Elite on Kickstarter...

[merman]

See, I liken Tim Schafer to a film director who makes low budget indie films and cannot get the distributors to pick up his latest. So he turns to crowd sourcing as an alternative, because that way the project gets made.

Braben and Molyneux are more like Richard Branson - sitting on a pile of cash while whining that the market is unfair, promising a lot but failing to deliver. They don't need to go the Kickstarter route in quite the same way.

[Darkflame]

See, I liken Tim Schafer to a film director who makes low budget indie films and cannot get the distributors to pick up his latest. So he turns to crowd sourcing as an alternative, because that way the project gets made.

Braben and Molyneux are more like Richard Branson - sitting on a pile of cash while whining that the market is unfair, promising a lot but failing to deliver. They don't need to go the Kickstarter route in quite the same way.

Schafer has had quite a lot of commercial projects recently - some concurrent with his kickstarter. 3 published this year by microsoft and I think 3 currently in development at Doublefine.
Point and Clicks get funded all the time - just turn to a german publisher and you'll stand a good chance. They are no more niche then space trading games anyway.

I dont see why Braben is assumed to be better off then Shaffer financially - let alone enough to self publish (if you have evidence that he can, I'll take it back, but it seems very unlikely to me).

I dont Shaffer blame him for using kickstarter at all, but he is exactly the same as those others - only he got $3million on essentials no game information. Purely sold on rep and naustigia.

We can give him some credit for drawing attention to KS though, in some ways he helped a lot of other projects because of that.

[merman]

Double Fine switched strategies and went to rapid development on XBLA because of publishing problems.

[Stuart B]

Today's update has brought a really rather tasty video of the work-in-progress gameplay.

[axel000]

Hopefully they vary the asteroids a little, early days of course but some procedural work would be nice, or even some randomization of texture / color / hue.

Looked really solid though, wonder what kind of processing muscle will be needed to keep a framerate that smooth.

[Darkflame]

looks spiffy. I was going "pwee pwee!" myself mentally as the lazers fired.

But yes, more irregularities are needed in that field. Also hopefully some physics so you can knock the asteroids about a bit too.

[defsdoor]

Looks ace - I'm sold.

Although that fighting was getting to be a little too Frontier-like for my liking - i.e. too distance, too much random firing and hoping and taking too long.

[Mqark]

Looks good - although without that vapor trail / smoke (whatever it was) it would be a bit hard to see that other ship.

[galaxis]

I'm not trying to be overly cynical or call Limit Theory a scam, but a lot of the Kickstarter bothered me. The lofty promises, slick video, and excellent game description hit my "Too good to be true" button pretty hard. Something seems off about it, but I really hope it's legit because I want to play the thing being promised quite a bit.

I wouldn't be surprised if the guy just underestimates the amount of work it takes to make a game from what's more or less a graphics demo. He's just 20 after all, and high on what he has achieved by now.

But then, aren't we asking for people who don't know what's impossible to come up with their ideas again and again? Doesn't cost much to help him trying.

[axel000]

Looks good - although without that vapor trail / smoke (whatever it was) it would be a bit hard to see that other ship.

I thought the vapor trail looked ridiculous, you just aren't going to see lit trails of smoke like that in space. The HUD isn't implemented yet though and I seem to remember the Elite HUD being so good (the novel spatial radar namely) that I could usually dogfight without looking up at the front view until it was time to take some shots.

[Flojomojo]

Not sure I care about what's "ridiculous" in space, considering how I wouldn't want to be out there except within the safe confines of a game. Eye candy is fine with me.

[Darkflame]

Looks good - although without that vapor trail / smoke (whatever it was) it would be a bit hard to see that other ship.

I thought the vapor trail looked ridiculous, you just aren't going to see lit trails of smoke like that in space. The HUD isn't implemented yet though and I seem to remember the Elite HUD being so good (the novel spatial radar namely) that I could usually dogfight without looking up at the front view until it was time to take some shots.

I think the best way to handle it is use a in-game AR based computer hud.
This way your ships computer can overlay imaginary for various purposes - combat trails being one possibility.

Another would be a movement representation. Many games use random debree or star-like dots. Id like to see a 3d lattice overlaid lightly instead - giving both a sense of speed and orientation even in a void.

[axel000]

Took another look at the kickstarter page for Elite Dangerous and they are still below 50% funded with just 39 days to go. Not ideal. Also noticed they have no stretch goals, or at least, they aren't listed on the front page as most projects do.

This project would probably be generating more enthusiasm if they had set more reasonable targets and broken it down into features like other developers do. You would think this would be obvious. Oh well.

[Jamesac]

Stretch goals are nice when the central project is obviously going to blow past the initial goal, but in many games they're a complete waste of time. Elite seems to be doing ok, honestly. They've got over a month left to earn the goal, and based on the standard funding curve it's looking really good for them. They've had the great start, are making small but steady progress in the middle, and will probably fly over the end goal easily with a day or two to spare.

James

[Stuart B]

Update #7 and a new video