156 replies to this topic

[Janichsan]

As Kickstarter backer for Elite: Dangerous, I'm entitled to participate in the Standard Beta, which started on July 29. Specifically to play that beta, I created a Bootcamp partition on my MacBook with Window 8.1 - and it took me until today to get that sh*t running... (Seriously, frell Windows... )

Anyway, after a painfully long download, I finally managed to play a while.

I'll make the description of my first impression short:

Firstly, this is the game I was waiting for since 1993.

Secondly, ...

[Cougar]

Man, I should've backed this instead of star citizen. That game is never going to be done.

[macdude22]

Cougar, on 03 August 2014 - 06:13 PM, said:

Man, I should've backed this instead of star citizen. That game is never going to be done.

Isn't there like a hangar we can download now.

[Cougar]

macdude22, on 03 August 2014 - 08:51 PM, said:

Isn't there like a hangar we can download now.

And a skirmish mode thingy, but what from what I understand, the controls are totally broken. At least they were a few months ago.

Anyway, I can't be bothered to try it out when I have so many *completed* games to play.

[macdude22]

Cougar, on 04 August 2014 - 09:12 AM, said:

And a skirmish mode thingy, but what from what I understand, the controls are totally broken. At least they were a few months ago.

Anyway, I can't be bothered to try it out when I have so many *completed* games to play.

I didn't know, I haven't even read the emails for a couple months now. I think the scope of this project sort of ballooned out of control and I'm not sure we'll ever see a functional final product.

[Janichsan]

macdude22, on 04 August 2014 - 09:46 AM, said:

I didn't know, I haven't even read the emails for a couple months now. I think the scope of this project sort of ballooned out of control and I'm not sure we'll ever see a functional final product.

Well, their available budget also ballooned beyond belief. Putting all that money to use takes time...

[macdude22]

Janichsan, on 04 August 2014 - 11:47 AM, said:

Well, their available budget also ballooned beyond belief. Putting all that money to use takes time...

Yea but look what happened to Double Fine, they beat their goal beyond anyone's belief. Then they proceeded to bloat the scope of the project so much they ran out of money. Even though they had so much more than they originally asked for. There's something to be said for having a sound project manager oversee these things (note I am not said project manager, I'd probably blow all the money on hookers and blow).

[the Battle Cat]

macdude22, on 04 August 2014 - 12:03 PM, said:

(note I am not said project manager, I'd probably blow all the money on hookers and blow).

Let's kickstart a hooker's and blow project.  It doesn't hurt to be honest and I think a lot of guys would want to help us out just for bro grins.

[macdude22]

the Battle Cat, on 04 August 2014 - 09:40 PM, said:

Let's kickstart a hooker's and blow project.  It doesn't hurt to be honest and I think a lot of guys would want to help us out just for bro grins.

After that fraking Potato Salad Kickstarter anything's possible.

[Janichsan]

macdude22, on 05 August 2014 - 08:29 AM, said:

After that fraking Potato Salad Kickstarter anything's possible.

Yup.

Back on topic: the Elite: Dangerous beta is in very good shape. Most of the major gameplay elements are in place and working well, I have seen only minor bugs and glitches, and the engine - albeit not being completely optimised - is performant, even when rendering bazillions of asteroids - literally:



Incidentally, this screenshot shows one of the bugs, as the cockpit frame is missing. While that does not happen in-game, it occurs from time to time when taking screenshots, which the game renders specifically at a ludicrous resolution (5464 x 3072 pixels).

I'm running the game at high settings (to which the game defaulted) at a resolution of 1366x768* and get mostly solid 30-40 fps, with a few drops in framerate now and then. That will probably even improve when the optimisation is complete.

(* I would have it running at 1440x900, which is my standard, but this resolution seems unknown to Windows...)

For the Mac version, I would expect that it will require at least OS X 10.9 and a fairly recent machine with a decent GPU, since it definitely will rely heavily on OpenGL 4.1, considering the Windows version is built with DirectX 11 in mind.

