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Elite Looks Set To Make a Comeback
realxmp writes "After many years in the wilderness, the BBC is reporting that the next sequel to Elite is in the works. After a long Kickstarter campaign, which squeaked through to its target in the last two days, the project was funded and soon many old gamers will be able to relive the joys of exploring the galaxy in what was one of the earliest space trading games."
I presume that's just the startup costs. Otherwise, it seems a little low to me. I mean, if they're going to stay among the elite in the genre today, they're going to have to compete with EVE Online and X3.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
So you can still jump on board if you want to.
There are (as of right now) 33 hours left to go.
And I wouldn't say squeaked through - people are still funding the project, and there is a healthy overshoot of the funding goal.
I played the original Elite on the BBC Micro and the Amstrad CPC 464/6128. I absolutely loved it. The only thing that was missing for me was an online mode where you could do battle against your friends, or team up and kick some Thargoid ass in witch space. I can't wait.
You do not understand. You probably never played Elite. It's *nothing* like any "modern" space sim. Anyway, you could have a team of 20 people working full time for a year and buy some equipment to work on (which is all you need if you already have a company) and have no problems paying everything. Sounds enough to develop this game.
as long as I don't have to break out that little red prism thing you held up to the screen to unlock the game (C64 version, dunno if the others had something similar), I'm all in. I lost that thing about 3 months after I had the game, and I only ever got to jump galaxies once.
Eve Online is click and point rolling dice game. In Elite and Elite: Dangerous you have actually to fly ship. There's actual collitions, you can damage many parts of the ship and it changes accordingly. Planets are real physical objects. In extenstions there's planned walking on planets and around space stations.
Also there won't be lot of hand crafted things (thus costs will be smaller than imagined for scope of the game) - most of stuff will be proceduralrly generated. And as Elite first did use this concept to keep game's universe big in small memory, I trust David will pull this off again. See this update http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1461411552/elite-dangerous/posts/349783 for more information.
As for money - yes, it's just nominal startup costs for core game. Lot of stuff will be in updates (free for game owners) and extentions (those will be longer in development and will cost accordingly more).
Still, it's biggest game Kickstarter for now, in goal and soon in total (for now it's still SC).
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If you read the BBC article you will see that development has already started. The funding is to complete the development.
"Although some early work on the multiplayer title had been done at Mr Braben's game studio Frontier Developments, but needed the cash to turn the code into a finished playable product. If the game did not hit its funding target then development work would stop."
For people with lot of questions and doubts about this game, check out reddit AMA, he is already there and gives answers http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15od2s/i_am_david_braben_cocreator_of_elite_creator_of/
Also check out updates section on Kickstarter which has lots of videos, dev diaries, concept arts, renders http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1461411552/elite-dangerous/posts
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You can play the FOSS version right now OOLITE
Have fun, it is an awesome game.
The brilliant thing about Braben's original ELITE was that he managed to squeeze a huge, open, varied, explorable 3D universe into 32/48/64 Kb of RAM on early 8-bit computers. He also had to publish the game himself - the big game publishers of the time wanted ELITE to have "waves of enemies, short levels, collectable powerups, 3 player lives", because that was the formula popular side-scrolling space games like R-TYPE used. Braben refused to do that - it flew in the face of the 3D space sim he was building - and thus ELITE became the first space game to feature realtime 3D wireframe graphics and break the "R-TYPE" space-game formula. Many people consider David Braben to be something of a gamedesign pioneer and genius. If Braben hasn't lost his touch, the new ELITE: DANGEROUS should wind up being a seriously impressive Space Trading/Exploration/Combat game. ---- For those who prefer action to trading and exploration, there is always "Star Citizen", a Wing Commander sequel made by Chris Roberts. That game will feature high-end CryEngine 3 graphics, and will be all about space combat.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
They will do a Mac/Linux port if they reach £1,400,000. I never played the original Elite, and I'm really curious as to how the procedurally generated stuff mixes with the ability of players to affect the game universe.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
It was the best space game, particularly for its time. I just wish it wasn't so dated, If they do even a half decent job at capturing the original and maybe putting in a half-decent story then I'll be more than happy to throw my money at them. I firmly believe though, that they should shun multiplayer until they have at least developed the graphics engine. I would much prefer to see an GREAT single player space game like freelancer than something that turns out more like Eve (says the guy with two eve accounts).
