In a comment I've made a little bit ago, I mentioned that I was tasking myself to discover music that was played on an old radio program that I listened to from the 2000s. And it is looking to be a lot more prolonged and tedious than I had thought. I've been able to find a program that has done an amazing job at removing the host's voices to where, I can't tell where they start or stop talking, I get hints that there were points of voices being there, but it's non-existent.
I've tried before in the past to use Audacity, but being that all recordings were done in Mono and not Stereo, no matter what I tried, the voices would still remain. So now that hurdle is done with, the next task is to go through all 139 episodes and all episodes average 1 hour to 2 hours. That's a long time if you're doing radio or podcasting, it's a lot of talking to do. Then it's a matter of listening back and forth at one points certain songs begin and end, marking times to point them out with.
I might pick out some standout favorites, episodes that contained the most songs that I would have wanted the most from them. Then once all of that is figured, the next course of action is to clean up the sample audio, because most of these episodes were recorded in Mono so there's going to be a lot of distortion and muddiness.
Then once all of that is done, the next challenging task is, actually finding someone who'll be able to identify what is played. I don't know electronic/techno music too well, I'm not entirely familiar with artists outside Daft Punk, Celldweller, 3Teeth and Pendulum to name a few. The only thing that sortof helps narrow things down is that they were all played on DI.FM at the time, so it may or may not help.
From there, it's just hoping I find them out there online.
It's a big project, but I've listened to these episodes for 18 years now and what kept me coming back to them besides nostalgic purposes, was the music played in them that never got identified.
I got really into ED for half a year or so when I got my VR headset. It made everything feel so immersive, and the fact there was no space legs at the time actually worked out well. I still have fond memories of the time I found a group of old timers doing a mining event and they all brought their huge ships, showed us the ropes, and shared the wealth.
After the engineering grind though I sort of lost interest. I remember doing an in game event, which was essentially "shuttle supplies from X to Y, N times. I took my headset off to be able to use my other monitor and decided to just leave it off because nothing complex was happening. That's when I realized that I wasn't in my ship moving cargo, I was sitting at a computer playing a "game" that is just mindlessly moving cargo. The VR immersion meant SO much to the thrill of it.
I was never a good enough pilot for full flight assist off combat, and the devs seemed hellbent on just making all gameplay based on endless loops with only the tiniest bit of lore to hold it together. I stopped when the space legs came out since it wasn't VR compatible and left it there.
It's really good to hear people like you are making the effort to onboard new players. I'm glad it still has a following because honestly, the bones of it were great and I had a lot of fun. If you don't mind my asking, what keeps you engaged and playing it today?
For me, Elite is all about alone time. Sure the loops are “repetitive”, but there’s well over 20 or 30 loops in the game. A lot of people share your experience because it’s ultimately more of a sandbox than a traditional experience like most other mainstream titles. It’s time for me to meditate and explore.
Another major factor is that I’m allergic to “the grind”. Many, many other players feel that Engineering is goal #1 and want the biggest, fastest, baddest ship, but I just don’t care about most of that. I like flying space ships and this game does it better than almost any other out there.
Add on the fact that now I have a squadron and it’s become a place to hang out with friends. Elite is less a game with a win state and more a universe to explore.
Lastly, it’s very easy to ignore major parts of the lore thanks to all the farming guides that skip past how those sites were originally discovered. It’s a game meant for you to reach these points hundreds of hours in instead of dozens.