Lot's of FFE d3d development

[pagroove]

http://www.spacesimcentral.com/ffed3d-f ... 43-45.html

Check it out.

Looks good.

[Wolfwood]

Looks pretty nice, but they'd need a Griff or two in their team as well to make it look as good as Oolite does at its best.

[OneoftheLost]

Probably gonna read through the manual until I get back from this trip, but I am one of the few who never played any of the Elite games before Oolite.

(Funny how in my search for the best free-form space game, I came back to the Original...)

It seems to have a huge amount of features and things, what should I be expecting? I doubt it will trump Oolite, but I'm kind of interested in the features and such. I know alot of people prefer the original Elite to the sequels, were they really that bad?

[another_commander]

It was not that the sequels were that bad, in fact, there were some very good ideas there, like seamless space -> planetary entry. It was just that they were poorly implemented and the end products shipped full of bugs (something like our test releases when a new major version comes out, only far, far buggier ).

Probably the biggest difference compared to Elite is the flight model: Fully Newtonian. This sounds good at start, until you actually get into space combat. You will find that the entire combat session becomes a series of jousting passes at ridiculous speeds and most of the times you cannot even understand what is going on until something kills you out of the blue. Speaking of blue, space was blue (major WTF there). Without autopilot, it was simply unplayable for me.

Coupled with bugs like autopilot trying to drive you through a sun or getting negative passengers in your bay (negative not as in attitude, rather as in a negative number), I found that the sequels were simply unfun. I did not like the icon interface one bit, either.

[OneoftheLost]

Full Newtonian? That does sound good, never thought of the 'jousting' per se.

I might check it out, simply because of the massive amount of features right off the bat. (BBS Boards, Military, Mining, etc etc.)

Sure most of which have been added to Oolite via OXP, but it would be interesting to see 'out of the box'

also, does the D3D version fix any of the infamous bugs?

[Kaks]

also, does the D3D version fix any of the infamous bugs?

No idea, but if you download & try it, you should be able to tell us!

[Sendraks]

I would certainly check it out, if only to appreciate what is great about Oolite.

This is not to say that FFE is not without its graces (being able to fly down and around planets in real time is very cool), but these are rather spoiled by the newtonian flight mechanics and *shudder* the aforementioned "Blue space."

However, there are other problems with Frontier/FFE.

1 - The game is largely biased towards larger ships. Larger ships can fit more shields, hull repair systems, have turrets and bigger guns. Most space battles are "jousting mactches" against much smaller opponents flying at high speeds which invariably crash into you and die. You don't die because your ship is huge and heavily shielded. I have memories of very shielded Panther and Puma Clippers which could survive direct collisions with almost any vessel and lose only a tiny fraction of their shielding.

2 - Smaller ships have few advantages in space battles against larger ships and indeed are really only good against similar class vessels. Anything bigger invariably packed a bigger gun that would instantly vape your ship if it managed to hit.

3 - Newtonian physics does seem to predicate a "jousting" approach (in other games that have similar mechanics, fights always seem to end up as "jousts") as opposed to the less realistic but more "fun" dogfighting combat of Oolite. Not once do I recall in Frontier/FFE ever having a "dogfight" where I actually got onto the tail of an opponents vessel and gunned them down.

4 - For the later missions for the military, small ships are necessary to complete the missions in time. Aside from being tedious anyway, there was nothing fun about doing a mission in a ship that could either easily be shot out of the sky or died instantly if it banged into anything.

5 - The autopilot often fecked up what it was doing and would leave you on a collision course with a planet, unless you noticed early enough that the ship hadn't begun reducing speed soon enough. There were a number of occasions where I averted a crash by using the ships main thrusters to reduce velocity by trying to flying away from whatever celestial mass the autopilot had seen fit to try and smash me into. Sometimes it worked..........sometimes.

6 - Time acceleration - you had to use this a lot. I'm not a not fan of time acceleration and don't use it in Oolite. If I can jump towards something due to mass lock, I use fuel injectors. If I can't use fuel injectors, I fly steadily towards my destination and ponder the great inponderables of the universe such as "whats for dinner?" and "should I get another beer?" Almost everything in FFE and Frontier meant the use of time acceleration to stop the time taken to travel anywhere from being terminally dull.

Sadly, Mr Braben seems to want to keep newtonian mechanics in for Elite 4, should it ever happen. Maybe he'll make them fun next time round?

[ClymAngus]

well he could if he could code some dog fight thrusters as an upgrade. Any body know if Steven Hawking can help with the maths for that one?

[Wolfwood]

I actually enjoyed FFE a lot and played it up until a few years ago. The Newtonian flight model isn't that hard, really, as long as you can think in 3D.

But, yes, the battles were mostly about jousting.

And I really hated that when you clicked on max time acceleration, the enemies - that you had evaded and escaped from - magically teleported back to you. In contrast, if you used the smaller acceleration, they never caught up with you.