I would hope they would update it considerably, as I have no desire to shoot polygons in space...
As subject :-)
I tried to get a screengrab, but the counter auto-updates and did so before I grabbed.
Yeah, will be interesting to see if they get a sudden burst of new funding as they get near the £1.4mill mark, as all the Linux players who jump on board. I for one wouldn't bother to contribute until there was a guarantee of a Linux port.
£1.3M is what they've got in Kickstarter pledges. I'm sure that won't be their only source of investment.
Now they can go to a publisher, an angel investor, or a business bank and say '22,500 people were excited enough to back us on Kickstarter, to the tune of almost £60/head on average . Give us an advance and you can be our publisher. Invest some money and you can be a shareholder. Lend us some money and you can have some confidence we'll be good for it."
How is this different from Star Citizen?
And people wonder why Hollywood sticks with sequels, prequels, re-makes, and re-imaginings. They shouldn't - it's where the money is.
For those of us who aren't familiar with the original Elite (and can't check it out on Kickstarter because we're lazy or at work) what kind of game is it exactly?
Is it a turn based game like Tradewars 2002? Or is it a real time flight sim like Wing Commander or X-Wing with economics and upgradeable ships?
If it's the former i'll definitely jump in at the last minute. I loved TW2002 in high school. If it's the later... well i liked X-Wing, but i'm not convinced about the marriage of that type of game to an economic sim. (I've tried out the X series and some similar games on Steam, but the controls kind of sucked and i never got into them at all.)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I look at the production history of the company and I wonder if they can pull of an A game of significant scope after having so many previous false starts, and a history of producing buggy games, only a few popular titles and failing to complete products.
To make a comparison, 3D Realms/Apogee put out more than three times the number of games Frontier Developments was working on in the same time period, and many of them enjoyed impressive sales and popularity, even compared to reasonably popular Frontier Development projects like the xbox port of Roller Coaster Tycoon and an expansion pack. Elite 4 (now Elite: Dangerous) was announced in 1998, so it's been in development in one form or another for 14 years.
Don't get me wrong, false starts and a limited number of original A-class titles for the last 2 decades doesn't detract from the fact that David Braben was a pioneer of the space sim genre, nor does it affect his ability to produce innovative ideas or the potential for astounding games. It just makes me question if the necessary business acumen is there to push reality out of the way for long enough to make an innovative, astounding game, with enough safety net to allow the risk of failure that is so necessary when pushing boundaries, and a realistic schedule that allows enough new/neat along with the established fun gameplay to really set it apart from other titles and it's own direct predecessors.
If I were to continue the 3D Realms/Apogee comparison, I'd note that they had a successful game they made several sequels for as well. The last started development in April 1997 and continued in one form or another till 2011, when Duke Nukem Forever was finally released. This from a company that was several times more successful, with a greater wealth of experience both in game design and publishing.
I'd be overjoyed if this project lived up to even a reasonable number of the expectations we've heaped on it over the years, but at this point, I doubt that it'll even produce an average quality game: I'm expecting to be disappointed. For now at least, I'm going to pin my hopes for a space-sim on Star Citizen.
Let's just be clear, there's a teensy little step between "getting Kickstarter funding target" and "people playing Elite again".
Just sayin'.
-Styopa
Judging from the combat in the video they have abandoned Newtonian physics, and in doing so probably thrown the baby out with the bathwater. If I wanted "fighter jets in space" I can play X3.
I never played the original Elite, and I'm really curious as to how the procedurally generated stuff mixes with the ability of players to affect the game universe.
