Elite 4

[Jinx]

just judging by history - david braben has a history of achieving his vision of a game - if necesssary alone and at his own cost. - he made elite by himself and frontier, too - or with just a few ppl. - both games were huge for their time and also revolutionary.

elite had several galaxies with well over 6000 systems, dozens of ships and upgrade systems on a machine like the C64 - along with excellent graphics and gameplay for the time.

frontier, while not a popular game because it was more realistic than playable, had planerary landing, a vast universe, player build stations, mining operations and an innovative jumpsystem concept and all in all much more than even the X universe ... but a decade earlier.

dangerous is supposed to offer a balance between graphical fidelity and gameplay. from earlier videos he aims it to allow gameplay as even a single person ( fighterpilot or even a stowaway on another players ship ( or saboteur )) - and capital ship crews with a greatly different control concept.

what sets SC and dangerous apart for me is that braben has a better schedule and business plan than roberts. he also does not focus so much on useless stuff that catapults the system requirements for a fast paced game upwards - but tries to keep the game playable for mid ranged computers.

one of the biggest differences is probably that SC is similar to freelancer in terms of controls - more a 1st person shooter in space with strafing and twitch reflexes, while elite dangerous is slower paced - more like freespace, i-war or well.. elite.

in terms of video diaries, elite dangerous appears to eat a lot less money and is already more advanced in its developement stage. - but for the graphics junkies, it does of course not look as great. Elite ships are traditionally much more geometric and not something to look at ( not as much as like X or SC )

but i am biased in that regard - i like braben much more than roberts as a developer and also his art design and gamedesign.

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Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC