Will we have better ship interiors in X4?

Cucumber King · Post by **Cucumber King** » Thu, 23. Feb 17, 09:48

I'd be fine with Freelancer-like station interiors that are semi-static and give you a sense of the world you're in. Enough immersion to get a good sense of whatever locality you're in whilst making it easy to 'get on with it'.

The problem of ship/station interiors is just the tremendous amounts of assets required for walkabouts that are nice for a couple of times, but then seemingly get in the way of gameplay. One of X:Rebirths mistakes was that you always felt small... If I'm the manager of a huge space empire, why would I have to run around stations going to small shops whilst getting insulted by the local populace?

I hope Egosoft focuses their dev time on features that help gameplay, and not features that may look good on paper but may be difficult to implement. We see feature creep being a problem even in immense dev teams like Star Citizen's, and they're spending so much time on features that are likely to get cast aside by players sooner rather than later. Why spend all that time designing putting crates into ships when that will just become arduous so quick? It's a waste of dev time... X4 will hopefully focus on emergent and complex gameplay in space rather than spending precious resources on crate hauling mini-games that have very little replay value.

Veeshan · Post by **Veeshan** » Thu, 23. Feb 17, 16:23

As my playtime in previous X games is 1/10 my Rebirth time, i come at this from a Rebirth perspective, essentially.

Im a huge fan of Rebirth's vision. The sense of actually being human sized is a huge boost to immersion, so id prefer to keep that.

So stations and ship interiors should either ideally expand and get more involved; shops, barracks, etc as mentioned, or the rest of the universe should.

So id be happy with either Rebirth + cap ship fleet warfare, station customization, etc, or Rebirth + that travelling Chinese food boat from Fifth Element and Han Solo-esque ship repair/space taxi gameplay.

Im easy to please but id prefer the latter.

mr.WHO · Post by **mr.WHO** » Thu, 23. Feb 17, 17:50

Cucumber King wrote:I'd be fine with Freelancer-like station interiors that are semi-static and give you a sense of the world you're in. Enough immersion to get a good sense of whatever locality you're in whilst making it easy to 'get on with it'.

I actually think the same - Freelancer style static interiors might actually be much more functional solution and ballance between immersion and functionality.

Not to mention ONE HUGE BENEFIT:
Avoid of close and personal POV encounter with space grannies.

Veeshan wrote: Im a huge fan of Rebirth's vision. The sense of actually being human sized is a huge boost to immersion, so id prefer to keep that.

X-Rebirth didn't had one thing that previous X-game had - space walking. There you could acually FEEL being human sizied comparing to something big like Collossus or Titan.

Ezarkal · Post by **Ezarkal** » Thu, 23. Feb 17, 19:14

mr.WHO wrote: Avoid of close and personal POV encounter with space grannies.

At the same time, their NPCs are not that bad.
Sure, they could be better. Much better. But it's very hard to make good looking NPCs due to them looking like humans. I have yet to hear much complains about the Teladi NPCs. That's because they look like lizards, and not something we see every day everywhere and in every mirror.
And yeah, I know many other games have high-quality human models and characters, but at the same time many of them don't. (Or they look like JP ccomic character.) So the NPC model is certainly outdated, but otherwise I don't find it that aweful for a first jab at it.

However... Give them frigging hairs, dammit!

Being bald or shaved is so trendy in XR you'd think hair trimmers would be found in every dammed lockboxes. Seriously, there's like 4 different hairstyle in the game. 1- Yisha, 2- Mohak & sideburn dude, 3-Shaved, 4-Bald. If you want to put some randomly generated NPCs, then put a bit of variety.

ZaphodBeeblebrox · Post by **ZaphodBeeblebrox** » Fri, 24. Feb 17, 11:09

@mr.WHO

As a space grandad I take exception to ageism.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with grannies in space.

I also think that interiors have a long way to go. There are vast realms of possibility with them. IMO Ego need to take on some freelancers to work on it. I work in software development in a small team about the same size as Ego. When we have a lot of work we take on contractors for short periods to help ease the burden.

So all of this talk, about the need to focus on just the space part, as they are only a small team, has never made sense to me.

hisazul · Post by **hisazul** » Fri, 24. Feb 17, 20:57

Where have you been for the past decade if not two. Game design industry is rotten to the core. Contracting out? With publishers having more say in the matter then god? Penny counters would have a heart attack if they had to spend even an extra penny. Even if it makes no sense. Ego being independent doesn't exactly exclude them from equation, why? because they have to publish and advertise same as everyone else.

This is why we have micro transactions already in single player games, tha'ts why we have horse armor dlc for a price of a decent game and it's total'y okay nowdays, that's why games don't last more then 5-8 hours unless they are sandbox and from big names.

Spectre01 · Post by **Spectre01** » Sat, 25. Feb 17, 18:22

I'd rather there's no ship interior like the old X3 series but has more pilot-able ships, than taking away the development time on making generic interior for different race's ship and different classes.

ZaphodBeeblebrox · Post by **ZaphodBeeblebrox** » Mon, 27. Feb 17, 09:40

@hisazul

So they can hire voice actors, musicians and source in game assets from third parties but they are not allowed to hire short term contractors directly?

DaMuncha · Post by **DaMuncha** » Sat, 4. Mar 17, 00:19

I think 1 cockpit per ship class and race is fine, and then add modability to it so modders can add more cockpits.

As far as space stations go, I would have loved to walk the eintre space station but we only get a couple of rooms, and thats fine as well, but the rooms are tiny and dont have much detail, but what kills it is the meager 1 man, 1 woman, 1 space grandma.

I would have liked to see the factories ports on space stations rather than just from the outside.

Theyve allready got the resources available from XR, they just need to make a llittle more variety.

Post by **Nanook** » Sat, 4. Mar 17, 00:38

Yeah, there's a lot of unrealized potential on the stations. Doors that don't open, terminals (not the hacking ones) that could be used for finding information, game consoles that don't do anything but beep, just to name a few. Flesh these out and the station would not only have more purpose but would feel more alive.

And for goodness sake, put the merchants/traders in little shops rather than having them hang out in bars and bunkrooms. That makes no sense.

Nikola515 · Post by **Nikola515** » Sat, 4. Mar 17, 11:17

Nanook wrote:
And for goodness sake, put the merchants/traders in little shops rather than having them hang out in bars and bunkrooms. That makes no sense.

I always wandered why NPC'S have space suits inside of stations

I think it would be also fun to have space walks outside of ships/stations.

26072013 · Post by **26072013** » Sat, 4. Mar 17, 16:02

I would like Egosoft to invest all the time they have into SPACE, not into first-person walking.

For me X is about building your own empire in space, and that's where Egosoft could really shine. So I hope they spend their limited time for space phenomena, anomalies, huge alien stations, perhaps brand new alien races with new ships and technologies.

And cockpits. And a good user interface.

(Please be good.)

hisazul · Post by **hisazul** » Sat, 4. Mar 17, 17:23

The only "new" alien race that is at least sort of maybe can show up are Sohnen. Since someone has to fix existing jump gates and they are the ones who can... so did terrans back in AP but considering AP why would they want to... in their shoes I'd want CW to go extinct.

spankahontis · Post by **spankahontis** » Sat, 4. Mar 17, 20:32

hisazul wrote:- WAAAAAAAH PL0X REINVENT THE WHEEL.

- Egosoft reinvents the wheel.

- WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!111!!11eleventeen IT'S NOT X ANYM0R3!!! U TR1CKED ME!!! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!11 LIERZ!!

- Rinse and repeat ad-infinity.

They released exactly what they said they would. They ****** up testing and fixed it as they did with every single ****** X title to day. They were all broken on release. You people are the reason why we can't have good things. Quit asking for nonsense that is wasting the precious development time on garbage you will be whining about anyway because that's not how you see A, that's not how you believe B should be, it's not so sparkly enough to blind an average person and requires 8 top end GPUs to run at 15 fps. This isn't an rpg, I don't need private quarters with your sidekicks wearing scanty bikinis and drinking martinis with your bros. You want eyecandy there is that Star Citizen... maybe it will be released in 3018.

True, it could be Star Citizen and People will kick off that there was no fluffy dice hanging from the cockpit, boycott everything.

Nikola515 wrote:
Nanook wrote:
And for goodness sake, put the merchants/traders in little shops rather than having them hang out in bars and bunkrooms. That makes no sense.
I always wandered why NPC'S have space suits inside of stations I think it would be also fun to have space walks outside of ships/stations.

The stations are very bland after a while, plus the lack of diversity and dress amongst the Argon, Terracorp, Reivers, etc.. I mean even the pirates in X-3 had pirate clothes and head sets and looked like pirates.
All factions need to look the part and they don't, there hasn't been anything modable in terms of new clothes, new NPC faces etc..

