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Elite: Dangerous

Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2014 9:06 pm
by Bock
phpBB [video]


Anybody else following the development of this game?

Looks pretty cool. I'm interested to see the similarities and differences with Star Citizen.

Re: Elite: Dangerous

Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2014 5:10 am
by matsif
haven't looked at it in quite some time, but it does have a lot of similarities to SC as Elite and Wing Commander were both space sims back in the 90s.

the major differences so far as I can remember:
-Elite is using full procedural generation for more or less all of their content. Their engine's graphical quality suffers for it. It's by no means bad, but nowhere close to the fidelity that SC is going to have.
-They are using a custom engine ("Cobra") that they've been developing for a few years previous to E:D's kickstarter campaign going up in November 2012. It's still a 32 bit engine and while it may do enough for the game, it still looks dated and isn't exactly pushing the boundaries of anything technologically.
-To get access to their alpha, it costs $200. You can fly in their alpha already (it's similar to SC's DFM that's coming up here in a few weeks hopefully), but it's kinda a big number considering you're getting more content for $40 from SC.
-SC is going to have full player control (walking around on ship/planets, that sort of thing) at release, while Elite's devs aren't planning it at all until an expansion

as to other opinionated things, I just think all of the ship art I've seen from the game looks dreadfully awful. Pretty much everything is just taking a basic geometric shape (mainly a triangle) and throwing some bumps and maybe cutting off some of the pointy bits. In contrast, SC's ships pretty much all look unique.

Between the look and the cost to get any game play, I kinda stayed away from it after spending so much on SC. They are expecting their full release at the end of this year though, so if the cost to enter goes down I may throw a few bucks in and give it a try. The beta is supposed to be coming out here soonish as well (listed as spring 2014), which cuts the cost to access actual game content down to $100.