[Sendraks]

I actually enjoyed FFE a lot and played it up until a few years ago. The Newtonian flight model isn't that hard, really, as long as you can think in 3D.

I enjoyed it, but it was still flawed.

And I really hated that when you clicked on max time acceleration, the enemies - that you had evaded and escaped from - magically teleported back to you. In contrast, if you used the smaller acceleration, they never caught up with you.

Yeah, basically the max time acceleration just meant there were big gaps in the calculations made by the programme. I recall that for space station docking, going in at a smaller acceleration invariably meant a crash, whereas no acceleration you docked fine and max acceleration resulted in a de-facto "teleport" into the station docking bay.

[Killer Wolf]

i found ships flitted about like midges in combat, was rubbish. the whole graphics engine was stunning for the time tho. as well as curves on models, working landing gear, flying down to land on planets etc, the little touches were great - like the town clocks showing the right time, smoke coming from the point your lasers actually hit etc.

[Cmdr James]

There were lots of nice ideas, but it was a horible experience to play.

Negative passengers was the worst for me, Id play for a few days hauling people across the universe, then there would be a problem and the count of passengers didnt match the people you had on board. Not only was the game wrecked then, but you didnt know which save game to go back to to get it working. Even now reading about the final versions and JFFE it seems there were all kinds of nasties that never got fixed, with impossible missions, systems that killed the game, and other insidious bugs like the negative passengers.

The Newtonian flight wasnt *that* bad in itself, I think a lot of the problems were actually how the stardreamer was implemented and the size of the systems. You spent all day flying huge distances at maximum acceleration, but when the stardreamer was set to normal speed, combat and landing/docking were ok.

It should have been a great game, and in many ways it was. Just a shame they never got rid of the bugs.

[matthewfarmery]

I never really played FFE, I played frontier the second one, on the amiga, but as others have said, both games were flawed and seriously bugged, indeed on another forum when elites birthday came up, both the sequels popped up in discussion, and I mentioned how bugged the second one was, then someone posted I was a complete liar and the game was flawless, yeah right, I encountered MANY bugs with frontier, some people have already mentioned, others were graphical glitches, like firing some of the more powerful lasers at stuff and the whole screen fills up with the laser graphics, plus with the very large ships, you could no longer dock at stations, and yes I remember using the tactic filling the ship with shields and auto piloting into little ships, I hated combat, it was easy once you were in a big ship, as you could shrug of the attacks, but combat was still annoying and not very well thought out

another thing, if your ship was hurtling through space at a huge speed using auto pilot, (and it was impossible to fly the ship without one as some starts meant you didn't have one) how was it that pirate ships could intercept you and start combat? plus slow you down when otherwise it would take ages to slow down the normal way? the whole game was pretty badly thought out and done, and did get boring after a while, pity mind, started off as a great game, turned into a bug fest and a real disappointment

nuff said really

[Killer Wolf]

"I mentioned how bugged the second one was, then someone posted I was a complete liar and the game was flawless"

either he was a complete tw@ or he wasn't realising you were talking about the original release of the game, which got slated for the bug reason. i distinctly recall the beckpedalling the company did, and the rushed fixes, and the full page ads showing the box splattering a rubber insect thing to boast that all the bugs had been sorted ~ which, if i recall corrrectly, they weren't!

TBH, i think Braben got a little too far up his own butt w/ the "implementing a real galaxy" thing - it's all well and good and impressive doing a full-on sim so you can literally watch sunrise over Phobos at the correct time etc etc, but....coming out of Witchspace an astronomical unit or so from a planet? the only thing THAT added to gameplay was frustration. i'd like to see a good galaxy representation, but done sensibly as opposed to an excuse to show how clever/knowledgeable the programmer is.

[Makara]

I have to leap to Frontier's defense here - I loved the Newtonian flight mechanics and it is the main thing I miss in Oolite. Can't say I encountered too many of the bugs (I never even thought about using the wormhole glitch).

Just picking on Sendraks post 'cause it was nicely laid out

Combat

1 - The game is largely biased towards larger ships. Larger ships can fit more shields, hull repair systems, have turrets and bigger guns. Most space battles are "jousting mactches" against much smaller opponents flying at high speeds which invariably crash into you and die. You don't die because your ship is huge and heavily shielded. I have memories of very shielded Panther and Puma Clippers which could survive direct collisions with almost any vessel and lose only a tiny fraction of their shielding.

3 - Newtonian physics does seem to predicate a "jousting" approach (in other games that have similar mechanics, fights always seem to end up as "jousts") as opposed to the less realistic but more "fun" dogfighting combat of Oolite. Not once do I recall in Frontier/FFE ever having a "dogfight" where I actually got onto the tail of an opponents vessel and gunned them down.

