Games Elite: Dangerous

[Jupitus]

just bought a HOTAS...I blame YOU GUYS! now I have to clean up my desk

@TdC Teeds! I have a HOTAS now - I need some tips on getting going please

When I install it (not plugged in yet) will it take over from my mouse (and maybe KB) or work in parallel?

Oh, and I am really struggling to get my beer and ashtray etc on my ickle desk now!

 

[TdC]

what I've learned atm is that stuff gets done through the combination of the HOTAS programming tools and the game. unfortunately I'm at a critical stage with my research stuff so there is little time :-(

 

[Jupitus]

Sounds a bit daunting, but thanks fella

 

[TdC]

yeah, well I've only used the tools for an hour at most. in the GAME is where you define what function you want the HOTAS to be doing for a given action. in the TOOL you can tell the HOTAS how/in what way you want it to do said action.

for example, mine has a linear rate of roll - pitch on the stick X and Y axis by default. I found that kind of harsh when flying, so I changed it to more of an S curve and now it feels more natural (to me). I haven't gotten around to transferring all the controls to the HOTAS because I don't have a lot of time atm -.-

 

[Jupitus]

It's cool pal, thanks! I managed to get it working, fly around a bit and dock so a bit of time honing the controls and I'll be ok. I'm too pissed to do it on a Saturday night anyway!

 

[TdC]

haha nice. Id certainly advise you to do the flying and tuning in the offline praccy things that the game lets you do. bit cheaper than flying the old space cow in to the side of a station several times in a row eh

 

[Jupitus]

haha nice. Id certainly advise you to do the flying and tuning in the offline praccy things that the game lets you do. bit cheaper than flying the old space cow in to the side of a station several times in a row eh

It's always a risk flying drunk, so HOTAS or KBM no matter

 

[Athan]

Newsletter #41 is out. For anyone dithering over buying:

Last week we announced that the price of the final release of Elite: Dangerous will be £39.99 ($59.99 and €49.99) and we also announced a special pre-order digital pack, The Elite: Dangerous Mercenary Edition, which is a bonus pre-order game collection loaded with digital extras.

The pack is available on our store for new customers at a discounted price off the final release of £35.00 ($50 and €40) and anyone who has already pre-ordered the final release version of Elite: Dangerous will also receive the bonus pre-order collection when the game is released.

Also, beta 2 is coming!

We still have our collective foot firmly pressing the pedal to the metal on the development of Elite: Dangerous, both on ‘under the hood’ work and forward facing features to get the game ready for release before the end of 2014.

We’re delighted to announce that Beta 2, our second beta phase, will be released on Tuesday 30th September, as the culmination of our 10 days of celebration of the 30thAnniversary of the release of Elite on the BBC Micro - see what we did there…?![/url]

 

[Jupitus]

So, Beta 2 is here so I fired the game up again and finally worked out settings for the HOTAS... the new missions seem a lot more varied at first glance so I'll be putting some gaming in.

I've not yet tried the grouping mechanics, but since @Scouse also now has the game do any of you fancy getting grouped up sometime with a parallel Skype group chat so we can explore / fight / mess about some time?

 

[Scouse]

HOTAS? Yep I'm up for that sometime @Jupitus, but it won't be this weekend as I'm off to the land of the plastic scousers, stuck in traffic on the M6, not soaring through space

Made 100k credits in about five or six hours play so far which I thought was pretty easy. Not done much dogfighting simply because stacking up on no-cargo missions and the odd cargo drop and flitting between stations in a few local systems seems more efficient.

I'll have my cobra mk iii in no time


Now all I have to do is figure out where best to buy ships / weapons / systems...

 

[Urgat]

Up for trying to group up. Noticed you on jup, but no idea how to actually speak / chat / group

 

[Scouse]

You know what -this thread should be nowhere near the RPG part of the forum...

 

[ECA]

Why not? You can roleplay a space pirate/trader/etc.

 

[Athan]

I'd always thought this should be in the 'PC Gaming' section myself.

 

[Jupitus]

I agree!

 

[old.Tohtori]

How's the release looking? Next year sometime?

 

[Jupitus]

I honestly don't know, but Beta 2 right now is very playable as is.... I would guess Q1 or Q2 2015, yes.

 

[Athan]

How's the release looking? Next year sometime?

David Braben is very very very insistent that it will launch "this calendar year". And keep in mind that Frontier Developments is publicly traded, so he has responsibilities to not mislead shareholders.

However... the current state of Beta2 doesn't inspire that much confidence. The network code is still shonky (both in the sense that it's difficult to meet up and play with others specifically and that you'll get hangs and crashes), and there's a lot of polish still needs doing on the UI.

