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Elite's new progress vid demonstrates scale, stimulates imagination
Frontier's twelfth progress diary video for Elite: Dangerous has been released. The six-minute clip focuses on Alpha 4 and features Frontier boss David Braben offering hearty thanks to backers whom he says have been crucial to design discussions on topics like the new supercruise travel system. If you haven't seen any footage of Elite's galactic map yet, the video is worth a look, as it shows a zoom down from the Milky Way to a single star. Braben says that this scale is also apparent as you're crossing systems or watching one of the game's gas giants grow from a spec in the distance to a view-blocking monstrosity. The massive scale is "only a backdrop for the game, but it really appeals to me," Braben explains. "This or something very like it is really out there, whether it's the rings of Saturn or some gas giant that we've only seen as a blip on some graph." Click past the cut for the full clip. [Thanks Cosmos and Cotic!]
Elite's Alpha 4 is here, beta starts May 30th
Development on Elite: Dangerous is moving right along, as evidenced by this week's release of the space sim sandbox's Alpha 4 client. The latest patch represents the final Alpha phase, and it "vastly expands scale, scope, and depth over previous alpha versions," according to a Frontier press release. Elite's already massive universe just got bigger, and the devs have released two additional travel methods to assist with traversing it. Hyperspace jumps are now a thing as is super-cruise for accelerated in-system jaunts. Alpha 4 also introduces inter-system trading via a dynamically evolving market. [Source: Frontier press release]
