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[Chance Hale]

Incredible, how long before a poor person can buy in? Watching these videos will be enough for now.

Seeing that ring being made up of asteroids was incredible, although hopefully they will fix the loading for them coming in and the popping.

 

[Parfait]

Are there any videos of a third person view?

I just want freelancer back with that sweet third person view without all this dumb cockpit stuff in the way of my space.

 

[epmode]

Is the beta going to be steam early access and cost those ridiculous 200$?

I'm not sure it'll get a Steam release in the first place. But if it does, yes, the beta will cost extra because everyone in the beta paid extra.

Incredible, how long before a poor person can buy in? Watching these videos will be enough for now.

You can get in the early beta on May 30 for about $165. They call it the Premium Beta. A less exclusive beta starts later but it'll still cost more than the game itself.

 

[Spat_triate]

I'm 32 and have been gaming for most of that time on almost every platform out there, and I haven't heard of this. Why does that make you feel old?

No worries, I misread your post. I thought you were a young whippersnapper who had never heard of the Elite series.

 

[Disorientator]

Wow...looks and -especially- sounds amazing.

Cant wait.

 

[The Technomancer]

There's something kind of unsettling about this...

 

[Dommel]

I'm not sure it'll get a Steam release in the first place. But if it does, yes, the beta will cost extra because everyone in the beta paid extra.



You can get in the early beta on May 30 for about $165. They call it the Premium Beta. A less exclusive beta starts later but it'll still cost more than the game itself.

I laughed at the $240 last time for Alpha Access but I'm afraid I'm willing to bite for $165 in two weeks.

This looks so freaking good and I played Elite for years on my ZX Spectrum back in the day.

Must resist...

 

[Disagree Guy]

I liked this moment, 4600 km/s flying "through the rings"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=p7K9Rl7fRjc#t=392

I felt like Jango Fett when the player entered that asteroid field. Absolutely stunning.

Wish I had a high end PC.......

 

[Buggy Loop]

I bite the bullet for premium beta 1 week ago, couldnt hold it anymore. I've been wanting this type of game since forever. Im actually pissed off that i missed the elite and elite frontier games before as reading about them today, they are quite mind blowing for the time.

 

[DieH@rd]

Brilliant. Time to check out Star Citizen.

Star Citizen will full on support FPS combat, boarding the trading/military ships, fight inside bulkheads, destroying/repairing ship central equipment, managing air/gravity, close combat firefights. It's gonna be awesome, not only as a military/pirate gamer, but as a trader as well. Hand to hand defense of the larger trading ships will be insane in MMO environment.

 

[itxaka]

Anyone wants to explain how this costs 120€? Its quite high...

 

[Sinatar]

Anyone wants to explain how this costs 120€? Its quite high...

They charge the same for beta access that they did on Kickstarter, the final game will probably be $50.

 

[Iced_Eagle]

Anyone wants to explain how this costs 120€? Its quite high...

That's just for premium beta. It's just a continuation of their kickstarter prices.

The final game will be $50 (available here: https://store.zaonce.net/elite-dangerous.html/) or if you still want it early you can buy $75 for standard beta (unknown start date). However, keep in mind that they are going the expansion pack route. In the future they will release ship boarding and planetary landings as expansions. You can get the expansion pass to give you access to all major expansions for $50 (https://store.zaonce.net/elite-dangerous-expansion-pass.html). The Premium Beta package comes with an expansion pass as well, so you're essentially paying an extra $50 to get in now instead of waiting months to play.

Personally, I got alpha access. Yeah, it was pricey, but I'm a huge supporter of space sims and they seem to be doing a great job on this project.

 

[cyberheater]

Star Citizen will full on support FPS combat, boarding the trading/military ships, fight inside bulkheads, destroying/repairing ship central equipment, managing air/gravity, close combat firefights. It's gonna be awesome, not only as a military/pirate gamer, but as a trader as well. Hand to hand defense of the larger trading ships will be insane in MMO environment.

Is there a single player component or is it MMO only?

 

[Durante]

Is there a single player component or is it MMO only?

Star Citizen is planned to have a story-driven Wing Commander like single-player campaign.