Beta3 has been announced for 28th October 2014, which was a welcome surprise. There'd been no mention of a Beta3 before this. I suspect it's more like "Beta 2, part 2" when they couldn't get it all done in time.

It will be an awesome game I think, it's just a question of how long it takes FD to nail the networking issues and get all the other promised features both present and fully working/bug-free.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Yeah was expecting that from what i read. Not really worth paying 20 extra(or rather full CE prices) to betatest a game(i usually get paid 20/hour to do it ).

Been waiting for this for sure, but will just have to leave it waiting a bit longer.

 

[Scouse]

I honestly don't know, but Beta 2 right now is very playable as is.... I would guess Q1 or Q2 2015, yes.

I reckon they'll be out for xmas.

 

[old.Tohtori]

I reckon they'll be out for xmas.

If what these guys say is true(which i don't doubt), then an xmas launch sounds like a bad idea. With a game like this and with online features you need a solid launch, otherwise it's dead in the water.

If they can make it then great, sooner the happier, but i'd rather wait for Q2 next year to play then play something buggy.

Esepcially when it relies on immersion quite a bit.

 

[Scouse]

Netcode may be a little shonky when warping in and out of places, and "menus" are clearly beta - but the in-game UI is a pleasure to use and most other things are pretty stable.

I don't think either of those things are insurmountable in the pre-xmas timeframe.

Content addition is getting ramped up and once they expand the universe you're good to go I reckon.

Won't love the wipe as I'll lose a solid week's pkay by then. But I rolled the dice so I'm to blame

 

[Zarjazz]

Won't love the wipe as I'll lose a solid week's pkay by then. But I rolled the dice so I'm to blame

That's nothing. In this wipe I've lost 30mil credits and my Anaconda kitted out to the max! Not sure I feel like putting in the hours again just for it to be wiped in the next Beta / Gamma.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Yeah that's why i'm also sticking out, once iplay i do want to keep my progress(even if i'm an altoholic to the max )

After reading this though; The game will be expanded with ambitious features such as seamless freeform (manual pitch/yaw/roll) atmospheric flight and landings and on-foot and out-of-ship activities (such as FPS combat, walking around and boarding ships, walking in stations and walking and driving vehicles on full 1:1 scale populated living planets), multi-player crew and player executive controlled capital ships.

Especially the bold parts, yeah, that's a lifesink game if i ever saw one. Probably going to pre-order it closer to end of year, or see if there's a collectors edition at some point.

 

[Jupitus]

I got a package which includes all future expansions, so I'm happy to see what is in the pipeline!

I just read that there will be a wipe before Gamma, but after that they expect to allow users to retain their progress through release unless there are any game-breaking reasons why not. I have been playing sufficiently to get used to controls and new gameplay, but not so much as to be concerned too much about wipes.... I will likely play a bit more through gamma to get a bit of a headstart ...

 

[Rubric]

So what sort of machine specs do you need to run this? Been waiting for Elite 4 forever.

 

[Athan]

So what sort of machine specs do you need to run this? Been waiting for Elite 4 forever.

Short version: It's not as resource hungry as most modern games, most of the time, as most of what it's rendering is space (which is a calculated skybox based on where you are, but once it's calculated it's just a texture like any other game's skybox).

It ran well enough on my old i5-760 with GTX 560 Ti, although not at solid 60 FPS, oh and that was at 1680x1050. Others are running it on rather old Dual Core CPUs and same era GPUs, but I have to assume they turn many of the graphics options down.

However... if you get picked as session leader you're going to want all the CPU you can manage. I'm assuming this is what caused ours to suffer low FPS when we were gathering outside a station (in a private group), but was fine once we warped away.

My i7-4790k and GTX 780 Ti do, of course, not blink at giving me a constant 60 FPS with everything on max (at 1768x992 on 1920x1080 monitor, because I want to be able to alt-tab without the game minimising which means running windowed, and I've not yet been bothered enough to look at the 3rd party solutions for borderless window). If I turn vsync off it's anything between 120 and 250 FPS (so I keep it on to use less power and stay cooler, although maybe I'll change that for Winter ).

 

[Scouse]

So what sort of machine specs do you need to run this?

I run on an old AMD Phenom II X3 and an ATI 7870 at 1920x1080 with max everything including all the AA stuff cranked up.

I get 60+fps in space (telly refresh) - drops to 45 in stations and busy asteroid fields generally run no lower than 25 (although I did manage to find one that hammered things).

So, my PC's plenty good enough for it - smoother if I drop the options slightly. I couldn't run the oculus rift on it tho - so that's put paid to my ideas about DK2 (need 75fps constantly for that).

 

[Jupitus]

I'm running an i5 3750K with 8Gb RAM and an R9 200 series GFX card at 1680x1050 and it runs well enough

 

[ECA]

1680x1050.
wut.