue me and a screwdriver heading towards the old PC with a determined look on my face.

2001: A Space Odyssey style.

 

[Sir.Tj]

2001: A Space Odyssey style.

"Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over."

 

[boringnick]

Heh - get writing I think a fair few of those original stories were Fan Fiction. I quite enjoyed the ones that came with FE2 as well.

Welcome to the forums - hope you enjoy your stay!

I don't think those were fan fiction. I guess they were written by professional writers.

The elite universe was quite different from the Frontier/FFE universe. How could fan fiction writers know about the Frontier setting? (they could only know the Elite one)

 

[Steve O B Have]

You may well be right. Smars or Michael can you confirm for us? Were the stories included with Frontier E2 written by professional writers and were they given specific perameters to write by or were they 'inspired by Elite'?

 

[Stefan Mars]

SMars = Stefan.

Anyway. The stories were written before I joined Frontier so I had to go and ask David. He had the following to say:

The stories were written by a mixture of people, including aspiring professional writers, and were indeed inspired by Elite - but we made sure they all fitted in the world.

 

[Sir.Tj]

SMars = Stefan.

Anyway. The stories were written before I joined Frontier so I had to go and ask David. He had the following to say:

The stories were written by a mixture of people, including aspiring professional writers, and were indeed inspired by Elite - but we made sure they all fitted in the world.

How cool is it when you can get your answers direct from the man himself!

Now if for E4 David wants to go down the same route again, I get the feeling we will all be sharpening our pencils!