December 12, 2016 | Author: Kornelius Briedis | Category: N/A
David Braben, CEO Frontier Developments plc. answers questions regarding Elite Dangerous...
Mobius
David Braben Q&A
CEO Frontier Developments plc.
Contents
© Frontier Developments plc. All rights reserved, 2014 ‘ELITE’ and the Elite and Frontier logos and Elite: Dangerous are registered trademarks of Frontier Developments plc. All rights reserved. Q&A.Elite.Dangerous was created using assets and imagery from Elite: Dangerous, with the permission of Frontier Developments plc, for non-commercial purposes. It is not endorsed by nor reflects the views or opinions of Frontier Developments and no employee of Frontier Developments was involved in the making of it. © Kornelius, design and layout, 2014, contact:
[email protected], more ebooks
David Braben on Elite: Dangerous Kickstarter. “If it fails, I’ll be terribly upset.”...............3 Credits, Cobras and Crowd-Funding: David Braben tells us about Elite: Dangerous....................................... 5 Elite: Dangerous David Braben Exclusive Interview.....................................................................................................................7 Alpha Papa Chat: Elite: Dangerous Alpha In December............................................................................................................ 9 Interview: David Braben, Elite. ......................................................................................................................................................................................................11 David Braben: “A lot of confidence and a little bit of cash”....................................................................................................... 12 “The tech caught up to our ambition”: David Braben on the return of Elite.....................................................14 David Braben. Q&A on frontier forum............................................................................................................................................................................ 16 The Elite: Dangerous Community Q&A, Frontier’s David Braben Answers Your Questions. ..... 19 Live Chat at the register. ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 21 David Braben at Retro Gamer...........................................................................................................................................................................................26 Elite: Dangerous hands-on preview and interview – ‘the nearest game to Elite is GTA’............. 28 David Braben on reddit.com.......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 32 Live chat David Braben on Frontier....................................................................................................................................................................................36 Braben On Elite, Oc Rift, Dodgy Gravity & Doing Space Right. ..............................................................................................38 Braben On Star Citizen, Elite 2 Bugs & Rude Planet Names.........................................................................................................41 On consoles, Steam, Oculus Rift and massive spaceships...........................................................................................................43 Q & A with David Braben on Frontier forum 2014.11.18..................................................................................................................... 46 Mostly Harmless Questions........................................................................................................................................................................................................... 49 FAQ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 55
David Braben. Interviews
David Braben on Elite: Dangerous Kickstarter. “IF IT FAILS, I’LL BE TERRIBLY UPSET.”
Elite: Dangerous is a new Elite game produced by David Braben’s Frontier Developments. It’s a long, long awaited return to the space-faring and trading series that made Braben famous. But it’s not without controversy: Braben’spitch on Kickstarter is extremely bare-bones. To find out more, we sat down with David to talk through the Kickstarter, and the promise of a brand new Elite. By Tim Edwards, 592 days ago, 0 Comments Wednesday, 7 November 2012 PCGamesN: How much work has been done on Elite: Dangerous then. What have you go so far? David Braben: We’ve been doing most of our work on the technology behind it. so we’ve got the networking layer, and we’ve been looking at technology, and how things are rendered, and that sort of thing, and we’ve already started looking and working on the game, but obviously we need to be confident that there is a market for it. PCGN: So you don’t have a demo or slice of the game ready to go? David Braben: not that we’re ready to show yet. the thing with the game is that it takes a lot of art, and all that takes a lot of time to make. PCGN: You mentioned in the Kickstarter that you’ve struggled to get this project off the ground. That it’s been a battle. Can you give me a bit of background to that? What’s been going on?
3
David Braben: the primary reason is that the project has been done as a skunkworks project, the issue is that because it’s not a project with an official release, or that sort of thing, you end up pulling people away to work on other projects. the advantage of this: it becomes a proper official project and it gets the priority. PCGN: There’s always interest in Elite, and it seems odd that it’s never got past the Skunkworks project. Why hasn’t it ever got off the ground? David Braben: Well, we have confidence in the design. We’re happy that it’s something we can go forward with. one option would have been for us to go with a publisher. If you look at the original Elite, if we’d have listened to a publisher we’d have had three lives, we’d have had a score, we’d have had a ten minute playtime. the fundamental problem is that it wouldn’t have been the game we wanted to make. PCGN: You haven’t been working in the PC space for while – and it’s a very different world now. How the audience reacts, what they like or dislike is very, very different... particularly around crowdsourced projects. Are you ready?
David Braben: Well, there’s only one way to find out, right? In terms of the PC space, it’s not hugely different... I do appreciate what you’re saying, I think there are issues when it comes to DrM and that kind of thing... which I’ve always been dead against... but in terms of interacting space we’re still selling lots of copies of rollerCoaster tycoon 3. It hit the pC chart number 3 in summer of last year. I do take your point though... it’s something we’ll have to... PCGN: I don’t really mean about working on PC hardware. The kickstarters and games that are successful, and that people get behind are extremely responsive and dynamic... that’s a very different environment to working on a product to spec... David Braben: yeah, I understand that. to be honest, that’s actually a better match for how I’d want to develop games than what a traditional publisher method. the problem is that a paper design doesn’t convert very well, you want to be able to tweak it, you want to be able to change it. you want to be able to spend time here, this bits much better than this, let’s work on it. PCGN: Okay. Let’s talk about your vision for the game. We know it’s an Elite game and that you’ll be flying between space stations... but what else. What’s progressed... David Braben: the obvious biggie: it’s multiplayer. I think that makes a huge difference to the game. once you’ve got a multiplayer environment, it completely changes the dynamic of the game. you can co-operate, go on missions together, meeting your friend in a certain place. that brings in so many more game mechanics, I think it’s fascinating. then of course, there’s the way you can interact with all those players, it’s so much deeper than when you’re just against a robot.
http://www.pcgamesn.com/interview-david-braben-elite-dangerous-kickstarter-if-it-fails-ill-be-terribly-upset
David Braben. Interviews PCGN: How multiplayer are we talking? A few of your friends, 10s of players? Hundreds? David Braben: huge numbers. potentially. a galaxy is almost perfect for this, in the sense you’ve already got the world split into little areas. Each system, you’re talking about many tens of people. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot more in the galaxy, if you jump to meet them. PCGN: That’s exactly how Eve works, where every system is an instance. David Braben: yes. and we can also shard the instances. PCGN: You’re talking about a persistent universe. It’s not a single player game. David Braben: I’d say ‘a curious mix.’ you’re right, there is a degree of persistence. PCGN: There’s a lot of space games in development or published right now. Star Citizen is flying on Kickstarter, Notch is working on 0x10C, and Eve’s been around for years. What’s changed? Is this a coincidence. Or has something changed? David Braben: I think there’s a strong latent demand for space games, and to be honest, Kickstarter has enabled it. I think that latent demand can be satisfied. If you talk to publishers, they’re very cool on anything that’s different to what is already out there. Because there hasn’t been a big space game for quite a while, they say “oh, space games are very passe.” It’s a self reinforcing thing. It’s also a desire from people within the business. the best games are those that the developers want to make. It’s like in the film business – the best films are the ones when the director has always wanted to make that film. If the people working on it really care about it, they’ll create something phenomenal.
4
PCGN: Okay, let’s talk about the team. How many people are working on the game right now? David Braben: It’s still at a skunkworks stage now, and the plan is to increase it beyond that once we’ve got the thumbs up from Kickstarter. PCGN: What if it doesn’t work? What if you don’t get the funds? David Braben: It will be a tragic shame. But actually, it will probably be for the best. If there isn’t the interest in the game, then it’s probably better to know sooner rather than later. I mean, I’ll be very upset about it, I won’t deny it, but it’s a sensible plan. PCGN: Since the Kickstarter launched, there’s been a bit of chatter about how barebones the pitch is. Can you see that? David Braben: oh sure, and I’m not saying there won’t be more content up on the site. I think the other danger is, we’re saying “here, this is what we want to do, we’re laying out,” and as we go, we’ll start laying it out to people. PCGN: Have you ever backed any other Kickstarter projects? David Braben: no I haven’t, and I intend to do so.
http://www.pcgamesn.com/interview-david-braben-elite-dangerous-kickstarter-if-it-fails-ill-be-terribly-upset
David Braben. Interviews
Credits, Cobras and Crowd-Funding: David Braben tells us about Elite: Dangerous
At the time of writing, Frontier Developments’ attempt to Kickstart a new entry in the venerable and classic Elite series is heading towards £600,000 GBP of a £1.25 million GBP target. The original project page for Elite: Dangerous was rather sparse, but the past few days have seen new concept art, information updates and videos released by the development team. I asked Elite co-creator David Braben about the groundbreaking original in the series, why Frontier has waited so long to develop a new Elite title, the nature of the proposed multiplayer, and finding a delicate balance between the wishes of backers and the vision of the development team. 30 Nov 2012 by Peter Parrish IncGamers: I’m going to assume most people reading this interview are familiar with the original Elite, but for those who may not be could you give a quick synopsis for the game David Braben: take 100 Credits and a basic space ship to make money legally or illegally – trade, bountyhunt, pirate, assassinate your way across the galaxy. You fly seat-of-the-pants style for your life as you cross dangerous space routes to make your fortune. Buy food cheaply at a poor agricultural world and take it to an industrial power-house and make your fortune. that’s if you make it there. perhaps you’d prefer a life of piracy Pick off those juicy traders arriving with cargo bays loaded with valuable food instead and steal it, and deal with the police from time to time or hunt those pirates for the bounty IG: Elite is generally credited with being the first ‘open world’ (or ‘open space’ I suppose it should be!) game. Was that intentional in your original design from the very beginning, or something of a happy accident
5
David Braben: yes it was, or rather the freedom was a key desire for the game. Most games of the time were entirely prescriptive. Fight off one ‘wave’ of baddies, then deal with another ‘wave’, that were slightly more challenging to beat, and keep doing this until you lose. three times. or four times if you manage to reach a score of 10,000. you certainly couldn’t run away – or sneak past them! We wrote the game primarily for ourselves – ie we were the judges of what the game should be, and we wanted something very different from what had gone before. that freedom was a big part of that, so yes, the freedom was our intention from the start, and the openness of the world was a key part of that. IG: You say that Elite: Dangerous is the game you “have wanted Frontier to make for a very long time”; what has prevented you from doing this over the years since the company’s formation in 1994 David Braben: Working with publishers is great, but as part of the process, inevitably the publisher will want to steer the game in a particular direction. It happened with “Elite” – the game was rejected by Thorne-EMI because it was so different to what had gone before; to what they believed would
be successful because those sort of games were successful before. they wanted three lives, a score and a ten minute play time. that was because that was the norm at the time. today, we would be steered to make a game with cut-scenes that would appeal to an imagined audience. that is not the game I want to make. publishers had then, and still have now, established processes and a key part of that is the forecast roI or return on investment. for that to work there has to have been a sufficiently similar game in the near past to base the forecast upon. the publisher will then try to ensure those similarities remain. anything else will be ‘too risky’. It is why we see so many sequels and ‘me too’ games. IG: You’ve just (at the time of writing) added a pitch video and some artwork to the Elite: Dangerous Kickstarter page. Was it a deliberate decision to open the Kickstarter without those What was the thinking there David Braben: It was a matter of timing. We wanted to go live as Kickstarter went live in the uK. We actually thought that it would make sense to make a second ‘splash’ when we added more content to the site – we thought it would be a slow start. With hindsight we were wrong – particularly because of the huge splash the BBC story made. IG: It sounds like multiplayer will be a key part of this entry in the series. If you’re able to say at this point, how will the multiplayer system work Is the intent a persistent ‘MMO’ style world where every player will be present in the same universe, or more of a drop-in/ drop-out, invasion/co-op system like Dark Souls David Braben: It has elements in common with both. There will be significant elements of persistence – the world will gradually change, and everyone
http://www.incgamers.com/2012/11/credits-cobras-and-crowd-funding-david-braben-tells-us-about-elite-dangerous
David Braben. Interviews will effectively (in some respects) be in the same universe, but you will also be able to select the players that you can meet in the game – perhaps just your friends – perhaps all-comers. you will also be able to leave the game, and your commander will be saved – you will not be able to be robbed while offline, for example. IG: In the Kickstarter video, you refer to a hypothetical situation where a player could call another player for some co-op help with ferrying some cargo. Will co-op be ‘formalised’ in a situation like this, or would you be aiming for more of a trust-based system where, in theory, the person helping ferry the cargo could turn on the first player and steal the freight David Braben: It will be a trust-based system. the helper could indeed turn on you and steal the cargo just as you’re about to complete the journey. some missions will be based around encounters – things like distress calls or stumbling upon a shipwreck. they may be what they seem… but they might not be… IG: Are you able to expand on what you mean by procedural generation techniques going “further” than in previous games Does that mean more detail with star systems, more procedural influence on the game’s economic/political models, or something else entirely David Braben: all of these things, and we have procedural texturing, procedural cloudscapes and other things too. IG: With so many more games being developed and published today, do you think it’s now much harder for titles to make such a stylistic, revolutionary jump as Elite did back in 1984
6
David Braben: It is certainly harder to make an impression, and stylistically there is such a broad range out there, it is hard for strong differentiation, but having said that, the best games still stand out. IG: Space-based games seem to be cropping up a lot on Kickstarter (Star Citizen and Strike Suit Zero to name a couple). Is this simply down to a general lack of publisher interest in the genre pushing developers to Kickstarter, or is there more to it than that David Braben: that is a big part of it. I think the assumption is that games set in space will not succeed because there hasn’t been a big success in space for a long time. A sort of circular, self-fulfilling argument! IG: The first Elite was the game you and Ian Bell wanted to make; the vision of two men. With this crowd-funded project, will you be relinquishing a little of that development power to the players who’ll be funding the game (in the sense of beta feedback and other suggestions) David Braben: yes. It is important that we embrace the desires of those backing the project. We all have a similar goal already (which is part of the beauty of Kickstarter in the first place), as we have all come to Kickstarter with a very similar goal, and in the few cases where the goals are slightly different (for example emphasis of single player over multiplayer or vice-versa) we should be able to find a solution that accommodates both sides. There can also be a huge benefit in having open discussions about ideas and plans for a game. We find it at Frontier with our “Game of the Week” discussions – more often than not the discussion about what might be a tricky issue in a design yields a solution that wasn’t originally in the mix.
IG: Kickstarter campaigns seem to fall into two categories; you have the projects launched by established developers as a way of bypassing publishers (yourself, Tim Schafer, Obsidian) and those launched by smaller teams hoping to get their first game made. As the former type become more numerous, is there a danger that they will begin to dominate the media coverage, to the detriment of the smaller projects David Braben: not at all. In fact I believe these are actually the same category – both are looking at it as a way of bypassing publishers. those trying to get their first game made are doing it this way because the publishers won’t deal with them as they are set in their ways. that exact same issue applies to established developers too. the reasons are not too different. What Kickstarter gives is the opportunity for those passionate about wanting to get something made to connect directly with others that also want to get that same thing made. IG: Looking far, far ahead here, if Elite: Dangerous is funded and proves to be a success, is there any chance of The Outsider re-emerging as a Kickstarter project David Braben: perhaps. It is a great concept, perhaps a little before its time.
http://www.incgamers.com/2012/11/credits-cobras-and-crowd-funding-david-braben-tells-us-about-elite-dangerous
David Braben. Interviews
ELITE: DANGEROUS David Braben Exclusive Interview
David Braben is one of the most important game developers of all time. He is the father of absolute masterpieces like Elite and Frontier and he’s finally back with an ambitious 1.5 million crowd fungind campaign on Kickstarter for Elite: Dangerous. Apr 03, 2013 Registil English, News 0 MMORPGITALIA: Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh My god! It’s David Braben! I played Elite for months and Frontier for years! You’re my hero! Will you sign my boobs while I cry and scream like an overexcited little girl? David Braben: I think it’s best not to answer that one! MMORPGITALIA: All right, let’s be serious: Frontier was a coding miracle, in a time when resources were scarce and true miracles were needed. No game has ever reached its level of detail, of quality or of quantity. Today we have much more calculating power than we really need and gaming has been dumbed down to “press a button and something awesome happens”. Will the new Elite be a true successor to the masterpiece Frontier is or are you too afraid to scare the mass market off? David Braben: following up from the previous games is a big task, but we plan to do the best we can to make it a true successor. I completely understand the concern about the ‘dumbing down’ – something that is all too common these days, and a reason we wanted to make this game without a publisher; we want to make this games for ourselves.
7
MMORPGITALIA: On a side note: have you tried Space Engine (en.spaceengine.org)? Billions of billions of billions of procedurally created star systems based on real data. Wouldn’t it be a dream come true adopting something like that in a videogame about universe exploration? David Braben: frontier had 10¹² star systems back in 1993 – as many as the real galaxy, and so will Elite: Dangerous. We will also include the stars in the immediate vicinity of the sun, so the night sky will be accurate – but you will be able to visit each one if you choose. MMORPGITALIA: Star Citizen is probably going to be your main opponent, there’s plenty of news about it and everybody and their dogs speak about it, while Elite: Dangerous is left in a dark and dusty corner. Why is that? Do you have something extraordinary in mind I hope you’re willing to tell us right here, right now, or are you still chosing on which tropical island to run and hide with all the money from Kickstarter? David Braben: Star Citizen is a different type of game, but I think people are talking about both. I see this more as a return to space, and the presence of both games will keep each of us on our toes. Competition is a good thing!
MMORPGITALIA: History belongs to innovators. Elite was the first, one of a kind, something never seen before. Frontier went where no man had gone before. On the other hand, Kickstarter feels like a fashion, massive social forced interactions mandatory multiplaying feels like a fashion too. For whose traits will Elite: Dangerous be remembered in twenty years? David Braben: I would hope “Elite: Dangerous” will still be being played in 20 years time, much as “Elite” is/was 20 years after it was released. there are many ‘firsts’ I would hope “Elite: Dangerous” will be remembered for including the approach to multiplayer, and some other things we haven’t talked about yet! We were the Kickstarter with the highest target amount worldwide (so far) and we launched it as soon as Kickstarter opened in the uK, so we were not really following fashion – but I don’t expect that will be what “Elite: Dangerous” will be remembered for. MMORPGITALIA: Speaking of fashions: will there be any kind of skill tree, crafting system, unlockable stuff or anything like that? David Braben: there will be stacks of things to discover in the game, and some of the elements will work a little like unlocks (for example trading in illegal goods will require you to know who to go to in order to do so, and you will need to build up trust with them), but we do not see this as a traditional rpg. MMORPGITALIA: Excluding the blue skybox, Frontier is being remembered for its exasperated, brutal realism (which could be afforded on that time’s computers, and was still a lot). Now I read that you’re not really fond of it, that Elite: Dangerous will contain a lot of fly-by-wire to lessen the impact of newtonian physics and that there’ll be nebulas which, in reality,
http://www.mmorpgitalia.it/2013/04/03/6509-elite-dangerous-david-braben-exclusive-interview/?6509-Elite-Dangerous-David-Braben-Exclusive-Interview
David Braben. Interviews are less dense than on Earth mechanical produced void. Every today’s reboot, remake or sequel have changed its predecessor ruleset, resulting in an inferior product which alienated fans. Do you think it’s due to society’s decadence or is catering to the lowest common denominator not only the present but the future of humanity too? David Braben: Most of the ‘brutal realism’ of frontier will continue. the real galaxy and so on. for the combat model we are doing more fly-by-wire than in frontier, but this is to improve the feel of the game; the realism is still there. Don’t forget there was flyby-wire in frontier too. In “Elite: Dangerous” space is essentially black, just as in real life, with a rich stellar backdrop. We are modelling real world nebulae, but this is not the huge magenta and green clouds you see in some representations of space – this is as accurate as we can make it. If you fly to a nebula you will indeed see it from inside, but it will have a realistic, ethereal property, and you will be able to see it from nearby systems. MMORPGITALIA: I feel I’m being unnecessarily hostile, don’t know why, maybe because one has huge expectations from his heroes, so here’s an easy and accomodating question: you said planetary landing and on foot movement will be expanded in future. How? David Braben: When the game ships, it will not have the ability to explore on foot because it is a huge undertaking to do well, and I don’t want to include it if we can’t do it well. Each of these things will be launched via updates after the first release of the game. MMORPGITALIA: Question on a FAQ: “How many craft types will you be able to fly? At least 15 at launch, and we plan to add more after launch.”. What do you mean with “types”? Like “Interceptors, bombers,
8
freighters” or “15 ships total”? I strongly hope the former, 15 ships seems very very little. David Braben: We are planning to have 25 different playable ship types at launch. some will have variant versions, and each will have a huge range of different equipment levels, so you could equip them as freighters, attack ships, explorers, etc. It really is a lot. MMORPGITALIA: Balance. In a single player game of this genre the pursuit for balance is just an obstacle but in a multiplayer, PvP game it’s its very essence. How different are going the ships to be? I want, I need to be able to pilot one of those gigantic superfreighters I saw parked beside orbital stations. David Braben: Balance is important. It is why we are having an alpha and Beta test period, but you are right it also affects a great many design decisions. the ships will range from the tiny sidewinder – with little more than the facilities for the pilot and a few units of cargo – to the giant anaconda and larger – with many decks, gun turrets, and a giant loading bay. They will all fly differently, and have differeent benefits. Some ships will be specialised for speed or combat, others for carrying vast amounts of cargo. MMORPGITALIA: In closing: maybe inspired by “2001: A space odissey”, those starships dancing on “By the beautiful blue Danube” were a stroke of genius. As a kid I could stare at them for a very long while and from there my passion for classical music was born. Can we expect the same kind of soundtrack or are we going to get the latest dubstep crap? David Braben: no – we are going for a full classical musical style, and it will include the Blue Danube!
http://www.mmorpgitalia.it/2013/04/03/6509-elite-dangerous-david-braben-exclusive-interview/?6509-Elite-Dangerous-David-Braben-Exclusive-Interview
David Braben. Interviews
ALPHA PAPA CHAT: Elite: Dangerous Alpha In December
RPS: Any difficult decisions you’ve made? Cutting something the fans of the previous games might expect to be included? Will we all still be chatting on an intergalactic BBS system? David Braben: We make difficult decisions every day! I think the most controversial is not to include landing on planetary surfaces in the first release. This The floating space head of David “Orson” Braben is transmitting more details about Elite: Dangerous. This is a is because as a player you expect there to be so much particularly important dev diary, because it announces the alpha stage of the game. The backers who pledged to there; bustling cities, rich vistas, verdant forests full be part of the alpha will be getting the first new taste of Elite in nearly two decades this December. It’s not the of exotic creatures, and so on. you expect to be able whole game, though: the alpha will be a series of test segments, enabling Frontier to tune parts of their space epic to get out and walk around. all of those things we before the general public is allowed in. The first test will be of the combat systems. Being two months away from want to, and plan to do with time. But not at first new Elite got me a bit excited, so I asked a courier to deliver a package of questions to Braben’s home system, and he release.
delivered it on time. Braben’s space responses, and the alpha dev diary, are below. By Craig Pearson on October 18th, 2013 at 3:00 pm. RPS: The alpha is the first time the public will be playing a new Elite in nearly 20 years, which means you have both a legacy to live up to and a clean slate to start over with. How has that driven the design? David Braben: the main factor for me is creating a compelling ‘world’ – ie a galaxy – that I want to explore and inhabit. the ambition for me is just as it was with Elite and frontier, but now we have far more capability to do things that we couldn’t even consider before. fundamentally it has been a balance between the ‘clean slate’ and embracing the heritage. the latter has provided a great framework, and we have expanded this hugely with a very rich tapestry to the world – something we didn’t have before – detailing everything from how food is made, transported, consumed, how electoral systems work, what is in people’s homes, who the corporations are and what they do, in addition to the obvious elements like what the spaceships look
9
like and what goes inside them, the technology of the time and its underlying physics. this may seem like superfluous detail, but it helps provide invaluable information for the associated fiction, for the subject matter of missions, and also in the whole immersion of the worlds.