SpaceProbe · Post by **SpaceProbe** » Wed, 8. Mar 17, 00:35

Nanook wrote:
hisazul wrote:....
What people want is a city with rpg elements, buildable freaking houses, lots of things that have nothing to do with space sims....
What people?? I saw one mention of one of these. You're beginning to sound like The Donald. Alternate facts, anyone?

better than sounding like CNN fake news. No facts, just bias and spirit cooking, anyone?

No one expects Mass Effect level of RPG with a small budget but if there would be planet surfaces some simple RPG elements, well executed, would be welcome.

YOYOMAN_MODDER · Post by **YOYOMAN_MODDER** » Fri, 10. Mar 17, 16:04

If Egosoft change laggy engine which i can name (imho of course) 'shit', sorry for this word but its reality, to one of Game high level industry, all games after X Rebirth, wiil be fpsfriendly and not 'shit'. I dont want diskuss about station graphics (its hello 2000s). So if game will be playable - cool. Not playable- shit.

The Q · Post by **The Q** » Fri, 10. Mar 17, 17:39

Changing the game engine at this point hardly makes any sense. The development of a custom engine costs a lot of money, which can only be justified when you use it for more than one game. Additionally, the game is stable now and optimisations take more and more effect. So throwing everything away now – not only the engine, but everything that is built on this engine – makes no sense at this point. Also, let’s not forget that Egosoft has experience with working with a custom built engine for a long time. As for your statement that after choosing a „high level industry engine“ everything will be fine (fps-wise): First of all, there isn’t a space simulation game engine readily available. If it would be different, then you could be sure that there wouldn’t be so many developers who built their own engines or are in the process of doing so right now. Secondly, you cannot expect an engine to work perfectly no matter what you do and no matter on what system you run it on. Implementation is the key word here, whereby certain tasks will always cost performance, no matter how you perform them.

If, however, you were referring to the graphics engine, then you probably didn’t read the last announcement (posted around Christmas), in which Bernd mentions that they would be working on a new Vulkan based graphics engine, which will be first introduced in XR VR.

SpaceProbe wrote:No one expects Mass Effect level of RPG with a small budget but if there would be planet surfaces some simple RPG elements, well executed, would be welcome.

But wouldn't it make more sense to fill station interiors, i.e. what has been created already, with simple but meaningful gameplay elements, before jumping to planets?

YOYOMAN_MODDER · Post by **YOYOMAN_MODDER** » Fri, 10. Mar 17, 20:22

The Q wrote:
If, however, you were referring to the graphics engine, then you probably didn’t read the last announcement (posted around Christmas), in which Bernd mentions that they would be working on a new Vulkan based graphics engine, which will be first introduced in XR VR.

i like Unreal Engine 4. its flexible, powerfull crossplatform engine. an it free! I like UE4 becourse i works on my own project on UE4) XRIM is separate task. And if Egosoft change engine to UE4 we can play realy AAA Space game with newest techniques (mesh instansing - 1 static mesh - 100 000 instances = 1 draw call, DX10/11/12/Vulkan, physics and more, powerfull animation system, full modddable suport on custom modEditor based on original UE4 Editor and more)))

Post by **Nanook** » Fri, 10. Mar 17, 21:54

UE4 is an FPS style engine. It simply wouldn't work for an empire in space type game, such as all the X games. This has been discussed over and over ad infinitum in many past threads and the answer is always the same. It simply wouldn't work. Sorry.

YOYOMAN_MODDER · Post by **YOYOMAN_MODDER** » Sat, 11. Mar 17, 16:09

Nanook wrote:UE4 is an FPS style engine. It simply wouldn't work for an empire in space type game, such as all the X games. This has been discussed over and over ad infinitum in many past threads and the answer is always the same. It simply wouldn't work. Sorry.

Sorry, what? fps lock engine?

I am sorry but i recomended to you watch on youtube on UE chanell reel videos. features 2017

Everyjing possible on UE4. and unlimited level streaming too, which is true seamless travel. Evrerthing possible on C++ or personal UE4 modification for special purposses. engine sources are free for modify I learning UE4 2 years, i developed streaming level system with level change mask effect called 'hyperspace' to XRIM 0.9. I dont see any post for UE4 and X games. its possible Epics engine can be true multytreaded and not cpu bound. 70% can be swap to gpu calcutations.))) if you want to discuss about this engine, welcome to PM)

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egosoft.com

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Will we have better ship interiors in X4?