| Pages: 1 :: [one page] |
| Author |
Thread Statistics | Show CCP posts - 0 post(s) |
Jenna Stannis
   |
Posted - 2003.12.01 21:02:00 -
[1]
CCP have brought the space combat/trader game genre into the 21st century with EVE, but for those of you who played the first games of this kind (Elite and Frontier) you'll remember some of incredible attention to detail and realism those old games had (especially Frontier).
I found this interesting description of the game whilst surfing the net...
"Frontier: Elite II" was the long awaited sequel to Elite. It was written in five and a half years by David Braben, with Konami Inc of Japan as publisher. In 1993, Konami decided to get out of PC publishing, and sold the rights to Gametek. The game was released in October 1993 and was in the top few slots in the UK Gallup chart for the best part of the following year. It was the best selling game in Europe 1993 according to Gallup.
It was made up of in the region of 250,000 lines of 68000 assembler, and as such was one of the largest (and last) commercial programs to be written entirely in assembler. Chris Sawyer (now of Rollercoaster Tycoon fame) did the mammoth task of porting it to the 80286 for the PC.
"Frontier" also set a number of firsts. It was the first game to have real-sized planets, where cities could be viewed from orbit, it was the first to use curved surfaces (bezier), the only game to do a palette-fit every frame to get best use of colours (Amiga and ST only), and (apart from First Encounters) is the only piece of software (games or otherwise) that attempts to simulate our entire galaxy.
Planets orbit and rotate correctly, so if you stay in one spot you will see sunrises, and the progression of stars, planets and moons through the night sky. It is possible to watch Saturn-rise from one of its moons.
Due to Gametek Inc's disappearance, accurate sales figures are not known. Royalties were received for around 350,000 sales but it appears that actual sales were in excess of 500,000 units.
Frontier, like Elite is still widely played by many people, has many excellent fan sites, and is still discussed in the newsgroup alt.fan.elite.
I'd love EVE to one day have a fraction of what Frontier offered - imagine being able to land on different worlds and to see the Amarrian, Caldari, Minmitar and Gallante capital cities from orbit! Or watch a sunrise from a distant moon.
I hope EVE survives long enough to hopefully have similar Frontier-type content in it one day!
And Thargoids! We need Thargoids in EVE! 
|
Skillz
|
Posted - 2003.12.01 21:19:00 -
[2]
I am the Thargoid.
Keep on flaming, lamers.
|
Nirvy
|
Posted - 2003.12.01 21:21:00 -
[3]
Frontier was an appaling buggy Pile of cr@p to be honest. It didnt match up to the original in anywway what so-ever.
Half of what you were supposed to be able to do didnt work, the other half bugged out most of the time.
Reminicising about such games is great, but NEVER actually go back and play them, it WILL shatter your memories of the game
Mercenary | The Azath |
Oboko
|
Posted - 2003.12.01 21:40:00 -
[4]
For me Frontier was for its time one of the best games ever written.
And certainly the most impressive game universe by a very, very long way I have ever seen to this day.
Given that the computer I play Eve on is many hundreds of times more powerful than that I played Frontier on it would be a little unreasonable to go play Frontier now and judge it.
Having said that it's still installed on one machine.
|
Morkt Drakt
|
Posted - 2003.12.01 22:15:00 -
[5]
Frontier was a travesty of unfinished buggy code... deserved to be shot alongside Gametek for even thinking it should be released.
It sold only off the back of elite and almost single-handedly destroyed Elites staggeringly good name and obliging following.
Legal battles went on for years around its release and various*****-ups.
Truly awful history around that game.
|
Draximus Prime
|
Posted - 2003.12.01 22:20:00 -
[6]
Elite II : Frontier owned, I loved the music too, and the intro sequence damn what a cool game.
______________________
To dare in fields is valor; but how few dare to be throughly valiant to be true? |
threeD
|
Posted - 2003.12.01 22:25:00 -
[7]
Frontier was pretty damn good.. finding new trade routes, doing a few missions.. try to sling shot round the sun, like they did in star trek, to achive time travel.. failing 9 times out of 10 to get the right tradjectory and being incinerated by the sun... ahh those were the days...