The flight controls are tight and responsive, although I'm no fan of the mouse controls. It's quite possible that I might be able to tweak them more to my liking, though, since the extent to which the controls can be adjusted is ridiculous. However, I would still suggest playing the game either with a gamepad or - even better - a decent flightstick.

There are only a few things I would criticise currently. Some things could be explained a bit better, for instance. I hope the final version will have a more detailed introduction to these elements than the handful of slides the beta has at the moment. Also, there are a few things in the user interface that are a bit more complicated than they need to be (otherwise the UI is great).

What is beta is mostly missing at the time is lots of the content the final game will have, like the roughly 1,999,999,945 star systems you cannot visit yet (they all can be inspected on the galaxy map, though).

Apart from that, it's shaping up really, really well.

[UmarOMC1]

Soooo... this is here because a Mac version is announced??

[Janichsan]

UmarOMC1, on 07 August 2014 - 02:48 PM, said:

Soooo... this is here because a Mac version is announced??

Yes! It's currently scheduled to be released three months after the Windows release, which is at the moment planned for this October.

[RGoulder]

This game looked so good until:

Offline Mode Canceled

The entire Elite: Dangerous Newsletter #50 http://us2.campaign-...e&id=6b99a1d038

Quote

Elite Dangerous Newsletter #50

Elite Dangerous Offline Mode Q&A
From David Braben:

Each of the “Elite” games pushed the boundaries of the technology available. With Elite: Dangerous a major new feature is playing online, and we are pushing that hard now. Offline support was not one of our original aims, though we did believe we could support it at the start of the project. We do a great deal of processing in the cloud, and this benefits everyone playing. We had considered that an online connection is a reasonable pre-requisite for a game delivered online. I am really sorry this has upset people, but we have a strong, consistent vision that we do not want to compromise.

And they go on to answer some questions about why they waited so long to make this announcement and so on. If your interested you can read the full news letter using the link above.

I'm crushed by this decision.

The online aspect really didn't interest me, I wanted to fly my ship around the galaxy alone without the need for a constant internet connection.

It saddens me that it has come to this as Elite: Dangerous really looks to be a great game, one I was looking forward to playing when it was released for mac. I truly wish Frontier the best of luck with their MMO vision for Elite: Dangerous, it is unfortunately not a vision I share.

[Janichsan]

RGoulder, on 20 November 2014 - 03:52 PM, said:

This game looked so good until:

Offline Mode Canceled

The entire Elite: Dangerous Newsletter #50 http://us2.campaign-...e&id=6b99a1d038


And they go on to answer some questions about why they waited so long to make this announcement and so on. If your interested you can read the full news letter using the link above.

I'm crushed by this decision.

The online aspect really didn't interest me, I wanted to fly my ship around the galaxy alone without the need for a constant internet connection.

It saddens me that it has come to this as Elite: Dangerous really looks to be a great game, one I was looking forward to playing when it was released for mac. I truly wish Frontier the best of luck with their MMO vision for Elite: Dangerous, it is unfortunately not a vision I share.

Yeah, I'm also not happy about this as are many others. The Elite forums are fuming about this. But I have to say that most of the anger seems to come from the way how this decision was handled and not from the fact itself.

I mean, I can see where this was coming from: they have said right from the beginning that the game would be developed as multiplayer game, with an evolving galaxy influenced by player actions, that these dynamic parts were to be handled server side, and that the single player offline mode would be quite limited since these dynamic parts would be missing.

Nevertheless, they have almost right from the beginning stated as a certainty that there will be a single player offline mode and have asserted this fact without leaving any doubt several times. Until they stopped mentioning it after a few months and dropping the bomb only one month before release.

And that's the point were Frontier started to handle this matter really wrong: David Braben's first reaction to the negative feedback from the community was taken as quite condescending and just as he was making up for that, including offering refunds, they made the next huge mistake by limiting the eligibility for refunding to those who haven't actually played the alpha or beta versions. You licked it already, we won't take that back. (EDIT: They are just now backpaddling on that policy, saying refunds will be decided on a (currently completely intransparent) case-by-case basis.)

