Starfield [XBSX|S, PC, XGP]

[Deleted member 2197]

Starfield Covers Much New Ground, Will Blow People's Minds, Says Dev (wccftech.com)
March 30, 2022

There aren't too many concrete details on Starfield, but we'll recap what we know here. It's set in 2330, in a relatively small pocket of the Milky Way called The Settled Systems. The player character is a member of an organization called the Constellation, dedicated to exploring the universe and all of its mysteries. Players will also get the chance to join one of the many factions, such as the United Colonies, the Freestar Collective, Ryujin Industries, and even the Crimson Fleet. The latter is a pirate faction, but the developers revealed it'll be possible to infiltrate them in a 'space cop' fashion.

On the technical side, Starfield is setting up to be a major breakthrough, described by Todd Howard himself as the biggest advancement for the studio's engine, now called Creation Engine 2. Howard also highlighted the goal to go back to old-school hardcore RPGs, hinting at a greater focus on roleplaying elements than recent games made by BGS.

 

[cheapchips]

This is the direct link to the full interview:

https://bethesda.net/en/game/starfi...et-emil-pagliarulo-lead-designer-on-starfield

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I started playing The Outer Worlds last weekend. I had played it a whole day before I began idly speculating how similar Starfield might be.

I do hope that the ship aspect is not just a loading screen between worlds and would be so disappointed if this is the case. Bethesda's worlds have always had space which you could (or had to) traverse between locations and the little adventures you have along the way are often as much fun as when you get to your destination.

I am enjoying the Outer Worlds though. Will it be my space RPG of the year?

 

[PSman1700]

Starfield Covers Much New Ground, Will Blow People's Minds, Says Dev (wccftech.com)
March 30, 2022

Cant wait, its a big hitter for sure.

 

[Malo]

I do hope that the ship aspect is not just a loading screen between worlds and would be so disappointed if this is the case. Bethesda's worlds have always had space which you could (or had to) traverse between locations and the little adventures you have along the way are often as much fun as when you get to your destination.

I'm sure there will be lots of cosmetics you can buy for your ship to "make it your own". Good question though, I somehow doubt it's going to be an Elite/Star Citizen type game where you fly between systems and planets though.

 

[iroboto]

I started playing The Outer Worlds last weekend. I had played it a whole day before I began idly speculating how similar Starfield might be.

I do hope that the ship aspect is not just a loading screen between worlds and would be so disappointed if this is the case. Bethesda's worlds have always had space which you could (or had to) traverse between locations and the little adventures you have along the way are often as much fun as when you get to your destination.

I am enjoying the Outer Worlds though. Will it be my space RPG of the year?

I'm super pessimistic on starfield. Don't tell me how much it's going to blow my mind. When people are trying to hype things up, I can't feel this terrible feeling it won't meet any of those expectations.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I'm sure there will be lots of cosmetics you can buy for your ship to "make it your own". Good question though, I somehow doubt it's going to be an Elite/Star Citizen type game where you fly between systems and planets though.

I could certainly see them doing something along those lines except with procedurally generated content for "space stuff" sort of like a lite version of No Man's Sky that's limited to a far smaller area of space.

They've done a mix of procedurally generated stuff with hand crafted stuff for their worlds before, so this wouldn't be unprecedented. They just need a good amount of hand crafted "areas" for story related stuff while using procedurally generated stuff to fill out worlds, space and perhaps side quests (procedurally generated side quests have been done before, although not by Bethesda).

Then your space ship takes the place of the horse for transportation over large distances.

Regards,
SB

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I'm sure there will be lots of cosmetics you can buy for your ship to "make it your own". Good question though, I somehow doubt it's going to be an Elite/Star Citizen type game where you fly between systems and planets though.

I'm very much hoping that you will fly between planets and systems. I don't think we need another full-on space sim because Elite and Star Citizen fills that niche but I really do want a game where travelling longer distance actually takes longer - but with fast travel as an option. Having the ship as a pretty interface / level-load menu would be really disappointing.

I am hoping Bethesda do an interesting combo of making travelling take time (like Elder Scrolls and Fallout), make travelling interesting/terrifying (like Elder Scrolls and Fallout) but also allow a degree of automation and give you something interesting to do on the journey. I'd like to be able to board my ship, set a waypoint, engage rage autopilot and have 10 mins to checks the communications channels for missions, do some repairs and crafting on equipment and/or bits of the ship and so. But sometimes, things don't go quietly, like a bandit/monster attack in Elders Scrolls and Fallout.

It will be tricky to balance well but It's so much better than jumping on board your Mass Effect / Outer Worlds ships and it just being a level select/load screen for the next planet.

I'm super pessimistic on starfield. Don't tell me how much it's going to blow my mind. When people are trying to hype things up, I can't feel this terrible feeling it won't meet any of those expectations.

I really love the core Bethesda Elder Scrolls / Fallout game loop (explore, kill, loot, buy/sell, repair, craft) and my only worry is that because this is a new IP that Bethesda decide to do something utterly different and that I'll no longer like it.

 

[Malo]

The problem is I doubt their engine is capable of the kind of vast distances that a space RPG on a planetary scale would require. I think we'd be looking at more of Mass Effect or Outer Worlds experience.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

The problem is I doubt their engine is capable of the kind of vast distances that a space RPG on a planetary scale would require. I think we'd be looking at more of Mass Effect or Outer Worlds experience.

Well, they do call it the Creation Engine 2 now, so in theory that should represent a significant upgrade in features and capabilities from all games that they've previously made.

The first games made with it will be Starfield and Elder Scrolls VI which if Bethesda are to believe are being created specifically with the capabilities of the current generation consoles in mind.

Regards,
SB

 

[Deleted member 11852]

The problem is I doubt their engine is capable of the kind of vast distances that a space RPG on a planetary scale would require. I think we'd be looking at more of Mass Effect or Outer Worlds experience.

Spacial scale is a math and co-oridnate precision problem. Elite handled massive scale in space on 8-bit computers. The remainder is about flexible geometry, LOD and streaming. It's certainly a technical challenge different to anything Bethesda have done before but it's not an unsolvable problem. It's not like they need to store the locations of all the cheesewheels in space.

But I do think, with Starfield being a genuinely new IP with no established mechanics baggage, it may represent a massive departure to gameplay from Elder Scrolls and Fallout.

 

[cheapchips]

I'd be very surprise if the game has full 'go anywhere' planets. That creates so many challenges for content generation and story. Unless they've really pushed procedural cities, npcs and quests much further than anyone to date, I'd be happier with planetary locations being limited hand crafted areas.

 

[SmooTh]

I'd say it'll go the Outer Worlds route with hubs etc.
Can't see this Gen (and so early) be good enough for a "fly wherever you want"

 

[cheapchips]

I'd say it'll go the Outer Worlds route with hubs etc.
Can't see this Gen (and so early) be good enough for a "fly wherever you want"

It has been in prototyped for years and will be landing 2 years into the Xbox Series lifecycle. It's not that early a title in some senses.

From a raw graphics perspective, this gen's plenty good enough to do something with procedural planets/landscapes/cities. It's such a hard challenge to make it interesting visually and compelling from a game play perspective. The gaming landscape has enough failures that tried. MA: Andromeda was supposed to go down this route before they reverted to something more conservative. BGE2. Star Citizen..

We could be wrong though and they're being super ambitious.

 

[Malo]

I'd be very surprise if the game has full 'go anywhere' planets. That creates so many challenges for content generation and story. Unless they've really pushed procedural cities, npcs and quests much further than anyone to date, I'd be happier with planetary locations being limited hand crafted areas.

Agreed. I'd be happier with large detailed specific areas to explore rather than planetary scale for an RPG.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I'd be very surprise if the game has full 'go anywhere' planets. That creates so many challenges for content generation and story. Unless they've really pushed procedural cities, npcs and quests much further than anyone to date, I'd be happier with planetary locations being limited hand crafted areas.

Bethesda have been working on the procedural stuff a long time and in the one of the videos, I think it was Todd Howard said something along the lines of letting the player define the story - which would fit more procedural beats of a story.

Procedural world generations has been done well on much less powerful hardware and in terms of random events cascading in various charts, Fallout 4 is fantastic in having you just turn a corner while minding your own business then seeing some faction approach from over there and an opposing faction approach from over there suddenly it all becomes crazy. Bethesda RPGs absolutely nail having worlds filled with interesting things to do whilst also making the player feel vulnerable, isolated and alone.

There is still the NPCs and quests and that's still a tall order but if anybody has the experience to pull it off, it's probably Bethesda.

Hopefully they will show off more in the coming months.

 

[iroboto]

Can't see this Gen (and so early) be good enough for a "fly wherever you want"

What are the general requirements to be able to have a vector space large enough to be like No Man's Sky / Star Citizen? Is it's just 64bit vectors for X Y Z? That seems.... how to say... very CPU intensive. I mean, sure you're going to make great use out of those AVX functions, but this is extremely taxing when there are a lot of things happening.

edit: star citizen
>>map coordinate systems use 64 bit floating point values for positioning.
This is correct - CPU code uses 64-bit (where necessary) but the GPU work is all done in 32-bit

I guess you gotta AVX then.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

What are the general requirements to be able to have a vector space large enough to be like No Man's Sky / Star Citizen?

Only if you have a constant universe-wide co-ordinate system precise enough to plot the precise location and orientate of every object in the universe. Another way to do this is to multiple co-ordinate systems; e.g. one for when you are in space where you're really describing the relative spacial relationships between significant objects (ships, stations, planets, big asteroids) - because space is mostly empty.

Then, as you get within range of anything large enough to dock with or land on, shoot or loot, you use a local co-ordinate system that accommodates your position relative to the item or items but also relative to the larger co-ordinate system. There may be some minor precision issues but everything is so far apart it really doesn't matter.

David Braben has given a bunch of talks describing the various techniques used in Elite and its many sequels.

 

[iroboto]

Only if you have a constant universe-wide co-ordinate system precise enough to plot the precise location and orientate of every object in the universe. Another way to do this is to multiple co-ordinate systems; e.g. one for when you are in space where you're really describing the relative spacial relationships between significant objects (ships, stations, planets, big asteroids) - because space is mostly empty.

Then, as you get within range of anything large enough to dock with or land on, shoot or loot, you use a local co-ordinate system that accommodates your position relative to the item or items but also relative to the larger co-ordinate system. There may be some minor precision issues but everything is so far apart it really doesn't matter.

David Braben has given a bunch of talks describing the various techniques used in Elite and its many sequels.

Curious to see what they chose. I think the 64bit vector space is easier than running multiple systems. If you are going to have a Series S as being the base machine to run the game I mean. It supports all the features needed. I think it's worthwhile to consider dropping off older CPUs and GPUs.

 

[Malo]

Bethesda have been working on the procedural stuff a long time and in the one of the videos, I think it was Todd Howard said something along the lines of letting the player define the story - which would fit more procedural beats of a story

Todd Howard saying stuff like that is just wankfest garbage for standard stuff like factions, different quest lines based on a few choices etc. Definitely don't read anything into it.