---
3D |
IZON
|
Posted - 2003.12.01 22:33:00 -
[8]
Ferdelance
"...master! there's a guy in the south village called IZON, he is a Ninja!" |
Eayon
|
Posted - 2003.12.01 22:47:00 -
[9]
 Quote:
Frontier was a travesty of unfinished buggy code...
Sounds familiar
________________________________
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." - George Orwell |
Thanatar Thed
|
Posted - 2003.12.01 22:55:00 -
[10]
Three little words ....
1. Rose
2. Coloured
3. Spectacles
Well, maybe spectacles aint such a little word and coloured is kinda medium sized but rose is a little word.
|
Xtreem
|
Posted - 2003.12.01 23:05:00 -
[11]
frontier elite 2 ... now that was an epic game for the time, had it on my amiga A500+ ... it had a meg upgrade though.. yes u heard A WHOLE MEG <---uber!
|
Halseth Durn
|
Posted - 2003.12.01 23:25:00 -
[12]
Buggy? Frontier ran great on my machine and was an even better game than Elite.
-Planets with cities and landable spaceports.
-Night and day cycles for planets.
-Mission system that you could pick and choose from. (not to mention challenging hunting/bounty missions that spanned many star systems)
-NPCs that traveled from system to system on their own business.
Eve is close, but wouldnt it be very cool to have those features mentioned above in Eve?
And while I'm in "critic mode", can we have some populated planets pop up? at least make som planets show a lit network of cities on the dark side of planets? Id love to go to Caldari Prime or Amarr and see lots of NPC trafic and cities on the planets.
Also, lets get rid of most the nebulai. It's just too much. There is beauty in empty space populated only by stars.
Oberon-Inc FEAR MY EMOTICONS |
Xilian
|
Posted - 2003.12.01 23:34:00 -
[13]
Frontier Elite II is/was the best space sim. game ever!
|
The Monk
|
Posted - 2003.12.01 23:42:00 -
[14]
yup it was a classic. why cant they impliment the bulletin board feature from frontier into eve. it was so good donate money to charity to help your sec rateing or maybe do some missions from the board like bounty hunting. had loads of fun things.
-----------------------
╔╤╗╒╕╔╕║║/
║│║╘╛║╘╝║\
----------------------- |
Miso
|
Posted - 2003.12.01 23:54:00 -
[15]
Elite 4 out next year...
--------------------------------------------
Dead
|
Hackett
|
Posted - 2003.12.02 00:02:00 -
[16]
Quote:
Elite 4 out next year...
More info plz ma'am. (links and stuff coz I am a lazy bugger)
|
Wild Rho
|
Posted - 2003.12.02 00:03:00 -
[17]
Edited by: Wild Rho on 02/12/2003 00:03:45
You serious Miso. I read and have heard about elite 4 but I thought it had stopped because there have been so few updates to the website.
BTW: Elite II frontier had very few bugs (that I ever encounterd). It was Elite: First Encounters that was the bug riddled game. Besides when I head about eve I thought it was gonna have everything Elite offered and more plus great graphics. So far it has been ok but has a long way to go. I also cant see why the planet related stuff (like surface landing) cant be added since it worked on relativly puny systems.
I have the body of a supermodel. I just can't remember where I left it... |
Morkt Drakt
|
Posted - 2003.12.02 00:26:00 -
[18]
ya - im thinking of elite first encounters... went to check and you're right.
Met an angry Braben at ECTS where they were still trying to push First Encounters despite the huge backlash...
I mean - they were still sending out patches on floppy disks by surface mail back then...
scary stuff compared to now.
|
j0sephine
|
Posted - 2003.12.02 00:30:00 -
[19]
"-Planets with cities and landable spaceports.
-Night and day cycles for planets."
... Including all the lil' things like tower clocks which would actually show actual time on the planet... i'd waste time to land next to church and watch the hands spin with time acceleration turned on. :s
|
Eayon
|
Posted - 2003.12.02 00:43:00 -
[20]
Link for you Hackett
http://www.frontier.co.uk/index.html
Quote:
Elite 4 frequently asked questions (Answers from David Braben)
In response to the many queries we get about Elite 4, here are some answers:
1. What is Elite 4?
"Elite 4" is the fourth game in the Elite series, though as with the other sequels this is only a working title; it will be called something different when released.
