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.
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.
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.
You know what? You're absolutely right. I had a vague sense that this was once a popular game, but didn't understand how so.
>Elite is one of the most popularly requested games to be remade,[42] with some arguing that it is still the best example of the genre to date, with more recent titles—including its sequel—not rising up to the same level.
Elite was such a popular game that its still being implemented on the old 8-bit systems by dedicated fans, just for the love of doing it (and also for the love of old hardware):
If you're of a certain age, then Neither Elite nor David Braben need any introduction. As soon as I saw the HN headline my response was 'shut up and take my money.' 30 years after its release I still consider it one of the best computer games ever made.
Your memory's going, I'm afraid. The original version, the BBC Model B one, used a novel split-screen technique. The upper larger portion showing space was Mode 4, 1bpp at 320 × 256 if it was the whole screen, the bottom flight-deck portion was Mode 5, 2bpp at 160 × 256. Here's a screenshot, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c4/BBC_Micro_Elit...
No, you're right, the version shown is the second processor edition.
The pick of the bunch is probably the Master 128 edition, as it sports colour AND double buffering, though it won't be as fast as the second processor edition on account of the missing processor:
"-Product simulations are prohibited. Projects cannot simulate events to demonstrate what a product might do in the future. Products can only be shown performing actions that they’re able to perform in their current state of development.
-Product renderings are prohibited. Product images must be photos of the prototype as it currently exists."
I considered that briefly but they made sure to clarify that it only applied to certain categories:
>The new guideline prohibiting renderings applies only to projects categorized as Product Design or Hardware. Other categories, including Games, are not affected.
Besides, that wouldn't at all explain why there is a complete lack of pitch videos or artwork (even like reward tier artwork).
The most successful game Kickstarter campaigns (Double Fine, Eternity) have shown nothing[1], allowing donators to project their own desires onto the project instead of being constrained by the game's actual direction. Time will tell whether this is brilliant or foolhardy.
[1] They tend to update the pages after they get the money, so you can't judge them by what they look like now.
EVE is not a bad take on Elite with one huge show-stopper, EVE is all about coop and team playing. In EVE you cannot dominate without huge corp backing, Elite was all about the single player.
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.
Frontier was fine, a good Elite sequel. Even First Encounters was okay after extensive patching. And the problems with First Encounters at launch were apparently down to deadline issues with the publisher, just the kind of thing that a Kickstarter launch ought to avoid.
> 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.
I found this utterly pathetic. He asks for so much from the fans but hasn't even done the most basic of legwork.
Seems like a total cash grab to me, prepare for disappointment
Only one of the original developers. Ian Bell is not involved, as far as I can tell. And I wouldn't expect him to be, given the pair had a fairly public falling out many years back.
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.
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].
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.
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.
The big thing missing in EVE for me is being able to play without being griefed by other players. Unfortunately I have an _extreme_ dislike for PvP - which creates a love/hate relationship with EVE. I'm into pretty much every other aspect of the game - even the huge spreadsheets people often joke about.
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?
The vastness of the universe in the original Elite had a wow factor, but really didn't serve much purpose in the game.
Much more important was the trading aspect.
Some systems were safe, and law abiding, and had police ships. Some were criminal, and had pirates circling. Many goods were common across them, but you could buy narcotics and slaves from criminal systems. Your behaviour affected how other ships would react - trading slaves was profitable, but you'd be attacked by police and pirates. Attacking other cargo ships (to capture their cargo) would turn you criminal. Attacking pirates would make you more law-abiding.
You could find two systems and find the right product to buy-low, sell-high.
There's more in common with games like Fallout 3, although fallout 3 didn't really have a good trading system.
(All the above is from memory. I have no doubt made mistakes.
There is one minor aspect of the game that deserves mentioning - the mildly brutal learning curve just to fly the ship. Do you remember the first time you tried to dock with a spinning station? And how the autopilot mocked you, priced at 10 times your net worth?
Docking was my favorite part of the game. Particularly when under fire and heavily damaged. How fast should I come in? How steep? Can't be too cautious or this pirate on my tail will waste me. Glance the edges and I'll be dead anyway.
<armchair role=gamedev>
There are other places in Elite where similar high pressure situations could be added. The obvious one is to make the sun scoop more dangerous. Make it work better the deeper you go in the sun. But in addition to the hard surface to avoid crashing into, the sun does damage over time proportionate to depth. (Maybe collection rate is linear to depth while damage is squared, with a small safe zone for the patient at the top.)
A less exciting one would be cargo transfer. What if cargo was moved by porters? The union guys take their time, but do a good job. You could do it yourself, but you'll get irate customers if you clip a corner and damage the stock. Better hurry though, the police inspections are only a few docking bays down the row from your ship.
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.
Quite well actually. There's a space MMO project called Infinity, by Flavien Brebion that has demoed it for years but has released little material lately.
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.
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.
(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)
Docking wasn't THAT hard, and was one of the most fun parts of the game for me.
Not much has matched the fear and excitement of docking after a dangerous run through pirate infested outer space while holding valuable cargo. That moment as you enter the space station, matching your rotation to its rotation, only for your heart to skip a beat as your ship drifts off-center and you hear it scrape against the wall before successfully docking.
Elite was the most enjoyable game of my youth. I was lucky enough to have a Model B and although docking was hard it was also very satisfying when you got the hang of it.
Excited to see how this iteration of Elite will turn out!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.