RPS: And a sort of mirror of that question: with your initial design goals, has any part of the game expanded beyond how you initially envisioned it? David Braben: yes. Just about everything has expanded beyond our original design plan – but that is the process of making a rich game.
RPS: Actually, given how long ago it was, and how the space genre waned over time, how many people on the team have a grounding in Elite and space games?
RPS: I understand the design forum has seen a lot of discussion between the team and the community. How much information have you given them? How have you been using their feedback? David Braben: It’s been incredibly useful. We have changed features, reworked features, and tweaked features. We have even added whole new sections of the game. I called out ‘super cruise’ in the latest video where players want to be able to experience travelling between planets in a similar way to the way they could in frontier using fast forwarding of time – clearly something not possible in a multi-player game – but we have come up with a method where it can work – and this will now be in the game, as we think it is a valuable addition – but it has meant large elements of the game have had to change as a result. and it will be better for it.
David Braben: Many of the team have a grounding in either “Elite” or “frontier” – take a look at the ‘Meet the team’ interviews on our forums for more info, and the few that didn’t – they do now! RPS: What role do you play in all that? David Braben: My role is to champion the game as a whole. to look at individual design decisions, and to try to make sure they are going to work well together – and that the eventual game will be one we will all want to play.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/10/18/alpha-papa-chat-elite-dangerous-alpha-in-december/
David Braben. Interviews RPS: I think the most exciting thing for me is being able to play the game with friends. Will the alpha have multiplayer or co-op? David Braben: The first combat test build will not, as we want to test combat with AIs first, but multiplayer testing is a key priority for us so you can be sure we will get onto that soon. RPS: What sort of uptime can people in the alpha expect? I understand you’ll be testing various components. Will it allow people to keep playing (through the alpha and beta) to launch? David Braben: yes – people should be able to play pretty much throughout – though through the alpha a big portion of what we are planning are stand-alone feature tests, and also there may not be continuity of data structures across the alpha and beta – ie you will probably not be able to save data from one and reload in the next – for some stages at least. RPS: What about ships and customisation within the alpha. Will people have the opportunity to choose their ship and how it’ll be fitted, or is that separate component for testing at a later date?
David Braben: yes. It was always scheduled for December 2013. thereafter we will take an ‘it’s ready when it’s ready’ approach. as we’ve seen with the DDf input, it’s incredibly valuable to get feedback from players, and we are trying to take full advantage of the opportunity we have here to get the best possible end result, so we want to have the flexibility to react to feedback for the overall good of the game. RPS: How playable is the game? Any interesting stories from your time with it? David Braben: as I said, it’s not a coherent whole – yet. Elements are playable, others are not. for me it is a fantastic release to be able to start doing the things I have wanted to do for a long time. one example is improving on the planet generation in frontier – building a rich galaxy with an accurate night sky, where you can visit every visible star in it. there are already billions of stars in the game, created with careful attention to detail so that they match real life physics, including the approximately 120,000 stars that comprise the ‘night sky’ as seen from earth with the naked eye and telescopes.
David Braben: to some extent – more details to follow. RPS: Will it be available to all alpha-backers at the same time? David Braben: yes. RPS: Was the alpha access always scheduled for a year after the Kickstarter? What’s the projected timeline for the beta and release date?
10
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/10/18/alpha-papa-chat-elite-dangerous-alpha-in-december/
David Braben. Interviews
Interview: David Braben, Elite
When you hear all the enthusiasm out in the gaming industry for Linux, it’s easy to forget that we’re very much in a battle to prove our viability in so many areas, particularly to mainstream publishers. Do we need them though? Well, initially at least. As in other markets, Linux needs the corporate giants to cosy up – at least until the gaming industry changes – as it’s the quickest way to get Linux in front of the average gamer. Interest from the big players has largely been muted, however. Unless, like Ubuntu, you count a couple of browser-based games from EA as a win. For us that’s too close to getting leftover scraps from the EA’s table. No, thank you. But it’s a different matter and a harder knock when our hero and gaming legend David Braben (co-creator of Elite) says he has doubts too. As you’ll see in a short interview I managed to snag over email he admits there’s no reason why Cobra, Frontier’s own game engine can’t run on Linux. Everyone has to earn a crust, and if you’re a game developer the uniformity of, for instance, Apple’s iOS line-up also makes the process much easier. He did give us a glimmer of hope, though, with one golden nugget of an answer. Linux is something Frontier are “seriously looking at supporting.” Right now, it’s doubtful whether Elite: Dangerous (Braben’s follow-up to Elite) will support Linux from launch, but the alpha opened recently and the game will be out this year. Posted at 5:36pm on Monday January 20th 2014 Linux Format: What’s your position on Linux for gaming? David Braben: linux is great because it is a truly open format. It is why we used it for raspberry pi. at frontier we haven’t previously supported linux for one main reason; historically games on linux do not sell as well as on other platforms, though of course figures are hard to come by. It is not that they don’t sell at all, it is just that the other potential platforms sell more. My guess is that there are a great deal more Xboxes, playstations, Windows pC, and ios machines, than linux ones. sadly, the openness of the platform, and the variations between setups make it a challenging platform too. piracy is much easier because of that openness, but it is something we are seriously looking at supporting.
11
LXF: I believe you’re using your own game engine – COBRA? Does that open the door to a Linux version? David Braben: there is no reason Cobra cannot run on linux, running through opengl. LXF: What do you think is currently preventing Linux from being an unstoppable force for good in the gaming industry? David Braben: With this sort of thing, it comes down to numbers. The fragmentation is an issue too (ie the number of subtly different set ups and OSes – making even the Windows pC appear pretty uniform. LXF: What’s your best guess as to the future for Linux gaming? Or maybe just your best hope for it. David Braben: a common platform would help (and there are a number of these coming through, including Raspberry Pi).
http://www.tuxradar.com/content/interview-david-braben-0
David Braben. Interviews
David Braben: “A lot of confidence and a little bit of cash”
David Braben: I think it’s really important for all of us. What are the conversations you have over lunch, over coffee? What do people really care about? I suppose part of it is why do people want to work at a company like frontier, and not a giant company like Electronic arts or Microsoft. It’s wanting to have that input, that indie feel where there is real likelihood that a game idea, if it’s good enough, and by good enough I mean judged by your peers as being good enough, then there’s a good chance that it will get made.
Frontier has just signed a publishing deal for two new titles, but how key was its Game Of The Week process? Frontier Developments is busy making Elite: Dangerous right now, but it’s also just announced a new publishing deal for two unnamed titles. The new games will use the studio’s Cobra technology and were both products of a Game Of The Week process, which allows members of staff to pitch their ideas. Here David Braben, Frontier boss, explains why that process is still so important to the company, why the indie scene is like ‘70s rock and how you get a studio to its twentieth anniversary and still maintain a lustrous head of hair. Q: Would you encourage more companies to adopt it? By Rachel Weber THU 27 FEB 2014 12:00PM Q: You’re not talking about what the games are yet, but what made them right for the deal? David Braben: our game of the Week process, which is what it came out of, has run for a quite a long time now. The first game that came out of it was Lost Winds and I think that created quite a buzz within the company, and it also validated the process. so we’ve been running game of the Week, but actually the opportunity to do games on our own ticket… in a good way we’ve been in really high demand because people have wanted to work with us. Kinectimals, Disneyland adventures, Zoo tycoon, and obviously doing Elite at the same time. the game of the Week process is fantastic, we have an internal forum where people suggest ideas and other people essentially either shout them down or praise them. and it’s quite clear that some ideas get a lot of traction quite quickly, they capture people’s imaginations. and we’ve been looking at them in a very practical way, of the ideas that are good we’ve got various filters – is it a game that is novel in the marketplace? Is it a game that there’s a big market
12
for? so if you do a game for a platform which is not necessarily very popular, and for an audience that isn’t very much on that platform clearly it’s not going to do very well. We’ve had our own forecasting system internally where we’ve been forecasting just about everybody’s games for a long time and it’s been very successful for us because we forecast our own games as well but it’s very easy to want to try and put a tilt on them. But if you systematise it that’s a good way forward. If you add to that the energy behind people saying ‘oh this is a great idea, I’d like to work on it…’ one of the things which is good is to work on a game that you really care about and this is a very good way of filtering for those kind of ideas. so what we did is we have a top few games and it’s quite clear which ones bubble to the top and clearly the ones that we’ve chosen to go ahead with are at the top of that list. The games are all different styles as well so obviously there’s been an element of involving a partner on that, which games are most suited to the platforms we want to target? Q: You’re a busy studio, so why is Game Of The Week something you invest time in?
David Braben: on a really small start-up you get it implicitly because if there are just two or three people you will make the ideas that those two or three people want to make because that’s all there is. that’s how these companies move forward. But actually in practice these small start-ups tend to end up working on work for hire because that’s the one that brings in the money. you’ve got to have quite a lot of confidence and a little bit of cash behind you to be able to do this kind of thing. you’ve got to be able to work on the ideas before they ever generate money. having said that, yes, I think it’s a very very good thing because it’s a way of slightly dispassionately looking at what you’re creating and saying ‘is this really going to work?’ Because some of the ideas that come through are really lovely ideas but they’re so flipping impossible to play that actually they wouldn’t necessarily do well in the market place. and then there are others that have that quirky addiction, I mean look at a game like flappy Bird. Imagine a design document for that. It’s so unbelievably simple and I think it was only one or two days work, I remember reading that somewhere. But it’s strangely compelling. It’s coming up with a process to place that sort of thing alongside a truly huge adventure. some
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-02-27-braben
David Braben. Interviews of them would require really big teams to deliver, others require really quite small teams so we can also match the opportunities. If we can see in our planning coming up there’s an availability for 20 people to work on something for four months we can fit that to that slot. And so actually it creates an immense amount of flexibility for us as well. We’re talking a hundred or more ideas here, we’re not talking just a few. Q: And I imagine some of the those ideas become part of other projects? David Braben: no question. some of those ideas came through when we did a game called thrillville: Off The Rails which had 50-odd arcade games actually embedded within it – some of those came from people’s own creativity within the company Q: How does Frontier maintain that indie sensibility as a 240 person studio? David Braben: It’s all of the people themselves who are here and get involved. It’s very easy to talk about this sort of thing, it’s harder to deliver on it and it’s taken a while for us to get to the sort of scale where we can do this. It’s in order to, and hopefully has, kept the indie feel going. I think by many people’s definitions we’re a bit big to be counted as an indie, even though we are still an indie. I think it’s the independent atmosphere that’s important, the fact that we do do the things, and in fact more so than many indies because we’re less hand to mouth. We can sensibly say ‘actually this is a great idea, let’s pursue it.’ and what’s wonderful in the case of these two projects is actually they’re a fantastic hybrid because we’re working with an external partner.
13
Q: On the publishing side, it’s quite trendy to skip the publisher partnerships these days and go it alone, what value do publishers still hold for you? David Braben: Well, the very fact that something is trendy is often a bad sign in this sort of industry because it means you’re following the crowd. With a lot of these things being different from other people is a big advantage, not just in game design but in business model and approach. the point is frontier has been around now for more than 20 years and I’ve been doing this for more than 30 years. We’ve seen so many changes, but what we’re always trying to be is in a place where we can take advantage of that change. Whether it’s the move in 2008 to mobile, then the consolidation of the way console development is done, all these changes are really important and I think we’ve been on the leading edge of it. We’ve been at the right place at the right time but also we’ve been there and we’ve taken advantage of it. there are changes in the way people get their content, I mean, how many games sold through various online stores actually don’t sell very many? It’s horrifying quite how many don’t make a lot of money. It’s how do you get your game to be seen? What we’ve managed to do is keep that visibility of our titles going where we have have had many millions of downloads for games that we’ve made.
It’s really because it takes someone in that team to move the company, or the band, into the public eye somehow and to keep it there. and going back to the sort of thing that we’re doing, working with partners, is a good thing because it also means we can be in the early stages of hardware. With Microsoft we were a launch title on Kinect, we’ve been a launch title on Xbox one and that means we get early access to the hardware, we understand how it’s being developed. and that gives us a big advantage and and a lot of coverage. Q: You celebrated your twentieth anniversary in January, what’s been the secret to that longevity? David Braben: there’s an element of luck in it, no question. It’s not standing still, is the other thing. Every one of the 30 years I’ve been in this business there’s been a dramatic change, every single year. some more than one change in a year. I think the key is trying to ride those changes and anticipate them rather than reacting to them after the event. Because they happen so quickly, and games development is not a quick process. you’ve got to be developing for where you think it will be when the game ships, not where it is now.
Q: So the successes get all the press, but there are plenty of games that struggle? David Braben: the sad thing is that the life on an indie is much more typical to have that sort of issue than the stand out successes that we do see from time to time. the parallel is in the ‘70s and ‘80s with rock bands, for every rolling stones or pink floyd there were probably a hundred bands that you haven’t heard of that spent ten or 15 years touring the pub circuit and then retired.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-02-27-braben
David Braben. Interviews
“The tech caught up to our ambition”: David Braben on the return of Elite
He defined bedroom coding, and now David Braben is pushing boundaries again with Elite: Dangerous By Henry Winchester from PCFormat 291 May 12th on its release in 1984, Elite was the pinnacle of bedroomprogrammed games. It was a title that had a vision beyond the limitations of mere hardware, executed by a pair of undergraduates who had barely escaped their teens. now Elite: Dangerous brings the story full circle – although it’s a bigger game with bigger costs, its Kickstarter funding and independent distribution give it a homespun feel. David Braben and co-designer Ian Bell began work on Elite while they were studying natural sciences and mathematics respectively. Braben had an acorn atom computer, Bell had a BBC Micro and both had tried programming space simulations with varying degrees of success. Elite initially took shape as a space combat title, but it felt empty and unfocused. the pair then added the trading system – arguably Elite’s greatest asset. In 1984, Elite was released on the BBC Micro and its budget brother the acorn Electron. at the time there was nothing else like it, and it was the game’s sense of freedom and exploration that captured the public’s attention. here, in a mere 22 kilobytes of memory, was a game in which players were able to set their own path through the universe and make decisions about how they played. We hope Elite: Dangerous includes a planet called arse in tribute to the first game. of course, a game of such vast scale inhabiting such a small amount of memory meant some ingenious cutbacks had to be made, including the development of a procedural generation system for creating and naming the game’s 2,000 systems and planets. It even caused one of the galaxies to contain a planet amusingly called “arse”, but fortunately Braben and Bell noticed before the game was published with the bum word.
14
CUSTOM CODING after its initial success, the game was ported to all the platforms that mattered: the amiga, atari st, apple II, amstrad CpC, Commodore 64 and even the thenupcoming IBM PC. Each game acted a little differently to the original. for example, the amstrad version had fewer ships and the Commodore 64 version included a reference to stanley Kubrick’s 2001: a space odyssey. the fervent following that the game gathered led to fans taking it apart and reassembling it. for example, angus Duggan’s Elite a included more ship types and cargo delivery missions. In 1993, frontier: Elite II was published. the successor included full-colour graphics, curved polygons and texture mapping, and Braben had managed to get the entire thing to fit on a 3.5-inch floppy. It also included some ridiculously cool sci-fi mechanics, such as the ability to slingshot around stars and land on planets. ultimately, though, the game divided players between those who found it too boring, and those who appreciated its dogged adherence to newtonian physics. games have come in the last 30 years, but Elite’s core ideas remain the same Bolstered by Elite’s success, Braben set up his own development studio – frontier Developments – in 1994. the company created Elite’s second sequel, frontier: first Encounters, in 1995. however, due to disagreements between the studio and publisher gametek, the version was full of bugs and it received a lukewarm reception due to being half-finished. Braben went on to sue gametek, and settled out-of-court four years after the game’s release. as well as developing Elite: Dangerous, frontier Developments has also created some big games, including rollercoaster tycoon, acclaimed WiiWare launch title
lostWinds, and cute Xbox animal simulator Kinectimals. We’re still waiting for the outsider, though. this technothriller game relocates Elite’s freedom into a real world scenario. It’s currently “on hold”, but we hope Braben turns his attention to it once he’s completed Elite: Dangerous. We spoke to him about the return of Elite, pushing the bounds of game development, and why space is back in style.
Why is Elite able to make a return now when we’ve had so many false starts before? David Braben: Elite is in our Dna, and we have always had skunkworks development of relevant technologies that we have been building upon over the years. More recently, various things have come together to help catalyse it: the technology has finally caught up to our ambition, but Kickstarter has also offered an excellent opportunity. Has anything completely unexpected happened during Elite: Dangerous’ alpha? David Braben: yes – already in the alpha 2x multiplayer builds we have seen interesting player behaviours emerging. a good example is the Ethics and Credits scenario, which is really the first glimpse of the flexible second-by-second roles and choices that the game will offer. some players were patrolling in sidewinders together. they were waiting for others to kill miners and would then collect the bounty on their heads. It’s a great example of the value of having our backers getting involved during development. We’re able to drill down into the balancing to maximise the opportunity for such emerging behaviours. Are we going to have the same sort of epically accurate star map that we had in Frontier? David Braben: of course! In Elite: Dangerous we are going a lot further. We have some 150,000 star systems visible from Earth in real life; in the game this
http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/-the-tech-caught-up-to-our-ambition-david-braben-on-the-return-of-elite-1248142
David Braben. Interviews will be backed up with some 100 billion more that will be scientifically accurate in terms of how they formed etc. They will be generated procedurally to fit the observational data as best we can, as most of these systems are not individually visible from Earth, even with hubble. Each of these will include stellar systems with different types of planets, gas giants, rocky moons, asteroid fields and so on. One great side effect of this is the night sky is “correct” when viewed from Earth and changes gradually as you travel to nearby systems. the constellations gradually become unrecognisable as you move further from Earth. Why do you think that space games have been unfashionable for so long? David Braben: I think games set in space became quite niche. they lost sight of what was the key element of Elite and frontier – freedom. the true successors to Elite and frontier were the grand theft auto games. for me, the setting is secondary to the feeling of freedom. the success of the Elite series has always been based on the freedom that players are given. It’s all about individual choice in an open world – you don’t select “pirate” or “bounty hunter” or “trader” from a list, you simply do what you want and events will unfold accordingly. traditional publishers have always regimented games into strict categories for forecasting and planning reasons, and somehow “space” became a category in itself – including games like Dead Space, Mass Effect and Halo, which are all quite different. this screenshot weighs in at 535 kilobytes – the equivalent of 24 Elites How much friendly competition is there between you and Chris Roberts – especially now you’ve got the Elite: Dangerous alpha out before Star Citizen’s dogfighting module?
15
David Braben: I’d place the emphasis on “friendly” as we are both alpha backers of each other’s games, and both want the other to succeed. the games we are making are very different – Star Citizen is a handcrafted story-based game – but there are common elements, the most obvious being that they are both set in space. Many of you will have seen the discussion Chris and I had during the Elite Kickstarter campaign, where we discussed the return of the space game at length with gary Whitta. If you haven’t seen it, you can still check it out through our website or the Elite: Dangerous Kickstarter site. It’s also not just Elite: Dangerous and star Citizen, there are others, too. I think shows there is strong interest in this area, which is a very good thing. What are your plans for player created content, such as companies or galactic organisations? David Braben: to start with, players are just another commander, trying to make their way in what is quite a hostile galaxy. however, participants can form alliances with other players, and we do have plans down the line for building space stations and so on. Is it generally easier or harder to program a game now compared to the 1980s? David Braben: there are several dimensions to it, I think. put in today’s language, Ian and I were a micro-studio, and when you’re in that environment, communication is so much easier. the largest game that frontier Developments has made to date involved almost 400 people! While the Elite: Dangerous team isn’t quite that huge, between 70100 people are closely involved. It’s still a different world when it comes to communication and getting a shared vision for all the different aspects of the game. In modern game development, team communication is probably the biggest challenge, and this didn’t really exist in the 1980s.
looking at just the programming, I think today it is a lot simpler to do the same sort of thing. Debuggers and the fancy programming aids we have nowadays make it much easier, but the expectations are also very much higher. the scope of what happens in a ship in Elite: Dangerous, and hence the complexity of the programming task, is far greater. this more than makes up for all the fancy tools we have available now. With the original Elite we literally used every byte of memory the BBC Micro could offer. We are trying to make sure we similarly push the boundaries of what’s possible in Elite: Dangerous using modern computer hardware. Braben feels that sticking to his guns over Elite let to more creativity in games When you were developing the original, was there a point when you realised you were completely changing what games could do? David Braben: With the original Elite, I think the realisation came for me when we presented the game to thorn-EMI in london. they wanted us to completely change the game – have three lives, a score, a typical playtime of 10 minutes, and no saves. they really didn’t understand what we were trying to do. I started to think that we had a real hill to climb, to sell the idea to a publisher. The fact that it was so different to any of the competition at the time meant that after Elite came out, publishers were much more prepared to experiment with different types of computer games. they were willing to look at ones that weren’t derived from the arcades. And have there been any similar moments while you have been designing Elite: Dangerous? David Braben: With Elite: Dangerous, it was the realisation that we didn’t have to follow publisher constraints in what we could do. It has allowed us to have a galaxy that continually changes based on player actions. I think this will prove to be very significant.
http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/-the-tech-caught-up-to-our-ambition-david-braben-on-the-return-of-elite-1248142
David Braben. Interviews
David Braben. Q&A on frontier forum Date: June 5, 2014 Daffan, Vikinger, Sterlino: Why P2P and not central server? It is neither of these – it is a hybrid. the important elements are moderated by the server and are slightly less time-critical, but much of the traffic goes peer to peer to reduce ping times. We will tune the emphasis throughout beta. Wolf: Do I code? When was the last game? hi Wolf, sadly no, but I do miss it. I think there may still be a little bit of code left in some of the Cobra tool chain, but nothing for a good few years Riedquat: Will I play E once released? What aspect will I play? absolutely! I think the exploration is probably the biggest appeal to me. Darkman: plans for the centre of the galaxy the plan is to make it as realistic as we can. there is still quite a lot of uncertainty, but the stellar density is pretty well known, as is the evidence for a supermassive black hole – the X ray source sagittarius a, so we will implement that. having said that, the galactic centre is not a very interesting place as there will be very few (if any) planets.
16
they are indeed – and the DDf has been great! I suspect this game will never be completely finished, but that is a good thing. the world will continually move on as we add new content.
“Has any (more) thought been put into Crafting within Elite Dangerous? I’d love to mine the required resources and then deposit it them into a rented factory along with a blueprint and make my own missiles etc” there is already a sort of crafting loop in premium Beta 1 – for example coltan is mined, then taken to be refined into tantalum, then turned into high-tech goods. Down the line mining machines (as featured in Frontier) and similar elements will be introduced, but that will most likely be after the first release. “Can I be found in the Premium Beta, and what is my commander name?” My commander name is Commander Braben, and yes – I am there from time to time. irrstern: “Does the solution architecture of the game as a whole take into account a later upgrade of parts (e.g. the engine itself) to make use of the upcoming new hardware/software possibilities?” yes – we are planning for things that many don’t have yet – oculus, 3D, 4k etc etc – but yes we will also build in flexibility for the future too. RobFisher: “Some of the proposals on the DDF are just awesome -- and very ambitious. But doesn’t that mean there is soooooo much still to do? Or have you got a lot more in the bag that we haven’t seen yet? Can it really be done?”
