Elite Dangerous

Well I stopped following Star Citizen since David Braben announced Elite: Dangerous. Robets made Freelancer and the Wing Commanders but Elite is Elite :).

The only thing that annoys me with SC is the hollywood style hype. I’m seeing slick videos, but not a lot of actual game content, i mean the last thing i saw coming out of there was the recently released Aurora ship, but maybe i’m being harsh as RSI have a huge project on their hands. Chris has the $20 million he was after so it’s up to him to produce. That said, he has a history of being late with his releases, so i guess only time will tell

Over to Cambridge UK. The godfather of 3D space sims who started the whole genre also has funding, but at least he’s getting on with things. I’ve personally pledged to this project so i’m getting regular updates so know exactly what’s going on. His method of programming is clearly different from SC, the core of his game engine seems more compact, functional without the clutter, he is after all a bit of a maths genius so again only time will tell but i have high hopes for Elite Dangerous. I think it will be better programmed, clearly smaller in size, and will have plenty of unique features that will make it stand apart as a direct competitor to SC, as their respective gaming universes are literally worlds apart, bit like Star Trek v Star Wars. I look forward to both, i know i’ll be playing ED way before SC comes out that’s for sure.

I’m more of a SC fan myself, for some reason it looks more appealing to me, but I also look forward to playing Elite because I can never say no to a sci fi game so I’ll play what I can get

I am not sure if ED will be smaller in size. The universe will be procedurally generated but it will be the whole Milky Way. SC will have a way less systems. At least I hope the in ED a player will be able to fly to any solar systems in our galaxy like in Frontier and FFE.

Hmm and while waiting for ED I just continue playing Frontier

We shouldn’t foster an SC vs ED attitude. We should all fly around with flowers on our ships and proclaim our love for our fellow space pilots.

Why are you arguing ED vs SC? Who cares?

I am looking forward to playing both of them!

@Kuze

You misunderstand, i don’t mean game content wise it will be smaller, i mean game size as in MB. DB is a far better coder than CR will ever be, if DB coded SC it would be a quarter of the size it will end up as. Let’s not forget DB codes in machine code, which is what Elite was originally written in and to get all that info into about 22k of memory is staggering when you think about it.

I appreciate ED is the milky way which let’s face it, should be big enough for everyone whether it’s procedurally generated or not, room for everyone to kick back. SC will also be massive in size so all good really. I’ll be playing both that’s for sure

If you think Braben codes in “machine code” (whatever the hell that means), you’re deluded. He’s very likely using a prebuilt engine in a standard language like C or C++. Sure, he may be a better programmer than Roberts (though I personally wouldn’t be able to say that, considering Roberts also built a lot of games back in the day), but at this stage NEITHER has much input on the game’s code, they’re designers.

Regardless of all the ridiculous claims I’m seeing here, I’ll be curious to see what happens. I just hope people don’t turn this into another turf war over what’s the “best” space sim, because obviously the reaction to seeing more than one space sim released every five years should be to rip each other apart because we have diversity now.

I’m deluded am i? Assembly language (look it up) is what Elite was written in, maybe i didn’t use the correct term, such is life. It’s DB’s speciality. While i don’t doubt the modern version of Elite will be written in C++ or similar, i’ll guarantee his knowledge of programming is superior to that of Chris Roberts. I also firmly believe ED will be made on time which i doubt SC will be. Chris is always late, think he was born late. I just hope both products live up to what we all hope they will be.

Why does game design have something to do with programming skills?

Besides, all of us who do hooking have assembly knowledge, but that has nothing to do with programming skills in higher programming languages.

I also doubt that much of those are required if you use a commercial engine like they do for SC. Most likely you are getting support from the company anyway.

Basically what Schmack said. There’s little logical correlation between low level programming skills and high level programming skills, and even fewer between programming at all and game design.

You can be an awesome leet coder, but a fairly terrible game designer. Case in point: one of the best programmers in the entire industry, John Carmack. He’s so good he’d run in circles around Braben a few dozen times with both hands tied behind his back while under the influence of a full bottle of vodka, yet he can’t seem to design a game worth the engine that’s running under it.

But hey, I’m sure Roberts doesn’t give two shits about the irrational dislike some people seem to have for him. I personally think you should criticize his methods, his concepts or his arguments, not his person. That’s useless.

I think nether of the 2 games will be made in time.

Aaaanyways…As per usual this thread is getting away from it’s original purpose, so let us take aside the ED/SC comparison and focus on Elite: Dangerous here only.

So, since we all love starships talk about them for example…

The difference is that DFA/Broken Age is growing fairly close to a AAA on a 3.3M budget, whereas SC’s 14M budget (as of now) is much closer to the average AAA title’s budget.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/35932496
“A recent study by entertainment analyst group M2 Research pegged the average cost of developing a game for this generation of consoles at between $18 million and $28 million.”

Keep in mind that SC’s also using CryEngine 3 instead of building their own (though I don’t doubt they’re grafting a lot of stuff to it, it wasn’t really designed for space). That’s going to remove a big part of the cost that many AAA games have as in-house engines are very expensive.

Recently I found a interesting note about a voice controled Elite Dangerous Ship Assistant

=> here.

Might be some fun for those playing it.