Frontier Developments shared a minidocumentary of sorts talking about the development of upcoming space sim Elite: Dangerous.
The developers are not tied down to the conventions of the previous Elite games, but they are taking liberal inspiration from them in other ways. They noted how the older games had a detailed world, with fully mapped galaxies, and tried to bring that vision to the 21st century.
One of the challenges the devs had was rendering the ships from the previous games – then rendered in wire frame – and updating them to CG graphics. Frontier opted to keep the familiar shapes of those ships, but also fill in the gaps with functional items. For example, there are vent flaps where there were none before, to make the ships look different from each other, and to make them seem more real.
It was also a challenge to create fully immersive environments. In fact, this may have been the biggest hurdle the studio had. Frontier took a lot of consideration into making it feel like you were inside the cockpit. Even secondary and tertiary pilots had to feel like they were in that space, so that whole area had been properly spaced out. Another immersive experience are the game’s docking procedures, which were made to have more depth than in the older games.
The game boasts 400 billion solar systems, developed using procedural tech and easily accessible via hyperspace. Hyperspace was challenging to add in, but was a requirement to make these huge sprawling worlds accessible at all.
The devs stated that combat needed to feel great, and bigger ships does not equal winning the fight. Space combat has a certain degree of verisimilitude, in spite of the game veering towards a sci fi theme.
Sound was an interesting design point for the studio. They deliberately eschewed sci fi clichés, so do not expect to hear the same familiar ping sounds you’ve been used to from older sci fi movies, TV shows, and games. The studio aimed to make the sound as realistic as possible, but some parts were enhanced in the service of improving immersion.
Frontier’s devs also cited how online multiplayer enriches the gameplay, giving Elite: Dangerous an edge over its predecessors, and how great the game feels when played on an Oculus Rift.
Elite: Dangerous is coming to Windows Q4 2014, and OS X Q1 2015.
