How much did we miss?

[Cellulanus]

Frankly the only thing that we're really missing out on is some of the stellar backdrops there had there. We -can- even do things like cause the wings to fold currently. If you can believe it the mechanism and ability is currently there, we just don't have it turned on.

Actually, we are missing its story, which I think is the biggest thing they dropped.


Oh, and the lost game mechanics, who knows exactly what the boosters did.

[VincentFerrex]

Activating cruise is a trigger?

In that case, I'd definitely love to see folding wings every time we cruise.

---

<span style="font-family:Garamond"><span style="color:#FFFFFF">Saxophile's Signature Workshop

</span></span>

[darthbeck]

Activating cruise is a trigger?

In that case, I'd definitely love to see folding wings every time we cruise.

that would be awsome.

---

<span style="font-family:Century Gothic">Violence is Golden</span>

[finaldragons]

for the first 20 time's maybe after that it's same old i believe

---

If i dont respond PM me i get lost in the massive amounts of posts here ..............

[joshua_cox]

The scaling, first-person cockpit and moving starmap were what interested me. I'm sure there's a mod out there that allows you to play first-person, but the scaling in the game is way off. I'd love to see that fixed.

---

[Nightmouse]

The scaling, first-person cockpit and moving starmap were what interested me. I'm sure there's a mod out there that allows you to play first-person, but the scaling in the game is way off. I'd love to see that fixed.

yeah, me too, a few threads have been made about this, but they all concluded that it's either too much work or that fun>realism, but I think both can be combined

[Jinx]

here is a little history of what was the concept at first ( from what i gather )

DA or the lead designer had a vision of an ultimate free-roam-space-sim. it was meant to be like "Elite - Frontier II" .... but with the latest graphics and abilities.

major aspects about the gameplay included seamless docking - and unrivelled identification with the character by allowing you to play the whole game in 1st person ( meaning, you walked around and spoke to people on stations or in cities as if playing a 1st person RPG - and then you entered your ship as if it was a game like unreal tournament 2004 - and set off into space )

it was meant to be like privateer - an epical story that would dynamicly affect the universe where you happened to be in - as a freelancer, bounty hunter, explorer or whatever else ... entirely your choice.



but it was meant to be a simulation. - 3d, scaled up to almost realistic sizes etc etc.



reasons why it was done differently:

- at about that time, the massive multiplayer games started - and games with massive multiplayer support were better sellers - a game with such a vast amount of freedom would have been a singleplayer game though ( cause it wasn t meant to be a serverbased game like eve - so the players were usually bound to 8, 16 or maybe 32 players - but no where near 200. such a scale though ( like docking seamlessly ) would make even a 200 player universe appear very empty.

- the whole game was revised away from the simulation towards arcade. - the handling of the ships was quite innovative for a space sim at that time - extremely easy and almost perfect for quick dogfights while at the same time more complex than a simple shoot-em-up.

- graphics were simplified to allow it to run on lower end computers ( like real shadows [you may notice that the lightning is different in the trailors] and probably moving parts )


what we get is a game that focusses on the basics and does very well at that. - it is simple, but still needs skill to master ( and that is one of the greatest challenges - having a game that is as simple that everyone can understand it - but still complex enough to reward practice and skill )

the dynamic universe was given up for the ( ultimately unfinished ) campaign ( thats the only part that was really quite bad about the release )



i think the very ambitious wish to create a seamless universe from 1st person up to space, from the cockpit into the private quarters or a bar in a city was too much for these times. - it might even be too much for today.

at first its awesome to step out of your cockpit and wander through a blade-runner like city from hotspot to hotspot. - but very soon you wish for a simple "quick travel" - once you have seen it.

same with the moving parts. - they are in the game ( as mentioned before... FLhook commands can trigger folding wings etc. ) - but if the choice is

- have moving parts and make the game run 5% slower or
- have fixed parts and keep it at optimal speed

even players will often choose the later option. - everything is a compromise.

besides.... it would be rahter bad if the ultimate space sim was made in 2001. - they failed at that.... that gives future projects the chance to be just as ambitious and maybe make something much closer to the ultimate space sim.:laugh:

---

Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC

[VincentFerrex]

Hehe, guess they were aiming to make something similar to Egosoft's X-Universe games, and Earth & Beyond, combined. Probably no wonder why it didn't pull through. Shame, would have been great anyway.

---

<span style="font-family:Garamond"><span style="color:#FFFFFF">Saxophile's Signature Workshop

</span></span>

[Cellulanus]

Now that I've seen this, the "ghosts" of this version of the game will bug me now whenever I play FL.

The unused hardpoints on vanilla ships that were meant for the engine booster thingy's, the turret models that were just a last second modification of the CM model...





However, it would be awesome if microsoft still had that old code sitting around somewhere and competed the original game at some point in the future, to bad that will never happen.

[Jamez]

Eh, don't dwell on it. Discovery has things which DA probably never even thought of.

(Although, can I has folding wings plzx)

---

Andrew Skye
Starflier thrill-seeker

Evangeline Knight
Seasoned fighter pilot

Shinji Takeda
Renzu Corp ex-COO