Frank: “ Am I too late? The game is going to be peppered with tributes. If you could pay homage to only one person, who would it be?” Well, there is already a tribute that went into alpha 4 (and is in PB1 too), to the excellent late Colin Pillinger and his Beagle 2 spacecraft – with the station “Beagle 2 landing”. In frontier there were plenty of tributes too – for example to the wonderful late richard feynman – the planet “feynman” as the nearest exoplanet to Earth. Ibastavd: “Two Questions for you: 1. Will there be a rear view added to the game at any point? 2. Will you consider adding a padlock view to the game? Keep up the fantastic work – we love you! (but not in a man sort of way!)” We are looking at how best to include a rear view, and certainly it is being considered, especially for the larger ships – but we wanted to see how much it was really needed (oh, and I’m too stupid to know what you mean by a padlock view...). teamkill: “Talking of exploration, do you envisage finding a new system and instantly knowing what planets/moons etc are there or will it remain ‘dark’ until someone finds them. Also will the discoverer be known throughout the universe. (news feed possibly)?”
http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=20371
David Braben. Interviews stellar systems that have not been explored will simply show the star or star(s) that can be seen there from a distance, and have a systematic name. someone will have to explore them anD rEturn for them to become more generally known. they will also be able to stake a claim and name such a system. some ‘dark’ systems will not be shown at all, until someone actively scans that area of space, and makes that information available – and without that information (which will be tradable) it will not be possible to travel through hyperspace to it. Sloma: “Are you focused atm on Federal / Independent side? Why are we not seeing any Imperial ship designs or any content related to Imperial faction?” the area of space we chose happens to be a long way from Imperial space, hence the focus of PB1 etc. We have Imperial content too (as in the ‘Damocles’ video and the Imperial cruiser and Imperial fighters), but that will come as we open up space. Colonel Kenney: “One interesting question I have. Much of the galaxy will take us a very long time to get to. Are there any plans of implementing any sort of “shortcuts” to different parts of the galaxy such as wormholes? Like something extremely rare but there are some hidden around for us to discover etc? Like how can we explore the center of the galaxy if it would take a year of gameplay to get there etc?” no, we’re not planning to implement shortcuts. for me, one of the attractions is it Is a big achievement to travel a long distance. I like the idea of the occasional meeting of a player far far out in the galaxy as a chance encounter. We do plan to seed things of interest out there too.
17
Ben Ryder: “Will there be a competition and a trophy for the first people to reach Elite?” nice idea! yes, we certainly should do something – though this would be post-release. Brodie: “Hello David, Walking around your ship and stations is something many of us are eager to see, but what practical in game function will the ability to move around your ship add to the game (beyond, of course, the awesome sense of immersion it will add). I understand that Station & Ship exploration is planned for an expansion, is this expansion a certainty or is it dependant upon the profitability of the initial Elite Dangerous release? You recently tweeted a picture of yourself playing Elite: Dangerous whilst wearing the Oculus DK2, can you please describe this experience, especially in comparison to playing Elite: Dangerous using the Oculus DK1. “ Moving around your ship feels a little pointless on its own, but when it comes to getting out of your ship, boarding other ships, having other players on board your ship, it becomes a lot more interesting – and this feeds in to station and ship exploration. E on oculus DK2 is great. the resolution is a big step to help with the immersion, as is the extra frame rate. the head-tracking also gives that little extra – you can lean forwards and down to see around the hull of your lakon type 9 for example, or lean beyond your chair to look back into the giant bridge deck. Kroenen: “David: Is there any timescale on when we might start expanding past the 5 systems we have now? I’m sure many if not all are eager to start testing more procedural generated aspects.”
this expansion will be gradual. More are coming, but we don’t want to go too far too quickly, as we test out the systems. trying to answer all the questions is like drinking form a fire hose... on the padlock view – no, I think it interferes with too many things – but that’s not to say something like it couldn’t be on a sub-screen (which is how we’d do a rear view anyway). I am very interested to hear more about the planetary landing. What is planned? How much detail will there be on the planets? Are they going to be limited in any way? planetary landings won’t be a single thing. I think I’ve said before – it is what is down there that makes planetary landings compelling – and please remember all of this will be after first release of the game. I imagine we will start with landings on airless moons. you would be able to see heavy industry, craters up close, and ultimately be able to deposit things on the surface (stash cargo or mining machines). atmospheric worlds are a bigger challenge – whether rocky or gas giant in nature – and a key element there is the atmosphere. they should have rich cloudscapes with lightning, turbulence etc. the biggest challenge is with what we call ‘outdoor worlds’. I would want rich and varied vegetation, wildlife, and so on. He’s there been any thought to having a loot system similar to Diablos, where you can salvage guns of varying stats from destroyed or abandoned ships? So say some skilled mechanic has invested a lot of time in improving their lasers and now they have a slightly more efficient cooling system, but consequently lower range (you get the point).
http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=20371
David Braben. Interviews It does a lot of good for increasing the longevity of a game by making the random generation slightly more significant, so I hope something like that is on the cards? Thanks for the great game though! yes – we have considered that. We are trying to balance the game, and want to be careful about introducing potentially destabilising elements, and one problem is that weapons are very valuable. the current plan is that damaged (and stolen) weaponry would have a much lower resale value, but that once we had that we could introduce such things into debris from time to time. David, I am lucky enough to have been able to pledge at a level which gives me invites to the Launch Party, I will need several months notice however in order to book the time off work. Do you foresee that we will get a firm date with sufficient notice? Oh and will you sign my wife’s bo00bs? :P yes – that is a good point. We will make sure that we do. Err – and fortunately I missed that last bit... ;-) Since there seems to be a big disinformation campaign against Elite, claiming that Elite IV (Dangerous) has been in development since 2005. Can we get, from the horses mouth, the head honcho, the big kahoonah, exactly what has been developed, when, and for how long? My understanding is that most of the development took place after the kickstarter and it was only skunkworks up until then. Can you end the debate, once and for all? no problem! I have wanted to do a sequel for a long time, and there has been ‘skunk-works’ development, on and off for quite some time, but full on development is mostly since (and somewhat during) the Kickstarter campaign. so you are correct.
18
How much has the industry changed since, in your opinion? Are we shifting that paradigm yet? Any shining examples? games are gradually changing from this. We are starting to see some more thoughtful elements and true emotion in story-based games. games like “the last of us” for example. Construction games like “Minecraft” are outside this too. As it’s currently not noticable in premium beta, will the gravity model in supercruise that allows things like slingshot-maneuvers around massive bodies still be implemented, as proposed in the DDF-thread on In-System-Travel? That bit was what hooked me to the game initially, and I would be kinda sad if that’s something you decided to throw out. I think that feature could be key to make supercruise more than the linear travel it kinda is right now, assuming you don’t turn flight assist off. I saw a number of posts feeling bored when supercruising, I guess those would be satisfied if you would elaborate on gravity. I also see this as huge potential towards immersion, as many of us probably always feel somewhat uncomfortable linearly traveling through space, when all of today’s space travel is nothing but using gravity of our planets as efficiently as possible. There just needs to be one hint of it, nothing complicated, so we don’t accidentally scare off the other bigger part of the community. yes – that was something I like too. I think it does do this a little, but it needs to be accentuated.
http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=20371
David Braben. Interviews
The Elite: Dangerous Community Q&A, Frontier’s David Braben Answers Your Questions The Elite series is legendary. Father to the modern Space Exploration and Combat genre of games, it hailed a new era of involved gameplay with adult themes and expansive universes to explore. Now, almost 30 years after the release of the BBC-B original,Elite: Dangerous promises not only to bring the series back with a bang, but also to allow you to explore it’s universe through the wonders of virtual reality. Elite: Dangerous is one of the most promising titles yet to feature support for the Oculus Rift VR Headset and has been warmly received by the community that backed the project during a hugely successful crowd funding project last year. Frontier recently celebrated Elite: Dangerous’ Premium Beta release and you can still become a part of the universe with early access here. David Braben, one half of the original team behind Elite, is behind the new venture and we asked him if he’d be willing to take your questions on Elite: Dangerous as part of a community Q&A. Gladly, he agreed and we asked you for your questions a couple of weeks ago via subreddit/r/oculus and this very website. The response was excellent and the quality of questions high. A selection of the queries you sent us were sent on to David for his replied, and here below are the responses. June 6, 2014 by Paul James John Horn (RtoVR): You’ve mentioned that planets within the Elite: Dangerous universe may feature wildlife. Will those be hand-designed or might you consider generating them procedurally? David Braben: We’ve not put a lot of thought into this yet, but certainly some elements should be procedural. monographix (RtoVR): Do you think that, once people have spent significant time experiencing games like Elite: Dangerous in virtual reality, that it may alter our perception of the real world?
19
David Braben: Just about any form of storytelling (ie games, films books) alter our perceptions a little. That is (partly) why we watch them. VR simply accentuates the experience, and I think in that sense it probably does accentuate the perception change a little too. Just about any formof storytelling (ie games, films books) alter our perceptions a little. That is (partly) why we watch them. VR simply accentuates the experience, and I think in that sense it probably does accentuate the perception change a little too. George (RtoVR): Will the Oculus Rift be listed under “Recommended System Requirements”?
David Braben: We already support various add-ons in the game like vr displays, 3D tvs, track Ir, a wide range of joysticks, foot pedals, control pads etc. Elite: Dangerous is a great game with or without these add-ons, and the experience you get with them is additive, certainly, but not essential. “recommended system requirements” for any add-on is perhaps taking it a little far, so no. EdZ (RtoVR): In the beta of ED available to Kickstarter Premium backers, HUD UI elements are rendered inside the cockpit, causing convergence issues when focussing on targets. Will this be changed to infinitedepth rendering in the future? David Braben: We’re continually adjusting such things, so yes, they will improve with time. John Horn (RtoVR): Will the planets in ED be procedurally generated using voxels, allowing terrain deformation and ‘digging’ for secrets? David Braben: no, that’s not the plan I’m afraid. We have considered surface damage to planets, but there are some serious network issues when syncing a whole planet full of voxels. soap (RtoVR): Do you see many applications for virtual reality outside of gaming? What might those be? David Braben: yes. Many. Medical – especially when allowing a doctor to see inside a patient when doing keyhole surgery, as a way of visualising information from an ultrasound scanner. Firefighters or bomb disposal or rescue or exploration – similar techniques using rovs are already used, but vr might help improve this further. Military. architectural. Espionage. virtual tourism. I was interested to see the new parrot ar Drone using an Oculus Rift to allow you to fly virtually.
http://www.roadtovr.com/elite-dangerous-community-qa-frontiers-david-braben-answers-questions/
David Braben. Interviews Appellono (reddit): You’ve been involved in the Raspberry Pi project and bringing the technology into schools to enhance the teaching of Computer Science. Do you see any place for virtual reality in the classroom? If so, what? David Braben: It can help students visualise many things, so yes, I think there are many applications, much like my answer to the previous question! chuan (reddit): Given the unfortunate fate of the shelved ‘The Outsider’ project at Frontier, is is likely that some of the ideas for the project might find their way into ED? David Braben: like with all our games, the technology is shared, so many elements have already been re-used in other games, and in Elite: Dangerous too, and perhaps more so, once you can walk about. chuan (reddit): The original Elite was notable for many things, one of which being the longer simulation play time you could clock up which at the time was brand new. How do you feel VR might further alter player’s engagement with games like Elite? David Braben: It changes the depth of engagement more so than the duration. Personally I find I cannot play for so long with a vr headset, as I need to take it off after a while. I suspect this is more of an issue with the current generation than with the technology in general. I didn’t like the way in most games in the early 1980s that the odds were hopeless, and eventually you were ground down in a war of attrition. It felt odd you couldn’t run away – but then the games were not designed to allow that.
20
chuan (reddit): I think it was David that came up with the original demo of a spinning 3D spacehip which lead to Elite being created. Can you briefly chat the conceptual leaps which lead from demo to full game? David Braben: I put together a simple 3D game shooting spaceships. It had four spaceships and felt dull and repetitive. I didn’t like the way in most games in the early 1980s that the odds were hopeless, and eventually you were ground down in a war of attrition. It felt odd you couldn’t run away – but then the games were not designed to allow that. you got a smart bomb every 5,000 points and an extra life every 10,000. It also felt odd you couldn’t choose. so these thoughts came together with the idea of ‘spending score’. Brainstorming ways of changing this pattern, Ian and I realised we needed to make the player need to finish a mission – even if it meant running from the fight – hence travel. Score being money was not such a big stretch (especially in Thatcherite Britain!), so trading seemed an obvious choice – though both Ian and I thought it might be a bit dull. Apellono (reddit): With a reported 400 billion (!) star systems in the game, do these systems actually exist on a hard-drive somewhere, or are they all contained as possibilities within the procedural code? Does a star system actually exist before someone visits it? David Braben: they exist, in the same way they existed in Elite and frontier. If you simply consider procedural generation as a fancy form of compression, then yes they do exist.
should be? If so, when did you realise this had become the case? David Braben: to be honest, I don’t think vr is essential to a game like Elite: Dangerous, but it is brilliantly additive. the technology simply continues to get better, so each year it is possible to fulfil more of the vision, and we will continue to do so through expansions and updates. nevertheless, vr is very helpful in the immersion, especially the rapid spread of oculus rift. Apellono (reddit): At what stage of development was Oculus/VR support included, and what design decisions got shaped or altered by choosing to support VR? David Braben: We already had some thought about vr, but it was the Elite: Dangerous backers asking for it – and us wanting it too – and the fact we were already well set up to support it through our own engine – that we added it to alpha 1 on 15th December 2013 – as a sort of Christmas present to the backers, together with track Ir, 3D tv, and anaglyph stereo. RtoVR: Do you have plans to include support for the Development Kit 2 and in particular positional tracking once it’s available? David Braben: Well, I did tweet an image of myself playing Elite: Dangerous using an oculus DK2… so yes, Elite: Dangerous already supports positional tracking, and DK2.
beIIe-and-sebastien (reddit): Do you think gaming technology (specifically virtual reality) has now caught up to allow the realisation of your vision of Elite
http://www.roadtovr.com/elite-dangerous-community-qa-frontiers-david-braben-answers-questions/
David Braben. Interviews
Live Chat at the register 2014-06-13 NeilF: Is David able to give us a hint if external views will be offered to fully enjoy the Elite universe? And what limitations they will have to ensure they do not give any game play (combat) advantage? David Braben: External views can be quite distancing from the experience of being in a cockpit – it also begs the question as to where to display key ship information. It is something we have been looking at, though. billyboblee: My brother and I are having loads of fun with premium beta, how long will it be until we can choose the same serve and go hunting together? David Braben: you are all on the same servers now, but the players get arbitrarily split into islands. Matchmaking and friends lists are coming in the summer. Commander Brix: Will there be pirate hideout stations in Elite Dangerous that are built from remains of old ships (like Anacondas), maybe even anchored to asteroids? David Braben: We do plan a 'bottom of the range' station that is made from a melted-then-inflated asteroid (as featured on the recent cover of EDGE magazine). David Jones: For a multi-player game I find it a bit odd there are so many reported ways the game will offer
21
to hide players from one another. Are you concerned the multi-player side of the game is going to end up feeling like a singleplayer one? David Braben: It is important that players enjoy the experience. We are writing this game for ourselves, and the fun of the game is the most important thing. player-player encounters should be interesting, and part of this is the ability to hide – whether from other players or aIs. Most of the ships you encounter will be aIs – and in many cases you will kill them – which is why we want the majority to be aIs. generally speaking we expect players, even beginners, to be more of a challenge than an aI ship, and something that players will tend not to attack, but more cooperate with, and we are designing the bounty system (and others) to discourage pvp and encourage player cooperation. Matt F: Given the success of the elite kickstarter would you consider something similar to allow you to complete "The Outsider" or another crowd funded game? (please finish elite first ;) David Braben: We will of course finish Elite: Dangerous first, but crowd funding is something we would consider doing again. Slawkenbergius: Has being situated in 'Silicon Fen' made any impact on Frontier as a games company, or on your career in general? David Braben: yes. Cambridge is a great place to both live and work. there is a thriving games community here, and of course the university. frontier is hiring if you want to see what living and working in Cambridge is like ;-)
Chris: If so, My question is... How many of the features discussed in the original kickstarter videos will be present / achievable in Elite:dangerous. And which feature(s) are you and the team most looking forward to? David Braben: I haven't gone through them again recently, but I think just about all of them will be present at release, with the exception of the elements we have called out for post release – like walking around ship interiors, landing on planet surfaces, big-game hunting etc, which we do intend to do, in time. I am most looking forwards to exploration, and encountering another player a thousand light years from Earth. Toby: Will there be a Mac beta of Elite:Dangerous at all and thanks for the original Elite t-shirts, mine arrived today! David Braben: there will be a beta at some point, but it will be after the pC beta, probably after the pC release. Colonel Kenney: David thank you for rekindling our passion! Has your team come up with any sort of method to integrate the skybox into the galaxy map so that we can maybe put our hud into a type of "exploration mode" (Similar to supercruise)? SO we could point at a star from our cockpit have a context menu come up that will link us to the galaxy map data? Then maybe an option if within range to set as the current target? David Braben: I'm not quite sure what you're asking for, but you will be able to select stars to jump to directly from the night sky. Alexis: Any Information about the next patch? Thanks and you and your team keep your good work!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/13/live_chat_david_braben/
David Braben. Interviews David Braben: yes. the date for the next update will be announced announced shortly... ;-) Guest: Congrats on the OBE, well deserverd! David Braben: thanks! though it is really for everyone here at frontier. MikeSnos: Will the Sol System be in any of the Betas or will it be one of the last to be implemented? David Braben: It will be late on, but it should be in there. (It is in now, just you cannot go there...)
been great for teaching the real fundamentals of programmer and controlling IO. David Braben: true. If that's what you want you can boot into riscos, and run the excellent BBC BasIC. John: Will the Thargoids make an appearance for the comercial release of the game, or before. David Braben: they will be in there. Whether anyone finds them is another matter... ;-) MikeSnos: Is Summer another word for 'soon' ;) David Braben: ;-)
Guest: Are the current planets placeholder in some way, the gas giants seem very bumpy.. is this because they only have one LOD implemented right now or is this meant to be like this? David Braben: Planets (and other elements) have been getting better continuously. loDs are getting better too – though the gas giants arE supposed to be bumpy. those towering clouds are moving (slowly), much as we think they do in real life. Guest: How has choosing kickstarter as a fundraiser altered the project and development? David Braben: Developing in the public eye has been interesting, but in many ways a helpful experience. It helps us concentrate on the things that really matter to people. Frank Leonhardt: Raspberry PI – why so complicated? Something with embedded BASIC (like a PET, Atom, Superboard, ZX-80 or… BBC Micro) would have
22
LevP: Hi David, will we have possibility to fine-tune ships? For example, maybe I want to sacrifice some speed for more cargo space. David Braben: yes. that's coming. you can swap out your drive for a smaller, less powerful, less capable one, increasing cargo space, or perhaps a more expensive more compact one of similar power – or sacrifice cargo and go for range and performance. James Dean: What are the biggest changes you've made so far due to player feedback? David Braben: supercruise is probably the biggest change Cmdr Wires: In the premium beta I have found smuggling of illegal goods surprisingly enjoyable, When can I expect to see a wider range of illegal products? David Braben: Early in the beta, probably Beta 2.
Peteris Krisjanis: We have rainy clouds out here – so question is this – will systems have some kind of space weather? Some freak solar storm which can damage systems? Some unpredicted move from universe you can't really prepare for? :) Also we will see weather changes from space on planets (and later on landings)? Thunder storms, ciclons? :) And thanks David for making ED so amazing expierence. David Braben: On planets (ie down the line) – yes, but not space weather (though who knows what happens in hyperspace...) ;-) Alexis: Are there going to be an assist system to avoid kill-stealing? David Braben: there is the concept of player alliances that should help with this. David Jones: Notwithstanding REAL griefing why does the game design philosophy seem to biased against any kind of PvP? I enjoy co-op like you but I also love spontaneous sandbox PvP. Will this game be for me? David Braben: yes – you can pvp – you can even excel at it and become a notorious pirate, but bear in mind everyone wants to be the person to kill (and get the bounty for killing) a notorious pirate. Your location will be reported from time to time in the news feeds... Alex Hamilton: Having seen my father play the original Elite and having played the original a fair amount now, how do you feel that players of the original versions will translate onto Dangerous? Aspects such as docking with the station and fuel scoops were quite an art, and this may put off new players, I'm relatively curious as to where the medium is set, thanks.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/13/live_chat_david_braben/
David Braben. Interviews David Braben: there is plenty in there for players of Elite (or Frontier or First Encounters) to get their teeth into. Docking and fuel scoops are already in, and are an acquired skill. Martin Jenkins: Hello, no console war wanted! Original Elite was eventually ported to all platforms. I am really hoping that Elite: Dangerous will eventually make it to PS4 etc. – and if that happens I would like to use my kickstarter £90 level to buy PS4 version (next year, or year after, whatever) rather than needing to buy a windows PC on which to play it. Is it possible to provide some feedback? David Braben: frontier has our own tools and technology that covers pC, Mac, consoles and mobile, so we would be foolish not to look at other platforms. We haven't announced specific platforms yet, but it is clearly something we will plan to do. Steve T: Will the "matchmaking" process also put people of similar internet speeds in the same instances to avoid the current rubber banding issues? David Braben: We are working to address those issues already, and you should see improvements throughout the beta. Matchmaking would be our last line of defence, so we are considering it – but we want to make sure we do our best for those with low bandwidth too – and they will still want to play with their friends. James Dean: Several third-party tools have appeared to help with trading in Elite Dangerous; are Frontier happy for these to exist past release? Will the market information be available via an API?
23
David Braben: a public apI is something we have considered for post release, but we need to balance this with the potential exploits. Commander Sam: Will you be putting OBE on the end of your commander name, in game? (Congratulations BTW) David Braben: no! Cmdr. Kerrash: Hi David, I am really interested in what you may be able to inject into the game in the future to keep the procedurally generated content fresh and varied? David Braben: We will keep most such things secret, but things like famines, rebellions, and general progress (building new stations etc) will be there. Colonel Kenney: A similar shorter version of the question would be – I've always dreamed of being able to look up at a star and instantly have all the data available about it instantly. Will we have such a feature in our HUD eventually? David Braben: for the adjacent stars, you can get most of the info from the galactic map. It will become cumbersome to do it on the night sky (though we will think about it), but the other important thing is that many of those systems are unexplored, so the data (ie details on planets etc) will only available if an explorer has first gone there, scanned the system, and returned safely to register it.
