NeoGAF

Finally got round to backing this at the £20 level. None of the rewards/incentives for going higher are of any interest atm.

Originally Posted by Frogacuda

This is simply not true. It was going to be a grid-based first-person dungeon crawl with positional combat with four party members (like Legend of Grimrock or Eye of the Beholder) and it was going to have a sci-fi theme with some fantasy elements.

Day 1, not updates. Day 1 was give us moneyz we will make 2 RPGs (which looked like they didn't want to do one good game but two crappy ones). It was old school RPG nothing more which didn't state anything. Later they did introduce finally more concept how game will play.

Originally Posted by Perkel

Day 1, not updates. Day 1 was give us moneyz we will make 2 RPGs (which looked like they didn't want to do one good game but two crappy ones). It was old school RPG nothing more which didn't state anything. Later they did introduce finally more concept how game will play.

But Day 1 Project Eternity was exactly the same. They said they wanted to make an isometric Infinity Engine-style game, in an original fantasy world, gimme moneyz plox. There was almost no concept art or gameplay details at all, just a crappy world map.

That sort of pitch works if you're Obsidian or Double Fine. Not so much if you're Tom Hall.

I guess it also works if you're Dave Braben, but maybe not to the tune of $2,000,000. This is actually doing pretty well all told, but the goal is really high.

really nice video on procedural generation http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...v=iTBvpd3_Vqk#!

some footage of early game visuals and systems there

The more I see of it, the more I want it...

But he's still not really going far enough in showing stuff!

Get your head out of the videos Braben! Give us more footage!

Hell, even just a quick fly through of the kind of detail we can expect from the ships would be great.

Originally Posted by Joseph Merrick

really nice video on procedural generation http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...v=iTBvpd3_Vqk#!

some footage of early game visuals and systems there

That's weird, the background footage is giving me motion sickness. That doesn't usually happen to me.


edit: That's pretty damn cool though, those procedurally generated clouds for the gas giants.

I think youre expecting stuff to be shown that just doesn't exist yet. This isn't anything like Star Citizen where an earnest effort was made to make something and then pitch, this is very much the very super early days of anything, which makes the year and a couple of months dev time pretty laughable. Good thing The Outsider made all those dates! Oh. Oh no.

Its also hilarious in 2012 to see someone talking about procedural generation with just asteroids and clouds in the background when Minecraft has sold a bajillion and people expect a little more from their randomised content nowadays than a different coloured planet in the background and star-maps. Its a shame Notch isnt further along with his Elite-alike.

Originally Posted by Pie and Beans

I think youre expecting stuff to be shown that just doesn't exist yet. This isn't anything like Star Citizen where an earnest effort was made to make something and then pitch, this is very much the very super early days of anything, which makes the year and a couple of months dev time pretty laughable. Good thing The Outsider made all those dates! Oh. Oh no.

Its also hilarious in 2012 to see someone talking about procedural generation with just asteroids and clouds in the background when Minecraft has sold a bajillion and people expect a little more from their randomised content nowadays than a different coloured planet in the background and star-maps. Its a shame Notch isnt further along with his Elite-alike.

To be honest, I don't expect the game to be much more than Elite or Frontier offered, so I believe the development time could be realistic.

And there's many details about the project we don't know. He talked about generating clouds for gas giants, I think that means it'll be possible to fly close to normal planets too, and in that case they'd have to make random generated terrain.

Originally Posted by Pie and Beans

I think youre expecting stuff to be shown that just doesn't exist yet. This isn't anything like Star Citizen where an earnest effort was made to make something and then pitch, this is very much the very super early days of anything, which makes the year and a couple of months dev time pretty laughable. Good thing The Outsider made all those dates! Oh. Oh no.

Its also hilarious in 2012 to see someone talking about procedural generation with just asteroids and clouds in the background when Minecraft has sold a bajillion and people expect a little more from their randomised content nowadays than a different coloured planet in the background and star-maps. Its a shame Notch isnt further along with his Elite-alike.