 

[Danthrax]

Star Citizen is planned to have a story-driven Wing Commander like single-player campaign.

Also, the persistent universe side of the game can be played on your own or with a few friends on a private server.

And the Wing Commander-like campaign can be played cooperatively with friends, too.

 

[friday]

Can't wait for this. Are they targeting a 2014 release?

 

[~Kinggi~]

Wait a minute.....why havent i seen this before.

WHAT IS THIS

 

[epmode]

Wait a minute.....why havent i seen this before.

It's PC exclusive and we're on GAF!

 

[YuShtink]

Looks absolutely Un-Fucking-Believable. So badly want to join the beta but its too pricey, going to wait for the finished game. So hard to resist with my DK2 coming in July tho....

 

[~Kinggi~]

Trade runs are in too. Interesting to see the seamless transition from a space station, to space, to hyperspace travel, passing planets by and then dock to another space station.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sCXCZNNhy8

I feel like ive been lied to or something

 

[Quasar]

I liked this moment, 4600 km/s flying "through the rings"

The rings there are weird. The material making up the rings appearing to be stationary.

 

[~Kinggi~]

Im fairly certain when this releases legit at 40 or 50$ on steam its gonna be the hot shit if they can somehow make a game out of this.

Also the audio design is amazing. Really really good give that guy a raise.

 

[Spectral Entity]

Before "wide open sandbox" was a thing there was Elite.
And after Elite there was GTA.
Now if only you can hijack spaceships...

tl;dr : the series that invented the term "space sim"

Oh. Wow, that sounds awesome! I wonder how I missed out on it?!

And yes, a space-themed game where you do things such as hijack would be amazing.

Grand Theft Firefly!

 

[Mengy]

Yep, that looks like a modern Elite. Outstanding! I'm looking very forward to this game!

 

[Dictator93]

Watched the videos. I am flabbergasted by the quality. I will definitely get the game when it hits a more playable build and does not have the large entry fee (student, poor etc...)

The star map is bad ass.

How is the music for just flying around or resting idle? A huge part of a space game is an appropriately fitting ambient track. One reason why I always like Eve.

 

[ichtyander]

Those engine sounds are fantastic. I'm really glad this game is turning out to be better and better with every new update.

For those who are already playing, how does the large scale space travel work? From the videos, it seems it's very similar to the first Elite. You select a star/system, engage hyperdrive when you're not mass locked and you instantly jump to the vicinity of the star. What happens next? You can obviously travel fast when inside the solar system and can get interrupted if there's a ship nearby or attacking you, but in the trading video it seems the player is constantly modifying his speed, probably not to overshoot. So are there some Newtonian physics involved like in Frontier or can you maybe just set the autopilot to make a local jump to the selected station?

One of the things that has always bothered me in space sims is the amount of time you need to get from one system/planet/station to another. Don't get me wrong, I like the feeling of traveling through space, making the whole process a bit more realistic in terms of time spent in simple cruising, but when it's too long, it feels like a lot of lost time on unnecessary things. It takes a whooping 14 minutes for the guy in the trading run video to get from hyperjumping into the system to docking in the designated space station, which I think is far too long for such an operation. In something like Euro Truck Simulator, at least you've got your radio stations, the road, traffic and a changing scenery to liven up the monotonous journey.

Another thing is the trading mechanics, which I haven't really seen in Elite Dangerous (I guess it's not really fully implemented yet anyway). I always find it frustratingly anachronistic to have the ability to hyperjump and having to use a pen and paper or notepad (as in tools outside the game) to memorize prices for every system, compare them and devise a trading route. Freelancer had a simple yet satisfying trading system where the shopping screen would always show you the lowest and highest prices for the selected commodity as well as the optimal selling location based on the buying price of the station you're currently in, if I'm not mistaken. Maybe this is a bit too simplified, but making a gameplay mechanic where you at least need to visit and record the prices for every system and then have a smart comparison screen would be a useful enough element to make trading actually fun.