Photosensitive: There have been a number of people on the forums recently looking for the difficulty of elite to be tones down, and obviously a number of people who like it exactly they way it is; how as a developer do you go about balancing these 2 view points? PS: i like the almost dark souls in space aspect to the game. David Braben: there are some elements to the difficulty we will address. For example if you mess up docking the damage is especially cruel as the station slowly rotates back into your ship, doing further damage. this is coming soon. trading is also slowly being balanced to make it more cash generative. other elements are because of the choices you might make – so travelling through a busy anarchic system will always be hard and dangerous. Core systems will be a lot safer, and easier. fitting your ship with great shields and powerful weapons will give you a major edge too. Tapout: Is the net code one of the largest challenges facing the dev team? David Braben: the network code is indeed a big challenge, probably the largest, but that's not to say the other challenges aren't pretty big! Frank Leonhardt: Third try: Why was the Raspberry PI so complicated, with Linux and X-Window? Something with embedded BASIC would have been great for teaching the real fundamentals of programming and interfacing to external devices. David Braben: yes, but you can boot the raspberry pi into a special version of riscos and BBC BasIC.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/13/live_chat_david_braben/
David Braben. Interviews Colonel Kenney: This doesn't need to be answered. My point about information on stars in the hud is that we would only be able to pull up data on stars that are within an acceptable range and pull up info. It sort of randomizes the "exploration spirit" of the game. Such as I have a cargo full of food, I'm looking at the night sky click on a star that is industrial lets go there. It is an adventurer's spirit to just explore a random nearby star. Or to just spend time in the hud alone looking at the different stars. Trying to see where Earth is right now is difficult to find except from galaxy map. Thanks for your time ! Never mind Star Citizen, Destiny and Eve, there's a million space shooters all vying for our attention in 2014 / 2015. Was there some kind of zeitgeist, where everyone got singularly sick and tired of COD / GTA sequels? So how will DB ensure his latest offering stays float in this space barrage? David Braben: Elite: Dangerous will, and I think does already, stand out from those other games. It is an open world space game. It is what we all want, and I look forwards to playing them, but they are very different. Notionally Mass Effect, Dead Space, Halo etc etc could all be space shooters, but they are very different. James Dean: We've heard the 400 billion systems figure a lot – but how many populated systems will there be in the initial release? David Braben: human space is around 100,000 systems – with a larger halo of relatively uninhabited frontier systems around them – and many of the systems in human space without anything particularly remarkable there. the 400 billion number is for the immense galaxy.
24
Commander Brix: I had a lot of problems configuring the game with all the buttons (hard to remember them all) I even bought a HOTAS Joystick for it (still having problems to map them all). In flight the game seems to be heavily on the simulation side – Will there be simplifications for the more casual gamer? David Braben: yes – many of the sub-systems are only there for those who want that level of control (like the power distribution) and work fine if you don't use them. Paul B: Hi David, SLI and Cross-Fire are mostly nonfunctional in ED at present, when could we realistically expect to see this kind of code optimisation? David Braben: you're correct. We are just starting to look at optimisations now, and slI will come too, but once we have the big performance wins first. For performance increases 'soon', for slI, 'later'... sorry to be vague. CMDR Yan: When time for walking around comes, have you a solution to the age old problem of the boring conversation tree? David Braben: yes, but we're not talking about it yet. Commander Sam: Do you think you'll be able to optimise the game to run faster with an Oculus Rift? You mentioned that at E3 that you were using a titan with a DK2, which is a pretty expensive bit of kit. Or is VR just so demanding we're all going to need to upgrade. David Braben: the titan gets 75 fps on a dual 1080p display on a DK2. further optimisations will come, so yes that will help a good deal.
Athanasius: David, did you ever hear about some research done at The University of Birmingham in the early 90s to do with military cockpit layout/seating that used the BBC Model B version of Elite? I took part in it! David Braben: Interesting. no. I did hear of a cockpit study nasa did, where the controls were activated by looking at them (VR style). Apparently it was very stressful as pilots tried very hard not to look at controls that might have nasty consequences – like the ejector seat! Paul B: Is there a concern that the multiple ways of experiencing ED (Single player, group play and all-in MP) is going to fracture the player base, diluting the MP experience? David Braben: I hope not. I'd like it if everyone played all-in. Ben: Will there be area's such as low security star systems to where you cannot hide from players at will, and thus will be more "Dangerous" and rewarding? David Braben: those with no governments. We have an anarchic system in the premium Beta already... Philip: David, have you been surprised at the strength and creativity of the Elite community? I'm thinking in particular of things like Lavecon, Lave radio and all the other stuff that has sprung up since the kickstarter finished. David Braben: yes. It is great!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/13/live_chat_david_braben/
David Braben. Interviews Eric Doyle: How involved are you now with Raspberry Pi and how important is it to get schools involved with coding? What value does it bring beyond being a skill David Braben: I am still regularly involved. I go to board meetings every month, and communicate daily via email. In my opinion it is important to 'put something back'. I was very lucky when I was a teenager that the acorn atom, then BBC Micro were available. Without them, learning to program would have been much harder (and more expensive) and I doubt I would have done it so early. Pryrios: When you say we will walk inside ships and stations, are you thinking in first person view or third person view over the shoulder? If it's third person view, are you planning on doing some character creator to make different characters for players? David Braben: first person. Springy: Hi David, I was wondering if the game will work with TrackIR whilst we await consumer models of the Oculus Rift? David Braben: Yes. It already (since Alpha 1.2) works with oculus rift, and track Ir.
25
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/13/live_chat_david_braben/
David Braben. Interviews
DAVID BRABEN at Retro Gamer
It’s been 30 years since Elite blew BBC Micro owners away with its sheer scope and ambitious design. Three decades on and Elite Dangerous is finally getting ready to dock after being successfully funded on Kickstarter. We speak to David Braben about his first steps in the games industry and what led him to creating his original sci-fi epic. by Retro Gamer Team, 18 June 2014 Let us start by going back to your days at school in the late Sixties and Seventies. Computers and gaming didn’t really exist, so what were your aspirations back then? at school I was very much into physics and that was my major passion. I enjoyed seeing how things worked and I also loved making things. I felt fascinated by science, but at the same time, I enjoyed unleashing my creativity. Were you considering a career in science back then? I liked the idea of being a research scientist. you know, looking into… well, lots of different things, I suppose. It was very interesting. I have also been fascinated with astronomy for a very long time. I am amazed at how little we understand the whole shebang. I mean, I look up into the sky today and I realise that it was only quite recently in historical terms that we had any idea of what kept the sun warm. and you know, we still don’t understand gravity. Would it be fair to say that you have a natural instinct to explore and discover? I think so. there are a huge number of things that are out there that we have almost no comprehension of, you know? In fact, the things that we do have comprehension of are a very small percentage of what there is to understand.
26
How did you get into the development of games? Well, I did sciences at university. I went to Cambridge to study natural sciences, which is specialising in physics, and in parallel I got a computer and started playing around with it. and I was fascinated by 3D graphics and put together various graphical things. I wanted to make a game because that seemed the best way to make use of graphics, if you see what I mean. It sort of started life as a hobby. But if gaming hadn’t existed, do you think you’d have become an astronomer, perhaps? Quite possibly, yes, but you never really know. you know, if that hadn’t… If games hadn’t taken my fancy, maybe something else would. personally, that was the path when I went to university that I was imagining I was going to go down. Can you remember the first time you played a game? Well it wasn’t when I was a child because there were no such things at that time. When I went into the sixth form, games had just appeared in pubs and arcades. there were some space Invaders cabinets from taito – you know, the original space Invaders. and then when I went to university, or maybe it was when I was still in the sixth form, I seem to recall seeing galaxian and then pac-Man. Did they fascinate you? the games then were very much centred around coin-operated machines. they weren’t in the home.
I remember a machine came out at the end of the seventies, where you had these six games and a machine that you plugged into the television. It would just make bleeps and it had rip-offs of Pong, Breakout, those sort of things. But, to be honest, computer games were just a hobby. they weren’t as engaging as they are now, if that makes sense. So games didn’t particularly grab you right from the start? these earlier games came along a bit late for me. I was already moving on by then, if that makes sense. I mean, we didn’t have a computer at school until I was in the sixth form. But I was always fascinated by the sort of clever things that these machines could potentially do. It sounds as if you were more interested in how games were constructed rather than the games themselves… yes. I quite enjoyed subjects like maths. I was a bit of a saddo at heart [laughs] but I remember seeing an advert for an acorn atom, and you had to buy it as a kit and put it together. I remember being fascinated by the idea that you could build a computer to do things and I got very excited that using very, very simple logical steps you could make something really complicated. Did this extend to your future in programming? When I was a lot younger I had lego and the mindset of making really complicated things out of things that were quite simple was really exciting. I think that’s what got me interested. I mean, the lego had gear wheels with it and you could make really quite complicated machines out of what seemed quite simple things. and it’s that same sort of fascination, I think, with programming – designing things that could be exciting – but at the same time a way of trying out different sorts of technological solutions to things.
http://www.retrogamer.net/profiles/developer/david-braben/
David Braben. Interviews given your love of physics and astronomy, it’s little wonder that you created Elite… One of the very first things I wrote on a computer was an expanding star field. I wanted to actually be able to fly through a star field, and I remember writing this in BasIC. I was really crestfallen because I was expecting it to run really quickly because at the time I thought, ‘oh, it’s only drawing a few dots’. But you had to draw them again and again in a moving perspective and it took 10 or 20 seconds to draw them all up, so I was really disappointed. I was expecting it to be magical, you know; something really interesting to behold. Did you give up on BASIC? I started learning machine code. But I suppose the link between astronomy and gaming was ironic in that my very early program was driven by my astronomical interest. Was there something of a parallel between astronomy and programming? Were they both appealing because they allowed open-ended exploration and the pushing of boundaries, or is that a bit of a strained comparison? that’s probably a bit strained. I think – and it’s not just astronomy but most science – that there are actually great vast areas that we know pretty well nothing about or we have various sorts of understandings of to some degree, but they’re not complete. and with programming, there’s just the fascination of what you can do with it. It’s like building a fantastic structure from bricks. Bricks are very simple but you can make amazingly complex structures, and I suppose one of the things I learnt then was that by very, very simple steps you can get things that appear to be extremely complicated. I don’t know if you know about mathematic functions like the Mandelbrot set, but I remember being amazed at how, with such a simple equation, you can get such a complex outcome. I
27
think it’s a whole exciting, fascinating thing to do from a programming point of view. and what I’ll say is that the things that I was fascinated with back in the Eighties in terms of computing still exist. I suppose all of this is what’s behind the sort of things we know with the Elite galaxy. How did you get started on Elite? Well, I’d put a lot of time into playing around with 3D graphics and 3D spaceships, and how to draw them, and how to draw them very quickly, and then I met Ian Bell at university and he was working on a game called free fall with acornsoft, and I thought, ‘oh, it would be excellent to make a game from this and publish it.’ I showed him my spaceships flying around with sort of 3D star fields and things like that. How receptive was he? he was very receptive. But the problem we had was that, fundamentally as a game, it would just be too empty, so we just, you know, we talked about how we could make it more interesting, have a galaxy to fly around trading and all that sort of thing, and that’s where Elite was born. I mean, trading came from the need for an excuse, almost a justification for why the player was doing what they were doing. We didn’t want a game that just took ten minutes to play. Did you feel it would be a success from the start? Well, we knew it wasn’t similar to other games out there at the time and so when we came to getting the game to market, we started to struggle. We’d already been turned down by publishers and I think I’ve said a lot publicly about thorn EMI rejecting the game. I think the point was the game was very different to what was out there and so we were confident that it was going to do really well.
What was your biggest fear? I think really, certainly my biggest fear was someone else getting there first, doing a good 3D game before we did, and I was obviously delighted that it didn’t happen. But it’s one of those things that once it’s there, I thought other people would see it and go, ‘oh wow. I will do one like that,’ and we would just be one of many. I think we were very lucky in that we had the field to ourselves for quite a while. Can you take us through how you went about visualising Elite? We didn’t really have any doubts about what we were doing because we were writing the game for ourselves and we were just hoping that there would be other people like us. that this was a game we would have liked to play was the point. the bigger doubts were either that we were going to get somehow ripped off, or someone else would do a similar game and come out before we did, you know, because why were we in any way special? We were lucky really. We thought maybe someone else had started before us and kept it secretive. Was it difficult juggling programming with your studies? yes, it was a challenge because the masters for Elite went off for duplication about a week before my end of final exams. So that was difficult balancing priorities. How did your friends react to the game and the time you spent on it? they probably thought I was an idiot, but nothing changes. I’m sure they still do. [laughs] good friends were supportive. they just thought it was a bit of fun – you know, a job on the side. I think they were mostly critical actually, but in a good way.
http://www.retrogamer.net/profiles/developer/david-braben/
David Braben. Interviews
Elite: Dangerous hands-on preview and interview – ‘the nearest game to Elite is GTA’
GameCentral gets to play the Oculus Rift version of Elite: Dangerous and talk to creator David Braben about the ultimate Han Solo sim. Thursday 19 Jun 2014 2:03 am We’ve been waiting to play this game for over 20 years. although the series is not generally well known in the us any British gamer in the ’80s and early ’90s will have known Elite as one of the biggest franchises in gaming. a space trading simulator so ahead of its time that it was doing open world exploration and free form gameplay of a style that would only return again with the likes of grand theft auto and skyrim. But because it’s only well known in the uK and Europe many americans and younger games know only later equivalents such as Wing Commander: privateer and freelancer. there was a sequel, subtitled frontier, in 1993, and a quick follow-up in fronter: first Encounters two years later, but since then nothing at all from creator David Braben. and until the advent of Kickstarter almost no big budget, modern equivalents of any kind except EvE online. But as we discussed with Braben the rise of indie gaming, and the ability for fans to help fund games themselves, has brought with it a whole host of new space combat sims and space traders, from star Citizen to no Man’s sky. Before we spoke to him though we got to play the game itself, already in beta and available to backers of the original Kickstarter campaign (a boxed product will be released later this year). But if you’re not familiar with the series, or the concept, simply imagine skyrim but with you playing a han solo type character exploring, trading, and pirating your way across the galaxy.
28
We start the demo docked at a spacestation and are immediately struck but how good the graphics are. the Elite: Dangerous Kickstarter was successful, but it still has a much lower budget than star Citizen. Even so, the visuals are exactly what our young selves would’ve imagined of a 21st century space trader, especially as we’re viewing it all through an oculus rift headset. We’ll have a separate feature soon on all the Oculus Rift games we played at E3 (including fellow space combat sim EVE Valkyrie) shortly but one particularly cool feature was that glancing to the left or right causes (currently non-interactive) menus to automatically pop-up, which we’ve not seen before in a vr game. It’s also the only vr title we’ve seen where moving your hand on the joystick also sees your virtual hand move as well, although admittedly that’s easier in Elite because we’re using a joystick throttle – and so the game already knows exactly where your hand is. flying out of the spacestation the controls do feel remarkably like the original Elite, and not the fussy, unsatisfying set-up of frontier – which was based on accurately modelled newtonian physics. It’s still not as fluid as something like X-Wing or Freespace, but then it’s not meant to be. Elite is not pure fantasy and both the movement of the ship and the map of the galaxy are based on real science. (In fact we’re told, before Braben turns up, that to travel from the outer rim to the centre of the galaxy would take several months in real-time; giving the developer time to plan what will be there when players finally arrive. Although they can’t put off that decision
forever as some fans are already planning a ‘great Expedition’.) Since we only have 15 minutes or so to fly around there’s no time to worry about cargo or missions, so instead we just have fun shooting what we think (but aren’t too worried about verifying) are pirates. again the action is reminiscent of the original but more nuanced, with the other pilots seeming to react sensibly to our attacks and none of the simpler tricks of the original games working for long. Just like skyrim, Elite is a game to savour over hours, not minutes; but despite the impossible weight of anticipation this is already looking like it will fulfil many of our childhood hopes for the game. and if all goes to plan it’ll only get better with time… GC: I don’t know what I’m going to do about E3 previews now, if I can’t warn people that Elite IV won’t be there. David Braben: [laughs] I know, I know. It’s taken a long time for us to get to this stage. GC: And yet it’s very strange that suddenly there are all these other space combat simulators emerging at the same time. The genre’s been dead for at least a decade and now they’re arriving like overdue buses. David Braben: I think it’s because… I’m trying to think what the last one was, freelancer? GC: Yeah, probably that was… early 2000s. That was the last big one for the PC. But it never did that well. David Braben: Exactly, and one of the problems for publisher-funded games is there’s a lot of caution. understandably and sensibly so. and what they look at is what game will it be like? and they say, ‘right, okay return on investment will be comparable to that’.
http://metro.co.uk/2014/06/19/elite-dangerous-hands-on-preview-and-interview-the-nearest-game-to-elite-is-gta-4767378/
David Braben. Interviews It might be 20 per cent better or 20 per cent worse and they go, ‘oh, that’s not very good’ and ‘Do we really want to make another one of those or do we want to make another Call of Duty or, you know…’ and so to them it’s an easy decision to say, ‘no, we don’t want that’. so there’s been a real lack, for a long time, of space games. I also think that the way they categorise them is not very sensible. GC: Space combat simulator is a horrible phrase. David Braben: yeah, but it’s not… I see Elite as an open world game. I see Elite as similar to the… the nearest game to Elite is gta; and it just happens to be in space. Because when Elite was originally conceived I wanted to make a game that was free, free to do whatever you like. and back in the ’80s space was the one thing that was easy to render. [laughs] space, the clue is in the name. And it fitted really, but actually I’ve always been a huge fan of astronomy anyway and hopefully you’ll see some of that in this game. We’ve gone a bit over the top in the background, I don’t deny it, but it makes the world rich. I just love the idea that you can look back at… GC: I was talking to the Destiny guys before, I don’t know how much you know about that game? David Braben: only a little bit. GC: They’ve got things like Venus and Titan represented fairly realistically, and it’s always frustrated me that games and movies don’t use real planets as their settings. With lakes of methane and sulphuric acid rain. That almost sounds too silly, except it’s completely real. David Braben: that’s right. Well, it’s the star trek rubber suits. they’re all basically the same shape as people…
29
GC: But with funny eyebrows. David Braben: Exactly! funny eyebrows, funny ears and that’s it. GC: You must’ve been thinking about all this for literally years. David Braben: yeah. GC: So I’m curious, that golden era of space combat simulators, that came after Frontier, have you taken anything from that in this new game? Because the fluidity of combat in something like X-Wing is very different to Frontier in particular, but does that mean it’s just too fantastical to be of interest to you? David Braben: We’ve looked at many of them, but I’ve wanted to make this game for a long time and it’s really trying to build out every part of the game in a way… GC: Just now it still felt a lot like you were playing it on the Amiga, which I assume is because it’s still based on the same physics theories? David Braben: ah no, it’s all new, everything in the game is new. But we tried to get some of the similar feel, and with all these… the detail we’re putting in, we’ve tried to work out how to best do the project in a way that addresses each stage in a sensible manner. The first one is the moment-to-moment gameplay, which is the feel of the ship. and if we can’t get that right there’s not a lot of point carry on! So we put a lot of effort into the single-player combat, which was the first alpha phase we released and then we added things like oculus rift – mainly as a Christmas present to the backers, because they all wanted it and 3Dtv. and then we followed on with multiplayer, which is the next biggest risk. and we’ve just followed on that sort of way,
addressing the list one at a time – being quite focused, quite narrow. But the way it feels is really important, and what’s great is different people say it feels like different favourite games they’ve played. and what I mean is, I think they have in mind things that they really liked; and it feels solid, it feels heavy, it feels rich in terms of what you can do. GC: Where exactly do you find the balance between realism and fantasy? Because I think trying to be too realistic did hurt Frontier. David Braben: It’s about feel. and the sad thing is, I think, if you go back to play Elite or frontier now you’ll actually realise it’s quite simple. But your mind was saying, ‘It’s a giant craft and you’re pulling a great heavy stick back, and you’re jousting in space with these other big ships!’ one of the things we’ve had to address in this, which we didn’t have to in Elite or frontier, is the symmetry of the situation. What I mean by that is that to make the game fun we could adjust the aI to make it fun, with them tending to come in front of you. But we can’t do that now because the other guy might be a player. so we’ve got genuine symmetry, so we’ve done a lot of testing of the control system against other players. GC: The other thing about Elite is, you would play it for a certain amount of time – I’m not going to say how much… David Braben: [laughs] GC: And you would learn the controls and the enemy AI to such an accurate degree that it not only became very easy but you’d literally seen everything the game could do. The combat wasn’t one note per se, but it was possible to have a plan for pretty much every eventuality. A lot of that was just the limitations of the time but how do you avoid that problem here?
http://metro.co.uk/2014/06/19/elite-dangerous-hands-on-preview-and-interview-the-nearest-game-to-elite-is-gta-4767378/
David Braben. Interviews David Braben: oh yes, that’s right. Well it’s the amount of variation, it was very small in the originals. the great thing with Elite: Dangerous of course, is that we’ve introduced real players. so that introduces infinite variation all by itself. And also, all the AI pilots have different skill levels, so they do different things. some of the aI pilots don’t use a lot of the fancy features in the ship, whereas others will use them to really great effect. Bizarrely it’s easy to write an aI that’s utterly unbeatable. the hard thing is to come up with aI that feels about right. so we have to do things like delaying all the decisions: they notice something but they don’t react instantly, just like a real person doesn’t. so building all that sort of thing, so you get a good feel for how good a pilot the guy is you’re chasing, if it’s an aI, is very important. GC: So how does the multiplayer work? I’m guessing that’s not a separate option on the main menu or something? David Braben: no, it’s always multiplayer. GC: So at any point a player could appear and do whatever they do, and there’s nothing you can do to filter them out? David Braben: Well, we do have the option – this is coming, but it’s not in yet – where you can filter whether it’s just your friends list that you see, or whether actually it’s essentially a single-player experience. still connected online but you won’t see anyone else. Which is a shame, and I hope people won’t do that… GC: Oh, sure. I’m not suggesting it’s a good idea. I’m just curious if the option is there. But another great thing about the original, and it seems odd to critique a game that’s 20 years old…
30
David Braben: 30, this year. the original Elite is 30 this year. GC: Don’t say that! Well, the Amiga version must’ve been what, 25? David Braben: [laughs] I guess so. GC: And I suppose Frontier is what, 20? I remember going to see that at ECTS during the school holidays or something. David Braben: ECts! I remember that. GC: But one of the big differences between the first one and the second one was the humour. The original was very funny and very British and very obviously influenced by Hitchicker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The second one though was a lot more dour, it took itself a lot more seriously. David Braben: Well I wanted to… but yeah, you’re right. It probably was. GC: So how are you going to handle that side of things this time? David Braben: It’ll be something of its own. I think each game… GC: Because a sense of humour is not what these sorts of games, any game really, tend to be known for. And it’s another way to differentiate yourself from all these American-made games. David Braben: Indeed, there’s a balance to be had between sort of taking itself too seriously and just being silly. there were some things where I think the original Elite took it a bit far, because we had
the original planet descriptions. you had things like ‘edible mountain poets’, which annoyed me most. GC: [laughs] But couldn’t you have that just be a rumour and you get there and it’s just a misunderstanding? David Braben: yeah, you could but then that’s making it dour again. that’s what I’m saying: it’s a balance. GC: And in terms of balance, the trading… again I remember in Frontier… Sorry, I don’t like to complain to you about 20-year-old video games. David Braben: [laughs] no, go for it! GC: But again, by taking itself that much more seriously, it became a lot more complicated and seemed to lose some of its accessibility. It forced you to deal with things you didn’t really care about. I wanted to trade but I didn’t want to get into that much detail about it… David Braben: The first one was great because it was very straightforward, but what I liked about the second one is that it didn’t have the symmetry of illegal goods. In the first one illegal goods were always illegal, whereas in the second one you could by something legally, like firearms, and then take them somewhere where they were illegal. I liked the asymmetry. GC: No, that was better, I agree. David Braben: the same with narcotics. GC: I get the impression this is going to be an ongoing game, essentially like a MMO? David Braben: It is an MMo.
http://metro.co.uk/2014/06/19/elite-dangerous-hands-on-preview-and-interview-the-nearest-game-to-elite-is-gta-4767378/
David Braben. Interviews GC: It is an MMO, okay. So you’ll be adding stuff ad infintium then by the sound of it. David Braben: yeah. GC: But is there an end goal at all? Or at least a point where you say that’s stage one complete? David Braben: We have a first release. And then other things will build on that first release. We’ll build all sorts of additional functionality, like walking around inside your spacecraft, landing on planets, all this sort of thing…
GC: I’m glad you were actually thinking the same things I assumed you were all those years ago. David Braben: [laughs] It will take a while to get there though. GC: Oh, that’s fine. But would you put a ballpark on that? Two, three years? David Braben: that sort of time scale. GC: That’s great, thanks very much for your time. David Braben: no problem, lovely talking to you.