I, personally, see the problem with the cut out single player offline mode not really in being forced to play with other players, because I'm not. There's still the single player online mode. It's these three words that give me a headache:

Single Player Online.

Because that has totally worked out well for other games. Because there's no way how this could go wrong.

What I'm pissed about is that I have been taken an option. I still want to play a game when there's no internet connection at all or when the game's servers are overloaded. And from my experiences in the beta, it can be taken almost for granted that the game's servers will be overloaded, especially at launch, and playing the game will be at least a miserable experience, if not impossible.

And that's really a frelling shame, since Frontier has made so much right with this game. This will all be for naught if the playing experience will simply suck because of some stupid server problems.

[RGoulder]

Janichsan, on 21 November 2014 - 03:42 AM, said:

Yeah, I'm also not happy about this as are many others. The Elite forums are fuming about this. But I have to say that most of the anger seems to come from the way how this decision was handled and not from the fact itself.

I mean, I can see where this was coming from: they have said right from the beginning that the game would be developed as multiplayer game, with an evolving galaxy influenced by player actions, that these dynamic parts were to be handled server side, and that the single player offline mode would be quite limited since these dynamic parts would be missing.

Nevertheless, they have almost right from the beginning stated as a certainty that there will be a single player offline mode and have asserted this fact without leaving any doubt several times. Until they stopped mentioning it after a few months and dropping the bomb only one month before release.

And that's the point were Frontier started to handle this matter really wrong: David Braben's first reaction to the negative feedback from the community was taken as quite condescending and just as he was making up for that, including offering refunds, they made the next huge mistake by limiting the eligibility for refunding to those who haven't actually played the alpha or beta versions. You licked it already, we won't take that back. (EDIT: They are just now backpaddling on that policy, saying refunds will be decided on a (currently completely intransparent) case-by-case basis.)

I, personally, see the problem with the cut out single player offline mode not really in being forced to play with other players, because I'm not. There's still the single player online mode. It's these three words that give me a headache:

Single Player Online.

Because that has totally worked out well for other games. Because there's no way how this could go wrong.

What I'm pissed about is that I have been taken an option. I still want to play a game when there's no internet connection at all or when the game's servers are overloaded. And from my experiences in the beta, it can be taken almost for granted that the game's servers will be overloaded, especially at launch, and playing the game will be at least a miserable experience, if not impossible.

And that's really a frelling shame, since Frontier has made so much right with this game. This will all be for naught if the playing experience will simply suck because of some stupid server problems.

Right, I couldn't agree more, which is why after some time to consider I ultimately pulled the plug and asked for a refund. Its not that I hate the game, it looked wonderful, but having played Diablo 3 since release, a game I also really like, I had to ask myself, do I really want to go through the same thing with this game? A great gaming experience when I don't have lag and when the servers aren't imploding or down because of maintenance, but when it happens the game is completely unplayable.

The answer unfortunately was, no I can't do it.

And certainly there was also a feeling from all this, that I no longer really trust Frontier. If they could seem so certain that a single player offline version was possible if not optimal, and then just dump it a month before launch, I start to have doubts about their commitment to other features that weren't "one of [their] original aims" like the mac version.

It's a bit of doom and gloom leap there I know, but that's where my mind kind of went after this unexpected announcement and post announcement blunders and was a factor anyway in why I ultimately decided to ask for my money back.

But boy it was a tuff decision. I really did want to fly around in one of their space ships exploring the galaxy. I guess I'll just have to settle with watching others fly thru space on Youtube.

[Spike]

This is bad news .

I also kickstarted this and want to ask if anyone knows if the mac version will be native or wine? If its native, then I definitely still want this. Otherwise, maybe not. Anyone know? (I have not ever touched or looked at it as waiting for mac)

[RGoulder]

Spike, on 21 November 2014 - 02:19 PM, said:

This is bad news .