I did play it, a lot. My guess is that the procedural generation produced the starting state, and it stored a delta. The only thing you could affect was your own status (criminal/clean, and number of kills, your cargo and your armoury) and market prices on the planets where you traded. It definitely felt as if you could skew a market by buying or selling in quantity, repeatedly.
Everything else is happens dynamically based on that. If you're a criminal, you'll get cops and bounty hunters coming for you. If you go to lawless planets with a valuable cargo, you'll get pirates, and so on.
Elite: Dangerous will be a lot more sophisticated, of course.
Elite Plus plays quite well on my Mac in DosBox.
I grew up playing the Elite games, the original, Frontier, not other ones. I hope this is also evolution for the genre. Trading can be boring. Sequel maybe, but if its success and fun...who cares its a repeat?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oolite_(video_game)
I just have to ask; How is the new Elite going to be significantly different from a game like X3 Terran Conflict? It might be easier and faster for him to just license and reskin the X3 engine.
http://www.egosoft.com/games/x3tc/screenshots_en.php
David Braben will not want to let any publisher anywhere near his baby after the Gametek fiasco with Elite 3 (FFE) http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Gametek
I drink therefore I am!
Is Vendetta Online not pretty close to a modern version of Elite (and it runs on a ton of OS's.)
I think Elite was "of its time" - and if you want a nostalgia trip there is always Oolite. I'm not sure that even a good modernised version will re-capture the magic.
There were several grounddbreaking aspects of the original Elite:
(1) the 3D graphics. They look so rubbish now, and even Oolite is nothing to write home about by modern graphical standards, its hard to convey how amazingly jaw-droppingly good they looked back in the 80s. On the original BBC Micro version they'd even done s hack to switch display mode 3/4 of the way down the screen so that the space view was in 320-pixel-wide monochrome (the retina display of its day*) and the control panel was in low-res colour. I'm sure that the new version will have good graphics, but will it stand out?
(2) the vast, generative universe - although it didn't take a genius to work out how it was done this gave the impression of a huge space that nobody could ever explore fully, and its something that the otherwise more modern successors like the 'X' series and 'Freelancer' failed to recreate. Now, if Braben can take that and run with it to the extent of creating a massive universe with distinctive graphics in each system, maybe even generative ship designs, he might have something.
(3) Imagination (and the manual) - I'm sure Elite didn't invent the idea of the almost totally 'in universe' manual, but Elite was a classic example of that art, seeded with red herrings such as rock hermits and generation ships (which may have cropped up in later versions or in Oolite but certainly didn't exist in the original version). You actually felt as if there might be strange things out there to discover... and the graphics (while good for the day) were sparse enough to leave a lot to your imagination (in the same way that novels have better special effects than films, 2GB of texture memory and 512 parallel shader units can't compete with a healthy imagination).
(4) The self-directed play concept: you decide what your mission is.
The only modern game that I can think of that has come close to the appeal of Elite is actually Minecraft. In fact, it has a lot in common in that it combines a massive generative world with free exploration and self-imposed objectives. Actually, I think Notch's upcoming space game sounds as/more interesting than Elite.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Elite servers are free after the initial buy in, game can be played without ever going online, online multiplay is an option with rules you can setup,
plus a plethora of other differences and...
the biggest reason is the team building the product
Eve Online is click and point rolling dice game. In Elite and Elite: Dangerous you have actually to fly ship.
Wow. Two comments about this.
1. If you are saying they are two different games so they will appeal to different audiences I'm afraid you may be mistaken. Eve is very much based on the work that came before it (Elite, and Homeworld) and that particular genre of game is going to (and does) appeal to a very specific audience. Elite is going to be competing with Eve. If it can't, then it will die, and no amount of hoping it's something different will change that.
2. Eve (if the developers are to be believed) has the rolling dice mechanic you sited for practical network bandwidth, latency, and rendering reasons. The idea is that the client knows the parameters of every ship in the game and knows what commands are given to every ship and only transmits those commands to all of the other clients on-grid which subsequently renders them correctly. What Elite wants to do is allow you to fly the ship free-form. Fine, but that is a lot more information to transmit to each and every client on-grid (because you end up transmitting real-time coordinates). Good luck. Once Elite has 1000+ ship space battles with the mechanic you site as superior you may come back here and gloat. I suspect what you are able to do in-game will end up having to be artificially limited out of necessity and probably sold to you as a feature or design element.
I used to play Elite. I used to play Homeworld. I play Eve. And I sincerely hope to play Elite: Dangerous. But Elite will be competing with Eve for my monthly dollars, and they have some serious architectural challenges ahead of them.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
Star citizen i think made it to over 7million dollars... :)
i funded both
go games
Eve is very much based on the work that came before it (Elite, and Homeworld) and that particular genre of game is going to (and does) appeal to a very specific audience. Elite is going to be competing with Eve.
That's not true. Having looked at Eve previously I have no desire to play it. I'm very keen to play Elite though. They are not the same audience.
What Elite wants to do is allow you to fly the ship free-form. Fine, but that is a lot more information to transmit to each and every client on-grid (because you end up transmitting real-time coordinates). Good luck. Once Elite has 1000+ ship space battles
None of the realtime MMORPGs are stopped by this challenge.
So it will have bad teeth, obnoxious accents, and long boring waits while you drink warm beer.
No sane American should buy it...
It definitely felt as if you could skew a market by buying or selling in quantity, repeatedly.
Wishful thinking is all. Once you hyperspaced on, all market prices were forgotten. There wasn't memory available to remember them.
None of the realtime MMORPGs are stopped by this challenge.
Perhaps I'm out of the loop, but can you tell me which MMO has 1k v 1k combat, or anything even remotely similar?
WoW does not. GW2 does not (go into WvW with a small force and you have magically disappearing friends and enemies). DAOC never did (just a few animists and everyone was lagged to shit). I suppose you can rate Planetside an MMO; it does not.
I never made it to Elite status, only Deadly.
We've waited for this for 25 years...Right on, Commander!
The whole concept of 1k v 1k battles is just one of the things that put me off eve outright. Sure, there will be gaming addicts happy to pay for subscription in exchange of grinding for 5 hours every night, but I guess I'm not the dollars these games will ever hope to get.
So, I am not a big Eve fanboy (even though I do play), and I have criticized it publicly here on slashdot before (as SimCity in space (which has limited appeal)). And I would love to have good competition in the genre. But (and not to try to be an asshole here), your description of Eve misses the mark of what it is and if the concept you describe has put you off it may be you've misunderstood it from the outset.
You've probably heard it described as a sandbox. That is what it is. I've never seen a 1k x 1k battle, and frankly I've never seen more than a half dozen ships duking it out at a time, and I have never participated in any such battles of any size. What you do and what you see is your choice (that is the point). Elite (the original) had the concept of the sandbox insomuch as there were markets and systems and what you did in the universe was entirely up to you. I hope the games are similar in that way. The point I was making about the OP's remarks was where that sandbox breaks down, and my supposition is that Elite will put limits on the sandbox out of necessity because of the game mechanic the OP was espousing.
You do not ever have to grind in Eve (unlike most MMORPGs which require it to progress). In terms of ability Eve progression is done in real-time (the longer you are a subscriber the more you can progress), but again, in what skills you progress is a decision you can make for yourself. There is no "dps/tank/support" tracks and you should really choose just one or you're going to be lame, etc. There are hundreds if not thousands of skills and they affect how you perform in whichever of the hundreds of ships you choose to pilot, or industries you choose to get into or occupations you try to excel at.
It's not a grind, but it *IS* another job... :)
Is Elite going to excel at gameplay and also at the sandbox? I hope so, but I fear the challenges are huge. I agree with everyone here who has said that it is not enough money (or time). Eve is still working at getting the balance just right and they've been doing it for 10 years.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
... And I sincerely hope to play Elite: Dangerous. But Elite will be competing with Eve for my monthly dollars, and they have some serious architectural challenges ahead of them.
No it won't. There won't be any monthly fees for Elite: Dangerous.