2. Will Elite 4 be based around realistic physics?
Yes, substantially (ie except hyperspace, and general relativity), though the actual flight behaviour will feel more like Elite than Frontier.
3. How will Elite 4 relate to First Encounters?
The two are entirely independent.
4. Will Elite 4 be multi-player?
Both single- and multi-player versions are planned, it is now likely the single-player version will be released first.
5. When will Elite 4 be released?
There is more than one planned release. We will make an announcement as soon as possible.
6. Will Elite 4 have realistic stellar systems (like Frontier) or have entirely made up worlds (like the original Elite)?
It will have realistic stellar systems, with fully detailed planet surfaces visible from orbit. It will again be possible to land on planets.
7. What platforms will it be available for?
We will make an announcement as soon as possible.
________________________________
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." - George Orwell |
Hanns
|
Posted - 2003.12.02 00:54:00 -
[21]
Frontier with eve graphics and online would be the best game ever!!! you even had to hire NPC crew for you to fly big ships, ahh the panther amazing ship!
|
Lorna Doone
|
Posted - 2003.12.02 01:09:00 -
[22]
They may have been crappy-looking (I just dug out my Elite II box and checked the screenshots  ) and buggy, but those games had incredible atmosphere. The sense of isolation as you docked at the windswept Scirocco station on the ice-world Merlin (IIRC, which is a big if)...
Ah, put away the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, Lorna, you've got crud to mine
---------------------------------------------------------------
"Meantime, all around me is violence and robbery, coarse delight and savage pain, reckless joke and hopeless death." |
DJDoby
|
Posted - 2003.12.02 02:38:00 -
[23]
I used to play elite - me and my dad took shifts for weeks so that we could get on in the game
i seem to remember there was a million quid prize or summit for the first person to reach the elite status.
i tried frontier but it sucked
elite was the business - the game play was everything in those days cos graffix were not the best although elite broke new ground in that sense and was completely immersive at times :)
i loved it
Senior Producer
ingame chat: eve-radio
IRC: irc.coldfront.net #eve-radio
|
Jake Pliskin
|
Posted - 2003.12.02 03:29:00 -
[24]
it had the atmosphere, it had me captivated back in my Amiga 1200 days. Sure the game had bugs.
You had the option to fly around Earth and our solar system. Landing ships down on to the surface of the planets. Plus you had to make sure you did the descent properly, land too hard, and you crashed.
I landed my ship on one of the moons of Saturn and sat and waited for the sunrise. (with a little use of the speed up time button) I remember being very impressed. (Imagine that today with graphics like Eve Online) when the sun came over the horizon, all the shadows across the landscape changed accordingly
And you had the option of having that famous Blue Danube music playing in the background 
Yours, the ever nostalgic, Jake |
Slithereen
|
Posted - 2003.12.02 04:47:00 -
[25]
Edited by: Slithereen on 02/12/2003 04:49:02
What is this Amiga, what is this Elite, what is this Frontier? I'm too young to know. My first ever space freelancing game was Privateer 2 in my big brother's machine as he was playing it. It gave me quite an impression to try other space type games and left me with an interest for the sciences, science fiction, Star Trek, Star Wars, and astronomy.
Don't ask me about Privateer 1, as I have no experience about it, but I hear a lot of people talking about it with a mythical status.
_______________________________________________
"Is it me or the bad guys just getting totally pathetic?"---Clover, Totally Spies,
"Hope is wasted on the Hopeless."---Mandy, The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy.
"Stars are holes in the sky from which the light of the Infinite shine through."---Confucius.
|
Pann
|
Posted - 2003.12.02 04:53:00 -
[26]
Sorry to be a party ****er. I have been following the thread and debating whether or not to leave it open. We don't allow discussions about other games or game sites, but this thread was began based on an early comparison of EVE to these other games.
It wouldn't be fair to those who have posted threads similar to this which have been locked if this one stayed open.
Eve Community Manager
[email protected]
CCP |
| |
|
| Pages: 1 :: [one page] |