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[Web] David Braben about Elite 4ANN.lu
Posted on 25-Sep-2004 21:31 GMT by Elite fan (Edited on 2004-09-26 11:03:27 GMT by Christian Kemp)10 comments
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David Braben about Elite 4: Click here
David Braben about Elite 4 : Comment 1 of 10ANN.lu
Posted by Lando on 26-Sep-2004 14:18 GMT
I think it's quite sad that the guy's been in the games business for over 20 years, has worked on dozens of games, and still all anyone wants to talk to him about is a game he produced for the BBC 32K 22 years ago.
David Braben about Elite 4 : Comment 2 of 10ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 26-Sep-2004 14:53 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Lando):
You could also look at it this way: How many coders manage in their whole lifetime to make such an impact with one single game that it becomes an immortal institution throughout time? ;-)

I think Elite 4 may be a killer whenever it gets here ...
David Braben about Elite 4 : Comment 3 of 10ANN.lu
Posted by An-other-onymous on 26-Sep-2004 19:29 GMT
In reply to Comment 2 (Anonymous):
And to be fair, he's already done two sequels and seems to have been working on the third for quite a while now. It's obviously as big a deal for him as it is for anyone else.

Looking forward to it. :-)
David Braben about Elite 4 : Comment 4 of 10ANN.lu
Posted by Olegil on 27-Sep-2004 06:40 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Lando):
Uhm, did you read the interview? He wasn't asked a single question about the original, he talked only about Elite IV. So what are you on about?
David Braben about Elite 4 : Comment 5 of 10ANN.lu
Posted by Lando on 27-Sep-2004 12:06 GMT
In reply to Comment 4 (Olegil):
Uhm, yes I read it. Now you try.

The original Elite is referenced several times, and the page even has a screenshot of it. Much like almost every other Braben interview I've read over the years.
David Braben about Elite 4 : Comment 6 of 10ANN.lu
Posted by Trizt on 27-Sep-2004 14:29 GMT
It had been cool if this game would be released for AmigaOS/MorphOS/linux-ppc, but I guess this will be a "microsoft windows only" game...
David Braben about Elite 4 : Comment 7 of 10ANN.lu
Posted by kriz on 27-Sep-2004 14:58 GMT
"ELITE IV: DAVID BRABEN SPEAKS

The man behind one of the best-loved space-sims of all time talks about his latest star project

16:22 Twenty years on, almost to the day, since the ground-breaking original emerged on the BBC Micro Computer - and nearly a decade since the most recent in the Elite series launched into deepest space - it somehow seems an apt time to be asking David Braben about a new Elite game.

We've asked him in the past, of course, many times, and the answer we've received has always been a curt: "Yes, we're making it, but it's still a long way off." This time, as completion draws near on Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 (a game developed at Braben's Frontier Developments studio, see our preview here), Braben appears ready to tease back the curtain on this most secret and eagerly-awaited project.

"It's still a long way off..." he smiles unapologetically, "but you have to understand that I have high expectations for Elite IV. I don't want to release something that's rubbish to play. It's been such a long time since the last Elite that it has to be just right - and I'm more conscious of that than anyone."

With the aforementioned Tycoon sequel to be peddled and marketed, Braben refuses to go into specifics on a game that's still at least two years from completion. He admits, however, that clues to its content have been littered among Frontier's back catalogue.

PEOPLE PERSON
"There are certain things a game needs for it to be absolutely leading edge, and one of the key things in Elite IV is to be able to include people. But doing people properly is very, very difficult. No-one's done it properly or even approached it. And I don't just mean GTA people, where you club them and nick their car. I mean people you can interact with.

"So yes, we've had a lot of logical steps to work through to get to our ideal game. We need to be able to do naturalistic animations, we need to understand character interaction, and - as a parallel thread - we need to display vast numbers of people and to understand crowd dynamics."

Braben clearly feels he's nailed down many of the AI issues already, evident in watching the impressive crowd dynamics at work in RT3. Lifelike animation and character interaction - albeit canine - was a feature of last years PS2 curio A Dog's Life. However, the tools and rendering techniques behind these and his other games were first developed in 1996.

Braben has clearly been making plans for Elite IV for a very long time, and each game has been a technological stepping stone that, as he admits, "takes us closer to having all the tools we need to finish Elite." But the question remains, where is Braben and his team in the development cycle today?

"We started development in 2000 - that was as a massively multiplayer game. But talking to people who could have been involved in it, I realised how little the Internet infrastructure was capable of - there were so many problems, I could see us taking a lot of flak. "What we've got now is a separate design for a game which is single-player and for small numbers of players, up to 16 or 32.

"We could still do a massively multiplayer game subsequently - we've got the design, it still works, it's extremely exciting and very different to what's out there now in many ways.

"But for what we're doing at the moment, we want to create something completely new. I know what it is we're going to do and I actually know how we're going to do it. That, I think, is extremely exciting."

DON'T PIN ME DOWN
Braben refuses to allow Elite IV to be pigeon-holed so early on, but it seems obvious that first- or third-person combat will be a key feature, as indeed will freewheeling space adventuring. Braben has also made it clear he wishes to replicate the accessibility of the first game with the detail of the two sequels.

But the biggest challenge for his Frontier team (one that Braben is clearly aware of) is in recreating a vast universe - one that will display all the colour and chaos of humankind, artificial or otherwise.

Braben simply wants to revolutionise games. Again.

PC Zone staff"

cut and paste ? come on people...
David Braben about Elite 4 : Comment 8 of 10ANN.lu
Posted by hooligan/dcs on 28-Sep-2004 02:21 GMT
You guys are gonna kill me for this .. but... the best Elite was with no doubt Elite 1, and especially on Spectrum. Any sequels after that were _crap_.

/ducks
David Braben about Elite 4 : Comment 9 of 10ANN.lu
Posted by noggin on 28-Sep-2004 05:41 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (hooligan/dcs):
The BBC Micro version is widely held to be thedefinitive and best version of the original Elite.
David Braben about Elite 4 : Comment 10 of 10ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous Orc on 30-Sep-2004 17:47 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Lando):
Jeff Minter - LLamatron

Peter Molyneux - Populous

Matthew Smith - Manic Miner


All these are famous fo their main 'masterpieces'

There are several others - but these guys are my favourites 8-)
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