I've seen a lot of criticism of the space fights along these lines and have to think that people never quite got their heads around the technique for Frontier's flight model. The basic outline of combat was:

1 - Drop into normal time while autopiloting to destination when vessels detected
2 - Switch from Autopilot to Manual flight (having set an insanely high target speed on system entry) to acquire a target. This way you would always be under full forward acceleration during this phase - easy to work out what your ship was about to do.
3 - Turn the engines off (I think this is what a lot of people omitted) and use the forward/reverse thrusters to control your speed. No hurtling into huge ships for you.
4 - Repeat steps 2 & 3 until all enemies thwarted. Target switching was easy enough by flicking back to Manual control while acquiring a different one.

While there was still a bit of a jousting feel to the combat, it wasn't that extreme as most suggest. When head-to-head you'd be using reverse thrust while they accelerated towards you, so the two craft closed reasonably slowly if you wanted it that way. All the criticisms of combat I've seen suggest people who fought using either the autopilot (so they were actually trying to slam into their oppponent) or manual flight with a lower target speed (so your ship's acceleration would vary hugely with its orientation). The main downside was that the game really couldn't be played without a joystick.

Ship Choice

2 - Smaller ships have few advantages in space battles against larger ships and indeed are really only good against similar class vessels. Anything bigger invariably packed a bigger gun that would instantly vape your ship if it managed to hit.

4 - For the later missions for the military, small ships are necessary to complete the missions in time. Aside from being tedious anyway, there was nothing fun about doing a mission in a ship that could either easily be shot out of the sky or died instantly if it banged into anything.

Well, the light fighters were admittedly rubbish as a player ship - they could only pack a size 1 drive (so always took the same time to hyperspace) and couldn't fit an interesting amount of equipment. But from the Eagle II upwards things were okay. The game was definitely biased towards the small trader (Asp, Constrictor, Cobra III) with the glorious Imperial Courier let down by its lack of a fuel scoop fitment. If you were using the combat technique mentioned above though you got the advantages you'd expect - the lighter craft ran rings around the heavy freighters, they could apply more reverse thrust than the freighter could apply forwards so the terms of combat were completely dictated by the small craft. As long as there was some shielding then a (brief) laser hit from a freighter could be survived although you had to get out of their line of fire sharpish. Made for quite a tactical approach to combat.
The same thing applied to the spying/bombing missions for the military (never got beyond bombing missions for them though - don't know what else was on offer). It wasn't possible to fight the entire fighter complement of a military base at once, but sneaky flying meant you could stretch out persuers and engage them as you saw fit. Again these were baised to the small trading ships.

In System Flight

5 - The autopilot often fecked up what it was doing and would leave you on a collision course with a planet, unless you noticed early enough that the ship hadn't begun reducing speed soon enough. There were a number of occasions where I averted a crash by using the ships main thrusters to reduce velocity by trying to flying away from whatever celestial mass the autopilot had seen fit to try and smash me into. Sometimes it worked..........sometimes.

6 - Time acceleration - you had to use this a lot. I'm not a not fan of time acceleration and don't use it in Oolite. If I can jump towards something due to mass lock, I use fuel injectors. If I can't use fuel injectors, I fly steadily towards my destination and ponder the great inponderables of the universe such as "whats for dinner?" and "should I get another beer?" Almost everything in FFE and Frontier meant the use of time acceleration to stop the time taken to travel anywhere from being terminally dull.

Okay - the autopilot could be rubbish quite often while being pretty much essential. Its main problem was that it always aimed to arrive at the target at zero velocity (depending on frame of reference). Using it to intercept fast moving objects produced horrible results. If you were willing to think about how the ship was accelerating and use manual flight accordingly. There was a definite trade off where you could either save playing time (using autopilot) or game time (manual flight) - going full acceleration half the way then flipping the ship over for maximum deceleration (same as in Iain M Banks' The Algebraist ).
The time acceleration is really a matter of personal preference. I find the mystical jump drive in Elite rather irritating - it is necessary for the gameplay but throws the physics textbook completely out the window even by the cavalier standards of SF. Time acceleration produces the same gameplay result while feeling more "realistic" - given that the human body could survive accelerations that would leave internal organs thinly laminated to the ribcage . Unfortunately there were huge "steps" in the calculations under heavy time acceleration that produced... odd... results.

On balance Frontier was a lot better than quite a few posters on this board would have you believe. There was still massive scope for improvement even given the technology at the time (making small items of equipment less greedy for hull capacity springs immediately to mind) and if it were to lift all the goodies from Oolite would be - to my mind - a truly awesome game.

another thing, if your ship was hurtling through space at a huge speed using auto pilot, (and it was impossible to fly the ship without one as some starts meant you didn't have one) how was it that pirate ships could intercept you and start combat? plus slow you down when otherwise it would take ages to slow down the normal way?

The didn't slow you down, they just got into the same place as you at a closely matched speed. Both your ship and theirs were hurtling towards the planet at huge speeds but quite slow relative to each other (think about overtaking on a motorway). You could actually target other ships on the system map (a bit of time jumping here spread them out for easier selecting) and see how they closed the distance. Quite often they overshot a few times first due to the problems of autopilot AI + time acceleration.