Talk:Frontier: First Encounters

Requested move

Move It looks like this page used to be named Frontier:First Encounters and I think it should go back there. It is, after all, the full title of the game, and is mentioned in the caption to the image in the infobox (which also says Frontier:First Encounters) -- JediLofty ^{User | Talk} 13:53, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I think there should be a space after the colon, even though there's no colon in the image. The official FAQ doesn't prefix the name with Frontier. –Pomte 01:50, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it be moved. However, the move would be unobstructed (to either title, with or without the space after the colon), and someone who was convinced of its merit could easily make the move. --Stemonitis 08:09, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Reactions by press NPOV

I'm really missing the negative reactions of the press in this article. I recalled that this game had so much bugs at first that it became unplayable. And that later patches accidentally showed that the whole intricate plot was a little bit less intricate then advertised, and that a lot of the promised content simply did not exist. Sure this is listed a bit in the history part of the article, but the later reviews of pcgamer where a lot less nice about the game. Don't know if I still own a hardcopy of that issue. But I doubt it. --Soyweiser (talk) 11:12, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I think your comments and your disclaiming of not having a reliable source to back it up speak for themselves. What you're talking about would be appropriate for an opinion piece, but an encyclopedia entry. The game's lack of commercial success is already mentioned in the article.  Xihr  07:55, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

This section needs a complete rewrite. It's not acceptable to cherrypick only positive quotes, nor should the section comprise only of quotations. In addition, the url for the PC Gamer review is dead. I'll try and hunt down some reviews to expand the section. If anyone can provide links to magazine reviews, that would be helpful. Marasmusine (talk) 09:22, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Relativity

Are any relativistic effects modelled? Or are the speeds involved too low for that to be noticable? 2fort5r (talk) 03:08, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

AFAIR, a bug prevented the player from exceeding as speed of around 200.000km/s (roughly 2/3c). Further accleration would cause the ship to instantly reverse it's direction of movement. Apparently an overflow bug, where the overflow causes the sign to reverse (positive speed turns into negative speed and vice versa). Assuming 32 bit signed arithmetic, this would mean that the game calculates speed in increments of 0.1m/s.

Considering this lack of attention to this "speed issue", it's unlikely that relativistic effects were even considered. --Klaws (talk) 21:51, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Screenshot captions

Can we get better captions than "this is a screenshot from the game which you are reading an article about" three times? What's actually happening in them, and which computer system are they taken from? --McGeddon (talk) 16:59, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

History section incomplete

AFAIK, the lawsuit was settled out of court in Braben's favor, because Gametek released the game prematurely, why isn't this mentioned anywhere? Source here: http://www.gamesinvestor.com/downloads/Playing for Keeps Great British Games IP.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by HyperspaceCloud (talk • contribs) 17:51, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

"Gametek released the game prematurely" Where's your evidence for that? Your citation is false - that gamesinvestor report does not say the premature release was by Gametek. The Gametek writ says that the premature release was by Braben 18:44, 7 July 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.223.120.208 (talk)

History whitewash

What's with this recent whitewash https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Frontier:_First_Encounters&diff=prev&oldid=613801196 by HyperspaceCloud? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.223.120.208 (talk) 01:06, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

The edit summary is misleading, but if you're referring to the Gametek lawsuit, I don't disagree with the edit - per WP:BLPPRIMARY we shouldn't use primary-source court documents to write about living people. If there was some secondary-source coverage of the case, though, it could be added back in. --McGeddon (talk) 08:42, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

We're not writing about living people. We're writing about a computer game. The deleted material is highly pertinent to the history of this game. 18:41, 7 July 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.223.120.208 (talk)

The content is about a lawsuit raised against a living person. --McGeddon (talk) 11:52, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

"Elite 3"?

User:HyperspaceCloud has been changing piped links to this game to read "Frontier: First Encounters (Elite 3)", and updating the article to say that the game is "also referred to" as Elite 3, but I can't see any official documentation or reliable sources that call it this. Is this just a fan thing? --McGeddon (talk) 12:45, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

From the old FFE FAQ: http://web.archive.org/web/20010301195811/http://www.frontier.co.uk/

What is Elite III?

Some people refer to First Encounters as Elite III (or Frontier II). Numbers are convenient, but a bit boring, but yes, First Encounters is Elite III. We wouldn't have sub-titled "Frontier" with "Elite II" if it wasn't for publisher pressure. Similarly, though we are using the working title "Elite 4", it will not come out under that name (unless we are again under publisher pressure!).

And here a mention of FFE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ue87r4zPcE&t=38 and the devs mentioned FFE multiple other times. HyperspaceCloud (talk) 17:54, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for clarifying, I'll add that reference to this article. But if "Elite III" is a fan name that the developers themselves don't like, it shouldn't be in the piped links. --McGeddon (talk) 18:06, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Well it's not really just a fan name, it literally is Elite III (same universe, with continuing story), but I understand your concerns. HyperspaceCloud (talk) 21:36, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

I understand that it's literally the third game in the Elite series, but if "Elite III" is only an informal way of referring to the game (and one that the devs considered "a bit boring" and something they apparently avoided in the absence of "publisher pressure" on the third game), it doesn't seem helpful to change piped links to "Frontier: First Encounters (Elite III)" in a way that suggests this is the official name. --McGeddon (talk) 08:17, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Release date

Release date is stated as April 16th 1995, which by my reckoning was a Sunday(?) --SteveBex (talk) 21:44, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Difficulties running under post-DOS?

Re: "As the official support has ended and the game being a DOS game, First Encounters has difficulty running with post-DOS operating systems such as Windows 95, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Only with DOS-emulators like DOSBox the game was playable." - as a purchaser of the game (CD version, with the video clips), now two decades ago, I'm both surprised to be told that it was buggy/unfinished (never had any problems with it myself, that I recall, unless I just mistook a bug for a 'feature') and that it's apparently hard to run in Windows 95 (which would have been my primary OS, at the time, never having run 3.11 or earlier at home) and thus 'needs' DOSBOX. Either there was no problem running it under '95 (possibly also '98) or I just followed instructions straight from the manual to run it under '95s base DOS boot-up as one occasionally had to do, back then, for games. I've a feeling the former, though.

I wouldn't be surprised at all to find 2K might have difficulty, of course, and thus possibly XP too. I still have both 2K and XP machines running (not the '95 one, though I might be able to find the old box somewhere in the attic), so maybe if I can also find the discs for the game I could actually consider testing these, but... at least making this note to those that follow. 213.205.252.24 (talk) 02:09, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)

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