I really hope this game achieves good sales and stays alive and updated for quite some time. Btw, here are a couple of webms I made today from the videos posted on this topic.

http://a.pomf.se/gjzvnu.webm

http://a.pomf.se/nydaxi.webm

 

[Buggy Loop]

Scott Manley video of alpha 4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q04axMTIIO8

 

[~Kinggi~]

Really just overnight for me i went from not knowing about this to being one of my most anticipated. Over at the forums they even hint they may do planetary landing like Evochron mercenary does where you can enter the atmospheres.

This game seems huge but planetary shit seems unreal in this setting. I mean this game really is just space still and its easy to fake certain things when traveling large distances.

 

[SparkTR]

I'm definitely loving the look of this, even more than SC lately.

 

[mitchman]

A video of someone getting an interdiction as he was travelling hyperspace it makes you exit your travel. They were pirates wanting the cargo. He barely escapes. I've seen interdictions for the federation wanting to scan you too, so thats quite an interesting mechanic.

It's like the original Elite from the 80s where Thargoids could pull you out into hyperspace and attack. I used to trigger it manually to farm pirates back then when I played it. Nothing new there. Seems like all the old mechanics that made Elite so fantastic is present in this version too.

 

[ichtyander]

Really just overnight for me i went from not knowing about this to being one of my most anticipated. Over at the forums they even hint they may do planetary landing like Evochron mercenary does where you can enter the atmospheres.

This game seems huge but planetary shit seems unreal in this setting. I mean this game really is just space still and its easy to fake certain things when traveling large distances.

Here's a video from Frontier: Elite 2, departing from a city on a planet to another planet's space station, completely seamless (except for the hyper jump of course). And this is a game from two decades ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc9o_ldmlVs

It seems they're doing some tricks with loading instances in Elite Dangerous when something interrupts your local jump or when you actually arrive near a station, or maybe it's just the way the Alpha handles loading certain things?

Space Engine has an incredible seamless space travel but there's no game in there yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YieL0qK-qCk

I'd love to see Elite doing seamless planetfall again but I'm not sure if they'll be doing it exactly like that. There's also stuff like Rodina that has a lot of the gameplay elements you need, but it's still early in development. You walk around your ship in first person, control your ship, fly to other planets, seamlessly land on them and then get out on foot and explore. Also has a fantastic OST.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywxKXUHjXOs

 

[~Kinggi~]

Thanks for the links. Havent heard about any of these games.

 

[Pachimari]

Looks magnificent. What is a good flightstick to get?

 

[TheOohChild]

Those engine sounds are fantastic. I'm really glad this game is turning out to be better and better with every new update.

For those who are already playing, how does the large scale space travel work? From the videos, it seems it's very similar to the first Elite. You select a star/system, engage hyperdrive when you're not mass locked and you instantly jump to the vicinity of the star. What happens next? You can obviously travel fast when inside the solar system and can get interrupted if there's a ship nearby or attacking you, but in the trading video it seems the player is constantly modifying his speed, probably not to overshoot. So are there some Newtonian physics involved like in Frontier or can you maybe just set the autopilot to make a local jump to the selected station?

One of the things that has always bothered me in space sims is the amount of time you need to get from one system/planet/station to another. Don't get me wrong, I like the feeling of traveling through space, making the whole process a bit more realistic in terms of time spent in simple cruising, but when it's too long, it feels like a lot of lost time on unnecessary things. It takes a whooping 14 minutes for the guy in the trading run video to get from hyperjumping into the system to docking in the designated space station, which I think is far too long for such an operation. In something like Euro Truck Simulator, at least you've got your radio stations, the road, traffic and a changing scenery to liven up the monotonous journey.

Another thing is the trading mechanics, which I haven't really seen in Elite Dangerous (I guess it's not really fully implemented yet anyway). I always find it frustratingly anachronistic to have the ability to hyperjump and having to use a pen and paper or notepad (as in tools outside the game) to memorize prices for every system, compare them and devise a trading route. Freelancer had a simple yet satisfying trading system where the shopping screen would always show you the lowest and highest prices for the selected commodity as well as the optimal selling location based on the buying price of the station you're currently in, if I'm not mistaken. Maybe this is a bit too simplified, but making a gameplay mechanic where you at least need to visit and record the prices for every system and then have a smart comparison screen would be a useful enough element to make trading actually fun.

