IanHamlett wrote:

and how many PCs might exist with that spec.

An absolute ton, my pc is 3 years old and soundly outperforms the new gen consoles, so yeah, plenty.

If they can tune it into it well enough, this game might be a good contender for the use of Oculus Rift-alikes for both PC and Sony's own effort. Would be very interesting in that regard.

It's worth noting that this is a game that looks very pretty because of the actual art design, not how much work the system is doing, from my own assessment of what i've seen at least. There's nothing too stressful going on and it's exactly the type of game that scales extremely well. The appearance suggests something like a PBR (Physically Based Rendering) approach in shader use but with NPR (Non Photorealistic Rendering) art design and textures - the stylised look is strangely physically plausible but completely art-centric. It's a very pretty effect and something i've been keen on looking into myself for some time

Paul the sparky wrote:

Surely we can communicate and select a destination to meet up? Can't be that hard if we all share the same map.

You can find a place to meet up, like the guy said you can follow the actual course of other people's journeys, it be EASY to meet up? No chance, you have billions of systems to start in, everyone will be hundreds/thousands of light years from each other. It will take an extremely long time to meet where you arranged

JMW - Ian Bell's involvement in Frontier was 'supplying algorithms for drawing planets and suggestions for control systems' Ian Bell power-bitterness interview. Frontier was imo an astounding programming achievement, as much so as Elite was. So no

krs wrote:

Ian Bell's website is ever so slightly ou ... Sorry, got cut off. It's ever so slightly out of ... Arse dammit, CompuServe, would you stay connected for two sodding minutes?! It'seversoslightlyoutofdate. Yay, did ...

It's had over 220000 hits. That's a lot more than my GeoCities site ever got, until I switched the counter to a .gif

Well, if there are 10mil systems on the outer ring, then you have a 1/100000 chance of spawning in a system next to one of us (if there is 100 of us, which I don't think there are).

Yeah, me too, would be shit.

If this game randomly generates content but once something's been 'discovered' then it actually exists so other players can see it too , wouldn't the memory requirements for a game of this size be absolutely fucking huge. Or am I misunderstanding?

I asked the same thing earlier in the thread. Can't remember the answer I got off Chump, maybe something to do with storing it all server side.

Yeah, the seed generates the same planets for everyone, so they exist without existing.

I would live to work on procedural rendering. Flying around Just Cause 2 would bug me because the procedural landscape was fine but the stuff they laid on top was stupid.

Why the fuck does the road bend? There is nothing for it to go around. Why does that tiny island with four shacks on it have a massive suspension bridge connecting it to the main island? Who would build a military base here when 1km north would have access to the river and be able to choke that whole valley?

I'd love to write the rules around that shit and set them free in a galaxy like NMS.

That alone wouldn't. It should free up some guys to work on the important stuff though.

Edit - JC & JC2 were procedurally created from a topography map that was drawn by a human Sweed in their editor. The engine decides if it's sand, rock, snow, jungle iirc. I think the roads and cities are added on top of that. There are a few places where the land has obviously been tinkered with to accommodate a road or something.

Sorry, there ain't going to be no clusterfuck.  Despite all the talk of players starting off in different parts of the galactic rim making the possibility of contact infinitesimally small, the odds ain't going to improve by the time you're nearing the centre. The reason?  Hello Games aren't doing a multiplayer title. 

This is a solo-adventure where the only 'contact' you get with other players are seeing the footprints that they might leave on the intergalactic map. In fact, it's a touch disingenuous of the devs to speak of remote chances of players encountering other players - they're instead intent on building parallel universes for would-be space pilots. Cosmonauts might share star charts and flag alien discoveries, but there's no actual mingling to be done in the vastness of space.

Why are they even talking about it as if it's a possibility then? Twats.

There are hints of a dark souls/journey style multiplayer.

Blocks100 wrote:

Sorry, there ain't going to be no clusterfuck.  Despite all the talk of players starting off in different parts of the galactic rim making the possibility of contact infinitesimally small, the odds ain't going to improve by the time you're nearing the centre. The reason?  Hello Games aren't doing a multiplayer title.  This is a solo-adventure where the only 'contact' you get with other players are seeing the footprints that they might leave on the intergalactic map. In fact, it's a touch disingenuous of the devs to speak of remote chances of players encountering other players - they're instead intent on building parallel universes for would-be space pilots. Cosmonauts might share star charts and flag alien discoveries, but there's no actual mingling to be done in the vastness of space.

ah ok. so if its just a shared map then yeah they should come out and say it. the way they are describing it sounds like there is a chance of meeting people. As in if two players do head toward each other they would eventually meet. If its the case of a shared map with no interaction then its very misleading the way the devs are talking.

Reflecting on Braben's talk about things being added to Elite: Dangerous over time, even major gameplay features, it's not that absurd to see 'multiplayer' integrated further down the line, when the concept of players getting remotely close to each other becomes possible. I know nothing about network code but i'd assume small scale encounters couldn't be that hard to integrate in a game that is already stated to have online functionality, nothing being persistent - by the time people got to the center, and i'd imagine they've got the figures of how many hours play that would take even with luck on a player's side, they probably had plenty of time to work in MP. In fact I wonder if the sequel, with extensive MP, would be out by then.

Why would they have to specify wether you can actually rendezvous with another player at this point, the game isn't even finished, the subject isn't relevant, if it turns up as a possibility and revolt is brewing, it could just go in