Tag: new content

New backgrounds in EVE

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , ,

The Winter Expansion is focused on “Flying-in-Space” experience, so it is not a surprise, that the new nebulae announced together with updated turret models will make it to this expansion. I must admit that the art departament at CCP really did a great job. The new nebulae look very detailed and quite realistic, much better than the current ones.

There is one more change. Existing backgrounds are different for each constellation, but there is not much sense in how they are placed. The new backgrounds will be different for each region instead, but as you travel around the New Eden, you will see some phenomena closer and some further away, giving a feeling of distance and adding more immersion.

New backgrounds will affect one more thing as well: the reflections. This will cause ship textures to look slightly different, depending on the nebula and sun colours. Similar effect can be seen with the current backgrounds, especially when jumping from a red-background system to one with blue or green nebula. Art department promised however, that all the ships will be just as cool with the new backgrounds in place.

Knowing EVE community, one thing is certain: the new backgrounds will witness some serious boat violencing. EVE is a serious internet spaceship game after all 😉

Since one image is worth thousand words, CCP will swap this dull red cloud:

with these pretty nebulae:

Winter Expansion coming to Singularity

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , ,

Yesterday a new beta build has been deployed to Singularity test server, which brings some, but not all the announced content of the still-unnamed-winter-expansion.

First off, new font has been introduced and moreover, it has been tweaked since its introduction, so it is now both readable and fits the existing GUI pretty well.

Secondly, there is the new cyno effect and the jump drive activation effect. It is still not as good as the old one, but I like it more than the current Tranquility version. And the new cyno is just simply beautiful piece of art.

  

Then, there are some ship changes: Destroyers have received 10% boost to shield, armor and hull, additional 25% boost to the capacitor, while at the same time the signature radius has been reduced by 25%.

Another change has been done to the logistic ships class. Oneiros now sports 4/4/5 layout instead of 4/5/4, and its powergrid has been boosted from 850 to 1050 MW. All logis had their warp speed slightly boosted, from 3.00 to 3.75 AU/s

The fitting window also received a further overhaul: it used to display defenses (tank HP/s, EHP). Now it also shows the DPS, so no external tools are needed to calculate fitting effectiveness. Fitting screen has also been reorganized a little to emphasize on important information, such as cap stability, DPS, tank stats.

The Customs office is now a player constructable object, with the Customs Office Gantry, which is build off BPC’s bought by CONCORD and Faction Warfare loyalty points. After the Gantry has been sucessfully anchored in orbit, further materials are required to upgrade it to a full blown Customs Office. The owning corporation is able to set their own tax (within some limits), so this can be a great source of passive income. The new Customs Office can now also be destroyed, so players can finally actively compete around the PI. As a side note, low-sec Customs are still present, even though the dev-blog mentioned their removal. They already do have a corp ticker however (it shows CONCORD at the moment).

At last, all the racial CQ’s are now there, but ship spinning UI has been made the default view, and the big, ugly CQ/spin button has been removed. If you ever choose to switch to the CQ interface, just right click your ship and choose “To Captain’s Quarters“. To go back to spinning, a new option has been added to the ship context menu – just hover the mouse above your ship holo and click on the “Enter Ship Hangar” label.

Galaxy on Fire 2 HD jump animation
Galaxy on Fire 2 HD jump animation

Hybrid turrets and gallente ships rebalancing is still not yet there, neither are the new Battlecruisers. We will probably have to wait a little bit longer for that.

PS. Dear CCP: Why does an iPad game still have a better looking jump animation than EVE?

CCP: What race should be the next Tier 3 BC? Players: Gallente!

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , ,
Gallente Tier 3 BC
Gallente Tier 3 BC

It seems that Hilmar keeps his word. He promised the playerbase new internet spaceships, so there will be new internet spaceships. Last week the Minmatar Tornado has been announced – a Tier-3 battlecruiser capable of using battleship-sized turrets. Battlecruisers were supposed to fill the gap between cruisers and battleships, and this new breed of BC’s seems to fit between battlecruisers and battleships. With the coming hybrid rebalancing Talos will be most likely a deadly short range blaster boat, sporting Neutron Blaster Cannon II’s.

The Talos has been nicknamed the king of in-your-face-glass-cannons: if one would compare a fleet to a human body, this ship would be its right fist. Bringing together the speed and agility of battlecruiser class with the firepower of a Megathron will make a very interesting twist.

Talos
Talos

This new Gallente battlecruiser is based on yet another player creation: the Seraphim. CCP however claims that the name “Talos” fits better (Talos was a bronze giant who guarded the island of Crete in the greek mythology).

I will not buy this ship on day one. Instead, I will buy the BPO!

