Elite Dangerous [official site] got its latest update today, bringing more galactic hi-jinks to the quite-good space sim. Murmurs of aliens and fighter bays have so far blinded us to the real highlight of the update the space buses. The Beluga is a giant luxury space yacht for transporting wealthy VIPs on passenger missions and it is the focus of a new trailer Frontier has made to celebrate their biggest update so far, called ‘Guardians’. Come watch the trailer and find out what’s changed.

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Two pilots in Elite: Dangerous [official site] travelled to the ceiling of the galaxy after a mistake by the developers accidentally gave players a huge boost to their jump drives. Frontier recently added plumes of white energy irradiating from the game s rare white dwarves and neutron stars which, when entered by pilots, would cause some turbulence and a small boost to their jump drives. They had intended to set this boost at 25% but thanks to a number mix up it was accidentally set to 300%. Two curious explorers noticed the massive boost and began to chart a dangerous course into the highest layers of the Milky Way.

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[Update: This issue is perhaps less imminent that I’d thought – Frontier dropped us a line to stress that it may be a fair bit longer than six months, though Braben did say “the change will need to come at some point” so it seems this will happen eventually.]

Like in real life, obsolescence in PC gaming is usually a slow process. An achy knee after running becomes an achy knee after hiking then all too soon you’re waking up achy, and your framerates dip lower and lower starting to stutter before you realise you simply can’t play shiny new games. But sometimes there are hard cut-offs, and two are coming soon to Elite Dangerous [official site]. Developers Frontier today announced that they plan to stop supporting 32-bit systems and DirectX 10 graphics hardware. They say it’ll help them make the game look prettier and run better.

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The pilots of Elite: Dangerous [official site] have been looking for direct evidence of alien spaceships for a while now, knowing that Frontier are planning to bring them to the game at some point. But today they finally found a crashed alien vessel that has been rumoured to exist for months.

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Suggestions of an alien intelligence creeping out of the shadows. Fighter ships, piloted remotely and able to bring down ships many times their size. Beautiful space station interiors that visually reflect the goods or services that they produce.

All very exciting, I’m sure, but I’m here for the cruise liners. Turns out I want every game to be a taxi/bus simulator, and if I can fly tourists around the galaxy, I’m definitely back on board the good ship Elite Dangerous [official site].

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Pilots in Elite Dangerous [official site] have discovered a hidden map in an alien probe after scanning the probe and applying a spectral analysis to the sound it produced. Probes like this have been around for a while but it wasn’t until last week that a player, Cmdr Rizal, “honked” at one (commander slang for using your Discovery Scanner) and documented the “reply”. Worryingly, the probe first sent out an EMP blast, temporarily cutting off the ship’s power. But after that, it spoke.

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We always knew they would come back some day. The race of aliens known as the Thargoids have been slotted to appear in Elite Dangerous [official site] for a while, according to the developer’s plans. And David Braben has said in interviews that he wants them to be just as scary as encounters in the previous games. But we’ve seen little in the way of actual evidence so far. While players have discovered alien life in the form of “space barnacles” and often come across ancient artifacts floating around, nothing that suggested a hostile race from beyond the stars had ever been found. Until now.

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At this year’s Develop conference in Brighton, I grabbed an hour with keynote speaker Luke Crane, Head of Games at Kickstarter, to talk about the state of play of videogames on the crowdfunding platform in 2016. Discussed: what makes a good project now, the odds of making it, ‘Kickstarter fatigue’ and the question of glory days, Kickstarter’s reaction to funded projects that are not then released, the importance of community, how the press can be unhelpful and whether or not famous names are dominating the ecosystem at the expense of smaller developers. … [visit site to read more]

Elite Dangerous: Arena [official site], the spin-off standalone of Elite’s combat arena mode, is free to try this weekend. More than that, if you get it now it’s yours forever.

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The second Elite: Dangerous [official site] expansion, from its ‘Horizons’ series of add-ons, will blast off on May 26th. ‘The Engineers’ will bring… engineers? Obviously. Little embarrassed I had to tell you that, honestly. They, in turn, bring even more ways to customise your ships and weapons – if they like you. Also, launching alongside The Engineers but not requiring anyone to buy the expansions will be a big update with a new mission system. Though Horizons has had a wee price cut.

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