Elite: Dangerous

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The People's Republic of Clogher
I don't think The Tablet of Doom (TM) could handle it. That thing stutters with Angry Birds.
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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan



there's a frog in my snake oil
I don't think The Tablet of Doom (TM) could handle it. That thing stutters with Angry Birds.
I've got an HTC One S that might just about be able to pull it off. Looks like it'll take a lot of faffing and quality reduction. Could be fun as a novelty project tho

(*EDIT* Got mine on a sweet £10-a-month deal from the ludicrously named site that sponsor Derby btw. I still don't truly believe they exist, as the site looks so dodgy. Phone's good tho . *EDITEDIT* Hmm, they've cleaned up their act. And aren't called EreMateWannaBuyAPhoneOnline anymore)
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The People's Republic of Clogher
Damn, don't link to that! I've been resisting getting a contract phone my whole life and now see I can get one with a free PS4/TV/Thai Bride.



there's a frog in my snake oil
Haha, yeah know how you feel. It's only because I was paying as much for my pay-as-you go per month that I suddenly saw the light . (I must have been on a truly atrocious call rate).

The more I look at this set-up the more it seems unlikely to be truly able to cope with high end gaming - especially lag due to compression - and potentially motion lag if the phone's internal kit isn't up to snuff. Tempting to cobble it together from parts just to do it on the cheap though. Lenses look like the priciest bit. Think I'll just see if I can get the software working on me phone first.



The People's Republic of Clogher
The game's streamed to your tablet, right? I've played around a bit with Steam's in-home streaming and it worked really well, but that was over a wired home network on a Windows PC.

I'll wait for the real Rift - Using mouse look in the game shows how the cockpit was built for VR.



there's a frog in my snake oil
Yep, the problem seems to be both shifting that much data via wifi (although if you have USB 3.0 that's a better solution apparently), and the live reformatting they have to do to fit the target screen.

Also issues regarding motion tracking that the Rift nails but the various home-brew solutions struggle with a bit more - so motion blur & stuttering etc. Some people reporting it playable tho, so who knows



there's a frog in my snake oil
So, 16th Dec for release then

And they seem to be quite big on the walky-round-station thing...



All still seems a bit 'would like to see', but liking this talk of zero-G combat, and fixing bits of your ship via spacewalks etc.

In other news...



Currently stops working when I place the phone in (I think the divider is touching the screen and pressing 're-center'), and the visual quality is, um, basic. But hopefully should be a bit of fun if I can get it working



The People's Republic of Clogher
You should really check out the Ghost Adventures Kinect spirit recording device. It's be right up your ally, Mr Heath Robinson.

As to the game itself, it seems to be panning out in totally the way I'd want - The best bits of EVE Online with some actual gameplay plus the walking around stations picking up contracts manually of Freelancer.



there's a frog in my snake oil
Hah, my one's just sitting around annoyingly pausing movies whenever we have the temerity to speak. It's definitely getting close to some home-brew repurposing

I am a bit worried about how good the human modelling is going to be, given we've seen nothing but artist's impressions. The ships & stations are so sweetly realised on a macro level (and the footage there for the interiors looks strong too), I just hope the voice acting and movement AI/animations etc can match it. Will def be more fun to interact with factions and indivs rather than menus tho for sure



The People's Republic of Clogher
Now that I have a functioning headset, I'm going to see if I can get Voice Attack set up later. There's a 30 day free trial if you're interested and I don't think the purchase price is too extortionate.

Yeah, human(oid) modelling is going to be tricky. If it's not totally spot-on then it'll jar badly with the rest of the aesthetic. In my head I'm picturing Mass Effect's Presidium.

Hopefully Braben is too.



there's a frog in my snake oil
Ah ok cool, I can get some chat on tonight if you fancy trying some co-op, or just, like, getting it to work

Will look into Voice Attack *EDIT* Ahh, that's the voice control. Ach, I'll pass on that. Had enough of shouting FUS at Skyrim



The People's Republic of Clogher
Voice Attack works really well, especially in this context. I ended up buying the full program - It's only a fiver.

Must say that the instability in the game's starting to annoy me at this point. I'm close to crossing my fingers and waiting until Dec 16th.



there's a frog in my snake oil
I'm a bit worried by the bit buried in this dev talk (think it was around 17mins), where he says they've tried to keep the server-side actions light to stop them having to charge monthly for access...