GC: This is really surreal for me because now I’m going to talk to you about rumours I read in C&VG when I was in English class back in the ’90s. And the next Elite was going to have all this amazing stuff, the things you’ve just spoken about… so all that was true? You are planning to put it in? David Braben: We intend to do it, yes. GC: So in the end it will become… my dream game is a Han Solo simulator. I can’t believe human society has advanced to this point and such a thing still doesn’t exist. David Braben: [laughs] I agree! I know exactly what you mean. GC: I don’t mean necessarily in terms of an official Star Wars game, although that’d be nice, but just a game that lets you do all the things you imagined him getting up to. David Braben: no question, absolutely. Doing dodgy deals and all that stuff.
31
http://metro.co.uk/2014/06/19/elite-dangerous-hands-on-preview-and-interview-the-nearest-game-to-elite-is-gta-4767378/
David Braben. Interviews
David Braben on reddit.com 2013 One of the greatest joys in Frontier was the physics. Slingshotting, manual landing, manual docking... this was the core experience for me. Will these continue to be part of the game mechanic? For those that you plan to release later, such as planetary landings, might they be some of the expansions (DLC) mentioned on the Kickstarter page? overall – yes, but slingshotting was always a little hit and miss, and without ffwding of time will be hard to achieve in ED, I'm afraid, so probably will not feature. After my Amiga days, I became loyal to the Microsoft camp starting with Windows 95. Now, however, I am on the verge of jumping ship to Apple. Many games are released on OSX via a Wine wrapper – it works, but not an ideal solution – rather than as native apps. What are your plans for OSX? We plan to support osX natively, as a stretch goal. I love modding games, despite rarely releasing anything. I particularly enjoy tweaking game mechanics, and writing custom scripts which I did for Civ4 and Egosoft's X-Tension game. What modding support do you plan on providing? If you are, will they be cosmetic (textures, models, et al) or more in-depth with scripting and parameter modifications? If you are NOT, would you at least provide easy access to the game's data files? I want us to provide modding support, but it will not be there at day 1
32
After numerous mishaps and false starts, I have grown extremely averse to multiplayer as a whole, outside of a private LAN. In my current situation, such LAN parties are out of the question, unless it's Starcraft... which I detest. I realize that Multiplayer is a big financial incentive, but do you intend to apply the same amount of effort and energy into the Singleplayer experience? a hard one to answer. almost all of the game world work applies to both single and multiplayer. Exploration is very nearly a single player experience, though much of the fun comes from the fact of the multiplayer world. We do not see these as separate experiences. In most open world games I like to occasionally sit back and go wild, by antagonizing the police just to see how long I would last. Games like GTA will magically teleport fresh troops and send them in with no sense of self preservation. How realistic will the police presence be? Will they be finite, and can a system run out of military might? police presence is also there to ensure people behave, so I suspect it will be infinite Crime rarely pays in games because the moment you do something wrong, everyone knows about it. How will notoriety and crime be handled? Will each system have their own records? Will there be a galactic record, which might take time to access after you enter a system? police records will largely be system by system.
Regarding Q&A 6 Do you see (at least) two levels of system policing ie police records local to a system (so there is a low overall penalty from the "county cops" if on a multi-hop delivery run and you just fancy causing havoc in a place you won't return to on the way through) and a federal level (for all the systems aligned to particular power blocs) so that the persistently anti-social have a hostile welcome from the Feds wherever they go in the space controlled by the block? Yes, certainly different grades of crimes will be treated differently. Don't forget the bounty (for player kills) are provided by the pilot's federation so that will be near universal... Are you considering multiple in game currency – or the ubiquitous all encompassing Credits? yes. It also has interesting gameplay opportunities when it comes to rigging stock markets, though having too many currencies will be annoying for the player. so we are considering it, but have not decided how many to have (if any other than credits). Why is Jameson so important ? Who thought up the name and why ? Will David be Jameson ingame ? Jameson wasn't all that important at the start, but has become so as he has become part of the Elite lore. the initial reason was I wanted a 7 letter commander name that would work as a filename on both the BBC micro and acorn atom. Ian an I discussed a few possible names. I liked Jameson as it is one of the best blended whiskys! I plan to be pretty anonymous, as otherwise people won't be able to resist killing me! (though I may try going as Commander Braben in the Betas)
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15od2s/i_am_david_braben_cocreator_of_elite_creator_of
David Braben. Interviews Kickstarter backers vs traditional consumers: Are you expecting the 20,000 or so Kickstarter backers to be a significant percentage of the players when the game is finally finished, or do you think many more will join in once it's released? Will the Kickstarter pledges continue to be available once the goal is met, or will you be selling the completed game by more traditional methods by then? I hope we will have very many more than 20,000 players. all frontier's released games from the last few years have exceeded 2M players (Coaster Crazy has had over 500,000 users on our servers at the same time). non player / Computer generated Characters: Will the NPCs develop (like human players) as individuals / groups and be involved in shaping the universe? Will the NPCs be consistent, playing while we all sleep (not that I'll get any sleep once the game's released!) Would that give them an unfair advantage? Will NPCs also have "Harmless" to "Elite" levels like human players, and if so, will that already vary from NPC to NPC from the start, as if we're all joining a long established Universe, or will there be a "Big Bang" start where NPCs and human players alike have to build up their reputations, skills and credits from scratch? npCs will be inferior and not members of the pilots federation. this means the game will not react so strongly to the killing of such a non-member. Jury is out as to whether they will have ratings. probably not. Space is big: Due to the size of the Elite: Dangerous Universe, isn't there a danger of playing for weeks and not seeing another soul (except for NPCs)? Perhaps that's not necessarily a bad thing?
33
you will tend to see other players in the central systems. If you go out exploring, I suspect it will indeed be pretty rare – but the lack of law will also bring a frisson of danger! Persistent Universe: With a game that can be shaped so much by the players, if you haven't played for a while, might things be very different when you return ("go to sleep" in a space station in a friendly system and "wake up" in an anarchy!)? galaxy will only change slowly, and the changes will tend to be additive. But yes, it can change under your feet. Music: Can we have a full blown orchestral version of The Blue Danube for docking? Or perhaps we can rename our own MP3 to "docking-music.mp3" (bypassing royalty issues!) The old (perhaps remixed or even orchestral) version of the Frontier music might be good for fight scenes? yes – I would hope for the former. the music for the Blue Danube is out of copyright, so it is only the performance that is an issue. I would hope to get it re-performed, budgets permitting. What features are you most looking forward to that perhaps haven't had the airtime yet? Also, what aspects of the two Frontier games were you most disappointed with and how will these be overcome in E:D? I was most disappointed by the loss of immediacy in the combat – it just wasn't much fun (effectively jousting). I am most looking forward to the social aspects of the game, and ways people find to 'game' some of the systems. I find that sort of thing intriguing.
Will you be using procedural generation in any interesting ways not yet discussed? yes. We are already using procedurally generated textures. aging and dirtying up of surfaces will also help make a new ship look shiny and an older ship look travel-worn. I like the idea of being able to get an idea by looking at a landed ship how much experience the pilot is likely to have. I love the idea that a battered ship is a sort of 'badge of office'. How much interaction will players be able to have with NPC ships? Will we be able to hail them, ask where they're going, what they're carrying? We will have some way of doing this as npC ships should feel like they blend in – but details need to be decided. Will NPC ships have their own purposes? Will we be able to follow NPC ships to their destinations? Will their cargo and destinations "make sense" (i.e., carrying cargo that would make a profit)? at a simplistic level, yes. Will NPC ships fight among themselves (as in ArcElite)? yes – we will have encounters between npCs that you may come across (and of course NPC vs player) and you can choose to get involved (or not) however you like. An oddball question to David. In the mid 80's (I figure it could have been mid 85 or 86). My father had to visit and speak to the house at the house's of parliament (I said this was an odd one); due to the first buy out of a publicly owned bus company of all things. I remember waiting in the corridors as a kid and looking through
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15od2s/i_am_david_braben_cocreator_of_elite_creator_of
David Braben. Interviews a door that had glass panes. I distinctively remember there being several machines (can't remember if BBC or C64) playing Elite. I knew as soon as I saw them, that it was Elite. Can you confirm whether all our government were playing the game or did you have some presentation or something more sinister go on?? I do recall there were some disputes/problems with getting the game onto other systems. I've always been curious as to what I had seen that day (or am I just making it up)?? I'd love to know if this jogs your memory and whether you knew what I refer to??? I don't think it was particularly sinister (though the C64 version was published by a public company – British telecom – just before it was privatised so in effect it WAS published by the government). It may have been a demonstration of British games at the time. alternatively it was simply that a great deal of computing in the early 1980s was done on BBC Micros and they were being used to play Elite in their down time. people may not realise but the BBC was the only machine at that time that supported networked data. Ian and I appeared on Itn news in the uK in november 1984 because John taplin, the the editor, was amazed that all his journalists in the newsroom were playing Elite, so decided to make a story of it! Astrophysics question. We know you are modelling various star types, planets, moons, asteroid belts and rings. Will you also be modelling any of the following? Comets – yes Kuiper belt – yes, to some extent ( though a bit far out to be compelling) Oort cloud (just an extension of the Kuiper Belt, really) Quasars – no. These are almost certainly (yes, I know what Harlton Aarp said...) very much extra-galactic bodies, so modelling them within our galaxy would
34
not make sense. Black holes – yes protoplanets and protosystems – yes, ideally. Active binary star systems where one star is pulling hot gasses of the other into an accretion disc? – yes, as it is a graphical spectacular. I think the nearest is Beta Lyrae (wanted to include this in Frontier, but time ran away with me...) Pulsars – yes – I hope so as these can affect gameplay too, but there is not one terribly nearby... With all of these, some may or may not make first release, but I want to see most at some stage... I've always thought the Elite logo was a Phoenix but have since been informed its a Griffin. Is that the case and can you tell us why that design? the Elite logo took a while to get right. the inspiration was a mix of pilot's wings and logo. the Griffin thing was Philip Castle's idea. What part of E:D are you personally most looking forward to creating/playing? (Suggest you don't say planetary landings:-) the emergent social aspects that will come out of multiplayer. I am really not sure what to expect – but that is why it is exciting. Could you give us some examples of how you would like to see the Design decision Forum working during development? We will openly discuss design issues we need to address, and the options of how to do so. DDf members may well suggest other options. this will continue beyond the release of the game, as design issues will continue to come up. pre-release examples
might include how we deal with ships in dock. Can they use their guns on other ships while landed? should there be an automatic interlock, or do we rely on penalties to discourage? post release examples might include how we change a system through time. Will permits be required to enter certain systems, like Van Maanen's star, in Elite: Dangerous? I seem to recall you could obtain these by carrying certain parcels or passengers. Presumably this taxi-driver profession will still be a viable option in Elite: Dangerous? yes, we will have something similar. We will also reserve areas for future elements. Hi David / Michael. Just wanted confirmation on the ship recognition chart and star map not being in the premium box. If this is the case – would it be possible to have them as digital add-on's for those of us who live outside the UK? I think it would be very helpful to the game play. In addition, is there a manual that comes with the game, or do we need to purchase that as a digital add – on as well? Thank you so much – your game looks fantastic and I am really looking forward to playing it and will see you in the Alpha ! the star chart is included in the premium boxset, that and the ship chart are also available as concept art in the pledge add ons. We'll look into making digital versions available. there will be a manual, but you won't have to pay for it, it willcome with the game. Do you think we will be able to have a seamless transition from Single Player to Multiplayer? Or are the difficulties too great and you will have to keep SP & MP distinct. Issues like hacking of SP save files. Mining and traveling in SP mode, then switching to MP to sell goods.
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15od2s/i_am_david_braben_cocreator_of_elite_creator_of
David Braben. Interviews I expect it to be seamless, But the issue, as you say, is resuming Mp after a long sp session, and the problem with cheating. It is a thorny one. Worst case, once you go sp you will not be able to play with that save on Mp. Hi David. Will the docking computer/Blue Danube be making a reappearance in Dangerous? Will we get the original BBC laser sounds? yes. the Blue Danube has already made a very minor appearance, at the end of the teaser-trailer... I like the idea of the laser sounds sounding like the BBC Micro version... I'm sure our sound guys will not though.. hmmm.... Hi David, sorry if this has already been asked, I haven't had time to read through all the questions yet. Will there still be 'buyers' on the bulletin boards that pay over average for products or would this unbalance the economy too much? I am sure most players will remember that satisfying feeling when you land and see a buyer for the goods you have on board! It will work in a different way, but the spirit will be there. you should certainly be able to 'game' the stockmarkets, and missions will be part of that (and indeed triggered by wild stock market excursions) Can you give us a little detail on how you structure a development project like this? Are you using a RAD/ Agile development methodology? How do you QA, test and manage change? We use a combination of agile and waterfall. We have our own Qa department, and we regularly test builds against test plans so we can spot failures or issues as they come up. We have a version control database where changes are stored (and can be rolled back), just like any software development.
35
The only "disappointment" I had with previous Elites was the lack of police support when I, an innocent trader ("Honestly, your Honour!") was being attacked by thieving pirates in a supposedly civilized and well policed system. It would have been nice for the boys in blue to appear and shoot the bejasus out of the pirates before the pirates did it to me? local police will be responsive according to the capabilities of the local system. piracy in a core system may get a military response. A question regarding procedural generation. I understand that it will be used in the generation of planetary environments (land masses, clouds etc.) but now I understand that the galaxy itself will be crafted to accurately represent the milky way – as far as our science can perceive it. Will there be any content on a solar system/galactic scale that will receive the procedural treatment? yes, most of the galaxy will be procedurally generated, but the mechanism used will create a galaxy similar to our own. Where needed we can override this to handcraft systems and worlds.
all round view. I would like it in the first release, but we need to consider priorities, but I imagine it would be on the list to do, and would not be too hard. Hi Michael, Can you give us some information about the musics and sounds in the game? Who is going to compose? How the music or sound ambiance will changer over the actions of the users (landing, fighting, etc). Is the universe will look like more like the Civilization books of Isaaz Asimov or something like the Terran Trade Authority (http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Terran_Trade_Authority)? Can you describe what a Design Decision Forum Member will have to do with the team? Thanks! We have our own in-house audio team that will be responsible for the music and audio design. We would expect that to reflect what the player is doing at any given time. you can see what look we are using in the cocept art we've released, but the major factions will have their own styles. on the design forum you will be helping us shape the game, provide input on design decisions and be closer to the game's development.
When the game comes out, and it will, I would like to rebuild my old Cobra III cockpit (pilot's seat with joystick and control panel, forward view-screen, etc. This time, however, I would like to have two extra monitors, one each side of the forward screen, to act as side screens. Will it be possible to have forward, left and right views simultaneously, given such a hardware configuration? ... and if so, how about installing a rear-view sub-screen (like a rear view mirror) on the main screen, as well? this is something we have been asked a few times. as long as your hardware supports it at a good enough frame rate, it would be a good thing to offer – not just for side views, but for 45 degrees etc, to get an
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15od2s/i_am_david_braben_cocreator_of_elite_creator_of
David Braben. Interviews
Live chat David Braben on Frontier 2014.07.17. So, the ability to hack the game could threaten to significantly impact peoples' enjoyment of the game and the credibility of the game itself. How difficult do you think it is to combat, and how is this to be done in ED? this is always a problem. server moderation is our first line of defence, but sadly some hacking will inevitably go on. some hacks are easy to detect, some much harder. Deciding what to do is also tricky too – either forcing single player, or ultimately banning depending on what it is seem like sensible options. You've talked before about how "great hero" type stories don't work in a MMO environment, but will there be galaxy-wide events that are triggered/ altered by single players discovering the right artefact/completing particularly important missions/ barging into the Thargoid homeworld and blowing up everything they see? yes, there will. We have already discussed gold rushes – those will be triggered by specific players. other events too. Certain notorious players may get named on the news feeds if they have particularly high bounties too! How will finding friends work with the multiple server connections we have at present? Will we have to just reconnect and track what server we are on or what?
36
It should be automatic. If your friends are on your friends list, then you should meet them. this is one of the features coming for Beta 1 on 29th July. How will procedural generation manage to create a 1:1 Earth, populated by billions of people and animals, with huge urban cities in many different styles, and all this meanwhile being believable, immersive and high quality? In many ways, i would find such a 1:1 seamless recreation of Earth where we can walk around an even bigger achievement than a 1:1 galaxy. true. that's one of the reasons we want to phase the deliveries of such things. having said that we also have quite a few things working in our favour. In the fiction we already have the Earth of 3300 having changed quite significantly – just imagine travelling back to the year 700 – ie the 'Dark ages' – that is the same distance away in time... The coastlines will be similar, but significantly changed due to rising sea levels. Many coastal cities will have long gone and some new cities with similar names (in Frontier "New San Francisco" was a few hundred miles inland of where san francisco is today) popped up on the higher land nearby. so we will not recreate today's cities or today's Earth, but something that might be possible in 1300 years time. Will there be a "Solar Radiation" mechanic? e.g. Losing your shields close to a high radiation star could kill the human occupant. The canopy doesn't look like it would offer much protection! your shields should stop such radiation – but it may well drain them...
Do you think that the game will require in game player admins to be a source of help and support. or would you prefer to avoid this scenario. We may well do this as a way to police griefing. I backed to the Imperial Bounty Hunter level starting with the Imperial Eagle Mk2. Just wondering what ship I'll be likely starting with since it seems the Eagle is now a Federation ship? the Eagle was a ship that was made by both the federation and Empire in frontier: Elite 2 and it is the same with the Mk 2. We haven't shown the Imperial variant yet. Will people who have named stations, planets and systems have a way of finding them? In particular will stations and planets be searchable in the galaxy map? that's a good point. system names are currently searchable, but this doesn't cover stations or planets. We'll work out a way. Will there be star systems where the stars radiation perhaps interferes with the ship radar and communication systems? yes – I think I mentioned this during the Kickstarter – including the results of weather in the atmosphere of gas giants. Will unidentified signal sources be permanent locations as they are in the current version, or will they be randomly generated in some way? they will come and go, and each will have a ministory or mission behind them. What we have now is static to test the system.
http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=26275
David Braben. Interviews The ships Huds layout will we see other layouts of huds? We wanted to standardise the huD layout for ease of switching between ships, but this is something we will look at for the much larger ships. Hyper jumping will we see the approach to a system like in the battle video? Instead of just going through hyperspace.. Then just appearing in a system without seeing it in the distance.. Then it getting closer.. Etc.. Would be better if this was put in later.. there are changes being made to this, but it will be different to that. The effect in the video at the time was a prototype. Is there any chance of larger ships swapping out cargo space for some 'fighter bays' which small ships could dock at and be launched from? This would be especially interesting when we get multi crew ships as well as having NPC pilots... Not only this but will there be add ons to the ships like in frontier which take up cargo space such as better shield generators, engines ect ect so making your load out a decision and leading to 100's of individual styled ships? yes. the very large ships will be able to carry the smaller ships in the game, by sacrificing cargo space. Similarly we will have the ability to fit shield generators, larger engines etc out of cargo space. this should indeed lead to a good deal of variation. Their has been debate on whether ED will be on a single shard or multiple shards/instances. Are you able to confirm if ED will be on single shard or multiple. there is a single world – all trade data, world changes etc affect everyone. Some of the more crowded areas of the game are split into islands, where only
37
a subset of players can see each other. for Beta 1 we have friends lists coming, which will mean that friends get to go into the same island. As a clan /Guild leader what scope will their be for groups like us in ED as a number of us like to play in groups from your original concept?
Inevitable question has to be then: what about turret control? Gunner control was done really well in Rowan's Battle of Britain game... not seen that. We have auto-turrets in the game now, but manual turret control only really makes sense on the larger ships.
That is coming soon (ie friend's groups)... ;-) Will people that play in single player and private groups be able to influence the world in the same way as people in the all group? For example, a blockade in the all group could stop players delivering goods, but the blockade could be avoided by going into a private group. they are all working together. the blockades will be largely aIs, and that will still exist. There's been a lot of discussion regarding the effectiveness of gimballed weapons on the forum, with some players wanting them less effective, and others saying they preferred the way they worked in the first beta 2.00 What's your own view on this, and do you use them ? gimballed weapons are great I think – but mustn't unbalance the game. I think their powers were too high, but the principle is sound – trading some power for those who don't have quite the same pin-sharp aiming ability. What's your favourite ship in ED? (Bonus points if it's one we haven't seen yet!) I'm afraid it has to be the Cobra...
http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=26275
David Braben. Interviews
Braben On Elite, Oc Rift, Dodgy Gravity & Doing Space Right By Alec Meer on July 16th, 2014 at 5:00 pm.
At last week’s Develop conference in Brighton, I grabbed a half hour with Frontier Developments boss David Braben to talk about what’s going on with Elite Dangerous (fresh from my own wide-eyed experiences of it on a VR headset). Discussed: space, Oculus Rift, why FIFA games don’t sound right, how Star Trek doesn’t talk about gravity, developing in the public eye and publisher-free, and the resurgence of joysticks. RPS: [forgets to turn on dictaphone initially, like a professional, but says something about how what most struck me about Elite: Dangerous is that the essential ‘being in a ship in space’ aspect feels so good, even before you get into any of the actual features, and that sound seems to play a big part in that.] David Braben: [IIrC says something about how he’s pleased to hear that and that frontier tried to]… be as accurate as we can. It’s not just the distances, but the way things look, the way things behave. the rules, if you like, of the game. you mentioned sound – the sound team at frontier have done a really good job, led by Jim Croft, who put a really rich audioscape. But we played around with a lot things. people have said, y’know, there’s no audio in space, because space is a vacuum. But we know that, and that’s what we’re doing – what we’re assuming is that in the 33rd Century you can have a reasonable sound system. I read a report about a crash in the Pacific, an Air france crash, and when the plane was coming down
38
there would be a cacophony of different alarms and indicators going off, saying essentially very bad things. I think the way you would indicate a ship coming from the left is you do it with sound, and you would put it into a stereo soundscape or even 7.1. I think the point really is that we have thought of this, and that’s how we’re doing the sound. that’s why the sound changes when you go into a station. then you can hear the echo and the ambience of the volume. one of the examples that people haven’t called out, for example, is games like fIfa. If you go to a real football match, it’s not just the roar of the stadium, but you see a footballer kick the ball and there is an appreciable delay before you hear it. In fIfa you don’t hear that delay. It’s what people expect as well, a degree of that. RPS: I suppose in FIFA there’s an issue around who you are playing as. Are you the players, are you the manager, are you the audience, are you some floating god watching from above? David Braben: I think that’s right. I think you’re some strange homunculus of all of the above. and also you’re a manager to an extent, because you’re choosing the allocations of the player. RPS: You’ve got a great get-out in that argument that whatever you include in the game that might be scientifically dubious now might represent the technology of the future, hey? David Braben: I know it’s a cop out, but it’s a cop out that we’ve thought about at least.