They have 50 days to model up a ship and do some renders in the vein of the Constellation ship they're showing off with RSI.

But I think you're right. These guys... probably should've invested a little more preproduction time into this project before asking for crowd funding. I mean, they say they've been dabbling on it for the last 10 years... but there's scant details for something that's been stewing for so long.

Originally Posted by kurtrussell

The way things are looking today, I'm actually not entirely optimistic that it will get funded afterall.



£29,000 taken today. £932,021 and 58 days to go. £16,069 per day to hit goal, but I can't see the current levels of donation meeting or exceeding £16k every day for the next month and a half.

I think the major reason for the slow rate is the difference between 20$ (25$) and 20£ (30£)

this kickstarter is too expensive for a digital game (with an IP only a minority of oldtimers recognise)

I see the Kicktraq projections are now showing it'll miss its target by about £250,000. I notice there have been some updates to the kickstarter page recently (there's another video, and some more images) but it's clearly not enough to get the kind of spike they need.

Someone is doing a kickstarter for his kickstarter pledge

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/man-s...pledge/0107005

Oh man, they finally released some gameplay footage...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5JYR...layer_embedded


Not quite as awesome as Star Citizen's reveal...

but I'd say that the combat and flight engine looks better in this. Faster and more dynamic, lots of banking and rolling...

and I like what I'm hearing about the ships heating up the longer they fight, attracting more third party observers into the fray, like some insane rolling ball of fury that starts collecting more and more ships.

Pledged @ 20 pounds, but will be happy to upgrade as they show more.

Originally Posted by Zaptruder

Oh man, they finally released some gameplay footage...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5JYR...layer_embedded


Not quite as awesome as Star Citizen's reveal...

but I'd say that the combat and flight engine looks better in this. Faster and more dynamic, lots of banking and rolling...

and I like what I'm hearing about the ships heating up the longer they fight, attracting more third party observers into the fray, like some insane rolling ball of fury that starts collecting more and more ships.

Pledged @ 20 pounds, but will be happy to upgrade as they show more.

That looks fun. But it doesn't look Newtonian, which I thought they were using? (and which caused me to lose interest, because while it might be realistic, it's dull. Not to mention, asteroid fields like that aren't realistic, either, but they are fun.)

Originally Posted by DiscoJer

That looks fun. But it doesn't look Newtonian, which I thought they were using? (and which caused me to lose interest, because while it might be realistic, it's dull. Not to mention, asteroid fields like that aren't realistic, either, but they are fun.)

Well, there's space newtonian and there's atmospheric newtonian.

I think both Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous will be using the latter to a degree.

so basically, it'll play like all the dog fighting games we like from yore, minus large constant gravity (but I think given Elite's traverse from ground to space nature, that you're going to get large gravity effects).

Originally Posted by DiscoJer

That looks fun. But it doesn't look Newtonian, which I thought they were using? (and which caused me to lose interest, because while it might be realistic, it's dull. Not to mention, asteroid fields like that aren't realistic, either, but they are fun.)

Hopefully they'll find some happy medium between Newtonian and fly where you want

Originally Posted by frankie_baby

Hopefully they'll find some happy medium between Newtonian and fly where you want

It sounds like they'll have a system of normal flight, sub space and hyperspace flight, in place of time dilation found in previous elite games (because it's supposed to be dark souls style multiplayer or something).

If they do it logically - then it should be normal flight is newtonian, and medium scale multiplayer (like a guild wars instance or Battlefield map).

Sub space will be used for travel around planets in a solar system; basically a slower version of hyperspace flight - set waypoints via flight computer and sit back - you might be able to see targets and blips a distance out in sub space flight; allowing you to engage, disengage.

If you get into distance of another player, you'll probably have some sort of device that can be used to knock them out of sub space and force an engagement. The longer you fight, the more visible the two blips become to other sub space travellers.

And hyperspace is just typical worm hole, use tons of fuel per jump travel. Would be nice to have a system of jump gates and self jumping - jump gates allow for free (or reduced cost) travel from within close proximity of a main system, while self jumps allow for jumps from anywhere at the cost of more fuel (or really standard fuel).

