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Elite: Dangerous, the latest installation in the long running, star spanning, space dogfighting and trading series is currently in beta- and the studio has just dropped a ton of information on their testers. In it’s current incarnation, the beta includes 55 star systems, a variety of ships and the basics of combat. For the 30th anniversary of the original game, the team will be launching Beta 2 along with a host of new features and improvements.
“Elite: Dangerous wouldn’t be an Elite sequel without the ability to progress from ‘Harmless’ all the way to the exalted status of ‘Elite’. In Beta 2 all pilots have a visible combat rating, so now you can start to work your way up to Elite”, states Frontier. This will add an element of risk reward to combat, as you’ll be able to see the relative skill of pilots as you engage. In addition, Beta 2 will also have a reputation system. Reputations will be tracked in each system as well as separately against the galactic power blocs involved in that particular system. You can have negative and positive reputations which will impact the price of services offered to you at stations or outposts controlled by the Federation, Empire or Independent Alliance.
Beta 2 will also open up a massive new area of the galaxy. 500 systems will be available in Beta 2, allowing you to explore and discover new systems and planets – and sell the data on them for a tidy profit. To facilitate this, the new Asp Explorer ship has been added. The asp is touted as being very versatile and able to accommodate modules that make it a perfect ‘grand tourer’ for exploration. These modules aren’t just for the Asp however, as the team is adding life support modules, engines, hyperdrives, sensors, shield generators, cargo racks and more to outfit to the ship of your choice. However, certain upgrades will be tuned for certain ships, so choose carefully. Ships will also now be subject to wear and tear, which is also affected by how careful of a pilot you are.
New weapons are coming with the new modules, as well as a cargo hatch disruptor. Firing the disruptor at an opponent whose shields are down will cause them to begin spilling cargo into space, allowing you to scoop it up. Perfect for pirates that have a guilty conscience. Mines, plasma accelerators, dumbfire missiles and cannon will also now be at your disposal should you be more….lethally inclined. To facilitate this, Beta 2 also extends the visibility of ships in supercruise and also adds a module that allows you to track ships that jump into hyperspace via their supercruise wake.
Several new types of starports are slated to appear in Beta 2, including the Outpost which Frontier describes as “the exposed, isolated galactic equivalents of the run-down roadside café,”, along with a larger type called the Occelus starport. A handful of other tweaks are going in place, including a re-purposed single player tutorial that will allow you to hone your skills in combat as well as tackle docking and travel without the ” need to scrap a small pile of Sidewinders!”
All in all, Beta 2 looks to be massive expansion to the already impressive universe of Elite: Dangerous. What do you think? Sound off in the comments below!
Regular listeners of The Indie Game Show should remember Rob from Castle Pixel. The team’s first game was Rex Rocket, a blast of a game. Inspired by Metroid, Rex was a charming and intense game that was well crafted, fun to play and had an amazing soundtrack. Now, Rob and the crew have unleashed their latest game on Kickstarter. Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King looks to channel the old action RPGS of yesteryear, once again combining the team’s unique art style, quirky sense of humor and amazing music. The Kickstarter has just gone live, and the team is asking for $45,000 to back the game. A wide variety of awards are available to backers, including multiple options to become a character in the game, a tombstone, becoming an actual sidequest boss and many others. The crew here at Sanitarium.FM is looking forward to the game, and we’ll be keeping an eye on the Kickstarter campaign. I recently contacted Rob and asked him about the project, and he offered the following:
“Blossom Tales is a truly a labor of love for myself and the rest of the Team at Castle Pixel.”
We don’t doubt it. And if you want to know more about Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King, tune in to The Indie Game Show at 6PM GMT on October 5th, 2014 as PredictedCyborg and myself chat it up with Rob (and possibly other members of the Castle Pixel crew) about their new project.
You can find Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King on Kickstarter HERE
For those of you who follow Mojang a bit closer than your casual Minecraft player, you might remember that Mojang is an indie games developer. That means, even if you’ve got a hit on your hands and continue to support it, you still need to invest some time in developing some new properties.
Mojang or more precisely Notch was working on another game besides Minecraft. 0x10c was to be a game to follow on Minecraft’s footsteps, to hopefully gain some spotlight from its older brother and gain its own slightly different audience. At least that was the plan. Development stalled some time around early 2013 and in August of that same year Notch confirmed that the game project was dead in the water. However it seems that some elements of that game had been finished.
C418, better known as the composer of the tunes you hear in Minecraft, has released two tracks through Twitter to his Bandcamp for players to listen to. They’re short but they’re not bad. The low bitrate sound is intentional too, as C418 wanted that to be the identifier for the game. Little music, lots of drone.
I think now is a good time to release the 0x10c music. You can pay for it if you want. https://t.co/aFfAm8qIqK
Talking about Notch’s recent departure from Mojang, C418 echoed what had been said by Notch then, adding that he couldn’t have taken the strain any longer without snapping.
“Do you know that feeling that you have had a great day, but then some guy on twitter that you don’t even know tells you you’re the worst thing that ever happened to this planet? … That feeling also happens with Markus, except it’s amplified times two million.”
He has said though that he is going to continue to work with Mojang on Minecraft for as long as possible.
Blizzard may not expect World of Warcraft to grow again in the future, but that doesn’t mean it’s giving up on the game. In fact, Tom Chilton, lead game designer at Blizzard, says the studio has actually expanded the game’s development team over the past couple of years.
It’s inevitable that a game as long-lived as World of Warcraft will lose players, and new players aren’t as likely to stick with it over the long term as those from ten years ago, according to Chilton. That, and the sheer volume of new content that’s been added to the game over the past decade, has led Blizzard to change its approach to creating new expansions.
“The game can only get so complicated before it starts to collapse under its own weight, and becomes very cumbersome to do anything new with,” he told MCV. “So we are always trying to simplify the game, while at the same time add new things so that the total complexity does not get completely out of control. And you could already argue that the complexity of WoW is already huge. That can be overwhelming to new people coming in.”
The World of Warcraft development team has actually expanded from 150 employees to 220, he explained, which will be good for the game in the long run. But it’s also one of the reasons the Warlords of Draenor expansion took so long to come to fruition.
“By growing by 50 per cent, you don’t get people in off the street who can make content exactly in the way that we would want. There’s an acclimatization process,” Chilton said. “That has resulted in slowing us down. But in the long-term we are now positioned to release expansions more frequently.”
The truth is that even though World of Warcraft’s numbers have tumbled precipitously over the past few years, 6.8 million subscribers is the kind of user base most MMOs would kill to have. Sustained, long-term growth may not be on the table anymore, but it’s clear that the game is going to be around for a long time yet.
The new Aliens game is coming with some special unlockable items for another game if you order it on Steam before October 7th? The other game in question? Team Fortress 2. That’s right, there’s going to be Alien-themed hats.
The picture provided seems to show a xenomorph themed head and tail hat, and the iconic environmental suit helmet so it’s a fair bet that they’ll be included. There’s also a third item that will come as a pre-order bonus that we don’t know much about so it’ll be interesting to see what they are.