But Elite will be competing with Eve for my monthly dollars, and they have some serious architectural challenges ahead of them.
It wont compete for me. Ofc I will play Elite. And after a time I will see if it is worth it or not and perhaps switch back to Eve.
Eve is unfortunately in its game mechanics just like WoW. Everything you do is covered by some "magic". None of the attributes your ships or your weapons have make any sense (in terms of physic laws). I personally find it incredible hard to play, I can not switch of my "natural feeling for physics" and commit myself to the game mechanics. I died like 2 dozens of times trying to go through a jump gate, until I realized there is some "agression timer" which does not allow you to use the gate, how retarded is that? (Yeah, the game says so, with a small text box, which is gone after a tenth of a second, so you never can read it under stress) ... There are dozens more of such retarded game mechanics you only realize when you die and complain in corp chat and everyone tells you: you are a moron (because they expect you to know that bullshit).
Frankly, a new Elite, especially if it will be multi player or even MMO like, will be 'just the game' we old geeks look for ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
That's not true. Having looked at Eve previously I have no desire to play it. I'm very keen to play Elite though. They are not the same audience.
I briefly tried Eve but also found it uninteresting. However Vendetta Online looks fantastic. If I actually had time to play games, this is the one I would be sinking hours into. It looks remarkably similar to the proposed Elite. I cannot understand why no comparisons to Vendetta are being made?
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Ever play Darkspace? It's been a while since I played it, I didn't like the 2 dimentional space battle in simulated 3D space (All movement was restricted to x,y movements, eliminating the z plane), but they have the Metaverse option of play which essentially had thousands of players online at a time and could interact in real time, all a player had to do was perform an in-game FTL jump from one Solar System(server) to another to meet up with Allies or intercept Enemies in that system.
Simple point is that there are ways of providing supermassive simultaneous gameplay and a Metaverse setup is only one of those ways.
Not Mac/Linux, just Mac.
It was a little disturbing to hear David Braben on Ubuntu Podcast as a Guest - Answer a light speed question completly wrong.
One would have though - of all people - he would be knowledgable about such things......
After all these years - It seems all he has is a few ideas that have been kicking around - that he has decided to try and wedge into a rushed kickstarter project.
No years of pollish. No dynamic cities like we were expecting from the Hitman failed project. Perhaps a few factions as staple fair but nothing new to the table.
Sorry - I don't have much faith in the quality of this kickstarter - Or even DB now.
1. Graphics wise it will have good competition and because of budget it probably won't stand out.
2. The details and the rhetoric seem to indicate that expansive universe with unique locals will be a design goal.
3. this part is actually the driving force for most. For me having faith in the designer to keep true to the original ideology, which made the game as enjoyable, is the primary reason to take a risk in funding a project that may fizzle out.
4. This seems to be part of the game design as well.
Oh, oops, you're right. *sigh* Well, that's something of a disappointment. Oh, well.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Is it possible to buy it anywhere anymore?
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
It's considered abandonware. http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/386/Elite+Plus.html
Nature is procedurally generated.
After dying for the 5th or 6th time shortly after leaving the station, I think perhaps I will give it a miss.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Thank you for the link though. :-)
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
"I used to play Elite. I used to play Homeworld. I play Eve. And I sincerely hope to play Elite: Dangerous. But Elite will be competing with Eve for my monthly dollars, and they have some serious architectural challenges ahead of them."
You do know that Elite: Dangerous isn't subscription based? :) Also audience could be the same, but games are so far and different in their execution that I won't even start to talk about it.
Of course EVE is rolling dice, because otherwise you can't do a MMO in scale they wanted it. Heck, all MMO I play is rolling dice. I still enjoy them - as very dedicated EVE fans enjoy their share of game.
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Yes, GP confused me for a moment there. I decided to gave it a miss because I felt the sum was a bit large for a game quite likely not available on my platform. I almost thought I'd missed something.
Sins of a Solar Empire was made for less than 1 million dollars and was DRM free-ish.
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20026