UPDATED: Hilmar Veigar letter to the EVE community

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , ,

Hilmar Veigar aka CCP Hellmar, the CEO of CCP has published a long and sincere letter for the EVE Online community. My first thoughts about it are very positive, but let me tell you why.

It takes a lot to admit ones mistakes, and to do it in public takes much, much more. I deeply respect that, and I don’t know many people with enough courage to do such thing.

Some will say ‘bullshit, it’s just words’. I tell you, it’s no bullshit. Hilmar Veigar is a real person, a public figure. A respected CEO of big, international gaming company. He can’t give his customers bullshit, or else he is out of business. Simple as that.

Some will say ‘it’s long overdue’. I tell you it’s not. Community needed to calm down first. The knowledge of human psychology is very important, even though we are not consciuously aware of it. If this letter was published during the ‘monoclegate’, many players would discard it immediately without even reading it. Moreover, CCP has acted before they spoke, which backs up what Hilmar says in his letter.

Some will say it’s just PR. So what I say? What difference does it make if this is PR or a personal letter from a businessman to his customers, as long as things get done? I keep my fingers crossed for Hilmar and the CCP.

Second part of the letter points to another dev-blog by Arnar Hrafn aka CCP Zulu. The amount of work to be done is quite extensive, but more less sums up the things that most players asked for:

  • Hybrid weapons balancing /signed, /signed and triple /signed
    as a true Gallente pilot I can’t say otherwise.
  • Factional warfare
  • Assault ships
  • Capital ship balancing /signed
  • New T2 modules
  • Starbase logistics management
  • New EWAR-Drones
  • T2 Rigs manufacturing

Additionally, the list contains four features already mentioned last friday:

  • Ship spinning aka pre-incarna Hangar interface
  • New font
  • More captains quarters
  • Time dilation

And yes, Hilmar also said new ships are coming – more spaceships is probably one of the best news for internet spaceships.

Dear Hilmar,

I really respect you sir, for what you did and said today. I have been watching EVE grow for the past 6 years, and when new CQs and ship spinning were announced on 30th of September I have regained my hopes for EVE. Your words today have reinforced this feeling. I felt it back in 2005 when I started playing EVE: being excited about EVE and unable to wait for what’s coming.

I wish you and your company all the best. Keep up the good work!

New Cyno effect on Singularity

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , , ,

I know I have missed one very important feature mentioned in this devblog here, which will be coming in the “October patch” for Incarna. I am talking about the: *drumroll here* new cynosural field effect. New stuff has been available on Singularity since last friday, but I wanted to get some screenshots pretty enough to please the public (and do the new cyno justice: it really looks much better than the current one).

Okay, enough reading, let’s see *it*:

Animation is a bit slower than the one in the current effect, and textures’ resolution has been bumped up a few notches. The new capital jump has been improved as well, but I couldn’t get a good screenshot of it: it seems to only look good when animated.

But wait, what about the engine trails? Are they coming back?

According to a very well informed person (CCP_Fallout), the answer is YES. Unfortunately, there is no schedule, so we will just have to wait.

UPDATE: Racial Captain Quarters on SiSi

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , , , , ,

Yestarday CCP t0rfifrans has posted a dev-blog about racial Captain Quarters being already available for testing on the Singularity test server. If you can’t wait to see them before your client is patched to the Singularity level by the trusty SiSi Launcher, feel free to watch this youtube movie. All CQ’s reflect their races distinct culture and style: Caldari are cold and “made from steel”, so their quarters have a strong utilitarian look. Gallenteans value freedom and pleasure, so gallente CQ are IMHO the best looking ones at the moment. Amarr, the most religious race, have many statues and other religious accents in their quarters. And of course you already know the Minmatars: rust and duct tape (as if they don’t know how to smelt stainless steel, even though they are able to fly in space. It might have something to do with the legendary strength and durability of Minmatar duct tape).

T0rfi also mentioned that the inital spawn point after docking has been moved, so you can immediately access the ship’s console, rather than having to turn around and walk towards it. Oh, yes, you will now be facing your ship when you dock. And no, it does not work on Singularity yet.

Eve Sans Neue
Eve Sans Neue

One thing not mentioned in the dev-blog is the new font. It looks just like on the screenshots in this dev-blog (or on the screenshot on the right).

And yes, ship spinning is back, too. Just click on your ship in CQ and select “Enter Hangar”. The ship spinning UI is almost the same as it was before Incarna, but it seems not to be the final version: Station Info panel on the right is missing.

I've broken it
I've broken it

Unfortunately I can’t get on to Singularity thanks to this nice red error on the left. This is why I don’t didn’t have the usual bunch of screenshots from the current SiSi build – I am was stuck at accepting EULA. Hopefully CCP has published a few screenshots so I will link them below instead. And I won’t give up trying to get it working.