Maybe add a form of recharge time for hyperspace jumping, 30 minutes to 5 minutes depending on the engine class and jump distance made.

With the danger of coming over as a newbie whiner and re-visiting general Kickstarter issues but that's exactly the stuff that pisses me off to no end. Big names leveraging their fame to get funding for ideas. I mean wtf. So much money for literally nothing but promises.

Obviously they had to work for their fame at one point or another but stuff like this is just straight out rude and insulting.

However it shows how powerful the will to belong to something or share support for an idea, name or brand is in communities.

I generally don't understand how people can throw money at ideas without knowing what will come out of it. I absolutely loved the original ManiacMansion, Day of the Tentacle etc franchises but I still don't part with my money hastily.

It's like pressing "like" on facebook with money involved..

Originally Posted by Tash

With the danger of coming over as a newbie whiner and re-visiting general Kickstarter issues but that's exactly the stuff that pisses me off to no end. Big names leveraging their fame to get funding for ideas. I mean wtf. So much money for literally nothing but promises.

Obviously they had to work for their fame at one point or another but stuff like this is just straight out rude and insulting.

However it shows how powerful the will to belong to something or share support for an idea, name or brand is in communities.

I generally don't understand how people can throw money at ideas without knowing what will come out of it. I absolutely loved the original ManiacMansion, Day of the Tentacle etc franchises but I still don't part with my money hastily.

It's like pressing "like" on facebook with money involved..

Fans supporting what they love with money....shocking....

Originally Posted by Tash

With the danger of coming over as a newbie whiner and re-visiting general Kickstarter issues but that's exactly the stuff that pisses me off to no end. Big names leveraging their fame to get funding for ideas. I mean wtf. So much money for literally nothing but promises.

Obviously they had to work for their fame at one point or another but stuff like this is just straight out rude and insulting.

However it shows how powerful the will to belong to something or share support for an idea, name or brand is in communities.

I generally don't understand how people can throw money at ideas without knowing what will come out of it. I absolutely loved the original ManiacMansion, Day of the Tentacle etc franchises but I still don't part with my money hastily.

It's like pressing "like" on facebook with money involved..

Personally I'd rather give my money to a "big name" than some unknown as long as i could see kickstarter was a better way to fund the game than going to a publisher and after what happened with the last elite game this should be kept as far away from a publisher as possible

*i havent pledged yet due to lack of cash at the moment but i will be doing

Originally Posted by Tash

With the danger of coming over as a newbie whiner and re-visiting general Kickstarter issues but that's exactly the stuff that pisses me off to no end. Big names leveraging their fame to get funding for ideas. I mean wtf. So much money for literally nothing but promises.

Obviously they had to work for their fame at one point or another but stuff like this is just straight out rude and insulting.

However it shows how powerful the will to belong to something or share support for an idea, name or brand is in communities.

I generally don't understand how people can throw money at ideas without knowing what will come out of it. I absolutely loved the original ManiacMansion, Day of the Tentacle etc franchises but I still don't part with my money hastily.

It's like pressing "like" on facebook with money involved..

It's called disposable income and charity.

That said, I don't doubt that they wouldn't be able to get funding for a game like this without this sort of crowd-funding mechanism. Simply the market for this kind of stuff is dormant... and it's not a risk even an established developer can justify to self fund for if there's no proof of interest and therefore a market.

So outside of the money that it brings in, it's also a gauge of the interest that still exists in their legacy properties - it doesn't mean that they're only going to develop using only kickstarter money.

For me, having contributed to about 400-500 bucks worth of these games (lions share going to Roberts), I have to say, that simply the idea is worth more to me than most modern games.

Plus, they're established developers, so I'm confident in their ability to execute as they have done so in the past.

That said, Richard Garriott of Ultima fame is doing something quite clever - breaking the game they want to make into smaller games/tech development pieces, then using those smaller, more casual games to help fund the intended goal (in Garriott's case, the spiritual successor to Ultima, with the working titled Ultimate RPG).