I really hope this game achieves good sales and stays alive and updated for quite some time. Btw, here are a couple of webms I made today from the videos posted on this topic.

http://a.pomf.se/gjzvnu.webm

http://a.pomf.se/nydaxi.webm

For travel, there is a mass lock mechanic. When you get closer to larger objects, there are speed caps. If you get within a certain distance to an object with high mass, then you are only able to go certain speeds. You can limit the effect of the mass lock by taking arching paths around planets or stars. Travel can be time consuming, but there are nuances to make it go by quicker. Dev team also says these mechanics will be tweaked.

And there are people in the alpha forums creating lists and google docs of commodity supplies and buy prices, the weapons on offer at different star ports, etc. One poster made a Windows app to help calculate trades runs, and he is talking about making Android app as well. Commodity prices in the alpha are static, so the data is easy to track right now. In the final game it will fluctuate. But it already seems the community is willing to make trading a group effort.

 

[~Kinggi~]

Just saw this on their game page

The first release of Elite: Dangerous will not mark the end of development.

We intend to continue expanding the game both with new content and new features. A good example of this is planetary landings. We have an ambitious goal for landings to include new gameplay and a rich variety of worlds to explore. To achieve our goal we want the planets to come to life. We also want to add the ability to leave the ships so you can explore space stations or board enemy vessels or even just to look around your own.

We intend to release small, free updates after launch, but major expansions including rich new features will be charged for, unless you have bought the expansion pass, or are one of the Kickstarter backers at the appropriate tier.

Man that sounds so awesome. Kinda like Star Citizen, but is Star Citizen doing thing on this level of scale? Like a whole universe?

 

[kudoboi]

this looks amazing. shame it is above my budget for now.. might buy it when it drops to $75

 

[On Demand]

No worries, I misread your post. I thought you were a young whippersnapper who had never heard of the Elite series.

I'm 29 and i've never heard of this game before. But damn it looks amazing. The Rings of Asellus 3 video is ridiculous.

This is PC only?

 

[Mengy]

Here's a video from Frontier: Elite 2, departing from a city on a planet to another planet's space station, completely seamless (except for the hyper jump of course). And this is a game from two decades ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc9o_ldmlVs

Man, that video sure is a blast from my past. I had forgotten just how old Frontier was, lol. I still have it on disc in my closet, I wonder if it would even run on a modern PC?

 

[Qassim]

I'm super excited for this now. Hadn't really paid any attention to this - I'm glad it's looking this good already.

I'm 29 and i've never heard of this game before. But damn it looks amazing. The Rings of Asellus 3 video is ridiculous.

This is PC only?

Yep, Windows and OSX.

 

[~Kinggi~]

Im reading the newsletter where they detail that the space sky is actually now composed of fully modeled objects and not a skybox where they were faking it. 400 billion stars all fully modeled........lol

 

[Chezzymann]

Can you walk on the planets?

 

[RedSwirl]

If I was gonna try out an Elite game, which one is best? I tried looking up the original Elite but there are so many versions it's hard to figure out which one is the definitive version.

 

[Buggy Loop]

Can you walk on the planets?

Eventually, 2015 most likely.

Here's an old video about procedural generation for ED. You can see at 4:30 a cloud generation for a gas giant, they eventually want terrain and so on generated on all planets so you can go down its atmosphere, land your ship and walk out to explore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTBvpd3_Vqk

from the wiki faq.:

Yes, you will be able to walk around ship interiors, board and steal other ships, walk around in space stations, do space walks to repair your ship, operate land and underwater vehicles and walk on full 1:1 scale populated planets with living cities, forests and be able to big-game hunt wildlife as part of expansions.

 

[MoGamesXNA]

Man, that video sure is a blast from my past. I had forgotten just how old Frontier was, lol. I still have it on disc in my closet, I wonder if it would even run on a modern PC?

