Frontier First Encounters Playthrough - Episode 1 - "Wicca's World"

[@DVAFP]

one of my favorite articles was about when a member of the imperial royal family attemps to be the first person to successfully sun dive and things dont go so well.

[@bazza5699]

sunday afternoon wouldnt be complete without a frontier fix :)

[@mprojekt72]

It strikes me that marketing material for the "Liqui-Couch, the first ever, solid liquid control seat," sounds remarkably like they installed a bean-bag chair in your ship.

[@sadskytristeciel1439]

I actually loved the little videos and still do.

[@6StimuL84]

Same here .....Have them saved in a rar file and always install them when I install the game.....They crack me up.

[@homeoftheinepttulpagamer]

I remember hacking the files on the Amiga for Frontier Elite. It was possible to hex edit a missile to be a space ship (I believe all objects could be spaceships by altering a few lines of code - including the gigantic cargo transport ships that were as big as space stations). Add a cockpit to a missile to make it purchasable, some cargo space and hyperdrive and you had the fastest most maneuverable vessel possible. They were also very hardy, so you could crash into gas giants and bounce off of them.

[@bier00t]

looking at the polygons of the planets you can actually see that this is the same Cobra engine that is used in ED (although very old iteration). You can compare it to ED's V1 planets (prior Horizons) - ED also have the same fractal shuffling on the edges of the planets when you orbit them on low orbit and go fast.

[@trantion6944]

The dodgy coastline and other things jumping around on the planet surface might be a limitation of 16 bit maths. I think Kerbal Space Program, which is 32 bits, had similar issues originally in trying to simulate the whole of the solar system and then not having the precision to get things right on the planet surfaces. And The Outer Wilds, which uses a tiny toy solar system, also had the same problem until they changed it to calculate everything with you as the centre of the universe.

[@celem1000]

Kerbal also used the same fix. The cause of the jitter is floating point errors, becoming worse the further you are from 0,0. It's what the playerbase of KSP named "The Kraken". So the solution is that 0,0 moves occasionally to follow you around and you are never far enough from the origin for the errors to be a problem

[@celem1000]

Did you ever play the opensourced versions of FFE? It was reverse engineered at some point after becoming shareware and several well supported versions spun off with extensive bug fixing, stability improvements and textures FFED3DAJ being my favourite, though alas the maintainer of that passed last year. If anyone is discovering FFE today they're better served looking for those versions, which don't require DOS emulation. F:E2 and FFE are my favourites, they're just more fun gameplay loops than ED or the original. Edit: ahhh, the JJ variant, very good

[@6StimuL84]

I love the look and feel of FFE3D but my mouse hit points are way off compared to the screen and have not figured out what the problem is yet.....Yeah Andys passing was sad......

[@andysonofbob2599]

Really pleased you are doing First Enc!

[@6StimuL84]

Still love this old Game. So much Atmosphere.

[@MrRetroUK]

Love it, Saw this pop up in my youtube feed. Lights low, Cup of tea, Seat reclined, feet up.

[@blogtwot]

Thanks as always for the upload Drew, bloody work got in the way of the stream again. Hope to be home in a couple of weeks to catch that one and fill it with the usual asinine comments 😀

[@nathandi_maggio8297]

My Sunday afternoon relax me time

[@bier00t]

Frontier wanted to be ahead of their times with FFE. The UI is just another pursuit of what was new thing back then - prerendered 3D environments (in opostion to FE2's pixelart) - another silly idea along full motion video for such low display resolution. People back then thought it was cool, a breeze of the future etc

[@spearPYN]

Exactly, thats why I think Elite II aged better IMHO. Pixel art is timeless.

[@MrSoy_]

I loved this game as a kid. However, even back then in 1996 I was upset with the low resolution of the graphics.

[@Spatula007]

can't wait for the polaris missions!