Originally Posted by Tash

I generally don't understand how people can throw money at ideas without knowing what will come out of it. I absolutely loved the original ManiacMansion, Day of the Tentacle etc franchises but I still don't part with my money hastily.

It's like pressing "like" on facebook with money involved..

I think part of it is a lack of options. KS largely funds types of games that aren't being made, whether because they used to be popular but aren't anymore (like this, or all the Sierra ones, or Tex Murphy, or Wasteland 2, Project Eternity, etc) or indie developers with new ideas that publishers aren't interested in.

It's actually somewhat ironic, there are probably mores games being made now than any point in history, yet in some ways there is less diversity than 20 years ago. For me the heyday of gaming was the early 90s, now I hardly ever game (and spend way too much time here).

Yeah I see your points but from a developer point of view it's frustrating to see money sums like that being thrown at names just for ideas and a few mock-ups.

I get the whole "evaluate interest level" etc and not wanting to lose IP or control type thing. I also understand the "we want this idea made" influence.

But then you have comments such as this which get me pissed off:

Personally I'd rather give my money to a "big name" than some unknown as long as i could see kickstarter was a better way to fund the game than going to a publisher

That means no names or startups would never have a chance, no matter how good there ideas or designs or execution is. And there is already a tendency of more and more people starting to think exactly like this. Not to mention for a small developer the best option IS kickstarter and most often the only one. Investors are generally scary for indies, publishers are going for your IP and self funding is not only a time but also a manpower issue. It's easier for big established studios to use other means of funding then KS.

I guess bottom line is that there are many different game projects on kickstarter and all of them have to be evaluated separately. It's very dangerous to generalize KS.

I absolutely understand that the big names had to work for their communities/fans/fame but some of the abuse KS as much as small indies do with shady projects.

It all comes down to creating fair projects that explain in detail what your backers get and why you need the money and on the backer side you need to clearly read the fine print and evaluate before you support someone.

Sooner or later KS will reach it's saturation level like any other platform.

Originally Posted by Tash

With the danger of coming over as a newbie whiner and re-visiting general Kickstarter issues but that's exactly the stuff that pisses me off to no end. Big names leveraging their fame to get funding for ideas. I mean wtf. So much money for literally nothing but promises.

Obviously they had to work for their fame at one point or another but stuff like this is just straight out rude and insulting.

I don't follow why people have a problem with this. Braben's been trying to get this off the ground without Kickstarter for 10 years, and it hasn't happened. Now Kickstarter provides a mechanism to actually, well... kickstart this thing. Why is that wrong?

Yes, backing is a risk, and I don't think people should look at it like a purchase. Not every Kickstarter will be what we hoped it would, but we've seen this year how cumulatively it can dramatically impact the gaming landscape.

I, for example, backed a lot of adventure games, and while I suffer no delusions that every single one of them will be as good as I hope, it's also very clear that 2013 will be the best year for adventure games in at least 15 years because of that.

And the "celebrity" aspect of that is VITAL. The adventure genre has been suffering largely for lack of great writers. The fact that no publisher understands the value these established writers bring is why we get a lot of mediocre unfunny German games that look and sound nice but never come close to why I loved the genre in the first place. Now I have my heroes back, and that's worth it to me.

Frogacuda, it's not the fact that you need to show more as a no-name, that's kind of logical and understandable. It's more the fact that the big names automatically also get a huge amount of exposure for free - that's the biggest hurdle for an indie :)

What I don't get is: Can't those big names self fund? Maybe not Braben but there are other big names who sold millions of copies of previous games. I mean seriously Moly? Does he REALLY need pre-orders like that?

I just think there are other sources that need it more and they are getting overshadowed.

The whole "We are trying to asses risk and demand" is getting old as well and backers are paying the big names to see if their game would have any following. You can do that without asking for money.

But to be honest, it also comes from my personal frustration with trying to get our own game off the ground. Still, I stand by my opinion :)

Originally Posted by Tash

I just think there are other sources that need it more and they are getting overshadowed.

