<snip>

It is true that Elite IV will be more Elite-like in the combat, but mainly
because we want combat to be (at least potentially) between loads of
ships, not one spec in the distance. We will do our best to retain as
much of the nice aspects of Newtonian flight as possible, and the
underlying flight model is likely to still be Newtonian.

David Braben

Many well meaning people email me with ideas like 'wouldn't it be great to
do an Elite IV'. Some go on to say 'It could have hardware acceleration and
multiplayer...'. While it is great that there is so much interest, I'm afraid
I can't reply to all of them (though I do try). Apologies to those who have
not received a reply.

Elite IV has to be vastly superior to any competition, in order to revive the
Elite name after the FFE debacle. To be honest, the biggest problem I see
is the number of ideas we have already, and that to do them justice, even
with a large team will take a long time to bring to fruition. This time around,
I am very reluctant to sign with a publisher too early, as that is when things
start getting out of hand. I know this from bitter experience.

We would rather not receive ideas, because of the danger that later we will
be accused of ripping those ideas off. Please bear in mind this is something
we have been thinking about for a long time. We have a number of really
significant ideas that will set this game apart like no other. Please don't
email asking about these ideas, as we really can't give these out.

I will look at putting a FAQ up on our web site, and post here when it's done.
For the moment though, in an effort
to reduce the emails - a few answers:

1. We will support hardware render etc on PC through DX7
2. We will have multi-player
3. We will support a wide range of formats including high end consoles.
4. We will probably support Playstation 2 rather than Playstation
5. We will consider other formats like Linux, etc

Finally, many people ask if it would be possible in the meantime to re-release
FE2 or FFE as shareware or similar, or to release the sources. The answer is
yes to both of these; possibly some time this year, but I will need to check the
legal situation with respect to the lawsuit with Take Two (which is still going).

If you want to email me anyway, then go ahead, but please be aware you may
not receive a reply.

David Braben

Not at all. Sometimes I don't answer!
If you read my posts I have answered this question, albeit obliquely. Elite IV
is in development. It is in the design stage, and is a massive undertaking
given people's expectations of what it should be (and rightly so).
The target platforms are not yet decided.

David Braben

Absolutely not, though the issue I think is more particularly the choice
of publisher, and their attitude to quality.

I think this is inevitable.

> The flight physics *will* be newtonian? Damn well hope so -
> none of that star-wars crap. >:-{

This one is always tricky. The real problem is that a very wide audience
expects the flight models of films like "Star Wars", and don't realise the
issues. In turn a game gets highly criticised for it and dies a death because
it is unplayable. A few games have tried this and because of the cumbersome
nature of the controls have failed. People simply can't cope with a completely
separate direction of travel and facing if they have to control them both.
This is even true in 2D (eg driving a tank while the turret is rotating).

Having said that, I also prefer Newtonian physics from an aesthetic point of view,
but I think it is important to have a feel more like "Elite".
So the current plan for Elite IV is a Newtonian flight model (but with hyperspace
etc) with thruster corrections (like Frontier, except better) to give an Elite-like
feel. (This way, Frontier fans can still hurtle sideways out of control in to a
planet for old time's sake, by turning the fly-by-wire off.)

David Braben

Though there may be a software renderer with D3D it is appallingly slow
with many rendering bugs. The one on V2000 was in hand-written assembler.

We did look at supporting Open-GL for V2000, but D3D seemed to cover all
the cards pretty well. The Open-GL drivers are getting better, but are still
not available across the board. We will consider it again for Elite IV,
though no promises.

David Braben

Supporting all the various cards and different driver combinations just for
D3D is hard, as many require specific code work-arounds because of holes in
their D3D support. Adding OpenGL to this would have made it an even harder
task, as many of these drivers are still in their infancy.

Because of the legacy of FFE, I was conscious that there are many people
around who would have loved V2000 to have been buggy (as I've said in other
posts), as it might then be taken to imply the FFE disaster was entirely our
fault. For this reason we couldn't risk being associated with flaky OpenGL
drivers. As it was, there are still no known faults with V2000, thankfully.
We have had a few driver difficulties, but all these can be fixed with the
latest hardware drivers. Have you tried getting Half-Life to run in OpenGL?
Our experience shows it only works well on a few cards.

David Braben

No decision has been made regarding Linux for Elite IV. The previous survey
was across several groups, to get a measure of the Linux interest for a port of
V2000. There were around 1000 real votes, and many from 'fake' or duplicate
email addresses (which were subtracted from the list), so the decision was
marginal, but no.

The clincher was that there are many different variations within Linux
(graphics/processor etc) - the decision may be different in the future given
that Open-GL has become more stable and Red Hat's appearance make the
platform more of a proposition.

Please don't mail me with stuff like "but if you did x86 with Open-GL it
would clearly be best" as I don't want to get drawn into a "which is best"
argument. Even within the Intel arena there is a lot of variation - do we
assume Pentium and good floating point for example? Hardware acceleration?
Many of the people who voted had 486-66s. We will make the decision when
the time comes, and will run another survey at that time.

David Braben

> When he says "We have two very different multi-platform titles in development,
> and a third title on the drawing board" which of these is Elite IV? Would Mr
> Braben like to comment?

Elite IV is the one in the design stage.

> Also do the jobs advertised mean Frontier Developments is expanding? (possibly
> to cope with the huge amount of work needed to create an Elite IV worthy of
> people's expectations?)

Yes, though we have been expanding slowly already. Some may have seen our
ads in "Edge" magazine.

Elite IV has to be earth-shattering to recover from the damage done by FFE
not living up to expectations. This means it is a massive undertaking.

> Also www.release-dates.co.uk has Elite IV down for a 2001 and release. Is this
> just speculation?

Yes.

David Braben

<snip>

I have learnt a great deal from the Elite/FE2/FFE experience, not the least
is the value of a team effort, as this gives the opportunity to bounce ideas
around and appeal to a wider group. Especially given the time delay, and
(ironically) people's lower expectations because of FFE, I truly believe
Elite IV (or whatever we call it) will be a world beater.

David Braben

Concerns noted - but not to worry - this was never the plan. It is likely
that it will say Elite IV and/or Frontier and/or First Encounters on the box
somewhere, and will have the same galaxy (aged by the ravages of a few
hundred years more and a few wars) as FE2 and FFE, and players can
play a descendent of the original Jameson.

More, I'm afraid.