What do you get if you cross Star Citizen with No Mans' Sky?

[Dr Wookie]

  You get the sequel to one of the most influential games in history, which is responsible for me being where I am today: hunting black holes for NASA !

Here's an attention-grabbing video that in typically British understated style, was used to announce the composer .

 

The game is Elite Dangerous, and was funded by British Kickstarter in January 2012.
Now that the first stages of alpha are out (if you backed to an insane level like me ), it's already looking better than this video. We have had the single player alpha out  since mid December. Here is a video I made (and there are hundreds of others) in one of the combat scenarios (though I was just flying around)

 

Stealth will be a big part; sound doesn't travel in space but heat is visible, so gattling guns are stealth weapons! Here is my video of a scenario where I have to pick off 3 ships in an asteroid field, while avoiding the gaze of a much more powerful ship

 

The original ELITE was a revelation when it was released in 1984. At a time where we expected 3 lives and a score, and games lasting 10 minutes, ELITE gave us 8 galaxies and games that could last for weeks. ELITE was the first open world game; there was no particular story or goal, we started with a spaceship and 100 credits, and explored, struck deals, and fought off pirates (earning bounties) and forged a bloody path to wealth and glory. Those valiant few who  made it to the ELITE combat rating could send off for special gold badges, so long as they had proof.

Like No Man's Sky, ELITE was created by a small team (just two students at Cambridge University, David Braben an Ian Bell). Also like No Man's Sky, ELITE was a technical marvel: it gave us 8 galaxies containing 2000 stars, each with a planet to fly to, a space station to trade with, and its own indigenous life (though we never saw it). This was all rendered into wireframe 3D (another gaming first), and procedurally generated; galaxies were all produced from a single seed value, and beauty contests were held to make sure the player could fly everywhere, and no system had very rude names. Oh, and this was all crammed into just 22k (probably smaller than this postl).

David Braben established Frontier Games and released two sequels in the 90's, ans there have been rumours of a 4th game for as long as I can remember. Then last year, when the UK Kickstarter opened, a little game called Elite: Dangerous got funded, breaking the record for the achieving the highest target ever: 1.25 million GBP (about $2 million). It's a space sim from the daddy of all space sims! Nearly 1 year on everything seems pretty much on track, and I have been consistently blown away with what they've come up with. The core game (you in a ship) is going through alpha right now, with multiplayer coming next week, followed by beta testing and a "gamma" phase where all backers get access to the game, and the final polish can be applied. Planetary landings and walking around stations etc. (No Man's Sky territory) will come as expansions as they want to do them properly.



This new game will model the entire Milky Way galaxy (about 400 billion stars) using procedural generation and hopefully clever ways to keep things interesting. The local star map will be painted onto the sky, so you can travel to any star you can see. What is more crazy, the nearest 100,000 stars or so will be hand crafted to match what we know, and every known exoplanet will be included. 

We will make our way as explorers, traders, pirates, bounty hunters, miners... basically doing anything we please (there are no classes, but different occupations call for different types of ships). There will be a single evolving universe, where the concerted actions of players can alter the fates of worlds. 

What has been really great has been the "Design Discussion Forum", where committed (crazy) backers get to interact with the developers during many aspects of the design. I'm one of those crazy backers, and one of the most significant achievements of this forum was to change in-system travel between planets etc. from a points-of-interest, "room" model to free flight. The response was absolute genius. Once Frontier decides that the topics have been sufficiently discussed, then they go into the Design Discussion Archive, which is available to anybody who wants to see it.

This new game has brought together a passionate and vibrant community who have set up podcasts (e.g. laveradio.com), an audio drama (Escape Velocity, http://laveradio.com/EscapeVelocity/)  and a substantial number have pledged to write official fiction. The first game came with a novella, the Dark Wheel, and there has been a strong tradition of supporting fiction since.

 

Everyone should check it out!

[TychoCelchuuu]

I think it's weird that on the back of a single trailer No Man's Sky is suddenly so popular that someone would try to get people to pay attention to Elite by comparing it to No Man's Sky. I guess being a beloved decades old franchise with a working alpha in the hands of backers and a massive successful Kickstarter isn't as good as being able to walk around underwater and having a play on words as your game's title.

[Dr Wookie]

Yes it is weird, I'll grant you that !