RPS: I guess you could say that in year x someone came up with a study saying that pilots flew better if there was a simulated engine noise… David Braben: We did think about making it tinny and always the same, but there’s just no point. you wouldn’t do that, and it would spoil the experience. RPS: What other aspects have you had to fudge, for the sake of a more engaging game? David Braben: there is the one great… lie, if you like. Which is hyperspace. We know that’s not real, so what we’ve done is make sure that it works really well from a gameplay perspective. But all the rest we’ve made as physically accurate as we can. We are assuming that hyperspace is essentially some sort of dimensional shift, so that it’s contracting distances and you don’t have the inertia problems, you don’t have the fact that if you had that level of acceleration you’d be a small smear on the back of your cockpit. In fact, the cockpit itself would probably collapse. RPS: What is the internal tug of war at Frontier between fantasy and reality like? Are there competing opinions? David Braben: The gameplay has to come first, which is why we’ve made this hyperspace assumption. generally, making science the way it is is a fairly arbitrary choice, really. It annoys me that in a lot of science fiction films they don’t bother. They just do it without really thinking about it. so, for example, having gravity in star trek. they all walk around and no-one really explains how they’re doing it. same in so many games, like Mass Effect – you just assume ‘oh, there’s a gravity field’, a hand is waved slightly and then people forget about it. But I think it’s interesting – it brings a lot of gameplay interest and a lot of solidity to the game in doing that. We have the rotating spaceships that are novel, you look at it and you think ‘that’s from Elite: Dangerous.’ I think that is how it would be. that is a very good solution to the problem.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/07/16/elite-oculus-rift/
David Braben. Interviews [editor’s note- I’m informed that Babylon 5 did shoot for a similar explanation. Star Trek seems to have settled on the ‘magic box under the floor/inside boots’ rationalisation, however.] and actually, do you want gravity everywhere? you don’t actually. a little bit of gravity is nice, so that your sneeze lands on your tissue, or because eating with a knife and fork would become very difficult in zero-G. loading cargo – it’s really great that cargo stays put when you it down, but in a tenth gravity you could pick it up and lift it over your head if you want. the other thing I like is, in some value, maybe .3 or .4 G, a human can still fly. Isn’t that amazing? You could strap on wings and fly. But you don’t see that. RPS: I suppose you’re fortunate in that, despite the game covering such an immense amount of space, it has a much narrower focus than a lot of other sci-fi. This is primarily about getting spaceships right, whereas something like Mass Effect has to do stories and cultures and characters on a much bigger level as well. David Braben: that will come to us as well. We have said that this is just the beginning. We’ve shown inside the ships already, we will have those things with time and for the release. Walking around, ultimately landing on the surfaces of the planets. all of those things, whether it’s talking to people or big game hunting will come. RPS: And you’ll be looking more closely at how the individual civilisations and cultures work? David Braben: yes, we’ve already got that. We have piles, pages, hundreds of pages of that sort of thing, because we’ve created fiction bibles for just about every element of civilisation. What is the law, who is the president through time, who is the emperor, were they deposed? I’m sure you know [I did! Ed],there have been quite a few books now based in our world, so in order to be consistent they have to follow these fiction bibles.
39
RPS: The long term plan you have now, how much was it planned already, what you expected to have when you launched that Kickstarter? David Braben: It’s certainly where I’d hoped we’d be by now. all of these things, you do your absolute best to deliver the best thing you can, and I think we have. I’m very proud. there are lot of very, very dedicated people at frontier, putting in many, many hours – I mean man-years – to make the game very beautiful, and I get to take credit for it [ laughs], which of course is great. the point is that there are so many moving parts to it, and I think that… Well, I hope that the backers are pleased with what we’ve done so far, and what we’re continuing to do. I believe we have delivered what we said we’d do, and are continuing to, but that’s not to say we should get complacent. I am absolutely hopeful and expect that, in the same way looking where we are now and back at a few months’ earlier and thinking ‘I thought that was good, this is better’, I hope by the time we get to release we will have continued that rate of improvement. RPS: You mentioned about the other people involved, and how Jim Croft was heading up audio – I’m really interested to know who the other driving forces are on this game. David Braben: Johnny Watts is the producer, he makes it happen, he’s doing really well… y’know, there are so many people, and the danger when you start naming individuals is you leave someone out. that would be my fear. the reason I mentioned Jim is because you called out audio, but again he has a whole team, and they’re doing a great job. Every ship sounds different, every component of the ship has a sound, whether it’s a little relay switching because you’re lowering the undercarriage… all of these things have a sound, it’s the solidity of feeling you’re involved. they’re all placed in a proper 3D soundscape, so whether you’re listening on 5.1 or 7.1 or just stereo, you’re embedded in the world.
RPS: I noticed when I was fiddling with the Oculus Rift settings that you can either have ‘Oculus Rift – headphones’ or ‘Oculus Rift – speakers’, which is impressively specific. David Braben: oh, I know! absolutely. It’s one of the things that’s funny, because one of the things we found at frontier was that playing oculus rift with headphones was excluding, particularly if you’re talking to people. We’ve actually got a room set up with 7.1 and it’s nice, and we actually play the oculus rift without headphones, but we noticed you need the soundscape to stay with the headphones. RPS: Will you be tracking the depth motion tracking aspect of the Rift DK2? David Braben: We support that. If it’s on your oculus rift, we support it. We support DK1, we support oculus hD and we support DK2. It’s actually quite nice, you can see some things around the cockpits, you can look out and lean around, particularly on the type IX, you can actually see down to the weapons. RPS: You’ve got that modeled pilot body with the moving fingers in there already – are you going to see that leaning forwards and craning around? David Braben: ….yes? although it’s quite hard to see, so yes and no, I’d say in quite a weasely developer way. I’m trying to think, actually, the last time played on the rift… I think it moves, it can’t track your body fully but it can try to. It’s funny, if you take your real hands off the joystick then look down, you’re ‘woah, why’s my hand still on the joystick?’ [laughs] that’s the sort of thing that, with devices, if we wanted to explore we could. Whether it’s Kinect on pC or whatever, but I don’t think that adds a huge amount.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/07/16/elite-oculus-rift/
David Braben. Interviews RPS: I guess you can give a ‘well, we’ll see’ answer to everything now, as there’s no-one above you to say what you can and can’t do now. David Braben: Well, even when we shipped alpha 1, we weren’t expecting to support things like oculus until a lot further down the line. We had it in mind, we’d thought about head-mounted displays, but the alpha backers said they really wanted it. so we said ‘actually it’s not that hard to do’, did a quick investigation, we showed it worked, and then actually the rest of the work was probably a total of three days’ work for one guy. so we got it in there and we did it as a Christmas present to the backers. We did it as an update to a patch for the alpha build.
processors and consoles. Now we’re beginning to talk about it in terms of joysticks and headsets. You and Star Citizen are now the figureheads for a completely different form of hardware. David Braben: yeah. Well, actually what’s happened is that the industry has turned on its head a lot. Developers are now saying ‘we will do this’, whereas five years ago it was publishers. Publishers would come to developers, saying ‘we want you to work with this…’ It’s meant a lot more freedom. there’s no way if we were with a publisher that we could just support oculus rift like that. there would always be a deal in place – ‘what do oculus get out of it?’ all of that side of things.
RPS: That’s fascinating in terms of the demographics for those high-level backers. Are they developers too? Are they just rich? David Braben: ten percent played on oculus rift.
RPS: And presumably it wouldn’t be something you could just turn around in three days, because you’d have all these levels of approval to meet. David Braben: Absolutely, you’d find it was way more work, all these prototypes. And that’s the difference. I suppose we are a publisher, but in a different way, with a different mindset. Our allegiance is to the game, and if a particular piece of hardware – I like the X52 for example [me too! - ed], it works really well and that’s the one I’ve been playing with. having said that, I still like playing on a console pad. It works well, and actually on oculus, an X52 takes a bit of getting used to because you have to work out where all the switches are [laughs]. you have to memorise them. With a controller, I’ve played games with those for so long that I know exactly where all the buttons are, so it’s not a problem.
RPS: That’s huge, my goodness. David Braben: some of them probably are developers, some of them they probably do a bit of tinkering at home… there’s no harm or shame in that. I think that now we’ve got, in round figures, 30,000 people playing, I don’t expect 10 percent of them to be playing on oculus rIfts. there will be a significant number, as DK2s roll out maybe a lot more, and it’s not just oculus rIft. there are also other head-mounted displays coming up, some from Kickstarter, sony’s Morpheus… I think what we’ll see is a much more populated field anyway, and it’ll be like tv sets. “What about oculus, ooh, what about this other one?”, all different in some way. RPS: It’s fascinating that, for so long, as press and developers we’ve talked about which games sell hardware, but we’ve always meant graphics cards and
40
RPS: Clearly you’re very much an advocate of developing in the public eye like this, but I do wonder how much that’s because it’s gone so well for you so far. Just as a thought experiment, did you are can you think about how you be feeling about being this open if the reception to Dangerous had been more
negative, and you were on the back foot, having to defend yourself all the time? David Braben: yeah, you are right. It’s something that, before we went for Kickstarter, I did agonise either. But I actually thought ‘well, I’d rather know sooner than later if someone hated what we are doing.’ you know, while there was still a chance to rectify it. people have said ‘oh, I don’t like this feature or that feature’ or ‘your game runs rubbishly on my hardware’, and we’ve looked at it and tried to fix it. It’s actually been very helpful having such a big test bed so soon. We say there are ‘only’ 200 people playing alpha 1, but actually that’s still a very big test set, and we found all sorts of obscure graphics cards combinations and things that weren’t in our normal test set. So we were able to fix things. RPS: It’s free QA! David Braben: yes, they were fantastically helpful. there were a few guys who we said ‘actually we can’t find out why this isn’t working, because we haven’t been able to source the graphics card that you’ve got. Well, we have one, but it works!’ so we tried to figure out why his different, and eventually we sent him a really simple test program, he ran it and we found it was to do with the way the driver worked. so we’ve now got the bottom of it – we said ‘it is a problem, here is a temporary fix and we’ll solve it properly next.’ other obscure problems we’ve found in the wild, is that people love upgrading their machines and they love upgrading their network connections, to get fast connections. But they will have a network hub or a switch somewhere that they’ve not touched for ten years, and it doesn’t support a lot of the modern protocols. so we have to write a different codepath that copes with the older hubs. It’s things like that that were flushed out ,that we hadn’t found at work because we were working on a fairly straightforward and very clean lan that doesn’t have these things.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/07/16/elite-oculus-rift/
David Braben. Interviews
Braben On Star Citizen, Elite 2 Bugs & Rude Planet Names By Alec Meer on July 24th, 2014 at 2:00 pm.
A short while ago I ran the first part of my recent interview with Elite co-creator David Braben about space, VR and other Dangerous-related topics; here’s part two, in which I mutter questions from RPS readers at him, on topics ranging from Wallace and Gromit to obscure Elite 2 bugs, before posing my own questions about his take on Star Citizen, and exactly who all these people throwing shedloads of money at space games are. RPS: @badgercommander says “Any chance of a sequel to Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit?” David Braben: I loved working with aardman and nick park. obviously it’s aardman’s property not ours, but I would love to do that, or even to bring that game up to date for modern machines, but it’s unlikely. RPS: Wallace and Gromit on Oculus Rift? David Braben: Well, you never know [laughs]. RPS: @edwardo_ka says “Ask him what the plan was for the contact binary star (Beta Lyrae [-146,85]) in Frontier: Elite 2 that would crash the computer.” Does that mean anything to you? David Braben: yes, it does. so it was a special shape, a contact binary, which we are doing in Elite Dangerous, and due to a bug when I’d done some optimisation stuff, the shape it got wasn’t in the resource set, so it crashed when you went to it. and that was just so frustrating and so upsetting – these days you could
41
just very easily patch it, and most people wouldn’t even know it wasn’t there. I think the problem is that, in those days, Qaing something, especially in frontier with so many systems, you couldn’t visit every system and check. Because that one was a special case we should have done, but didn’t. Beta lyrae conceptual image from Wikipedia. RPS: Is it too late? You could push out a shock Frontier patch. That would make a lot of people’s day. David Braben: It would take me such a long time to even work out which version of the code was the latest, and work out how best to patch it. RPS: @sombrero_kid says “I’m looking forward to the sandbox, I expect I will need a campaign to frame it, what ratio of development is sandbox to campaign?” David Braben: Well, we don’t have a campaign as such. the game is the game. your campaign is your story. so the two are the same. so 100%. RPS: @glowingslab asks “How much was Elite influenced by the Traveller RPG?” David Braben: Not at all. It was influenced by RPGs, because there were quite a few around and I had played a few, but not influenced at all by Traveller. I think Ian played traveller a little bit, but I’d played fantasy trip which is essentially men in tights fantasy, there was space opera, there were lots around. they from people like steve Jackson, who went on to do gurps, although that wasn’t released at that time, and all sorts of others.
RPS: @touzimsky asks “Will the physical addons from the Kickstarter campaign be made available at some point?” David Braben: Well, the ones that are specifically available for Kickstarter are specifically available for Kickstarter. there are some things on our website that are available now, like badges, keyrings, mugs, and there will be more available in time. hopefully things that people will like. things that I love too. RPS: Our own John Walker asks “do you ever boot up First Encounters for a quick game?” David Braben: yes… although it doesn’t work any more, because one of the Windows updates seems to have broken it. It says “this application isn’t 64bit” or some such. RPS: There’s probably a fix for it. David Braben: there probably is, but I haven’t had the time to rathole finding out why it’s not working anymore. I wish I hadn’t taken that update. RPS: @andrewdoull asks “How are they checking for swear words in the planet names for the new version of Elite? (they did it by hand in the original)” David Braben: We’re less worried now, because we’re independent [giggles]. the way we’ve generated them is very different, it’s much more systematic, so it’s obvious what is a procedurallygenerated world. also, don’t forget that people will name worlds, and someone will look at those names just to check that it isn’t obscene, but they come in as people discover and name new worlds. We also offered that to backers, so if anything was particularly rude we wouldn’t have allowed that through already. some of them are strange, but none of them are obscene.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/07/24/braben-on-star-citizen-elite-2-bugs-and-obscene-planet-names/
David Braben. Interviews RPS: @WTFMiles asks “you hop between dogfighting velocity range, supersonic, interplanetary. Will there be hot locations that feel like a Warhawk (ps3) map?” David Braben: Well, there are already combat zones that you can jump into and participate in on either side. that’s the nearest, I wouldn’t call it a Warhawk map, though. usually it’s some disputed ship under attack or something. RPS: @Shivoa asks “Those LostWinds games seemed to review well. They’ve started to come out on phones but still nothing on PC. Chances of a port?” David Braben: [long pause, smile] It would be good, wouldn’t it? RPS: A good answer. A few last questions from me, then. What can you tell us that we don’t already know about future update plans for Elite Dangerous? David Braben: Well, there are some things already mentioned in the newsletters [some of which have been released subsequent to this interview], so audio comms are coming in the next update. Matchmaking and friends list. there’s so much, and obviously at the same time we’re updating the sheer content of the game. there’ll be more and more things in the game, and lots of small things that you might not immediately notice, but will over time – they’re just getting better. RPS: How do you choose what to prioritise in a game of this scale? David Braben: We have a huge list of content, features, and then it’s a case of which feature goes into the next update. We’re trying to make sure that the features are largely there, or at least some part of them, so we’ve got a cadence where we add this thing, then we add to it, then it adds on to this other
42
thing. also, what we’ve tried to do – we saw this with the alpha – is tried to address the biggest risks first. at the start of the alpha, we needed the moment to moment gameplay, and the flying the ship, that sort of thing, to feel good, otherwise we wouldn’t have a game. so we did that for alpha 1. alpha 2 was multiplayer, a big risk. RPS: You said earlier about how the Rift support came about in 3 days – is that sort of quickie random inclusion happening a lot? David Braben: not really. some things it’s “ooh, we can make that better by doing this”, so we’ll just go and do it. But with all of those things it was a priority anyway, to have in there early, to make us think about interfaces and things like that. RPS: How much do you feel you’re in competition with Star Citizen? To what extent do you watch it and respond to what it’s doing? David Braben: I’m a big fan of space games. I think that’s a great thing. We’re seperated in time by quite a lot, we’ll see how far apart it ends up. We’re in a similar field but they’re making a very different game. theirs is a very story-based game and all those other things. I think it’s important that we do the best that we can, and I’m sure that they will do the same. I’m a backer of star Citizen. RPS: What about their business model? Will you seek to emulate any of that? David Braben: We’re focused on our own thing, we will deliver our own thing and we’re confident it will be really good. We’ll make sure it’s good, we’ll make it stand out, and I’m sure they will do the same. But it will feel very different. It already does. What’s great, actually, is that the more good games come out –
especially in this – we’re moving the focus of the industry. If you look at the focus of our industry five years ago, it was on first-person shooters. Because there was conspicuous success from Call of Duty, we got Battlefield, loads of others, some of which were good, some of which were less good, and two of them have won out really strongly. I think what this now is doing is showing that there’s a latent demand for space games, and the more the merrier. they’ll all look at slightly different aspects, they’ll all feel different. RPS: This huge audience for them – were these people waiting out there all along, or is it new people who’re enjoying discovering something new to them? David Braben: I was certainly waiting. I think that’s the point -we were writing this for ourselves, we said this is the game we want to make. the people who thought “yes, that’s what I want too” signed up to it, so we are necessarily strongly aligned. I think what has happened is the whole return on investment spreadsheet that publishers use, there hadn’t been any conspicuous successes in this area. the one game, freelancer, didn’t do particularly big numbers, and that was from a publisher point of view it was “if we did those numbers we’d make a loss therefore we’re not going to do it.” I think that’s really what preceded us, whereas with this we’ve gone in, shown high quality, shown that we’ve got a long track record, and hopefully what people have seen is we keep hitting our dates and saying what we’re doing. I’m really pleased with what the team has done, they’ve done a phenomenal job and are continuing to do. look how many hours of youtube videos and twitch streams are on the game already. RPS: Thanks for your time.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/07/24/braben-on-star-citizen-elite-2-bugs-and-obscene-planet-names/
David Braben. Interviews
On consoles, Steam, Oculus Rift and massive spaceships. By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 26/09/2014
At EGX yesterday Frontier boss David Braben delivered a developer session on Elite: Dangerous, the space game currently in beta and due out before the end of 2014. In it he talked passionately about spaceships, player politics and a virtual galaxy packed with billions of stars. This morning I sat down with Braben – in the relative peace and quiet of the calm before the EGX storm – to follow up on a few of his points. He reckons gaming has gone stale, so will Elite: Dangerous have the same effect as the original, released a sobering 30 years ago, and freshen things up? And what about those console versions? And pesky publishers – surely a few have been in touch, right? And what's the vision for Oculus Rift support? Oh, and of course I put a few of your questions (thank you dear Eurogamer readers, you're the best) to the man in the hotseat. Want to know what the biggest ship in Elite: Dangerous will be? Strap yourself in – it's time for forward thrust. Based on your developer session, I get a sense you're motivated by a feeling that gaming has gone stale. Was that the main reason you wanted to return to Elite, or is there more to it than that? David Braben: I'd wanted to go back to Elite for a long time, and I wanted to be able to do it properly. I suppose, with first-person shooters, they're beautifully executed games, they're just all very similar, very samey, they're not breaking new ground. our kids weren't that bothered by the new Call of Duty. they said they'd rather have something different. I felt the same. I felt with the previous one, does this really add a lot?
David Braben: to a small extent we've helped blaze a trail, but we're not the only ones. What's happened now, ironically, publishers have looked and thought, oh, maybe these games are quite popular. Maybe we should do something different. Which is great. Way back in the 80s, Elite showed that, actually, they don't have to be arcade game clones to do well. that was the staleness that happened in the 80s. and suddenly we saw a burgeoning of new genres, and that was brilliant. I'm not saying that was solely Elite, but there was a mindset change when Elite was solidly number one in the charts for a long time. publishers can't help but notice that.
Is there evidence of a trend, though? Are you responding to this perception that gaming has gone stale on your own? Or is there a movement happening?
Do you envisage Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen causing a similar mindset change, or will it be a more of a modest change this time around?
43
David Braben: I hope so. But part of the mindset change has come because of the democratisation through ios. We've seen a lot of indie games – a term I find kind irritating now. Really what it means is smaller dev budget games trying out interesting ideas. that's great, because it's already bringing a lot of new blood in and a lot of new ideas, and it's forcing the older, publisher-based outlook to change as well, and to freshen it up. that is positive. You talk about publishers perhaps taking notice of Elite and games of its kind now they've gone through the crowdfunding system and have an audience. Have any been in touch with you about picking up the game? David Braben: Don't forget we talk to publishers all the time. We're doing screamride. We've got other games coming with another publisher, which we haven't announced yet. obviously we talk about it. they're not blind to it. But I can't say any details. the real point is, it's an exciting time for the industry, and for publishers as well I suppose. We've got the new consoles coming through. We've got the resurgence of the pC, which is a great thing. as we see those changes, we see new types of game being enabled by it, and new approaches to games. Could you imagine a publisher publishing papers, Please? It's a very different take. Look at something like Minecraft. that's a complete antithesis to a publisher game, when it first started – blocky and what was called at the time retro, but actually innovative in the way it puts things together. and look now. Coming late to the party sounds like it's very expensive. I wonder whether big publishers will create their own space games, now Elite and Star Citizen are doing well. David Braben: We've got a good lead here, and we're not going to stop. We're going to keep adding things, making it richer, building a wonderful community.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-09-26-elite-dangerous-the-david-braben-interview
David Braben. Interviews distracted yet. and we will look at other platforms once we've got this. obviously there are a lot of other possible platforms we can support, including linux and console. Depending on console choices, linux may be easier or harder as well. so we want to try and do a proper, sensible roadmap than a kneejerk. It would be easy for me to say, oh yes, we'll do that. I want to do that, but I can't say we're doing that on this date. We need to plan it sensibly. and so we will. With raspberry pi we chose linux. I am aware there are a lot of big linux communities. But we've got to be sensible about it.
And by self-publishing Elite you're in control of your own destiny. Any money made by the game is yours to do with as you see fit. You're not beholden to a publisher who might stick its oar in development. David Braben: that's right. right from the start we planned to support head-mounted displays, but I didn't expect to do it until a lot later. I fancied it, because I thought, oh, that's cool. I wonder what it looks like on that. and so many of our team thought that. We talked with the backers, who also said, this has to be on oculus rift. DK1 was just out for developers then. It was still a bit niche at that time. I said, look, I'd really like to do this. how long will it take? the team said, oh, three days. I said, let's give it a go. then we released it at Christmas. now, with a publisher, we would have had a conversation: we'd like to add this support. We would go through a whole, well, how many people have it? We need to see the results. actually, you end up spending more time on that than implementing the thing. so we just said, right, let's do it. and the response has been amazing. looking at our stats in December 2013, nearly 10 per cent of the backers were playing with oculus rift.
Are you any closer to deciding whether you're doing a console version? David Braben: We are, because we're getting closer to release. We've said we will make a decision, but we don't want to get sidetracked. We don't want to get distracted. obviously it is something we're seriously internally looking at. Have Sony and Microsoft been in touch?
