Did any of you guys play this? I had Frontier Elite which I thought was a brilliant game. The size of the Universe was staggering topped only by the complete open endedness of the game. Then I remember waiting and waiting for First Encounters, only to be totally let down by the bugs in the game, which were NOT fixed by the numerous patches released. First encounters added a much better storyline, if you wanted to follow it. Including newspapers which often were affected by your actions!!! The Frontier web site has had the same page of info on Elite 4 for years now. I am wondering whether it will ever be released, hopefully it will and if done right I''m sure will go on to be an amazing title. I am surprised nobody else has developed an idea similar to this since First Encouters was released. One last thing the full Froniter Elite game came on one Floppy Disk!!! Amazing by todays standards. Darren

<-- BBC Model B. I bought an RGB monitor do I could play it.

There have been several attempts to redo what Elite did. I can''t recall the names but there were at least 2 or 3 during the 80''s, and then there was Privateer.

Currently The trend is towards MMOGs and with those the universe is limited. Check out Jumpgate (www.JOSSH.com) for free style space sim gaming or Earth and Beyond (www.earthandbeyond.com) for RPG oriented space sim gaming.

I am looking forward to Elite IV, and had ''heard'' (read: rumoured) that it was due out end of next year beginning of 04. But to tell you the truth, If it is single player, it won''t do well. With FreeLancer out the beginning of next year, Elite IV will have alot to live up to.

BTW an infinitely sized universe in a MMOG will mean that you will never come across anyone else.

E&A has nearly a thousand pilots on (in each universe, 4 universes) each night and I come across maybe 2 or 3 pilots a sector (there are about 20 sectors, each sector may have 10-30 locations).

DeltaVee I disagree when you say it will not do well single player. I totally agree that mmorpg''s are getting better and therefore have many more players but I think there will always be plenty of room in the market for a single player experience like this.

Saying all that a mmporpg using the Elite universe would be a fantastic experience if done correctly. Well thats my opinion anyway.

I played both Elite and Frontiers, which (even though the bugs were horrible) was quite fun to play... Since then there have been many attempts to reclaim the Elite feeling, with varying degrees of success.
The MMO games which are out now are more traditional MMOs (E&B has been characterised as "Everquest in Space"), I think the closest to the original Elite was X:Beyond the Frontier, which (apart from trade and combat) allowed you to build production facilites and set up commodities chains with own freighters etc... I believe that would be the way to go for the original Elite.

Well, I''m not trying to spam your board or anything, but I lurk this forum a lot, and I noticed this post, so I felt compelled to reply.
The admin at a board where I mod is working on a version of Elite for Mac OSX. The thread where he talks about it is here

http://www.consoletalk.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3182

Well, you guys will be happy to know that there *IS* a sequel to Frontier.
It''s called Battle Cruiser 3000 AD and it is quite cool and in the same spirit that the original. I tried a demo a long time ago, and although it was quite buggy, the game was showing promises. It has been in developement for quite some time now, and I am sure you guys would be interested. I fail to remember if David Braben is involved in the development of the title, but I do remember that when this game came out, the reviews I read all declared it as the true sequel to Frontier. You be the judges. Oh, and no, I dont play the game nor am affiliated to the company; just thought to let you know

Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !

Wasn´t Battlecruiser cancelled and released to the public domain? I thought it was under development by a bunch of hobbyists for a while, now probably hopelessly out of date.

Nope, it was released in a really crappy not-good-enough-for-beta version, which DSmart broke his contract by patching, settling with Take-Two for the rights, and so on.

Derek Smart is currently working on a sequel, Battle Cruiser Millenium. He''s quite a firecracker, that guy!
Yeah, the game was released unfinished both in code (you couldn''t finish the second mission without a patch), and packaging--it came with a 25 page manual that didn''t explain any of the keys you needed. Smart had to release a 100 page manual online for download.
I think Smart''s using the Serious Sam engine for his new project, although I don''t know if that project is the new Battle Cruiser game.

according to their site Battlecruiser Millenium was released end of 2001...

somehow this passed me by more or less unnoticed - the demo doesn´t look too bad, graphics could be more interesting, i get the feeling that the thing is hideously complex...

[edited by - Hase on October 10, 2002 9:03:23 PM]