My gaming-dream is a Frontier-like multiplayer
Now that's what I've been dreaming about for months! The concept of an open ended game set in a huge universe isn't new - as seen before in Elite, Frontier, and even Hunter to a certain extent. However this concept has been neglected in the last few years in preference to eye candy and a relatively restrictive arena. That is one of the things that bothers me about my PS2, great graphics but the gameplay takes place in a predefined arena.
The idea of a RPG based Frontier sequel is currently being developed by David Braben; Frontier's original author. However, I'd personally trade a little character detail for more game depth - ie more ships, races, more inhabited systems and even the interaction between several different governments.
Now excuse my ignorance here, for my programming knowledge is next to zilch, but the original Elite possessed some trick code to generate the unique star system names (all seven million of them), without clogging up the available resources of a 48k Spectrum. The star systems, government types, trade prices, location etc were all unique and fixed - i.e. you could come back to the same location each time you played the game. Couldn't this concept be stretched to allow many different ships/weapons/governments/weather conditions etc? This way the code isn't too bloated, but the game allows plenty of scope for exploration etc.
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts - and do remember, this is simply an exercise in fantasy so don't be too hard on me!
