
Elite: Dangerous - morphics
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1461411552/elite-dangerous
======
mladenkovacevic
I'll post this here too.

David Braben has toyed with my heart and broken it at least a dozen times
since the beginning of this millennium. I've been teased and tortured with
promises of Elite 4, scouring internet forums and chat rooms for any new
information. My sickness manifested through vivid dreams of piloting my Cobra
MKIII, loaded with contraband, and shooting my way through a swarm of nimble
police ships. Awakened, I inevitably struggled with the sudden realization
that Elite 4 is not reality, and it may never be. And now - a new hope
awakens! And despite the burning scars of previous disappointments, I pledge
20 quid like a sad, pathetic junkie whose rehab never quite took hold. This
time, I tell myself, this time it will be different.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Remember: should the funding succeed, the game is due march 2014. 16 months.

Seek cetacean counselling before holding your breath.

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jere
Not that concept art, screenshots, or videos ensure success, but the complete
lack of all three seems quite odd these days. Especially for a $2 million
goal. That's fricking nuts.

If I'm counting correctly only 5 projects (out of thousands) have made that
much and their project pages were insanely snazzy and detailed:
[http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/games/most-
fu...](http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/games/most-funded#p1)

Also, the pitch seems like something someone wrote on a napkin. "Raw
performance" doesn't make a game gorgeous.

>Imagine what is now possible, squeezing the last drop of performance from
modern computers in the way “Elite” and “Frontier” did in their days? It is
not just a question of raw performance (though of course these elements will
make it look gorgeous), but we can push the way the networking works too –
something very few people had access to in the days of Frontier.

All of this compels me to post the obligatory PA comic: <http://www.penny-
arcade.com/comic/2012/05/04>

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I'm sorry - you make excellent rational points - but I don't care. I lost four
months of my teenage life to this damn game and I want more.

Make it better than eve and you can have a kidney to sell, the dodgy one on
the left.

~~~
jere
I guess I'm just too young to get it. I wasn't yet born when Elite was
released. I have a lot of respect for older games and I'm usually the first to
say graphics don't matter, but looking at screens and videos... I don't get
the appeal. It's hard to even tell what is going on.

~~~
ergo14
Get a copy of Frontier First Encounters - the last part of franchiase:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXKTTB95JlY>

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malbs
I still consider Elite as one of the greatest games of all time. The fact the
original developers are behind this gives it a load of credibility.

It may never live up to the expectations that will be placed on it

~~~
bitcartel
I would also put Mercenary, Starglider and Zarch (called Virus on the Amiga)
up there as some of the all-time great space combat/simulator games.

~~~
teamonkey
A remake/update of Starglider 2 would be most welcome.

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zikzikzik
Let me state first, that I am an Elite fan too, I played Mostly Harmless for
years on C64, where the visuals were sub-par (ugly wire graphics, low fps) and
I LOVED it.

However, I am really surprised noone mentioned the 800lb gorilla in this
space. If I felt like flying, modding, fighting spaceships, or trading or
smuggling or pirating or flying with friends or making new friends (or
followers, for that matter) or even building a space empire, then I'd
reactivate my EVE Online account(s).

It is not entirely the same thing, but EVE is an incredibly elaborate game
with insane depth, I do not see how one (even if his name is Braben) could
successfully compete with it (for largely the same player base!) by raising
$2M.

~~~
morsch
The two games don't sound all that similar. It's not an MMO, for one thing. I
also doubt there will be as much focus on the economy or large-scale
corporations. I think EVE is great, I like reading about it occasionally, but
I have zero interest in _playing_ "Ayn Rand's Battle Spreadsheets"[0].

[0] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4625338>

~~~
DanBC
Elite had 2 bits of gameplay:

i) Dog fights

ii) Trading

There was a bit of ship customising; there were the missions; there was a
mini-game of "land in the space-station without a docking computer and without
crashing".

Planets had names, and some description, but that was just dusted on top of
the actual game. You couldn't visit the planet. You couldn't get out of your
ship on the space station. The space stations were mostly the same.

So Elite was really just buy low, sell high, with dog fighting and 3 factions.
(Lawful, criminal, neutral.)

I dunno, it sounds pretty much like an early single player version of EVE.

~~~
morsch
There's no doubt that Elite is an ancestor of EVE and many other games. But
clearly they're going to implement a superset of the features the original
had, and I don't get the impression that the end result will be very similar
to EVE. That said, an early single player version of EVE wouldn't be very
similar to EVE, either; I get the impression that EVE is almost purely about
player relations and the metagame.

On an unrelated note, you could land on planets in Elite 2. That totally blew
my mind back then. Sort of like a real time lo-fi version of Powers of Ten[0]
running on your computer.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Ten>

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d0m
Seems like "procedural techniques" is a huge factor with this game. I haven't
played the first ones, but it seems like auto-generating galaxies and stars
was what enabled the game to make it feels huge.

I'm wondering how these "procedural techniques" will work with high quality
graphics? Also, for those who played both Elite and Minecraft, is it a similar
feeling? Is there any other similar - yet more recent - games in that genre?

~~~
babebridou
Minecraft and Frontier EliteII conveyed pretty much the same feeling of
absolute freedom, yes. Of course, Minecraft was based on a completely
different premise - changing the world instead of exploring it.

It can be argued that there has always been a contrast between procedural
games and handcrafted games, a contrast that has followed us since the dawn of
game design. Procedural tends to mean lifeless, Handcrafted tends to mean
depthless.

There is no longer a clear distinction between the two, though. Games tend to
include procedural elements and interweave them with handcrafted ones.
Procedurals are generally used to provide a longer game experience, while
Handcrafts are generally used to convey a story or a designer's cut of fun.

