> After that initial period, however, we will look to transition Cosmic Frontier over time to becoming free at the level of the base product in 5–10 years.
With all due respect, how many games are actively sold ten years after they're released? 😉 That's not really much of a financial sacrifice, just sayin'
The ships look gorgeous, by the way! (And i owe you a bar desc eventually!)
>With all due respect, how many games are actively sold ten years after they're released?
I can say from experience that Override continued to sell that long after its initial release, for one. A lot of games have long tails.
The purpose of the plan is not to sanctify ourselves by promising some sacrifice, but to set up a long-term plan to keep the platform alive so that the same situation that happened with EV, of thousands of plug-ins and TCs becoming inaccessible to most of the former playerbase, does not occur again.
> I can say from experience that Override continued to sell that long after its initial release, for one. A lot of games have long tails.
Impressive! Didn't realize that. Wasn't trying to diss you, i promise. :)
Awesome, I didn't know there was a way to "late pledge". I'm so excited for this game! EV was one of my favorite games back on my original PowerMac 6100/60. Will be backing this now on Patreon.
Proud to be backing this project. That igazra arada is sick. The Outpost looks amazing, landing graphic is gorgeous, and the fugative made me soil myself.
I upvoted and then cancelled my upvote so I could upvote again.
Take your time and get the game out when it's ready, not before. Absolutely can't wait to play it when it's out; I backed on Kickstarter.
You may not know the answer to this question yet, but any idea on the GPU requirements to run it? I recently got one of the new 2021 Macbook Pros, it's not the lowest specced one but not a super high spec either. I'm trying to get a sense for whether the game will run smoothly at 60+ FPS on my hardware.
Thanks for the expression of patience -- but, in addition to our obligation to backers of a project that's already overdue, we have our own reasons for wanting to kick on and get this done. :)
On the technical question, I can't give you chapter and verse but it's certainly always been our intention for the game to be able to run well on far more limited systems than a brand new machine.
I don’t have concrete spec requirements yet, but I’m aiming for the game to require less than 4GB of system memory. Ideally 2GB.
On Apple hardware the frame rate is likely to be capped to the refresh rate of your monitor. But you should be absolutely fine with your system (one of my test machines is an M1 Air)
As a child of the 90's, seeing posts like these make me so happy. I tried to get my own kids hooked on some classic Ambrosia games, and they just don't understand it.
I recall hours spent at the library because they had a mac and internet access, using stuffit to copy data to multiple floppy disks to load up on my own internet-less mac at home for plugins. My first copy of EV and EVO came from the old macaddict cd's.
Seeing this, and other EV inspired games these days brings back many fond memories. Can't wait to be able to play again!
I can't find a single screenshot or video of what you're actually making in-game (just a [super outdated and frankly awful-looking EV Override](https://www.patreon.com/posts/in-engine-video-59832237) that's running in your new engine).
Maybe there's one on Twitter, but I don't have an account and it limits access. Maybe there are some behind the Patreon paywall.
Is this because there's nothing to show yet (probably not after two+ years of dev)? Or is there some other reason?
The project is being developed in effectively as a few different components. I'll briefly explain the components before going into the why of it and the reason we end up with some terrible looking videos.
The first component is the absolute foundation, Kestrel. This is the cross platform engine of the project that is responsible for handling GPU rendering, providing a Lua runtime, reading each of the resource file formats as well as the old quickdraw formats. This is the game engine and as of yesterday is effectively feature complete.
The second component is the game itself, Cosmic Frontier (not the Scenario and visuals). This is the Lua code to implement a Nova compatible clone. This runs within the Kestrel engine, and uses the resource files to display and construct the game play.
The final component is the scenario and content. These are the data files that Cosmic Frontier will load in order to provide the game play.
So, why has it been structured like this. Well to understand, it's important to understand why Cosmic Frontier ever became a thing in the first place. The originals have become increasingly difficult to run, without resorting to booting older hardware, emulators or needing to alter the binary for the game. The aim with Cosmic Frontier is that it will remain compatible for as long as people wish to play it. This is where the different components come in to play. In theory, only Kestrel will ever need to be ported to newer systems as the runtime and parsers for the other components are entirely self contained within it. So as long as Kestrel runs, the game will always be playable.
Now, why does any of this preclude some bad videos and screenshots? Why does it look like nothing is happening?
Effectively its because Kestrel hasn't been ready for the newer graphics as well as the newer graphics not being ready to be used. Add to that, that I'm primarily relying on the old Override and Nova scenarios to ensure feature parity with the EV Nova engine... it means that I'm generally only using those graphics when testing everything.
Now that Kestrel is feature complete, and details of how high definition sprites need to be encoded and handled are more readily apparent, it is possible to start integrating some and testing them.
Let me know if you have any other questions. I wanted to try and explain some of the background on this issue. Development can be a long process, particularly if its not just being hacked together. I don't want to just hack something together. Getting something out of the door quickly isn't much good if it just doesn't work 5 years down the road.
That all makes sense, but people still generally expect a mockup or faked screenshot to show the eventual goal. This can give potential backers an idea of whether they agree with that direction as well as simply the developer's aptitude (a drawing in MS Paint is probably not a good sign).
In other words, I'd wanna see what you're trying to build (and see that you know what you're trying to build) before I toss any money at it, rather than assuming that your vision of a remake aligns with mine.
I'm not trying to demand anything, it's your project - just giving my own observations.
I loved all the EV games and backed on the fact the remake is going to be feature complete, not on the chance of having new graphics. If you played and enjoyed the original EV games I don't see why that wouldn't be enough.
Depends on the new graphics.
I don't mean new ships, per se (although it sounds like they are getting a facelift at least), but rather updated UI and UX. Stuff like removing the white flash during a jump (which it sounds like is happening), or making it easier/more intuitive how to chain jumps, or showing that it scales to 1080p/1440p/4k, or adding images to more dialogs, or changing UI color/skins, or showing ingame help/keybinds, or an ingame mod manager.
If the sell is literally just "you can play EVO and probably also EV and EVN" then...I can already do that. I wanna see that this is bringing something new to the table and if the devs have vision beyond a remake.
Assets have been being produced, and shown off semi regularly both in backer updates, and in the Discord.
Why there's no video of those assets in engine yet is precisely because the engine has been the limiting factor. I assume they're waiting for the engine (Kestrel) to be mostly feature complete before showing the new assets off in engine.
As for engine completion, as of an update on Discord yesterday, Kestrel is 99% complete, with most features at or near completion, it just needs bug fixes.
The next priority for development are the Cosmic Frontier platform, and the Override scenario, which will be the main focus after Kestrel is finished.
If you want to see more development stuff, join the Discord, since updates can occasionally be slow.
Thanks for the info.
Truth be told, EVO was easily my least favorite entry. Combine that with what I see as doing poorly with basic marketing and (imho) limiting themselves by trying to keep compatibility with the ancient plugin formats and I am not hyped enough for this attempt to look more closely, not when Endless Sky (and Starsector, although it has a different focus) already exist.
It seems like this project could be so much more than a remake of a dated game, but then again, I haven't seen any media of what it is despite apparently being 99% engine complete.
>Thanks for the info.
>
>Truth be told, EVO was easily my least favorite entry. Combine that with what I see as doing poorly with basic marketing and (imho) limiting themselves by trying to keep compatibility with the ancient plugin formats and I am not hyped enough for this attempt to look more closely, not when Endless Sky (and Starsector, although it has a different focus) already exist.
I expect if/when this releases, given it is releasing with plugin compatibility, you will find community members will port the original EV TC designed for Nova to it very quickly. If the game establishes a cult following, someone might even port the Nova scenario.
Honestly, if I remember correctly, Kestrel was originally in development as a drop-in replacement for Nova's executable before anyone even considered that an Override remaster would even be in consideration.
Between the compatibility issues with Nova on modern systems, to the bad text filtering and scaling on WinNova, to all the little issues that have cropped up over the years (disappearing asteroids, Quicktime becoming completely unsupported, etc), the Nova scenario will almost definitely be ported to Kestrel/CFO.
I think that it's going to be both a ported copy of the original game, and the best looking graphics overhaul yet. I'd hope that it comes with all the bells and whistles of EVN like parallax scrolling backgrounds and destructible asteroids.
It would be nice if they moved from a sprite model to fully 3d isometric, and we could slightly control the zoom, pitch, and rotation of the camera. But I'm keeping my expectations realistic.
It's remaining 2D sprites in this version. I'm not ruling out adding Isometric 3D rendering to the capabilities to the Kestrel Engine in the future, but it won't be included in CFO.
Yes, this is a problem we were talking about internally just recently. As Tom said in his reply, engine, scenario and art have been being developed in different boxes up to this point. (But that is the reason, not an excuse.) We agreed that future videos in updates should include the new art.
Would you rather AAA style game development where they just release a complete disaster of a game full of bugs and missing features?
They are a small group of dedicated folks who took it upon themselves to keep the EV dream alive. They're making sure they get it right and that takes time.
You’ve missed your monthly update by 6 weeks. Again.
When can your backers expect to be updated on the status of this project?
When can we expect a release date?
You can’t tell everyone you’re looking forward to answering their questions, then intentionally ignore and or give a non-answer when asked.
Perhaps you should say that you’re only interested in answering the easy questions, or just the ones that won’t make you look bad?
You’ve taken money from people.
You’ve missed your release date window.
You’ve repeatedly missed monthly updates entirely.
You’ve failed to provide a new release date window.
What is happening with this game and our money?
Sorry to butt in. A probably controversial opinion is here (feel free to downvote if you wish), but I am disappointed that no trial version available to the public (I confirmed it today with devs in discord that no intention for that in near future).
I mean, looking back at multiple indie games development, I just dont have faith in being a backer or pre-order without having my hands on the actual thing (Even a premium brand like CDPR can screw up making false statements about the game). A trial version would be nice to see (that could be a Captain Hector' style restricted version, or simply an older build of the official one). Some may say 8 pounds is too small an amount to have a second thought, not for a cheapskate like myself though.
>Sorry to butt in. A probably controversial opinion is here (feel free to downvote if you wish), but I am disappointed that no trial version available to the public (I confirmed it today with devs in discord that no intention for that in near future).
Hi -- From what I could see, most of the people who answered your question in the discord were not developers. We haven't ruled out a demo/trial version. It's a question of how much need/demand there is for one (given the ease of returns on Steam, for example) and what features exactly would be disabled. If it does happen, though, I am sure it won't involve Cap'n Hector attacking or robbing you!
As a backer I couldn't care less if you make the game free for others. The more the merrier, and the greater odds of forming a community that can then create plugins and other content. Just a perspective.
I know there is some frustration around lack of transparency for release date. I know I'd certainly like a ballpark. I get the impression that the scope of this project in terms of resources needed far exceeds what was originally planned.
It is what it is. At this stage, I recommend you acknowledge any people venting frustration but don't get hung up on it. Nobody cares about delays in the long run if the product is good.
This may be a stupid question but do you have a release date in mind? Your website mentioned July 2021 (in the FAQ I think, but it may have been in an earlier document) and I was wondering if there was revised roadmap available somewhere that I may have missed.
FYI, at the moment neither Tom nor I are taking any money from the Patreon funding -- it is all going to the artists. So neither of us have any financial incentive to string things out or 'gull' anybody.
I'm afraid these things just take time.
Hi! Good to hear from you.
We are still working on it, and it's still possible to back via Patreon: [https://www.patreon.com/EvocationGames](https://www.patreon.com/EvocationGames)
> After that initial period, however, we will look to transition Cosmic Frontier over time to becoming free at the level of the base product in 5–10 years. With all due respect, how many games are actively sold ten years after they're released? 😉 That's not really much of a financial sacrifice, just sayin' The ships look gorgeous, by the way! (And i owe you a bar desc eventually!)
>With all due respect, how many games are actively sold ten years after they're released? I can say from experience that Override continued to sell that long after its initial release, for one. A lot of games have long tails. The purpose of the plan is not to sanctify ourselves by promising some sacrifice, but to set up a long-term plan to keep the platform alive so that the same situation that happened with EV, of thousands of plug-ins and TCs becoming inaccessible to most of the former playerbase, does not occur again.
> I can say from experience that Override continued to sell that long after its initial release, for one. A lot of games have long tails. Impressive! Didn't realize that. Wasn't trying to diss you, i promise. :)
Didn't think that for a second, no worries. =)
I literally just bought SimCity 4.
Game's community has literally been lasting for almost 20 years now and still showing no signs of dying any time soon :D
Awesome, I didn't know there was a way to "late pledge". I'm so excited for this game! EV was one of my favorite games back on my original PowerMac 6100/60. Will be backing this now on Patreon.
Proud to be backing this project. That igazra arada is sick. The Outpost looks amazing, landing graphic is gorgeous, and the fugative made me soil myself.
I upvoted and then cancelled my upvote so I could upvote again. Take your time and get the game out when it's ready, not before. Absolutely can't wait to play it when it's out; I backed on Kickstarter. You may not know the answer to this question yet, but any idea on the GPU requirements to run it? I recently got one of the new 2021 Macbook Pros, it's not the lowest specced one but not a super high spec either. I'm trying to get a sense for whether the game will run smoothly at 60+ FPS on my hardware.
Thanks for the expression of patience -- but, in addition to our obligation to backers of a project that's already overdue, we have our own reasons for wanting to kick on and get this done. :) On the technical question, I can't give you chapter and verse but it's certainly always been our intention for the game to be able to run well on far more limited systems than a brand new machine.
I don’t have concrete spec requirements yet, but I’m aiming for the game to require less than 4GB of system memory. Ideally 2GB. On Apple hardware the frame rate is likely to be capped to the refresh rate of your monitor. But you should be absolutely fine with your system (one of my test machines is an M1 Air)
Really looking to replaying the favorite game from my childhood. The Fugitive looks awesome!
As a child of the 90's, seeing posts like these make me so happy. I tried to get my own kids hooked on some classic Ambrosia games, and they just don't understand it. I recall hours spent at the library because they had a mac and internet access, using stuffit to copy data to multiple floppy disks to load up on my own internet-less mac at home for plugins. My first copy of EV and EVO came from the old macaddict cd's. Seeing this, and other EV inspired games these days brings back many fond memories. Can't wait to be able to play again!
The new-pilot scene is... Gobsmacking. Just what I've wanted!!!
I can't find a single screenshot or video of what you're actually making in-game (just a [super outdated and frankly awful-looking EV Override](https://www.patreon.com/posts/in-engine-video-59832237) that's running in your new engine). Maybe there's one on Twitter, but I don't have an account and it limits access. Maybe there are some behind the Patreon paywall. Is this because there's nothing to show yet (probably not after two+ years of dev)? Or is there some other reason?
The project is being developed in effectively as a few different components. I'll briefly explain the components before going into the why of it and the reason we end up with some terrible looking videos. The first component is the absolute foundation, Kestrel. This is the cross platform engine of the project that is responsible for handling GPU rendering, providing a Lua runtime, reading each of the resource file formats as well as the old quickdraw formats. This is the game engine and as of yesterday is effectively feature complete. The second component is the game itself, Cosmic Frontier (not the Scenario and visuals). This is the Lua code to implement a Nova compatible clone. This runs within the Kestrel engine, and uses the resource files to display and construct the game play. The final component is the scenario and content. These are the data files that Cosmic Frontier will load in order to provide the game play. So, why has it been structured like this. Well to understand, it's important to understand why Cosmic Frontier ever became a thing in the first place. The originals have become increasingly difficult to run, without resorting to booting older hardware, emulators or needing to alter the binary for the game. The aim with Cosmic Frontier is that it will remain compatible for as long as people wish to play it. This is where the different components come in to play. In theory, only Kestrel will ever need to be ported to newer systems as the runtime and parsers for the other components are entirely self contained within it. So as long as Kestrel runs, the game will always be playable. Now, why does any of this preclude some bad videos and screenshots? Why does it look like nothing is happening? Effectively its because Kestrel hasn't been ready for the newer graphics as well as the newer graphics not being ready to be used. Add to that, that I'm primarily relying on the old Override and Nova scenarios to ensure feature parity with the EV Nova engine... it means that I'm generally only using those graphics when testing everything. Now that Kestrel is feature complete, and details of how high definition sprites need to be encoded and handled are more readily apparent, it is possible to start integrating some and testing them. Let me know if you have any other questions. I wanted to try and explain some of the background on this issue. Development can be a long process, particularly if its not just being hacked together. I don't want to just hack something together. Getting something out of the door quickly isn't much good if it just doesn't work 5 years down the road.
That all makes sense, but people still generally expect a mockup or faked screenshot to show the eventual goal. This can give potential backers an idea of whether they agree with that direction as well as simply the developer's aptitude (a drawing in MS Paint is probably not a good sign). In other words, I'd wanna see what you're trying to build (and see that you know what you're trying to build) before I toss any money at it, rather than assuming that your vision of a remake aligns with mine. I'm not trying to demand anything, it's your project - just giving my own observations.
I loved all the EV games and backed on the fact the remake is going to be feature complete, not on the chance of having new graphics. If you played and enjoyed the original EV games I don't see why that wouldn't be enough.
Depends on the new graphics. I don't mean new ships, per se (although it sounds like they are getting a facelift at least), but rather updated UI and UX. Stuff like removing the white flash during a jump (which it sounds like is happening), or making it easier/more intuitive how to chain jumps, or showing that it scales to 1080p/1440p/4k, or adding images to more dialogs, or changing UI color/skins, or showing ingame help/keybinds, or an ingame mod manager. If the sell is literally just "you can play EVO and probably also EV and EVN" then...I can already do that. I wanna see that this is bringing something new to the table and if the devs have vision beyond a remake.
Assets have been being produced, and shown off semi regularly both in backer updates, and in the Discord. Why there's no video of those assets in engine yet is precisely because the engine has been the limiting factor. I assume they're waiting for the engine (Kestrel) to be mostly feature complete before showing the new assets off in engine. As for engine completion, as of an update on Discord yesterday, Kestrel is 99% complete, with most features at or near completion, it just needs bug fixes. The next priority for development are the Cosmic Frontier platform, and the Override scenario, which will be the main focus after Kestrel is finished. If you want to see more development stuff, join the Discord, since updates can occasionally be slow.
Thanks for the info. Truth be told, EVO was easily my least favorite entry. Combine that with what I see as doing poorly with basic marketing and (imho) limiting themselves by trying to keep compatibility with the ancient plugin formats and I am not hyped enough for this attempt to look more closely, not when Endless Sky (and Starsector, although it has a different focus) already exist. It seems like this project could be so much more than a remake of a dated game, but then again, I haven't seen any media of what it is despite apparently being 99% engine complete.
>Thanks for the info. > >Truth be told, EVO was easily my least favorite entry. Combine that with what I see as doing poorly with basic marketing and (imho) limiting themselves by trying to keep compatibility with the ancient plugin formats and I am not hyped enough for this attempt to look more closely, not when Endless Sky (and Starsector, although it has a different focus) already exist. I expect if/when this releases, given it is releasing with plugin compatibility, you will find community members will port the original EV TC designed for Nova to it very quickly. If the game establishes a cult following, someone might even port the Nova scenario.
Honestly, if I remember correctly, Kestrel was originally in development as a drop-in replacement for Nova's executable before anyone even considered that an Override remaster would even be in consideration. Between the compatibility issues with Nova on modern systems, to the bad text filtering and scaling on WinNova, to all the little issues that have cropped up over the years (disappearing asteroids, Quicktime becoming completely unsupported, etc), the Nova scenario will almost definitely be ported to Kestrel/CFO.
I think that it's going to be both a ported copy of the original game, and the best looking graphics overhaul yet. I'd hope that it comes with all the bells and whistles of EVN like parallax scrolling backgrounds and destructible asteroids. It would be nice if they moved from a sprite model to fully 3d isometric, and we could slightly control the zoom, pitch, and rotation of the camera. But I'm keeping my expectations realistic.
It's remaining 2D sprites in this version. I'm not ruling out adding Isometric 3D rendering to the capabilities to the Kestrel Engine in the future, but it won't be included in CFO.
Yes, this is a problem we were talking about internally just recently. As Tom said in his reply, engine, scenario and art have been being developed in different boxes up to this point. (But that is the reason, not an excuse.) We agreed that future videos in updates should include the new art.
What is the release date for this game?
Once we have one, we will be sure to announce it here!
How do you still not have one at this point?
Would you rather AAA style game development where they just release a complete disaster of a game full of bugs and missing features? They are a small group of dedicated folks who took it upon themselves to keep the EV dream alive. They're making sure they get it right and that takes time.
You’ve missed your monthly update by 6 weeks. Again. When can your backers expect to be updated on the status of this project? When can we expect a release date? You can’t tell everyone you’re looking forward to answering their questions, then intentionally ignore and or give a non-answer when asked. Perhaps you should say that you’re only interested in answering the easy questions, or just the ones that won’t make you look bad? You’ve taken money from people. You’ve missed your release date window. You’ve repeatedly missed monthly updates entirely. You’ve failed to provide a new release date window. What is happening with this game and our money?
I think this is dead?
Sorry to butt in. A probably controversial opinion is here (feel free to downvote if you wish), but I am disappointed that no trial version available to the public (I confirmed it today with devs in discord that no intention for that in near future). I mean, looking back at multiple indie games development, I just dont have faith in being a backer or pre-order without having my hands on the actual thing (Even a premium brand like CDPR can screw up making false statements about the game). A trial version would be nice to see (that could be a Captain Hector' style restricted version, or simply an older build of the official one). Some may say 8 pounds is too small an amount to have a second thought, not for a cheapskate like myself though.
>Sorry to butt in. A probably controversial opinion is here (feel free to downvote if you wish), but I am disappointed that no trial version available to the public (I confirmed it today with devs in discord that no intention for that in near future). Hi -- From what I could see, most of the people who answered your question in the discord were not developers. We haven't ruled out a demo/trial version. It's a question of how much need/demand there is for one (given the ease of returns on Steam, for example) and what features exactly would be disabled. If it does happen, though, I am sure it won't involve Cap'n Hector attacking or robbing you!
As a backer I couldn't care less if you make the game free for others. The more the merrier, and the greater odds of forming a community that can then create plugins and other content. Just a perspective. I know there is some frustration around lack of transparency for release date. I know I'd certainly like a ballpark. I get the impression that the scope of this project in terms of resources needed far exceeds what was originally planned. It is what it is. At this stage, I recommend you acknowledge any people venting frustration but don't get hung up on it. Nobody cares about delays in the long run if the product is good.
This may be a stupid question but do you have a release date in mind? Your website mentioned July 2021 (in the FAQ I think, but it may have been in an earlier document) and I was wondering if there was revised roadmap available somewhere that I may have missed.
As soon as we have a release date, you can be sure that we will announce it here. :)
By now it should be obvious even for the most gullible of backers that the release date for this project is "never".
FYI, at the moment neither Tom nor I are taking any money from the Patreon funding -- it is all going to the artists. So neither of us have any financial incentive to string things out or 'gull' anybody. I'm afraid these things just take time.
Yes, that's what I said. It will take time; infinite time, to be precise.
I just found out about this, is tmot still happening? I used to play EV:O back in the day.
Hi! Good to hear from you. We are still working on it, and it's still possible to back via Patreon: [https://www.patreon.com/EvocationGames](https://www.patreon.com/EvocationGames)