At any given time, there's maybe at most, 6 or 7 well made, interesting game-related Kickstarters. I really don't think anyone is being overshadowed with those kinds of numbers. I think it's easy to confuse (and of course, there's no sure way to actually tell the difference between them) "lack of interest because game and/or pitch just doesn't seem that interesting" and "There's this awesome Kickstarter but nobody knows about it, oh no!"

Originally Posted by Tash

What I don't get is: Can't those big names self fund? Maybe not Braben but there are other big names who sold millions of copies of previous games. I mean seriously Moly? Does he REALLY need pre-orders like that?

I don't know if it's fair or reasonable to expect Molyneaux to self-fund personally, although he has done quite a lot of that over the years. A company funding is one thing, but for an individual that's a lot to ask. His company is new and he's financed it thus far out of pocket. That's not a great position to be in.

That said, he could certainly find investors, I'm sure. And probably should have. He may have painted himself into a corner, there, since a failed Kickstarter may put him in a worse position with investors than if he went to them in the first place.

I just think there are other sources that need it more and they are getting overshadowed.

Again, all evidence is that these big Kickstarters increase the visibility of the smaller ones, not hurt it. I really wouldn't worry about it from that angle.

It's at 50% currently with 35 days to go. It has a good shot at making it's goal. New vid as well:

Here we have a new Development Diary, in which I talk about how the galaxy evolves and how this relates to missions:

http://youtu.be/5uKD1ap5hsI

I moderated a video chat with David Braben and Chris Roberts talking about Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen. Here's Part 1:

http://youtu.be/NvPU8e2ezgo

thanks for the link, gary

No way this makes its target now without a complete relaunch.

Originally Posted by iapetus

No way this makes its target now without a complete relaunch.

Yeah I noticed the Kicktraq projections are now showing it'll miss the mark by a fair margin :(

Originally Posted by iapetus

No way this makes its target now without a complete relaunch.

unless they let us play a demo with all base systems running I won't pay a penny. Braben has been trying to make this game for like 15 years or so and failed. He didn't put his soul into this. He had other priorities. As I see no passion in this project I'll back it only if they show me that they only need some people to flesh out content while everything else is done.

Originally Posted by iapetus

No way this makes its target now without a complete relaunch.

Which is a shame, because what they're showing is starting to make me more excited for it as a game... then Star Citizen (which I think will be a much more awesome experience; if only because of the intense focus on graphics and peripheral support).


Seriously, Braben needs to rethink his crowdfunding strategy. The upside is that they'll have the material that they worked on during this campaign to show in a new campaign.

Other things I want to see would be more concept art on planets and bases. Ship Brochures ala Star Citizen (that thing was goddamn effective. Got me to pledge an extra $125), and information about weapons/upgrades/etc.

Even if all that stuff is subject to change with development; at least it gives us an indication of what they're thinking (of how to improve the 17 year old First Encounters experience).

Originally Posted by iapetus

No way this makes its target now without a complete relaunch.

Hopefully though should show braben there's enough interest to make the game anyway

Interview part 2:

http://youtu.be/IoLYNN7NltY

Originally Posted by iapetus

No way this makes its target now without a complete relaunch.

Braben needs to look at what made Star Citizen successful. 80% of the reason was the prototype. Braben didn't have anything and even the new videos only consist of him talking, or at most some lackluster asteroid field that looked like it was hastily thrown together.

Originally Posted by Gary Whitta

Interview part 2:

http://youtu.be/IoLYNN7NltY

you seriously didn't know that it is 6-7$mln ? You should check Neogaf twice more now.

good interview though.

New Dev Diary update.



http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...lite-dangerous

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...v=6gMbLjUjs1w#!

It's finally starting to look like a game that deserves to be funded. In a sense, it'll be quite similar to what Star Citizen is doing... but I get the feeling that the action will be somewhat more frenetic, and there'll be more variety in terms of player interactions and a more in depth trading system.