Is it more now? David Braben: It's more people, but probably a lower percentage. Don't forget, the alpha backers have already paid quite a lot for the game – and that you very much to all of them! so it's a self-selecting group who are much less price selective. as we moved to premium beta and then beta, and the price came down, we saw a lower percentage. I've got some reader questions. One asks, you've talked about PC and Mac. What about Linux? David Braben: I'm a big fan of linux. We want to get the pC version right. We're not being
44
David Braben: We're doing a first-party game with Microsoft. We talk about all sorts of things. and obviously we talk to sony as well. But I'm not saying anything about it. Another reader question: what's the largest type of ship you're planning on introducing into the game? David Braben: Initially there will be non-playable ships, like the big cruisers. We've seen a federal cruiser already – the Impeccable you defend and Damocles in the video we originally released. there's also an Imperial cruiser, which you've probably also seen in the videos. those are the biggest ships. But
there are also the ocellus stations, which move around very slowly. they're sort of ships. and giant freighters based on those. the biggest ship in the game is going to be the panther Clipper. Will there be an option for multiplayer when it comes to the ships? For example, a pilot with a couple of gunners. David Braben: that is something I want us to do. It's on the roadmap for after release. It's not for release. as a lot of people have noticed, ships like the Cobra has two seats. type-9 has three seats. the anaconda has three seats. that's exactly what they're for. Another reader question: have any games released in the past few years changed your original ideas for Elite: Dangerous? FTL, perhaps. Or have you stayed true to the original vision you had all those years ago? David Braben: We've stayed pretty true to the original vision. a lot of the changes are enabled by underlying changes in technology, particularly online. performance has enabled a lot of beauty on the screen. the game design is a lot richer than it's ever been, building on where we were with frontier and first Encounters. this whole infrastructure for having stories roll out – I'll give you an exclusive tip: it looks like Eranin is going to war with the rebels. Civil war is starting today. that is unfolding. It's very interesting looking at the social side of it. When we had the leader of the government of Eranin addressing people as comrades, it's amazing to see how many players then started siding with the rebels and the federation, particularly in america. anyway, the balance has been tipped, so the rebels are on the ascendancy.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-09-26-elite-dangerous-the-david-braben-interview
David Braben. Interviews David Braben: yes, that's true. It's something we would look at, but it would have to then interface with what we're doing, and the two would potentially conflict. We have to provide the back end.
What's your take on the latest version of Oculus Rift and how you might use it in the game? David Braben: oculus rift keeps getting better. It's a really good experience. We're showing DK2 here. My personal feeling is, it's fantastic, but I would like more resolution. I would like 4K.
Thank you for your time.
I'm not sure they'll hit that for the consumer version. David Braben: they will one day. In the same way we're supporting 4K and 8K, it will come. that's when it will properly arrive. Don't get me wrong, at the moment it's a fantastic experience. and DK2 is great. the improvements they're doing with the new one are all fantastic. they're all towards that goal. You've committed to a 2014 release. Are you 100 per cent sure Elite: Dangerous is coming out in 2014? David Braben: yep. It's exciting. the more we do the more we realise there is to do. We don't stop at release. We will keep adding to it and improving. there's so much richness to come. there is so much there today – particularly when people see beta 2 – how much gameplay there is there. the game is already playable from start to finish. We're just making it richer and richer. It's exciting. that's why I'm confident. Will you launch the game on Steam? David Braben: no. We've got to support the game with our own back end anyway, so I don't see the benefit of it. Well, I would suggest the benefit is 100m users, which is a huge potential audience.
45
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-09-26-elite-dangerous-the-david-braben-interview
David Braben. Interviews
Q & A with David Braben on Frontier forum 2014.11.18
Will be there major changes between GAMMA and Final, or Gamma will be an "add features - testing stability" excercise until Final arrives? Gamma will mostly (!) be about stability, compatibility and performance, not features, but there are more features to come from now...
experience would be empty at best, and even that would take a lot of extra work. It is not to enforce DrM or advertising as you suggest. We will be judged on quality, and the quality of that game experience would be poor, and we don't want to deliver a poor game. to make a richer offline single player experience has always been possible (and still is) but would be a separate game with its own story content. a huge slice of separate work. We have developed a multi-player game with an unfolding story involving the players, and groups collaborating with specific objectives and taking account of all players behaviour. this is what the game is about. Without this it would not be the rich gaming experience that we will deliver, and would be a great disappointment to all players. I don't pretend it was an easy decision, but it was done to benefit the game as a whole. One thing we have looked at carefully is our requirements of the network connection. for the single player game they are pretty light. I myself have played the game fine on the train using a laptop on a tethered connection over my phone. given that this is a game which is only available online, this was the decision we took. I am sorry that people are so upset about it, but it was the right decision.
Would you like to explain in some detail why the decision to pull offline mode was only announced a few days ago, and what the reasons for doing so were. Many people are under the impression this was done to enforce DRM and in game advertising. Back during the Kickstarter, we were clear about the vision, to make a phenomenal new sequel to Elite in an online world, which we believe we are about to deliver. at the time we believed we could also offer a good single player experience, and base an acceptable offline-only experience off that. as development has progressed, it has become clear that this last assumption is not the case. that
I appear to have been sold a game you now can't deliver - can you please confirm an unequivocal full refund will be forthcoming due to the lack of offline mode? I'm sorry you're upset. We do have a refunds policy, so you should get in touch. please consider that we have been backed to make the game we were backed to make as best we could. this includes hard decisions (and many easy ones too), but those hard ones are inevitably balancing one thing with another. for me, quality wins, and that is what happened with this decision. not everyone may agree with every decision.
David Braben will answer your questions at 4PM GMT/UTC Will we ever see the Krait in game? sadly it is not on our current list. that's not to say it couldn't be added in the future. I liked it too, even though it is quite a simple shape. Will Frontier be carrying on with the newsletters after release, hopefully with upcoming details for further releases and expansions? yes, there will be newsletters in the future, but I suspect we will drop their frequency. I have a few friends that have Kickstarter up to the full game pledge but not beta access. They they be able to play on 22nd or do they have to wait until December. they will be able to play the single player combat test shortly after the Premiere event (ie during the following week), then the full game at release. Apologies for replying to myself (!) but I mis-read the question. yes. Kickstarter backers will be able to play on the 22nd. I was talking about people who have pre-ordered on the store. What was the hardest part of getting this game to where it is now? When developing a game there are endless decisions to be made. The current "Offline" issues are a case in point. We make these decisions to get the best end result frequently leaving ideas on the proverbial cutting room floor. Sometimes these decisions are hard ones.
46
How much of a technical challenge do you think planetary landings will be, in comparison to the technical challenges of the game so far developed? the landings themselves are not the technical issue, it is the vast size of planets, and the prodigious amount of content required to make them interesting. We can generate the landscapes procedurally, but you need interesting things there to make them compelling.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=60284
David Braben. Interviews Did the ED team uncover any amusing or amazing 'bugs' or outcomes in the creation and processing of Stellar Forge? Any examples? Do the team try and keep the output of Stellar Forge as close to known reality as possible, or do the team stretch the parameters/ bounderies somewhat to generate greater ranges of interesting environments etc? We stuck with reality, but the reality is pretty amazing. the frequency of binary planets was one thing that surprised me. I like to play the old Elite games from time to time, and I was hoping I could do the same with E for years to come even after eventually the servers go down by whatever reason. Even if FD could make a statement promising to release the server code (or even a binary) to the public in the event of the servers going down indefinitely for any reason, that would be good enough for many of us! Is that even worth hoping for? Having said all this, thanks for taking the time to talk to us and thanks for making the game possible at all! We have no intention of taking the servers down, but I understand what you are getting at. We plan to archive the game from time to time (ie matching client and servers and game world state), and would release such an archive if the servers were to come down. that would also address the issue of how you preserve an online game for the future, from the whole 'retro' perspective. When you played Elite on the train did you use a HOTAS and if you haven't done so can you do it and take a picture? Can i have a signed copy of it? no. I used an Xbox controller... Early on it was communicated that one of the aspects of Elite Dangerous that would be executed would be the instant familiarity and recognize ability of
47
each system (02:30). When entering a system we will instantly know where we are. From the color of the sun, the ambiance coming from the host planet itself, obviously there is the stations' design which is modular and should contribute to the uniqueness of every system according to the video. There are different types of thrusters that also look different when installed making ships even of the same type different from the next in the video (04:12). The damage model where you can see the insides of ships through holes in the hull looks very very immersive (04:17). Also scavenging in space graveyards looks very exciting in this video!!!! These things are still in right? or have they ended up on the cutting room floor? How many of the features from the DDF percentage wise have been implemented? the features you mention are there - modular station design, different engines, coming across shipwrecks. Being able to fly massively damaged ships only really applied to the bigger ships, but it is still planned (though may be post release). As Offline mode is out (thank god!), does this mean we will see more co-op features deployed into the game? yes. absolutely. Hi David, great work on the game to you and your team (as other people have mentioned - I too am very disappointed that there will no longer be an offline version. That's really not good). My question is, if we can buy multiple ships - will there be any possibility of crewing those ships with computer generated people so you could send ships out to trade on their own. Additionally, if you have enough money, any chance you could actually build a base, buy ships for police duties and such? this is the sort of thing we will look at down the line. WE want to avoid the game feeling like 'playing a spreadsheet' though, but these features are certainly on our radar.
As I remember the Panther Clipper from Elite Frontiers and so enjoyed it's use; how will the new version of the Panther Clipper measure up compared to old version and when will it be available. We've heard little about it and I do wonder which roleplay it would cover best. Your thoughts on this would be appreciated. Thankyou. the panther Clipper is coming. It is a big trading ship a bit like the lakon type 9's big brother. From Gamma/Preview onwards will the locations of ship equipment stay random in Stations or will they be fixed ? high tech systems will always be the best place to get the top-end ships, with particular systems specialising in particular ship types. Do you intend to do anything to improve the tutorialswhich are not currently very welcoming/user friendly, lacking as they do a lot of essential information for newbies, like basic control keys, for example! Newbies should not have to search the internet to find out this information. We are improving them all the time, but I appreciate we are still not there.. I am worried about multiplayer, will I be able to connect to a server and find my friends in the same server every time? It should be much better in Beta 3.9. I pirated the original Elite. I wasn't even a teenager but still, do you forgive me? I think more pirated it than bought it! But yes, I forgive you (but please buy Elite: Dangerous! ;-) )
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=60284
David Braben. Interviews I am often becoming wanted because of a player or NPC getting in my line of Fire (sometimes intentionally to attack me in the case of players)... Is there any plans to incorporate a friendly ACCIDENTAL fire solution (such as small shield percentage but no hull or major dmg)? I understand how a team could exploit it but a couple errant bullets or strafing laser shouldn't cause issues I would think? yes - this is a tuning issue we need to look at. thanks.
Will we ever be able to fly the federal fighter at some point? it looks like a fun ship to own. Yes, that will come with time (even though it is not hyperspace-capable). The thing I love most about E: D is the attempt to realistically depict our galaxy. Being able to visit star systems I can see in the sky and being able to explore places scientists have only just begun to explore with remote sensing techniques fills me with a sense of wonder. How will you (or will you) keep the E: D galaxy synced with our rapidly expanding knowledge of what real star systems are actually like? What if a star systems at release has not been studied and so has several procedurally generated planets but a few years later it is discovered that it has no detectable planets? no detectable planets does not mean no planets... the main methods for detection at the moment are Doppler movements of the parent star and occultation. Both of these fail if a system is 'flat on' to us - ie if the planets orbit in a plane perpendicular to our viewing direction. so in that case we would be OK leaving them (though we may have to tweak the system axis...). Less flippantly we will look at each one as it is discovered. I hope the discoveries will already be there, in which case we just make an addition to the text box, but in others it may mean adjusting an orbit.
48
Could you please tell us if military missions and ranks (Federal Military etc) like previous elite titles (First Encounters and Frontier II) are in game ? yes... soon. Have you seen Hello Games' No Mans Sky yet, it's clear there's influence there from the Elite series - do you ever stop and think about your influence on the games industry with your games? I haven't seen No Man's Sky 'in the flesh', but know one of the people involved. I have also (of course) kept an eye on star Citizen and know Chris roberts reasonably well. I love science fiction, and I think it is a good thing it is coming back to gaming. If anything it is pretty shocking that it left, so I wish them luck. for players of course, it is a good thing too as competition keeps us all on our toes! How much more detail can the Cobra engine deliver Graphically? i.e. if I have the GPU(s) to handle it could it deliver 8k/16k images with the level of clarity required? (I'm just about to upgrade to a 4k Monitor) In theory, yes. But the gpus don't yet exist that can handle 16K - or at least I haven't seen one... My biggest question, sorry if it's been asked already: What prompted the decision to release the game now? Many feel/felt it's too early and panicked thinking this is the "end". Can we have some idea of the continued developement of ED in the future? Like, are there plans to continue aggressive development past the Dec. release? We planned the release date long ago, and have been working towards it. Development will continue past the December release. Currently the plan is to continue indefinitely - a game like this is never
'finished' - there is always something we can add or improve, but this date is a reasonable measure of what we think will be a great game. My question is about the status of the Mac version of ED. Are you still feeling that three months after the PC release looks realistic for a Mac release? And as far as the Mac beta is concerned, do you have any idea yet as to how closely that might follow on the heels of the PC release? See, I only have Macs, won't use Bootcamp, and as such it is driving me a bit batty not being able to experience this game yet. our plan is to look at this in detail after we have shipped pC, so I'm afraid I don't have any dates for you. Why are you against Bootcamp? I use it all the time on my laptop. Do you play the game often and do you plan to play often once released? How will I know if I meet you out there in space, Whats your Commander name? yes I do. I am Comander Braben. I have seen myself on youtube a few times... Will there be a new way to find about commodity prices at a target location in addition to actually go there (as it is now)? yes - this is something we have been looking at.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=60284
Elite: Dangerous newsletters
Mostly Harmless Questions Newsletters 1-31 Cathy: Are there any secret societies, chivalric orders or the like planned for the Elite universe? “Yes, secretive, certainly (which includes the Pilot’s Federation), and some only known to their members. there will be all sorts of illegal activities – even trading in illegal goods will require you to know someone who you can deal with, who is prepared to trust you – accessed through the mission structure.” Slawkenbergius: What will the political map of the galaxy look like? “Most (ie more than 99%) of the galaxy is unexplored at the start of the game. that is not to say that there is no politics there… human politics is dominated by the three main powers. the federation, based in the solar system, the Empire, based in the achenar system, and the alliance, based in the alioth system. In addition there are numerous independent worlds, and many powerful corporations, which are far more powerful than any single independent world, and a few might even challenge the big powers.” Andrew Sayers: The Outer Space Treaty declares space to be part of the common heritage of mankind. How did that treaty break down? Did the Americans decide the flag on the moon was a land claim after all? Did kids run off with it and cause an interplanetary incident? “the treaty didn’t so much break down; it was simply ignored. as industry moved into space and started
49
manufacturing there, people started living there, people started misbehaving up there, and pretty quickly jurisdictions began to be established. Initially using extensions of the laws of the sea for ships or planes in international waters/air space (where the jurisdiction that applies is the jurisdiction of the registered flag of a ship/plane), but pretty soon people started laying claim to asteroids, and then claims to land on planets and moons, or more particularly to their mineral rights, as ever more sophisticated automated mining techniques emerged.” bedroc: Hi, If you explore far out, will there still be stations and an ability to trade? there will be some isolated stations and bases for trading, repair and re-supply. these will be more infrequent the further you travel, although there will be some surprises for you to discover. special equipment and supplies can be purchased to allow ships to travel further without support, but we also expect players to co-operate so that they can reach even further. one of the key features for the evolving galaxy is that new stations (or suitable ships) can be deployed to extend humanity’s reach even further into the galaxy. Duncan147: How will you manage and prioritise the scope of this work to ensure that you maximise the value delivered at the initial release? There are a number of core features that defines the game as Elite (these are defined by David and the development team), the alpha test process we are currently undertaking takes each of the core features (like combat, trading, docking and travel to name a
few) in isolation to ensure that each of these features achieves what we want from them. features that are not deemed core will either be included in the beta, or in the case of significant new additions (like spaceship boarding and planetary landings) will be tackled in expansions after the game’s initial release. Lestat: Will there be technology that you can purchase that can slowly repair damage to your ship automatically? some self repair systems will be available, although they will be quite specialised so will require investment from the player. the same technology can also be used to reduce wear and tear on your ship's systems. serious damage will still need to be repaired in a traditional shipyard. Rollo: Is the Sirius Corporation a significant player in Elite: Dangerous? Yes, the Sirius Corporation (and it’s plethora of divisions) are the biggest corporation in human existence, as well as owning several systems outright they are also the dominating player in fuel and power technology, their products can be found throughout human space. Moriarte: Star Citizen is using cry engine, while Elite is using an unique engine of its own. What advantages and disadvantages do you have, when using a homemade engine, while making the space simulator? as a developer we’ve used our own game engine throughout the company’s history so we have considerable experience in our own technology. for Elite: Dangerous the game presents a number of challenges that we have to solve. The first (and most obvious) is the scale of the game, putting aside the requirements of procedural generation for
http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/home/?u=dcbf6b86b4b0c7d1c21b73b1e&id=eb767c006f
Elite: Dangerous newsletters a moment the spatial size of the game’s locations are an immense (pun intended!) problem. It’s quite common in space games to fudge the scale to make things look good and work, however this results in spatial locations being condensed. In Elite everything is the scale it should be, so the planets are the correct size and distances between objects are also correct. using the Cobra engine means that we can tailor our solutions to fit the game rather than the other way round. Luniticisi: Is Elite: Dangerous a sequel to Elite, or a sequel to Frontier, or a mix of both? Elite: Dangerous is a game in its own right. In terms of the game history it follows on from frontier and first Encounters, with Elite before that, but it has been such a long gap since the previous games (Frontier was released over 20 years ago) that the breadth of what we can do now is breathtaking. the term ‘Elite 4’ was used for a while internally, but we are not fans of numeric sequels, especially given the elapsed time and the fact that what we have feels all new. Slawkenbergius: Will planets and stars be to actual scale? yes, celestial bodies and the distances between them will be correctly scaled, wherever possible real astronomical data is being used. to give you an idea we're currently at 116,000 stars from various catalogues and includes pulsars and black holes as well as main sequence stars. Exo-planets are the other big import which we're about to start working on! Scot: Will the old design of the PYTHON be in the game? the python will be in the game.
50
Le-Betz: Will there be ships without hyperspace capability in the game? yes, some ships are too small to have hyperdrives (such as the small fighters and some shuttles). Perrie67: How will E:D make travelling the insane distances for exploring the galaxy without making it too easy to travel around the populated systems? There are two modes of super luminal (faster than light) travel. Super cruise (or frame shifting) is used for travel inside systems. It was originally conceived as a sub-luminal drive, but based on the fantastic collaboration we have been having with our Design Decision forum backers it was re-worked and is now itself a super luminal system to allow relatively rapid travel within systems. hyperspace drives are used to travel between star systems. Hyperdrives with different ranges, charge up times and fuel consumption parameters are available, and so your particular model of hyperdrive governs your specific ability to move around the galaxy. Both will make their debut in Alpha 4 (not counting the early version of hyperspace in Alpha 3). bedroc: Hi, If you explore far out, will there still be stations and an ability to trade? Most of humanity inhabits a few hundred light year bubble around sol, achenar and alioth. Beyond this are a lower density of isolated systems with small communities on them that can be used by explorers to resupply, with small/basic orbital stations. these are the “frontier” systems. Beyond this, you will still encounter occasional ships (including other players), but no stations; not to start with at least. there will be ship-ship docking though too, so it will still be
possible to resupply. the ships suited for long range exploration will require a greater degree of selfsustainability, for example fuel scoops and repair and maintenance equipment, and we expect players to cooperate to meet the challenge! Wreckage: Is the Kepler data for planets being figured into the galaxy map? We’re striving to make the Elite: Dangerous Milky Way as accurate as possible. as part of this we are using a variety of sources for the celestial bodies data, and that includes confirmed exoplanets from the Kepler data and many other sources. JohnStabler: Are we going to see the return of the Imperial Trader and Courier? the Imperial Courier is planned for initial release, the Imperial trader isn’t, although may make a later expansion. bsivko: I would like to ask a question about support of reality in E:D Universe. As you mentioned, you will include into release all of possible data of real Universe. But what will be after release? For example, if humanity discover thousand planets more, or find new objects like wandering planets between stars. Do you plan to change the E:D Universe according to that kind of events or not? yes, we will be changing the galaxy to keep up to date with the latest discoveries and observations – its one of the benefits of the connected world we now live in that we can update the game as needed! But hopefully, we won't need to update things *too* often; we think the physics we have used to predict new exo-planets is pretty good – it'll be fascinating to see how close we are!
http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/home/?u=dcbf6b86b4b0c7d1c21b73b1e&id=eb767c006f
Elite: Dangerous newsletters Slawkenbergius: Will Elite: Dangerous use a physicallybased shading/rendering system? short answer: yes it does. Elite: Dangerous adopted a physically-based rendering (PBR) model right from the start – we want it to look as good as possible under a variety of lighting conditions (and space certainly gives you that!). We expect the visual quality of Elite: Dangerous will continue to improve as we progress through development. It's worth mentioning though that pBr isn't a onesize-fits-all solution as much as it's the start of a discussion that could probably occupy someone for their entire career – kind of like the way "High Dynamic Range" was quickly adopted by everyone years ago but people are still arguing over the fine details! SzaryWilk: How many commodities will be in Elite Dangerous ?? We’re still refining the design, at the moment we’re testing with around 100 different core commodities, with other specialised ones based off them. Such spaecialist or ‘rares’ are a separate type of tradable item (‘Lavian Brandy’ for example). We’ve seen the recent plea for tea and it looks like we might be adding that to the list. Brodie: Apart from freight and possibly ammo will ship components such as rare weapons or engines drop or be salvageable from destroyed NPC ships? Currently the design is that you can salvage raw materials and data from derelict ships. an idea we’re considering is that enhancement technology from specific weapons and modules can provide temporary augmentations for your equipment.
51
Jant: How much freedom will there be to customise our ships from a purely aesthetic standpoint (like different cockpits, paint jobs, etc)? the intention is to support as wide a range of customisation as possible, we’re still working out some of the details but support for skins and decals is certain, ways to customise your cockpit are also something we’re interested in. this can be expanded further when we expand the game to allow walking around ships and stations, not only with the ship but the player’s avatar as well. In other words – yes, leather upholstery is on the cards! FS3DPete: Will explorers be able to receive recognition and a finder’s fee for discovering new bodies, such as planets? Exploration is a form of data trading, discovering new systems and celestial bodies generates data that can then be traded for credits. Significant finds could also be reported in the newsfeeds and will also help guide the expansion of human space. Patrick_68000: When we fly over planets, what minimum altitude will be allowed? We will allow fuel skimming on gas giants and make sure that starports can be placed in suitable orbits. throughout beta there will be an ongoing process to optimise and improve our already cool looking planets at ever closer distances. Le-Betz: Will there be Generation Ships? It would be fun to have them, certainly! Kerrash: What is the smallest detail of the procedural content that is being considered? and will we be able to customize it or will it be engine controlled?
Dust particles are probably as small as it goes – or perhaps details on procedural textures. alpha backers will already have flown over ring systems at super-luminal speeds and then looked down and seen the billions of individual rocks hurtling by below, perhaps heading down in to them. Listeri69: What benefits can we expect to see from becoming an explorer? the excitement of discovering something unusual – and perhaps even staking a claim (though this has to be registered). Finding a metal-rich system that is untouched for example would be a great find – and lucrative too. Philip Coutts: Why did you pick the Sidewinder for the basic starting ship? It is to give us more headroom in the ship progression. the sidewinder is much smaller than say, the Cobra. for much the same reason the Eagle was the default starting ship in frontier: Elite 2. insanephoton: Seeing as there should be some amazing visuals, will there be any in game screen grab /screen shot manager? the game already supports screen capture, just press the f10 and it’s saved to your local hard drive. It’s unlikely that we’ll provide a game-specific screenshot manager, there are already plenty of image library apps available for this purpose. Cathy: Will there be hidden societies such as secret orders to encounter in Elite: Dangerous? yes, there’ll be a range of characters representing a number of organisations ranging from the major power blocs, to crime syndicates and organisations
http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/home/?u=dcbf6b86b4b0c7d1c21b73b1e&id=eb767c006f
Elite: Dangerous newsletters with hidden agendas. part of the appeal of the Elite: Dangerous galaxy is the breadth of human interaction that you can become involved in. the primary vehicle for this interaction will be the missions, and of course it’s something we will build on as we further expand the game, notably when you’re able to get out of the cockpit. tluamiani: Will guilds/clans be supported and how? Everyone is enrolled as a member of the pilot’s federation, and within that there will be ‘groups’ functionality that allows people to form organic associations. there are also the three major power blocs of federation, Empire and alliance of Independents that you can cosy up to (or act against) as you wish. Specifically created clans are something we will investigate after the first release of the game. Davidtq: Will we be able to customise the appearance of ship interiors and exteriors? Yes! We plan to offer extensive customization options – please ‘watch this space’ for details as we release them; you’ll hear it here first. Arn: Will it be possible to upgrade modules such as the engine, shield and power plant? absolutely – in premium Beta ships and weapons are upgradable; as we progress you will get increasing choice of which system components to use, each having different strengths and weaknesses and suitability for a particular role. you will be able to switch systems such that you can ‘downgrade’ your ship if you want to, too – whether to free up some cash, or outfit your ship for a particular job.
