Cambridge, U.K. — David Braben’s Frontier Developments has launched a Kickstarter UK project Elite: Dangerous on PC.

“This is the game I have wanted Frontier to make for a very long time. The next game in the Elite series – an amazing space epic with stunning visuals, incredible gameplay and breath-taking scope, and also fully multi-player.” said Frontier founder and CEO David Braben. “Frontier has been working on this project, in the background, for several years now, building a foundation of technology and tools.

Imagine what is now possible, squeezing the last drop of performance from modern computers in the way the previous games did in their days? It is not only a question of raw performance, though of course this will make it a gorgeous and incredibly rich experience, but we are pushing the multi-player networking implementation too.”

David Braben co-authored “Elite”, which was one of the most successful games of the 1980s, being the first ‘open world’ game, the first true 3D game which also set many other benchmarks. It made extensive use of procedural generation of content to fit eight galaxies each with 256 star systems and associated planets, economies. legal systems and so on into 22k bytes, less than the size of a typical email today.

His “Frontier” sequel, which his company is named after, greatly pushed such techniques further, containing a model of the whole of the Milky Way galaxy with all 10¹¹ or so star systems, and many more planets and moons, each of which players could visit.
Frontier is using Kickstarter both as a means of test-marketing the concept to verify there is broader interest in such a game, extending beyond the fans and press who regularly contact David about the game, and raising £1.25M / $2M funds to complete it.

“Kickstarter is great because as long as we hit the threshold, it commits us to making the game.” added Braben. “From where we are now, £1.25M/$2M will get us the minimum game based on our tech and artist-directed procedural generation techniques, but I am of course hoping we can get more than that as it will allow us to be even more ambitious and potentially cover other platforms – the community of contributors will be part of the discussion about the specifics of any such decisions.”

Be part of it here.

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East Peoria, U.S.A. — Independent game studio, Aisle 5 Games, looks to the internet to help fund their fourth game title, G.H.O.S.T. Chronicles: The Magician’s Curse. As with most video games, funding is always an issue, and Aisle 5 Games feels that Kickstarter could provide extra support by reaching out to internet savvy casual gamers.

Kickstarter.com gives creative projects a chance to gain funding through individual pledges from the community. Following Kickstarter guidelines, Aisle 5 Games aims to raise $35,000 during a 30 day period. If successful, Aisle 5 states that the funds will be used for additional artwork, animations, and professional vocal actors. If the goal is not reached by October 6th, 2012, then all pledges are cancelled and G.H.O.S.T. Chronicles: The Magician’s Curseis not funded.

When asked why the decision was made to turn to the Kickstarter community for funding, Mike stated, “Casual gaming has change dramatically over the last couple of years. The typical casual game budget ranges from $100,000 to $500,000. As a small developer, funds like this are hard to come by. Kickstarter allows us to expand our funding possibilities while retaining creative control over our games.”

G.H.O.S.T. Chronicles: The Magician’s Curse combines adventure and hidden object game play, aiming to take the casual game player on a fantastic journey filled with mystery and intrigue.

Mike notes, “We believe the Magician’s Curse is going to be our best adventure yet. With each game, we continue to grow as a developer. From adding new features, refining game controls, to producing richer environments for the player to immerse themselves in, each game is a learning experience that we use to make the next game better.”

To find out more about this project, readers can view the Kickstarter campaign here:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1595116227/ghost-chronicles-the-magicians-curse

About Aisle 5 Games

Aisle 5 Games is an independent game studio, producing top quality games for the casual game market. Each game in the company’s portfolio has been distributed on major internet channels and has also obtained retail distribution among top retailers.

The article “G.H.O.S.T. Chronicles: The Magician’s Curse” Needs Funding appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.