I also honestly love the ship designs that they've shown so far - they're not hyper detailed like in Star Citizen, but they have excellent iconic lines. The Viper Mk 2 design looks miles ahead of the Hornet; the two fill equivalent roles in their respective universes.

I've upped my pledge to 50 pounds... might up it once more to 75 if they really bring the goods.

They need to start showing the stuff that made Elite, Elite. Hint, it wasn't the shooty stuff.

Originally Posted by Munin

They need to start showing the stuff that made Elite, Elite. Hint, it wasn't the shooty stuff.

What is it you think makes elite, Elite?

The combat from Frontier and First Encounters was somewhat lacking (because it was pure newtonian) - I'm excited to see this more arcadey and game-like approach to things; it should actually make it much more fun.

While I can't speak on Elite itself (because I was too young to play it when it came out), what I enjoyed Frontier and First Encounters for was their open universe approach to gameplay. Absolutely vast and immense universe feeling, with a great deal of detail everywhere (at least at the time).

The feeling that you could play many different ways - an open ended non-linear structure.

The system of trading and upgrades in combination with the exploration of a vast procedurally generated universe is what made elite frontier feel like elite frontier to me.

While it'd be nice to get more view of space stations and landscapes/planets that you can visit/buzz/land on... and activities like mining asteroids and scooping hydrogen from gas giants and stars...

I also don't really expect to see those things at this stage. I mean, that's the game that they're trying to make after all - and this is the kickstarter that will fund it.

The system that they're discussing sounds promising - the persistent multiplayer component sure to add liveliness and depth to the universe that was lacking in the original single player game.

They don't have to show all those things, but they could, I dunno, just show something other than some lackluster pew pew that looks identical to all the smaller budget space game Kickstarters that have come before.

If you look at the Limit Theory Kickstarter, that is one 20 year old guy working on the game in his spare time, and you tell me a development studio with 200 people that has been supposedly tinkering with this game for years can't show something better than a barebones combat prototype?

What engine are they using for this? Or is their own self develop engine?

Originally Posted by ZoddGutts

What engine are they using for this? Or is their own self develop engine?

I'm assuming that they'll be self developing an engine - because the lynchpin of the Elite series is an expansive procedurally generated universe to explore.

And it'll have to be an improvement on Frontier and First Encounters - allowing player to move from space to planet surface without cutscene or transition.

And if they want to beat contemporary attempts at such a thing - it'll have to include a lot of height changes in the terrain, weather phenomena, bodies of water and day night cycles.


Basically, I hope we're going to get an excellent space exploration simulator with a nice space action/trading game wrapped around it. Throw in some space stations and some cities on planet surfaces, it should be pretty neato.

I have yet to see a kickstarter game that meets the expectations of the funders to hand my hard earned money to some guy with an "idea". Legendary designer or not.

Originally Posted by sponk

I have yet to see a kickstarter game that meets the expectations of the funders to hand my hard earned money to some guy with an "idea". Legendary designer or not.

Ftl has done ok

Originally Posted by sponk

I have yet to see a kickstarter game that meets the expectations of the funders to hand my hard earned money to some guy with an "idea". Legendary designer or not.

That's fine. But damn..thank God not everybody is like you :)
Also..I would say FTL and Chivarly surpasses expectations and Cognition has met them.

Frontier and Elite are responsible for absorbing a good portion of my total gaming time throughout the years. I still play both regularly.

This is the first Kickstarter project I've 'donated' to. That said, it's been done to honour the amount of entertainment Braben's previous games have generated for me personally rather than my excitement for the proposed game design.

The good points about Elite Dangerous so far:

- The ship design and concept art is amazing
- The idea of a modern day Elite would be mindblowing

The bad points about Elite Dangerous so far:

- The combat on show in the (admittedly) early gameplay video looks like it's going to be an uber fast-paced action game for 14 year olds that need lots of space lazers and bright flashy things to maintain their three second attention span.
- The focus on multiplayer is incredibly concerning.

I'm beginning to wonder if they've forgotten about what made the original game so amazing.