 

Reinstall of the Sisi client did not help. My guess is, since I’m running polish version of Windows 7, EVE tries to find polish version of EULA. It fails, and cannot load its contents, so it becomes stuck on EULA window. Bug reported #117055. Here is the solution: how to get past the EULA window.

PS. I consider moving from my quiet home system to a new one with a Gallente station. Why? See for yourself.

What players (really) want

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , , ,

Pattern Clarc has written an excellent post on EVE Online forums regarding how players would like to see the solution for the current issues in EVE. It is a “fake” dev-blog, which adresses all of the below issues players see in EVE:

  • Players know that CCP is currently developing two other games: Dust 514 and World of Darkness,
  • Thus, the amount of manpower available to develop EVE has been reduced,
  • Players also see lots of known issues, which are not being addressed (hybrids, dreadnoughts, COSMOS, etc.),
  • Instead, players see new, mostly unwanted content (100+ pieces of clothing, aka space-barbie),
  • CCP not being transparent to the playerbase – resulted in the ‘monoclegate’

Post is really insightful, and the general feedback in the forum thread is rather positive. My opinion is no different – Dear CCP, listen to this guy; or even better: hire him to write dev blogs for you. By the way, the Tick-Tock approach mentioned in Clarc’s post has really worked well for Intel.

The Door.
The Door.

Personally I think we should listen to Zulu’s statement for now, and see if CCP keeps their word. CQ/WiS is not bad in itself, it just lacks the usability of the ship spinning interface (takes time to load, no context menu on ships, no way to open Ore bay/Fuel bay/Corp Hangar/Ship Hangar without opening “Ships” window first; no drag and drop from hangar to ship; no doubleclick on the ship to open cargohold). Another thing is lack of environment: instead of Walking in Stations we’ve got Walking in One Rusty Room. I’ve got a paddle, and a bucket but there is no sandbox to play in – there is only a big mysterious door instead.

Seismic Stan's hat by Rixx Javix
Seismic Stan's hat by Rixx Javix

PS. Dear CCP, we want a new ship for christmas; snowballs and launchers will work, too. AUR and clothing is a no-no, unless it’s a classy, black pirate hat:

Incarna 1.1 on the horizon

Lukas Rox EVE Online , , ,

CCP has been working on the Minmatar CQ while pushing forward with the development of the remaining racial quarters. CCP Fallout also mentioned that CCP is working on establishments (my second name is Quark and I wanna have my own space-bar). Incarna 1.1 will bring some improvements to the existing CQ, and later this year CCP will bring the remaining racial quarters as well as established.

Compared to space-barbies, space-bars might actually be quite interesting (I am definitely going to try this out).

Incarna 1.1 patch will be deployed on Thursday, 1st of September.

Beasts of the field (c) CCP 2011
Beasts of the field (c) CCP 2011

More apparel for EVE Online avatars

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , , ,

Many players have noticed, that CCP has recently released a second batch of items, that can be bought from the Noble Exchange (one of the items included in the second release is GDN-9 “Nightstalker” Combat Goggles). Those curious about what will be coming in future batches can check themselves. In order to do so, open the Market, go to Apparel group and uncheck “Show only available”. There is several kinds of monocles coming to the NeX near you!

EDIT: as to confirm my post, two days later CCP has released a third batch of items, more affordable this time.

Set a long skill! Because Incarna is almost here.

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , ,
Set a long skill! Because Incarna is almost here.

Because at this time tomorrow CCP will be deploying EVE Online: Incarna to Tranquility. Scheduled downtime will last 14 hours, beginning at 5:00 UTC (evetime) and should finish at 19:00. The list of new features is quite extensive, some of which have been awaited by the community for a long time:

  • Full body avatars will now walk out of the ship (just like in STO),
  • Captain’s Quarters – first room for said avatars to explore,
    • Strategic Data Feeds – sov information, incursions, pricechecks, etc.
    • News Feeds
    • Agents – Agent Finder panel installed in quarters
    • Planetary Interaction Panel – One-click access to PI Management
    • Walkway/Balcony – for those who don’t like CQ at all – just stay on the balcony
  • Animated and overhauled turrets – for pew pew pleasure,
  • Noble Exchange – micropayment based shop with avatar related items,
  • Improved New Player Experience,
  • Aura (the computer voice in EVE Online) has returned
  • Updated Maller model (affects Sacrilege, Maller and Devoter)

My question to you is: What do you plan to do during the extended downtime?

New Guns

UPDATE:

Downtime have been shortened from 7:00 UTC to 17:00 UTC. Additionally, Incarna 1.0 patch notes are already available.