 

What is more weird, is that I've not seen any coverage at all about Elite Dangerous from the US! We've had a very competent alpha out for 6 weeks, with near universal praise, nary a peep has been seen or heard from the US. This combat demo is only a tiny portion of the game, but it feels very tight. Even though a lot of people at Frontier are astronomy enthusiasts, and are generally in favour of realism, good game play comes first.

 

 

Chris Roberts is friends with David Braben, and was a great help in getting the game kickstarted; the only Americans I've seen who have shown interest in the game have been people from the Star Citizen forums. Here is the first part of an interview of David Braben and Chris Robers by Gary Whitta

 

The comparison with NMS is far from shallow, since the games share a lot of similar core game design elements:

--- a single, evolving universe with hundreds of billions of stars 

--- (Eventually) procedurally generated worlds with their own wildlife and ecosystems

--- The first player to reach an uncharted star will be able to make their mark 

--- The players will be spread fairly thinly, although in NMS, players will start at the outside of the galaxy, and work their way towards the middle, while in ED, the players will start in a localized area of core systems and expand outwards

--- You will be able to extract natural resources (life, minerals etc.) to upgrade ships etc.

[Sno]

Heh, the NMS comparison struck me as odd too, surely Elite's a more known quantity than something just-announced.

Are any of these games going to have solo modes? I'm not really interested in participating in a multiplayer community with these things.

[Dr Wookie]

I would have thought so too!

 

Yep, Elite can be played online in single player mode (with the evolving universe but no troublesome humans), or offline .

[BadHat]

Whoa, you mean the No Man's Sky from the VGXes?

 

Does it simulate drift when you're not accelerating/decelerating in a particular direction, like you could just idle and keep floating along? It never seems like 3D space combat games do this, I guess it's easier to represent your trajectory visually in 2D.

[Merus]

Elite is by no means a known quantity in the States. It was big in the UK, but I don't think it travelled much.

 

I think the appeal of No Man's Sky is the idea of standing on a lovingly rendered alien planet, and not so much travelling through space. It sounds like Elite Dangerous will have that 'eventually'.

[Dr Wookie]

Whoa, you mean the No Man's Sky from the VGXes?

 

Does it simulate drift when you're not accelerating/decelerating in a particular direction, like you could just idle and keep floating along? It never seems like 3D space combat games do this, I guess it's easier to represent your trajectory visually in 2D.

 

In the current alpha build, the speed is directly tied to the thruster power because the full flight model has not yet been implemented. However, the full game should see you floating along after turning off engines.

 

Elite is by no means a known quantity in the States. It was big in the UK, but I don't think it travelled much.

 

I think the appeal of No Man's Sky is the idea of standing on a lovingly rendered alien planet, and not so much travelling through space. It sounds like Elite Dangerous will have that 'eventually'.

I think they are planning to have planetary landings/ big game hunting etc out within a year or so of public release. However, they are taking an "it's ready when it's ready" approach, so that could slip.

[Dewar]

I'm in on this kickstarter, but only the minimum to get the game. I have a lot of fond memories of playing First Encounters (as broken as it was) and I'm definitley in to try another, but it's going to be difficult to stand up against X3 and EVE Online.

[Badfinger]

Very cool. Might have to follow the dev on this game.

 

I think it's weird that on the back of a single trailer No Man's Sky is suddenly so popular that someone would try to get people to pay attention to Elite by comparing it to No Man's Sky. I guess being a beloved decades old franchise with a working alpha in the hands of backers and a massive successful Kickstarter isn't as good as being able to walk around underwater and having a play on words as your game's title.

 

Literally never heard of Elite before I clicked on this post and this would've been right up my alley. Reading the wiki page it looks like it was made on platforms supported in the US, but it seems to be a nearly exclusively UK game. No Man's Sky is in the zeitgeist and got major coverage on basically every US (and many UK) game publications.

[Dr Wookie]

Very cool. Might have to follow the dev on this game.

 

 

Literally never heard of Elite before I clicked on this post and this would've been right up my alley. Reading the wiki page it looks like it was made on platforms supported in the US, but it seems to be a nearly exclusively UK game. No Man's Sky is in the zeitgeist and got major coverage on basically every US (and many UK) game publications.

Hence the angle, I'm glad it worked at least once .

 

It looks like the Elite Dangerous marketing machine is starting to kick in now, since it is the cover game (and lead article) for this month's EDGE magazine:

 

http://www.edge-online.com/magazine/e264-inside-the-rebirth-of-a-legend-frontier-developments-elite-dangerous/

 

Also, it is Number 1 in the Top Ten Games [Gametrailers] Can't Believe are Indie: