X4 Rebirth: Multicore support and DX11?

[Epsilon Sector]

I absolutely love the games you guys have made, and this is already an instant buy for me, especially with continued support for the modding community, which is also spectacular!

I had a couple of questions that I felt were important in one aspect or another.

Will there FINALLY be multicore support? Many gamers are now running on at least duel cores, if not quad or hexacore cpu's these days.

DX11 support? Windows 7 has been out for a while now, though since Egosoft started developing the game 4 years ago, I'm not expecting full DX11 support. Will you at least be supporting DX 10.1, which also provides a performence improvement over 10.0, and especially DX9?

Surround Sound: EAX 5.0 support? I have a 4.1 surround sound system, I'd love to hear a space game like this in all its glory since I'm not into wearing headphones for whatever reason. If my ears aren't happy, the game is less immersive, and sound is sometimes even more important than magical rainbow unicorns in 1080p glory.

I'm anticipating TAGES being used again, I know you can't answer anything right now, but I very much hope that copy protection will be removed a year after release as you have done in the past. I always thought it was admirable that you did that when most developers/publishers keep users restricted even after the gaming community has died long ago.

Release date: Don't rush the game We all know the drill...it will be done when it's done. All you have to do is Google "Valve time" for a good laugh on their timetables between what they have stated and when something is actually released.

Complexity: Keep it! There are enough games that are "dumbed down" for the casual crowd...we're here for the complexity and long lasting enjoyment as well as the satisfaction of spending months building an empire from nothing. I want a game that I'll lose myself in...forever

Those are all of my questions as well as suggestions/comments that I felt were important and/or had difficulty finding the answer to in the original thread.

On a side note, the trailer soundtrack is incredible! I've been listening to it on repeat for the past hour.

Keep up the great work Egosoft!

[supakillaii]

1. It's not X4

2. I do think Multicore'll be there

3. Doubt there'll be DX11, even DX10'll be a big doubtful

4. I don't personally care of surround sound since headphones master race

5. TAGES eh? I'm kind of hoping it'll be Steamworks

6. Quick someone copy paste valve time and replace valve with egosoft

7. "Dumbing down" is acceptable, as long as it'll still have the complexity as well.

[Epsilon Sector]

1. Sorry...X-Rebirth

3. I would hope there would be DX10 and/or 11 due to both significant graphical improvements as well as increased performence. DX9 is how old now? And today's video cards are being optimized for tesselation, etc. and not for DX9, which is dying, and has been since Windows Vista, and now Windows 8 is only a year or two away, probably with DX11.1 or 12 along with it. We'll see though.

4. To each their own...you prefer headphones, I can't live without my surround sound system...nothing quite like the room shaking during a capital ship battle. I'm just making the argument that neither party should be left out to dry. The game should sound great on all systems (assuming of course you're using a high quality brand...I'm using Klipsch for example).

5. I'm just guessing TAGES since that's what they've done the past couple games. I'm not so sure that steamworks is such a great idea because then you have fewer online distributers that can compete, and if you're looking for the best deal, then competition is good. Also, I get charged sales tax from Steam, not from Impulse for example. I'm also part of the minority that doesn't care about achievements, so steamworks has less appeal to me.

7. Well, of course "dumbing down" is acceptable if it's done right, especially when it comes to streamlining things like the interface(which I'm excited to hear that it was redone from scratch)...holy sh*t it was hard to navigate the first time I started playing. It literally took me an hour to learn how to accelerate forward, haha (note to self: look up controls first instead of guessing which controls are what). I made the mistake of going straight to the sandbox instead of playing the campaign in X3: TC, so I didn't get to do the tutorial. By the time I did play the campaign, I had already invested months into the sandbox and put together an empire.

[supakillaii]

By "fewer online distributors" did you mean digital sellers like VALVe's Steam or http://game.co.uk/ ?

[Epsilon Sector]

Well, a steamworks game, if I understand things correctly, must be registered through steam, giving them a monopoly on that game regardless of whether you buy it from Best Buy or from Impulse, etc.

When I refer to "online distributors", I'm specifically referring to places like Steam, Impulse, Gamersgate, etc. Essentially any platform that allows the digital distribution and downloading of games without the need to insert physical media into your computer (i.e. a dvd).

[dougeye]

1) Multicore i think is a defo - they have been aware of the probs with multicore for years so i expect it is included.

2) DX11 - i think too some extent yes it will be included, cnsidering games like metro 2033 etc were started at least four years ago. you need to remember that developers are aware of things like DX11 long before the public.

3) dumbing down - as long as its not the bioware DA2 dumbing down ill be happy. i want all the options for ship commands available but mabye what i would term a quick interface (sort of like the drop down menu you got in x3tc were you had basic commands) but also an option to enter a more detailed interface for setting turret behaviour etc. Also ill be interested to see any new ideas for a universe map. Mabye something like sins of a solar empire would be cool were you enter the map mode and you can see 3d representations of the planets / sectors with the trade lanes showing how they are all connected.

[perkint]

I know it's sort of semantics, but dumbing down is not ok. Simplifying and streamlining is.

We want a game that's simple to control, not a game that's simple. But I have faith in Ego - it'll be brilliant!

Also - multi core support is definitely in. Berndt referenced optimising for multi core in an X-News article last year some time...

BTW - I would think this should probably be in one of the (several) other X:R/TNBT threads...

Tim

[pjknibbs]

Please keep discussions about X-Rebirth to the existing threads for the moment.