Almost worried we might have to see MMO style subscriptions at this rate :S



The People's Republic of Clogher
You're a better man than I for sitting through that.

I just hope that they'll perfect the core game (the 'Elite experience' if you will ) before pandering to what Kickstarter backers are telling them to include. The basics are all in the Beta but it's still very rough around the edges.

Some people I've spoken with seem to think that FPS aspects, planetary landings etc will take the form of paid-for DLC. Hmm.



there's a frog in my snake oil
If they go the paid DLC route, and don't give the pre-backers free entry, that will be a monumental pisstake. Would be strange for functionality such as that to be DLC though, given in-game advantages it would give. Doesn't feel like something they'd do on that front.

The vid actually suggests they're dealing with the obsessive types fairly well - IE he holds up the PIPs system as an example of an aspect which has depth which keeps the hardcore happy but is also accessible (even ignorable) from the off for casual gamers.

The key thing in that talk though is his thoughts on 'vertical slice' builds, in that he thinks they're daft until you've got the 'riskiest' game propositions fulfilled, hence Beta still seems to be an isolated test build in some respects. If Gamma turns out to be slice of the full game (and you'd think it would be) I think we'll know how far up the creek we are. If they still haven't got aspects like instancing & multigun/planetary lag sweet soon after that goes live, and co-op reliability soon after that, current worries will look pretty valid

That said I'm off to go shoot some lasers near the big burning Federation ship now

---EDIT---

And rather promisingly, I just spent an hour there, multiguns ablazing, without a hitch


Apologies for sh*tty 640 screenies - click for full rez

They have moved it to Eranin 4, so possibly they've hefted it away from a heavy planet texture, but it was definitely lag-central for me before. Hopefully they're fixing some of these game-killers at least



I opted to go anti-Fed, as I'd heard their fighters are like paper, and tis true. Scant earnings ultimately, but very atmospheric And could def imagine a mission to take out the main ship being fun. Just strafing it and jinking through the interior to lose heat was good in itself, but taking out working gun stations and power plants etc would be grand



The People's Republic of Clogher
The stuttering when planets come into view during Super Cruise worries me. I've got a decent PC which can brute-force even the most demanding games into something like submission and Elite's nowhere near the most demanding. I've tried it on the lowest settings and it's still there. Fortunately I've never had any trouble when things get up close and personal but it sure breaks the immersion.



there's a frog in my snake oil
Yeah I don't actually get that, so I'm assuming it's a compatibility issue with different builds. It seems Frontier have been taken aback by the spread of PC idiosyncrasies in terms of networking, so possibly true of rendering too. I've certainly seen lots of arcane fixes mooted, but we shouldn't be having to jump through hoops (IE making sure your Bios & Windows are using the same graphics card option if you've got more than one etc).



The People's Republic of Clogher
My 780 seems a bit of a weird card and I'm not totally happy with it. It runs most things perfectly but has problems with stuttering on others, which sometimes seem to only occur with other 780 users.

I thought I was being smart buying at a discount just before the new Nvidia cards came out, turns out that the new 970 is almost as powerful as the 780 was and it's £250! I might be starting to save for a 980 (which apparently pees all over a Titan for £400-ish) sooner rather than later, before the market totally bottoms out for selling a 2nd hand 780.



there's a frog in my snake oil
Ay, sounds like a plan. Best hope no more plumbing springs a leak

I am semi-nonchalantly reading a ton of speculation about what extra stuff might be in Gamma etc.

Reading this 'my mate says' thread, (backed up only by the Dev's desired-addition lists), did make me realise that surely.... surely... they've gotta have the Thargoids all lined up for Gamma and full release? So that'll be something

And by extension, maybe they've got this modelled too then...

Void creatures - space contains a number of base intelligence critters that can be disturbed whilst detecting and extracting resources
Most are hostile, a few can become valuable resources themselves



The People's Republic of Clogher
I had a bad case of the thargoids last year. Not enough roughage in my diet.

High end graphics cards, I've found, can be a bit of a pain in the rear. There seems to be a sweet spot around the £200 mark and you're paying more and more for smaller and smaller performance gains. My plan with the 780 was to go big and it would do me for this console generation but PC ports so far have been a bit ropy - The consoles share 8GB RAM and VRAM and a lot of ports aren't translating that properly/easily to the way PCs are set up.

Nvidia are apparently launching a range of 8GB cards next year to try and compensate. My 3GB is looking a bit puny.