Elite: Dangerous

Still 43 days left, they may make it.
Althoug they do ask for a lot of money if you keep in mind that they have not shown anything yet.
 
Kyle Maverick said:
IT got publicity in the UK? I didn't see anything about this except on here
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Umm, I did post here the link to a BBC News interview. I didn't find it by searching - it was there on the front page :). So yeah, he did get publicity, and high-profile at that. Unfortunately for him, I don't think most gamers rely on BBC News to stay informed...
 
Quarto said:
Umm, I did post here the link to a BBC News interview. I didn't find it by searching - it was there on the front page :). So yeah, he did get publicity, and high-profile at that. Unfortunately for him, I don't think most gamers rely on BBC News to stay informed...
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Ah, I thought they meant something a bit more than the BBC News thing. I was expecting some of the UK gamer mags
 
FekLeyrTarg said:
A teaser of Elite: Dangerous has been uploaded today:
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There now, that doesn't look half bad. I mean, it's still far from the materials shown for Star Citizen, but it's a nice start. Too bad they didn't have this trailer ready at the start of their fundraising - as it stands, it looks like they're doing even worse than I had expected (I thought they would squeak through, just barely meeting their goals - but now it looks like they might fail even at that).

I have to say, though, I do feel sorry for David Braben. I mean, the guy made his career on Elite. He didn't have a huge success with Frontier or Frontier: First Encounters, but the series does have a modest following, and in many ways it remained the benchmark for all other space trading games. He absolutely deserves to get a boatload of money to have another shot at this. But just when he's getting ready to announce his crowdfunding effort, along comes Chris Roberts - famous only for single-player cinematic games - and totally upstages him with a far more advanced project. It must have been a painful blow. I criticised Braben for launching his Kickstarter without sufficient materials, but in all honesty - I don't know if he had any other, better option.
 
Aginor said:
If you like procedural generation you should look at the videos the Infinity project posted. Those are impressive, although they are from an early alpha without trees on the planets and stuff. browse a bit on youtube, there are some more.
With Elite: Dangerous I got the problem that they have shown nothing but talking people. For all we know the graphics might be like the original Elite :D
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I don't get the love for Infinity. That thing is in development for ten years or so. So in both cases, Elite and Infinity, you have just videos. I trust the Frontier team more though, because I'll never forget the moment when I first started up Frontier: Elite 2 and thought at first it's going to play just like the Wing Commander clones of that time. And then (after countless of crashes) I realized that you were able to start off from that planet and move into space seamlessly. To see the planet shrink from a screen filling monstrosity into a tiny dot was an awesome moment. And I was just floored when I understood that the game was simulating the entire Milky Way. And all this with a 500 KB executable.

I hope they make it. By the way, the background story of the Elite games is pretty awesome actually, it's just not told in the games itself much, but by the accompanying handbooks:

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There were better written than most of the SF bullcrap that gets printed today
 
The thing with Infinity is the following:
- Until there was Elite:Dangerous it was the only space MMO in development featuring a procedural engine
- Infinity's procedural engine is procedural from A to Z. Procedural Galaxy, procedural planets, procedural plants and so on. Even procedural ship textures! Rendered in real time. They showed that it is possible.
- Realistic galaxy. So you got all the stuff there is in the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram. You got all known planet types. You got realistic distances, sizes, realistic physics, planet movements and all the stuff. Even the atmosphere of planets is computed procedurally, by using the numbers physics tells us.
- Infinity also has a very active community that helped the developer to build space ships, stations and all that stuff for the game.
- There were not only videos but a playable combat prototype (you can still download and play it) that showed that you can have plenty of fun flying around in a newtonian physics engine, shooting stuff. It worked.

And yes, it is in development for a long time because all the stuff you see was done by ONE guy. Alone. For years. It wasn't until 2011 that a second guy joined the team. What they lack? Money and time. So their main focus is to build the engine that they can sell to other guys so they can get some mones, and then the game.

And yeah, they don't have the name of Eric Braben. Otherwise they have shown plenty of stuff people enjoyed, which is why there are still lots of people in their forums. But they have shown lots of stuff more than the Elite guys have.

So basically all the good stuff people hope that the Elite guys will deliver was in the works already. And there was no Elite. That's the reason why Infinity gets so much love.
With Star Citizen and Elite:Dangerous things start to look ugly for Infinity. I wish E:D and SC all the best of course, but I hope the Infinity guys will still get the opportunity to at least finish the I-Novae engine, or even the whole game.
 
There's a new dev diary with David Braben about Elite IV:

Mr Braben seems to be quite optimistic about Kickstarter. But not entirely.
 
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