A recent example could be Diablo 3. This is at the core a Procedural game. The
game has been divided in acts, chapters and quests. Each quest ends with a
handcrafted challenge, each chapter ends with a handcrafted miniboss fight,
and each Act ends with a handcrafted "act boss" fight. Everything in between,
including the fights, the rare monsters, the champion monsters, the stage
layout and of course the loot, is procedurally generated. The designers have a
set of game rules that dictate how and when this or that monster can spawn,
how it looks like, and how, when, and what kind of loot it can drop.

For some players, this extends the game's depth and the fun they can get, from
a dozen hours of handcrafted content to hundreds, possibly even thousands of
hours of procedurally generated entertainment.

Another great example would be Skyrim. Again at the core, the Elder Scrolls
series is procedurally generated, but with a twist; in Daggerfall, the third
episode, they pushed the envelope to its limit with a really humongous
generated world, of a size that only Elite games could surpass. With time they
realized that they went too far; they had to restrict the procedural aspect
and resume the handcrafting. Using the procedurally generated content as a
mold, they could "paint" the game on top of it to make it feel more lively,
possibly more epic with each following iteration thanks to a better engine and
of course a bigger budget.

Then there's the opposite line of game design - those that start as
Handcrafted with increasing amounts of procedurally generated elements as the
franchise advances. The Dragon Age series is widely seen as taking this path
(a mistake in my opinion).

For some other games that are pretty much only procedural, check The Sims, Sim
City and their ilk, Dwarf Fortress, Audiosurf, NetHack of course, the
Civilization series, etc. The whole line of EASports games could also be seen
as procedurally generated as well depending on your point of view. "God Games"
such as From Dust are also generally procedural.

~~~
tubs
All the important "bits" of NetHack are handcrafted though, much in the same
way d3 is.

------
yurifury
Here is a Wing Commander equivalent on Kickstarter, by Chris Roberts.

<http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen>

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motters
There is of course <http://www.oolite.org/>

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goldfeld
How about we all torture each other out by suggesting great Elitesque games to
play in the mean time?

I'll throw in Space Rangers 2. Great soundtrack, universe feels alive without
you, NPCs that can rise to fame just as the player, plenty of minigames (e.g.
land battles are an RTS, prison is a text game) and space battles are pretty
cool.

~~~
anigbrowl
Oolite is an open-source Elite clone written in Objective-C:
<http://www.oolite.org/>

Space Rangers 2 sounds cool.

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hoi
I got this on the ZX Spectrum, and it came with one of those plastic
converters. There would be a code on the screen and you had to put the plastic
thing in front of it to decode the image and type in the letters. To stop
people from pirating the game by making a tape to tape copy of it.

~~~
beagle3
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenslok> . Those were the times.

(Of note: 3D printers still can't print Lenslok type devices; This is perhaps
the only form of copy protection from those days that is still not trivially
breakable)

------
petercooper
BBC News video interview about it:
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20187897>

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gadders
This game was awesome, and one I really envied the BBC Model B owners for
having.

One request: Please make docking at a space station easier :-)

~~~
watmough
300 credits for the docking computer, if memory serves.

Ahhh, Christmas 1984, what a sweet sweet time.

~~~
yxhuvud
Yes, and you also got that nice Strauss music when the computer was enabled.

It was a bad idea to activate it on the wrong side of the station though ..

------
iuguy
I loved Frontier: Elite II on the Amiga, I played it for 6 years. It was
probably one of the main reasons I still had an Amiga as my main computer in
the late 90s, and I'd only got to around mid-level in terms of my status.

If this was 2000, I'd have handed over my money straight away but Frontier
Developments has had that many false starts over a new Elite game it's almost
like the Duke Nukem forever fiasco (except that Elite IV pre-dates Duke Nukem
forever).

I want to believe. But I just don't see it happening.

------
pelle
You can play the Spectrum version of Elite online in a Java Applet.

<http://www.twinbee.org/hob/play.php?snap=elite>

I grew up playing it on the BBC in a computer store and C64 at home. Loved it.

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SeanDav
I played Elite on the PC and still rate it as one of the best games I ever
played. It stands second to no other game in terms of sheer fun, challenge and
playability, not to mention, also being absolutely cutting edge for its time.

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TomAnthony
There better still be Thargoids and Witch Space!

I never made it to 'Elite', I'm ashamed to say - I was stuck on Deadly for a
long time. I still have my disk as I vowed to one day return and finish what I
started.

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Vardek
Doesn't any of you Elite players of old remember "Witch Space". When when you
hyperspaced to anywhere, instead of getting to your destination you found
yourself in a featureless void being attacked by the Mighty Thargons and their
babies the Tharglets,if you killed the babies you could then sell them as
"Alien Items" for a large profit if you got out of Witch Space alive!Brilliant
game addictive as Hell,I for one cant wait, bring it on Braben about time!.
Vardek.

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anu_gupta
Saw title. Saw Braben. Pledged.

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EvanAnderson
I remember brainstorming designs for an Elite-style MMORPG an on
Elite/Frontier mailing list back in the mid 90's... Ahhh... memories! This is
one of those things that, though I'd love to see it happen, I don't think ever
will.

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rurounijones
I guess he saw the success of Star Citizen (among others) and decided now
would be a good time to try elite on kickstarter

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moneypenny
I briefly worked at Eidos amongst a bunch of avid gamers (really?). The
consensus verdict: Elite - best game ever. We played Oolite mercilessly in our
free time.

However, regarding a new version of Elite, David Braben is a feckless omega
male, a Thargoid runt who never had his fear glands removed. Frontier is a
fine developer of new games where there's no legacy to destroy, but if Braben
delivers a decent Elite this side of 2015, I will EAT MY SOCKS.