I also kickstarted this and want to ask if anyone knows if the mac version will be native or wine? If its native, then I definitely still want this. Otherwise, maybe not. Anyone know? (I have not ever touched or looked at it as waiting for mac)

No one knows and that is kind of the problem. The only thing they've said what so ever about the mac release is:

Quote

Elite dangerous Newsletter # 48 Nov 7, 2014:

News for Mac Users
We want to clarify what buying Elite: Dangerous now means for everyone.

Everyone who has bought or who will buy Elite: Dangerous will be able to download either, or both, PC and Mac versions as and when they each become available for no additional charge.

Elite: Dangerous will be available for Mac next year after we have released the game on PC. To be clear, if you own both a PC and a Mac and want to switch your play between both, you will be able to do so as often as you like, as your ‘save’ is held in the cloud.

This also means that the benefits to being an Alpha and Beta backer are extended to anyone who wants to play on Mac if they have joined the Beta before it closes on November 22nd. They will also automatically become part of the Mac Beta (details yet to be released) when that process is started, at no additional charge.

There is a new Mac-centric product page on our store to clarify this, but whichever page you buy from the end result is the same – you will get access to the PC version when it is released and then access to the Mac version too when it is available.  Mac users who pre-order now will get all the pre-order benefits of the PC (including the reduced price for pre-order) and if they have access to a PC (or, for example, for those who have installed BootCamp) they will be able to play the PC version in the meantime, when it is released on December 16th.

Given what they said about offline mode being part of the final release again and again until they dropped it entirely, I'll let you decide if you trust them enough, site unseen, as to whether the mac version will happen or not and in what form.

[Janichsan]

So, Elite: Dangerous launched yesterday and the the servers actually turned out to be stable. However, despite playing in solo mode, which allegedly requires only little bandwidth, I experienced quite some network lag. Yay.

It's also pretty clear that their decision to release the game in Elite's 30th anniversary year no matter what was not one of their wisest choices. The game isn't broken or horribly buggy, neither are large portions of what was supposed to be in the release version missing, but there are obviously many smaller things that they didn't finish for release day. This ranges from the purely cosmetic, like custom models for most of Sol's planets (only Earth, the Moon and Mars look as they are supposed to; all other planets are there but only have default procedurally generated appearances, meaning they barely resemble their real counterparts), and some missing graphical fluff (e.g. gas and dust clouds within stellar systems), to quite crucial things like social features for the multiplayer crowd. How they could release a game that is supposed to be so multiplayer centric without decent means of communication between players is just beyond me. (There is a voice chat option, but that is limited to small flight groups, i.e. persons on your friend list.)

They also managed to fail to have most promised pre-order and Kickstarter backer bonuses ready at release.

The initial story line that was supposed to start on launch (a civil war of succession in the Empire) also has not kicked off yet, but the background simulation, which is taking player actions into account to evolve the game world, is up and running for quite a while now. A couple of dedicated players have already started during the gamma test a few weeks ago to systematically influence a specific system, and – lo and behold! – their actions show results, although not dramatically so yet.

I don't doubt that many of the missing parts will be added over a hopefully not too long time, and what there already is in the game is fun and mostly very well made, but at the moment I would say it's not quite fulfilling its potential.

Now, regarding that Mac version, it remains to be seen what we can expect there. A Wine/Cider wrapper is definitely out of question for technical reasons (no way that would work), but I have the impression that the developers are severely underestimating the task of porting the game. That three months timeline for the Mac version is highly optimistic.

[Spike]

It says on their Mac order page:
Availability: Coming Spring 2015

I believe they can get that then or sooner if it was programmed for cross platform all this time.
Waiting until then for my preorder...

[Janichsan]

Spike, on 17 December 2014 - 11:54 AM, said:

I believe they can get that then or sooner if it was programmed for cross platform all this time.

That's the point: it isn't. The engine is built on DirectX 11, which is why Wine/Cider can be ruled out.