52
Serge: Can you talk about the expectations of the Mac version? We have said that the Mac version will follow around 3 months after the pC version. Currently we have been focusing on building the fundamentals of Elite: Dangerous on pC. now we have got to premium Beta we have enough of the game present that it makes sense for us to start focusing on Mac specific porting and optimization tasks using our cross-platform Cobra game engine software. We have been laying the groundwork for the Mac version in the background for a while now, and have just started to ramp up the activity. We’ll keep you posted as we have progress to share! Sloma: "Are you focused atm on Federal / Independent side? Why are we not seeing any Imperial ship designs or any content related to Imperial faction?" the area of space we chose happens to be a long way from Imperial space, hence the focus of pB1 etc. We have Imperial content too (as in the 'Damocles' video and the Imperial cruiser and Imperial fighters), but that will come as we open up space. Colonel Kenney: "One interesting question I have. Much of the galaxy will take us a very long time to get to. Are there any plans of implementing any sort of "shortcuts" to different parts of the galaxy such as wormholes? Like something extremely rare but there are some hidden around for us to discover etc? Like how can we explore the center of the galaxy if it would take a year of gameplay to get there etc?" no, we're not planning to implement shortcuts. for me, one of the attractions is it Is a big achievement to travel a long distance. I like the idea of the occasional meeting of a player far far out in the galaxy as a chance encounter. We do plan to seed things of interest out there too.
Brodie: Has any (more) thought been put into Crafting within Elite Dangerous? I'd love to mine the required resources and then deposit it them into a rented factory along with a blueprint and make my own missiles etc" there is already a sort of crafting loop in premium Beta 1 – for example coltan is mined, then taken to be refined into tantalum, then turned into high-tech goods. Down the line mining machines (as featured in Frontier) and similar elements will be introduced, but that will most likely be after the first release. "Can I be found in the Premium Beta, and what is my commander name?" My commander name is Commander Braben, and yes – I am there from time to time. Dinbar: Will you be building any specific "role play" emotes, tools etc. We aren’t looking at using emotes as they don’t really fit the communications system (which is one of the features we’re currently working on). Beyond the text and voice communications we are looking at there will be pre-defined messages that have additional game play effects, such as the ability to “declare piracy” – an act that can affect your reputation and trigger specific AI responses. Steve Taylor: Will it be possible to find our NPCs in the finished game? Players will be able to find starports and systems that they have named by exploring the galaxy! named npCs will be encountered randomly during game play.
http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/home/?u=dcbf6b86b4b0c7d1c21b73b1e&id=eb767c006f
Elite: Dangerous newsletters Duvand: I really like to explore in games, will there be rewards in the game for doing this and what form will they take? We are looking at having a variety of rewards for exploration including straightforward credit payments, access to rare or restricted ship modules, and increases in reputation which open up new mission and event possibilities, as well as increase the likelihood of favourable outcomes when dealing with npCs and factions. Caribou: Will there be long range scanners, or some kind of small robot scanner that can hyperspace to a distant system and return some basic info on it? one of the aspects of exploration we are working towards does indeed have hyperspace-capable “probes” that gather and transmit useful information back to the ship. Veep: Which ships will get multiple independent shield sections? ships roughly the size of the Cobra or larger will have multiple shield zones, and the ability to “push” shield power between them. Kipper: Little has been said about the mission system as yet, what can you reveal? Missions fall into several types, but what I suspect you mean is the sort you actively engage in through a contract. these are coming in the Beta, and can earn you both credits and status within the organisation you are working for, whether it is a disreputable criminal group or the federation or Empire themselves. Initially these will be arranged either through direct messages or on a common message board. More details to follow.
53
Slawkenberguis: During the Kickstarter we were shown images of ships that were heavily damaged, but still flyable. Is that kind of damage model still something that's still being worked on? If so, have there been any further developments you can share with us? yes, it is still being worked on. Major damage, like we showed on the anaconda in the Kickstarter is coming in Beta. smaller ships will not survive anything other than minor damage, but the larger ships should still be able to fly (albeit with a ‘limp’) as long as the damage is not to a critical system. SzaryWilk: Is there a possibility of hiring warehouse space on space stations? We are taking care of elements that could unbalance the game. We do plan to allow you to store ships (rather than sell or trade them in), but we want to avoid people ‘playing the markets’ with vast amounts of cargo – and the danger is it could become the fastest way of making money, so not at first, at least. Arn: Will the game include detailed technical breakdowns for ships, weapons, modules and other equipment? yes. We will be providing more information than is there now, and also more variants on each type. Most elements of your ship will also have the ability to be ‘tuned up’ to get extra performance/efficiency/ weight reduction as appropriate. Shadowcat: Will it be possible for a player to head towards a sun to temporarily blind an attacker following behind them? That is not planned (but it is an interesting idea). We have tried to avoid things like this that could work for aIs but might be frustrating for players. We
intentionally darken stars so that you can see them, and if looking towards or flying towards the sun blinded a player, that would spoil the game. insanephoton: Will NPC ships be generated on the fly each time you enter a new system or will they be persistent objects that you could follow on their trade routes etc? there are a mix. some will be persistent, some triggered by circumstances. following an aI is something that should be possible, once we have tracking through supercruise and hyperspace. Gimi: We already know that there will be area of the galaxy cut off for later use and no planetary landings at launch. Will these sort of limitations be incorporated into current Elite lore and fiction, and given plausible in game explanations? Yes, to an extent. For the areas cut off, you will be prevented from going there – the drive will simply not lock on. We may add a message if we feel we need it like “unable to lock on” or similar. for planetary landings, there may be a piece of equipment you will need to purchase, that will only become available later. Nomadski: Will there be missions that ask questions of a pilot's flying skills that dont necessarily revolve around combat? there will be missions that require quick transits. I like the idea of ones that amount to races between players not unlike the old tea Clipper races from China back to Imperial Britain in the 19th century. In Elite Dangerous, it might be the first to get the latest harvest of Lavian Tree Grubs back to Earth (this way all players would start at the same time) – but I think there will be tricky issues with this sort of thing –
http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/home/?u=dcbf6b86b4b0c7d1c21b73b1e&id=eb767c006f
Elite: Dangerous newsletters people playing in different countries meaning the start time is at an awkward time of day. SzarWilk: Will different types of ammunition be available for different weapons? yes. Many weapons like lasers don’t use ammunition, but we have already planned a wide range of missile types. It should also be possible to get ammo for other projectile weapons that is a little better, for significant extra cost. Ben Ryder: Will we be able to buy books like the Art work of Elite and sketch books? yes, that would be a great thing to do, though such a book is not yet planned. Rog: Will auto-generated missions involve interaction with, or even the destruction of actual *human* players? generally no, but there are some special cases. for example if a player defaults on a deal with a particularly dangerous npC, he or she may put a contract on that player’s head. there is no reason that contract might not be taken by a player… Mysturji: What mechanisms/procedures will there be for avoiding & reversing offender/fugitive status? avoiding such status comes from being careful – basically don’t be seen to break the law in the areas controlled by the regime(s) you wish to stay clean with. reversing them is harder. they do decay with time, but the unscrupulous will find ways to ‘buy off’ their ratings, for the right price!
54
http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/home/?u=dcbf6b86b4b0c7d1c21b73b1e&id=eb767c006f
FAQ
FAQ IS THERE A GAME MANUAL? a WIp game manual can be downloaded here: http://elite.frontier.co.uk/downloads/sidewinder_owners_Manual_WIp.pdf
I'M NEW TO THE FORUMS, SO WHAT THREADS SHOULD I READ FIRST? Before posting we recommend that you search for exisiting threads on the topic you wish to post. there's also some useful threads for getting started with the main discussions on the boards. Yaffle's list of common topics is an excellent place to start: http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18606 WHERE CAN I FIND IN-SYSTEM MAPS FOR THE SYSTEMS? You can find concept for the available systems in premium Beta 1.0 here: http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=16655 I'M POSTING A NEW TOPIC SO WHICH FORUM SHOULD I POST IN? for general beta discussion post in the Beta Discussion forum: http://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=52 for bugs and technical support for the beta post in the Beta support forum: http://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=53 for general Elite: Dangerous discussion post in the Elite: Dangerous general forum: http://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=30 for gameplay ideas and discussion post in the Elite:
55
Dangerous gameplay and features forum: http://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=32 For official Elite fiction post in the Elite Fiction forum: http://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=45 for Elite fan creations and discussion post in the Elite: Dangerous fan Creations forum: http://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=31 for general technical support and discussion post in the Elite: Dangerous support forum: http://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=50 WHERE WILL I FIND THE FORUM RULES? the forum rules, which we expect all members to follow can be found here: http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18103 HOW CAN I EARN MONEY AT A CONFLICT ZONE OR DISTRESS CALL? open the right panel, navigate to the last tab*, open the entry "faction" and select your faction there. You cannot change the faction unless you leave the area (with supercruise or by leaving the game) and join again. When you have joined a faction, the opposing side will be displayed red on the scanner, for every enemy ship you kill you will be paid some money (usually 500cr). HOW DO BOUNTIES WORK? When you target a ship and the automatic scan has completed, along with the pilot's name you will see either the mark "Clean" or "Wanted". "Wanted" means they have a bounty on their head, if you manage to kill them, you will paid a sum of money that dependings on the crimes the target has committed. you can view the amount that a target is worth in the contact list on the left panel. When you shoot at a ship that you haven't scanned
yet or is marked as "Clean", you will get a bounty on yourself, and other pilots may hunt you for money. HOW IS A KILL COUNTED FOR BOUNTIES OR CONFLICT ZONE PAYMENT? Whoever scores the last hit before the ship reaches zero health gets paid. hits after it is already at zero health but tumbling for a few seconds do not count. HOW DOES SHIP INSURANCE WORK? When your ship is destroyed, you can choose to receive a free sidewinder identical to what you started with the first time (with light armor and one pulse laser). You will keep all your money and can get a free sidewinder as often as you like. If you choose to receive your old loadout again, the sum of money displayed will be removed from your account, and you will respawn with a ship and equipment identical to what you had before it was destroyed, fully repaired. If you don't have enough money, you can only receive the free sidewinder (later you will be able to loan money in order to keep your old loadout when you are broke). regardless of your choice, you will respawn at the last station where you have docked. WHY DO I NOT SEE ANY PLANETS? You probably have turned on the "AMD crash fix" in the graphics options. this option should not be needed any more, it is a left over from earlier stages of the game. HOW DO I USE SUPERCRUISE? take a look at fangrim's excellent guide to supercruise: http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18617
http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=20322
FAQ HOW DO I GET PERMISSION FOR DOCKING? Bring up the interface and select the left hand panel. select Contacts and if you're close enough you should see Coriolis station or something like that or maybe the name of the station. select the station and you should get a choice of lock target or request Docking permission. select the request Docking permission option and you should get a message on the centre of your hud just above the scanner. WHY DOES MY NEW WEAPON NOT FIRE? You need to set them up in a fire group using the fire groups panel on the right of the cockpit. Weapons within the fire group can be set as the primary or secondary weapons so that they are fired by their respective controls. HOW DO I FIND THE DOCKING PORT FOR A SPACEPORT? It is always positioned on an 'end' that is spinning anti-clockwise. looking for the advertising holograms often helps. WHY HAVE I RECEIVED A BOUNTY? Probably because you fired on a ship. If you did that deliberately, then be aware that to be legal you must be in a 'warzone' or the other ship must have a bounty. To find it it has a bounty in the current faction, target and point at the ship to perform a scan. It will show as 'wanted' or 'clean' in the target box on your HUD. To find if it has a bounty outside the current faction, see Kill Warrant scanner. If you did not fire deliberately, then be aware that a stray bullet or laser that hits a 'bystander' when you are fighting another ship, is enough for you to get a bounty for attacking them: the game does not know your intent!
56
you can also receive a bounty if you are scanned carrying stolen items or items that are illegal in the current faction. HOW DO I CLEAR A BOUNTY? visit Contacts/pilot's federation when Docked, and pay the fine. The fine is a bit more than the bounty. HOW DO I SEE THE CARGO OF ANOTHER SHIP? you need to have a cargo scanner installed on your ship and then when you are in range scan the ship for the required length of time. HOW DO I SEE THE CURRENT FRAME RATE? press Ctrl+f to bring up the frame rate counter. HOW DO I FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE CURRENT GAME DESIGN? Much of the game's design was discussed in detail in the DDF, you can find an archive of those discussions here: http://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=36 HOW DO I SET MY COMMANDER NAME? use the following process to set or change your commander name: 1. login at: https://support.orerve.net/ 2. navigate to the ‘CoMManDEr profIlE’ tab 3. Enter your desired new commander name in the ‘Request a New Name’ field and press the ‘Request name Change’ button. 4. If this is approved it will update the commander name at the top of the page. 5. If it is automatically denied a red message will appear above the field, stating the reason for the rejection.
6. If it is manually denied the player will receive an email telling them that their name has been rejected, once the batch update is complete. note that changing your name will make your previous name available for others to use. also note that approvals and import into the game can take a few days. WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT WAYS I CAN MAKE MONEY? you can: buy and sell commodities in the hope of turning a profit take part in the ongoing conflict between Dahan and Eranin (remember: choose a faction when you arrive at a conflict zone location in these systems!) hunt pirates and collect their bounties (from interdictions and at various locations) pirate ships to steal their cargo and sell on the starport black market (remember: not every starport has a black market); the best pirates target their victim’s cargo hatch, causing malfunctions that eject multiple cargo canisters Visit unidentified signal sources in the hope of locating and stealing unattended cargo drops run into mobile traders looking to buy resources (just fly near to them with the correct cargo to make the sale) WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN WEAPONS? There are many differences between weapons, some subtle others not so. as a general rule, laserbased weapons are more effective against shields, explosives are the most effective against hull, and projectile weapons offer the best penetration to reach subsystems. laser weapons tend to put the most pressure on the ship’s weapon cooling system and projectiles and explosives require ammunition.
http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=20322
FAQ as well as the weapon types, the mounting platform also plays a significant role: gimballed weapons have limited motion, allowing them to track and hit targets that are not directly in front, whilst turrets have full motion and can attack hostiles independently of the commander’s main target. such advanced mounts have their downsides though, tending to be more expensive and less powerful than their fixed bore counterparts. WHY DO SHIPS SOMETIMES DISAPPEAR WHEN ATTACKED? this can be caused by a number of issues. the main one is that there is a bug in the code that determines if and when ships should flee to super cruise, causing them to flee almost all the time. This, coupled with the fact that there is currently no feedback for such a manoeuvre manifests as a “disappearing ship” event. other, less frequent causes can be loss of network communication between human commanders. It goes without saying that we’re looking at fixes for these issues (and others as they are discovered). HOW DO I USE THE AUTO FIELD MAINTENANCE UNIT? Once this kit is fitted, when you view your module list (it’s one of the tabs on the right hand side multifunction displays), you can highlight a module and select it: instead of toggling the module on/off, you will now be cycling it between on/off/repair if it is damaged. remember: the afM uses resources to repair and can be restocked by using the “munitions” option when docked at a starport. WHAT DOES THE KILL WARRANT SCANNER DO? the Kill Warrant scanner is a specialised piece of bounty hunting equipment. When you target and
57
face a vessel, your ship will perform a quick basic scan, revealing the ship’s/commander’s name, hull and shield strength and the presence of a local bounty if present. performing a Kill Warrant scan (remember: assign the Kill Warrant Scanner to a fire group and “fire” it like a gun at the target) cross references the target ship with all known jurisdictions, revealing all bounties associated with it, not just the bounty from the current jurisdiction. When you destroy a ship, you are only awarded bounties that you know about, so this scanner allows you to maximise your profits when bounty hunting. remember: the Kill Warrant scanner *does not* give you free range to attack; if you open up on a target who is clean in the local jurisdiction you will be committing a crime. HOW DO I TAKE SCREENSHOTS? press f10. the images are saved in: "your name"\Saved Games\Frontier Developments\ Elite Dangerous\Screenshots I KEEP GETTING INTERDICTED BY PIRATES AND KILLED, WHAT SHOULD I DO? If you don't want to stand your ground, run! full power distribution to engines, full thrust away from the radar contacts, and use engine boost 2 or 3 times until you can hit 'C' to supercruise away. I'VE JUST STARTED AND KEEP GETTING KILLED, WHAT SHOULD I DO? Discretion is the better part of valour, especially in an unmodified starter Sidewinder. Choose your area of operations and targets wisely – tackling an anaconda in a basic sidewinder may not end well. Being too ambitious, too soon, is a common way of requiring an escape pod trip back to the station.... running
away is a perfectly valid course of action in combat – deciding when it is necessary takes some experience. Combat is not the only option – trading can be a useful way of earning credits to allow ship upgrades (making your Sidewinder less puny). n.B.: If you upgrade your ship you must pay a 5% insurance excess to receive a direct replacement in the event of a total loss. remember, the 5% applies to the ship and any weapons and other equipment modifications. HOW DO I SURVIVE AND THRIVE AT A CONFLICT ZONE/DISTRESS CALL? If you seen any *hollow* triangles/boxes on radar, those are other human players. Be very careful. see who they are attacking, then join the other faction, or you may face a difficult foe! select the faction you want to assist using the functions tab of the right cockpit uI look for isolated red radar blips away from the main fight and target them. npC enemies usually won't attack you unless you get close, so maneuvre into a good firing position behind them. Commence combat. Congratulations, you've earned 4/500Cr! Keep an eye out for hollow red triangles (human players) joining the other side. If your shields are damaged, retreat in normal flight a few km away from the combat zone to recharge If you have hull damage, consider returning to a station to get your ship repaired. repeat the above as long as you want. WHAT IS FLIGHT ASSIST ? HOW DO I USE IT ? flight assist helps stabilize your ship's maneuvers. Whit it activated, all you have to do to stop the ship from turning/rolling is let go of the commands, the flight computer will activate the thrusters in the appropriate way so it goes back to straight flight.
http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=20322
FAQ there's a penalty in maneuverability, this can make it harder to keep an enemy ship in your aim reticle. With FA off, the ship behaves according to Newton's law of inertia. this means any movement you start, will continue unless you counter-act. so, if you start a roll maneuver, the ship will keep rolling until you command another roll in the opposing direction. With FA off, you ship is more maneuverable, very useful for combat if used correctly. used incorrectly, it can be disorienting and get you killed. HOW DO I FIND MY ALLOCATED PAD/NAVIGATION TARGET? the ship's compass to the right of the scanner points towards the currently allocated docking pad and navigation target. the indicator will be smaller if the target is behind you. HOW DO I READ THE SCANNER? the scanner is the circle in the centre of your console (bottom centre of your screen. objects are shown as a vertical stick with either a triangle or square at the end of them. the other end shows where the object is on the horizontal plane of your ship and their length shows how far above or below you they are. the scanner is logarithmic by default (so a distance at the edge of the scanner represents further than the same distance at the centre). You can change this in the functions on the right hand panel. friendly ships are shown green. Enemy ships are shown red. neutral ships are shown yellow. Other objects (missiles, cannisters, nav beacons) are shown white. Ships firing at you flash white. In an asteroid field the larger asteroids are shown as a hollow depiction of an asteroid.
58
npCs are shown as a solid marker, players are shown with a hollow marker. ship contacts which appear with a square have their hardpoints retracted, whereas those with a triangle have their hardpoints deployed. WHAT DOES A POINT DEFENCE TURRET DO AND HOW DO I USE IT? point defence turrets attempt to shoot down incoming missiles. they are not infallible though, and they require ammunition. Currently they must be assigned to a fire group, though this is likely to change. WHY IS SIDE-TO-SIDE MOVEMENT (YAW) SLOW? this is one of several design decisions to improve the feel of gameplay. to quickly target an enemy to one side, roll your ship until your target is above you then pitch up. HOW DO I INSTALL THE GAME ON A DRIVE OTHER THAN THE C DRIVE? Currently the installer doesn't support install directory selection altough this functionality is planned. In the meantime you can workaround this with the following procedure: run the Client-Installer.exe Choose the drive and or folder you wish to use. In my case D:\Elite Let the launcher install finish, if it is running, close the launcher window, do not login navigate to where you installed the launcher, in my case D:\Elite, and create a folder called Products in the launcher folder. EG: – D:\Elite\Products now start the launcher again, log in and install the client.
When the download is complete you should see the install as automatically installed the client in the folder you created called product. If the \Products folder is not in the root of the launcher folder it will default to your boot drive. HOW DO I LEARN THE COCKPIT LAYOUT? you can see Keeval's excellent cockpit guide here: http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=10215 WHAT DO THE MARKS UNDERNEATH THE SCANNER INDICATE? the show the current range of the scanner, it can be increased or decreased by default on the page up and page Down keys. I WAS ABOUT TO DOCK AND THE STATION DISAPPEARED, WHAT DO I DO? If this happens then save and quit the game to the main menu. Close the game and the launcher and restart both and then resume your game. Michael I PICKED UP A CARGO CONTAINER, AND I SEE IT IN MY HOLD, BUT I CAN'T SELL IT! WHY? It's marked as "Stolen". You'll need to sell it on the Black Market. (Located under "Station Contacts"). WHAT'S THE BLUE GLOW ON MY SPEED SETTINGS? The "Sweet Spot" for maneuvering. If you keep your speed in the blue zone, your ship will maneuver better.
http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=20322
FAQ I AM AT THE RIGHT LANDING PAD WITH THE LANDING GEAR DOWN BUT STILL IT WON'T ALLOW ME TO DOCK? WHAT AM I DOING WRONG? you are possibly facing the wrong way. Make sure you are facing the control tower with the spinning radar dish to successfully dock. I CAN USE MY THRUSTERS TO MANOEUVRE WHEN LANDING BUT NOT IN SPACE. WHY? Check the options to see which controls are set for using the thrusters, there is also an override so different controls can be used when your landing gear is deployed. I AM UNABLE TO COME OUT OF SUPERCRUISE EXCEPT AS AN EMERGENCY. WHY? your speed needs to be less than 200km/s in order to successfully exit supercruise. HOW DO I SCOOP CARGO? To deploy the cargo scoop go to the right (systems) menu, then in the functions sub-menu select "cargo scoop" and it will change to "deployed". When you select a cargo cannister on the left radar, rather than seeing a representation of the cannister, a blue square with crosshairs in will appear. In this is a representation of a cannister. this is like a mini-game. you now need to use that to keep the representation of the cannister in the crosshairs until it's picked up by the scoop. Don't fly too fast, it will bounce off and take damage.
59
http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=20322