If you're in the mood to boot up Frontier again, I'd recommend downloading GLFrontier. It's a conversion of the AtariST version in OpenGL and looks glorious in all of its flatshaded polygon goodness

Link: GLFrontier

 

[~Kinggi~]

from the wiki faq.:

Yes, you will be able to walk around ship interiors, board and steal other ships, walk around in space stations, do space walks to repair your ship, operate land and underwater vehicles and walk on full 1:1 scale populated planets with living cities, forests and be able to big-game hunt wildlife as part of expansions.

 

[NoPiece]

Can you turn of those little white streaks that indicate motion? They distract from the beautiful spacescape they've put together.

 

[epmode]

Just saw this on their game page



Man that sounds so awesome. Kinda like Star Citizen, but is Star Citizen doing thing on this level of scale? Like a whole universe?

At least at launch, Star Citizen is focusing on fewer, but more detailed and unique systems. They also have plans for more procedurally generated content. Star Citizen's persistent universe is a LONG way away, though.

Elite's developer (Frontier Developments) has been working on this design for years before committing to the Kickstarter campaign. It also helps that Frontier has been around for a long time so the infrastructure was already in place. Star Citizen's development is scattered among several internal and outsourced studios which I imagine is making things difficult.

Can you turn of those little white streaks that indicate motion? They distract from the beautiful spacescape they've put together.

Those are very useful for navigation, though. You're not restricted to flying straight so they're necessary for more complex maneuvers.

 

[br0ken_shad0w]

Elite: Dangerous is *this* close to becoming my dream space game. Exploration is one of my favorite pastimes and if they nail it, my life will be over. Sadly planetary landings won't be at launch, but waiting for it:

Just saw this on their game page



Man that sounds so awesome. Kinda like Star Citizen, but is Star Citizen doing thing on this level of scale? Like a whole universe?

Star Citizen is smaller scale. Basically an expanded Freelancer. It makes up for it by making everything super detailed.

 

[ichtyander]

For travel, there is a mass lock mechanic. When you get closer to larger objects, there are speed caps. If you get within a certain distance to an object with high mass, then you are only able to go certain speeds. You can limit the effect of the mass lock by taking arching paths around planets or stars. Travel can be time consuming, but there are nuances to make it go by quicker. Dev team also says these mechanics will be tweaked.

And there are people in the alpha forums creating lists and google docs of commodity supplies and buy prices, the weapons on offer at different star ports, etc. One poster made a Windows app to help calculate trades runs, and he is talking about making Android app as well. Commodity prices in the alpha are static, so the data is easy to track right now. In the final game it will fluctuate. But it already seems the community is willing to make trading a group effort.

Thanks, I looked at a few more videos and I think I now understand how space travel works. That pop in when you actually arrive at a station is a bit disappointing. It looks like the game loads the actual location surrounding the near vicinity of the planet and space station instead of having a seamless, vast space inside the solar system akin to Space Engine or the old Frontier?

As for the trading part, yeah, I suppose the community will play a large part in making it more accessible. And that's a valid way of going around it. However, instead of the community creating these apps and charts outside the game, I would much more like to see such an "app" or option be implemented in the game itself. Have an advanced trading computer upgrade that reveals new options with editable charts, tables and calculations based on scanned data from planets and stations you've visited while playing. I think it would vastly improve the accessibility for players who would want to play as traders.

Man, that video sure is a blast from my past. I had forgotten just how old Frontier was, lol. I still have it on disc in my closet, I wonder if it would even run on a modern PC?

Sure, if you want to play the original game, there's always DOSBox. There's also glFrontier to get some enhanced graphics like higher resolutions etc. For more advanced remakes and modifications, there's First Encounters (Elite 3) D3D and Pioneer which is based on the gameplay and concept of Frontier.

Im reading the newsletter where they detail that the space sky is actually now composed of fully modeled objects and not a skybox where they were faking it. 400 billion stars all fully modeled........lol

The size of the universe in Space Engine is, I believe, 1000 cubic Gpc (forms a cube right now but might end up being interconnected so you would come back to your starting point if you follow a straight line) with 10 trillion galaxies, all fully generated and modeled like the one in Elite Dangerous. Once you start thinking procedurally, 10 or 1 million planets doesn't make that much of a difference. The magic of procedural generation. Of course, the important thing is how this vast number is populated and used in terms of gameplay.