[@OpenGL4ever]

28:25 Frontier: First Encounter was not a success because most players already knew from their experience with Frontier: Elite II that the realistic inertia mechanics meant that the game was not fun to play, especially in combat. Windows 95 was less of a problem. While it is true that this program, written in assembly language, required DOS, but Windows 95 and Windows 98 provided a way to exit Windows and boot into DOS. So it was relatively easy to get it to work if you wanted to. My guess is that it used its own DOS extender that was incompatible with DPMI. Or it used Unreal Mode, which was also incompatible with Windows' DPMI Host.

[@NoahChinnBooks]

Man i wish i had learned to fly this and the previous game properly. I had to use autopilot for just about everything and pretty much avoid combat... these days I could have just checked KZbin for a tutorial

[@pennyisdreadful]

Now i have to download this one too lol

[@falkerhard]

I bought my copy from a salvage shop (know I know why they were dumped). The game unpatched, crashes within 4 seconds! First time I experienced anything as rubbish. I was so mad, I wrote a letter to Frontier telling them! They sent me an update disk which made it work somewhat. It still intermittently crashed though, just after 4 seconds.

[@laureven]

where I can get this game ??? ..thank You :)

[@garytwinem5275]

I got my first jab on Saturday. Mildly disappointed I haven't developed any mutant powers.

[@RafaelFilho]

No sudden death?

[@Scrub_Ghost]

The intro music? Is it your own or from something? Maybe I've been hearing it for so long and maybe you talked about it. NICE!

[@smiths121]

I thought the Alliance shipyard was retro bombed out of existence by the time of ED.

[@AntonyStrus]

Hi Drew. Re: David Lowe who you said you'd been in touch with recently. There is a David Lowe who did/does an enormous amount of composing for British TV (BBC etc), and I've always wondered if they are one and the same. Are you able to confirm?

[@bier00t]

you can change file with the background picture (I prefer black)

[@Nails077]

Almost like the intro couldn't use the music they originally wanted and had to slap something else on last minute.

[@davidstephens3235]

Woop woop

[@JustinWillisDevil240Z]

well the thing about a black hole its main distinguishing feature is its black, and the thing about space the color of space your basic space color is its black so how're you supposed to see em?

[@drewwagar]

I think it turned out to be grit on the scanner-scope. ;)

[@JustinWillisDevil240Z]

@@drewwagar boys from the dwarf

[@drewwagar]

@@JustinWillisDevil240Z I think we've just encountered the middle of this conversation.

[@reidwallace4258]

Look, if you don't stop putting out so much darn content, I am never gonna find time to listen to Emanation.

[@stephengell9894]

I did email some files to you on mission etc.... from your web site...

[@falkerhard]

Gotta love the flaws in these games. Unintended gameplay features, like the max jump range bug on Amiga and the thargoid ship in FFE where you could get infinite cargo space depending on how you did it.

[@TonySpike]

I know the backstory, ......its what happened after you got released from prison in FE2

[@pureventrue2357]

So as someone who "knows anything about music" a couple small corrections. It's perfect 4th & 5th, no such thing as major in that context. Also what I think you're hearing is actually a minor 7th note that's being played over a major chord. :P Sorry, studied & played music all my life, I do know what you were getting at though! xD & now that I'm done being a nit-picky asshole xD ... honestly great to see this game get some love & you have a wonderful easy-going persona. Glad I found this. :)

[@burdbrain1598]

I never played this one. What a disgusting mess this looks, compared to the previous game. They may as well have just kept the graphical style of FE2, and enhanced that a bit, instead of messing around with texture maps that look crap. What the hell is that background in stations supposed to be? Looks like some kind of tunnel designed by HR Giger. It doesn't represent anything! Anyway, I'm keen to watch the rest of this series to see what they have actually added over FE2.

[@personaltitanfloroc4790]

1995

[@elbone4114]

lots of giggling almost like mushrooms

[@Lollo7719]

51 minutes for taking off?!? Come on! Be serious!

[@personaltitanfloroc4790]

1995