Thargoid Killer Posted December 22, 2012 Share Posted December 22, 2012 Hello All. Not sure if you've seen this or not, but David Braben is trying to crowd fund Elite 4 ( Working Title 'Elite: Dangerous' ) via Kickstarter. I'm surprised no one has started a discussion thread on kickstarter already as their has been quite a few high-profile games been funded by this method recently - A new Wing Commander game and a God game from Peter Molyneux to name a few. Some people have moaned that these people must have the money due to having past 'hits', but you need to understand what these people are doing - trying to fund a game without a publisher or retailers. Publishers control a game, control the devs and can ruin a game when the dev might have taken more time to polish and hone it. How many day/week one patches come out for new games? Retailers just add money onto the end game price. So, Developers ask people for funding up-front for a game via Kickstarter. You pledge an amount of money for a reward ( base game, access to design forum, alpha/beta teesting access, future expansions free etc etc ) and if the game hits the target amount in the project's Kickstarter timeframe - 30 or 60 days - the game goes ahead. If the project fails to raise the total needed - you don't pay a penny. So, Elite; Dangerous then. It's got 13 days to go and has raised £886,892 out of it's target of £1.25m. It's an ambitious target for making the seminal space sim in today's graphical technology. It won't be EVE with monthly sub fees and hugely steep learning curve, but more of the original. Kickstarter page here: http://www.kickstart...elite-dangerous All the youtube vids of pre-alpha gameplay are on there, plus interviews with David Braben himself. I'll include a few here if you're not inclined to look but want the meat straight away: - Trailer - 'Scavanger hunt' There's a full FAQ on the Kickstarter page I linked to first, but if you have any questions/observations or reservations - post here and i would gladly discuss. Cheers for reading. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thargoid Killer Posted December 22, 2012 Author Share Posted December 22, 2012 A couple more vids: - Dev diary part 3 showing multi-player roles - first Dev diary showing a ship chasing another ship in an asteroid field. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jacko Posted December 22, 2012 Share Posted December 22, 2012 I hope they make the target and produce this game. I loved Elite and Freelancer! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thargoid Killer Posted December 22, 2012 Author Share Posted December 22, 2012 Pledge then? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silentbob Posted December 23, 2012 Share Posted December 23, 2012 I still have the PC emulated version of the original Elite on my PC (Also have a BBC B boxed up somewhere with it on 5 1/4"), and relive my childhood on occasion, however..... Times change, and Eve Online is already the natural progression of Elite, I have even modified the original Elite so it reads "Eve Lite". Realistically, apart from a few 30+ year old wanting to go all retro, I cannot see it being a huge success. Still wish him the best of luck, and will buy it if it comes out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slim Posted December 23, 2012 Share Posted December 23, 2012 Yep, also loved Elite, Frontier and First Encounters. Also played Jumpgate, the X series, E&B, Freelancer. Evochron... They all kind of miss something. Elite came out when Sandbox games really didn't exist, and you were happy to buy food and sell food and perhaps mine an astroid. Now games have far more to keep us interested and space is big and empty compared to your average GTA city. Space games also suffer if they simplify the physics because they're boring, or make the physics too realistic and difficult which also makes them boring. I think we've moved on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alibaba Posted December 23, 2012 Share Posted December 23, 2012 Frontier was ace, and i still believe that the galaxy map, with the planets, space stations and terraformed worlds is actually real. Astronomers have discovered a planet around Tau Ceti you know... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ManxMann Posted December 23, 2012 Share Posted December 23, 2012 You guys need to check Oolite, the opensource Elite clone. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oolite_(video_game) Now check into the history of Elite/Oolite, legal wrangling/copyright issues abound as such there seems to be no way forward. My personal wish would be for a 'MMOG' imagine if _every_ ship you came across was piloted by a real person! Reached 'Elite' on Oolite a while back, decided I needed to meet the challenge as I only managed to get to mostly harmless on the C64 conversion as it was so awful! Now all I need is for someone to bring back Aviator! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MickyBlue Posted January 3, 2013 Share Posted January 3, 2013 Success! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20897768 Micky Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alioth Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 Oolite actually has a minor Manx connection, it was me who did the original port of the game from Mac OSX to Linux (and then subsequently the Linux port was used to make the Windows port of the game). I've not touched the code base for a few years though, the initial port and creation of a unified source tree for all operating systems was done in 2005-2006 or so. I still host the Elite/Oolite wiki though. See wiki.alioth.net. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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