Benjamin-Bohn
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EVE Evolved: The great ship overhaul
One of EVE Online's most important features is that the game is constantly updated to avoid falling behind the development curve and being overtaken by new titles. The EVE we have today bears little resemblance to the primitive sandbox released in 2003 thanks to major graphical overhauls every few years and iteration on gameplay systems. I think that's a big part of why people start playing EVE; they know that the game will still be alive and kicking years from now and will look as good as anything else on the market. EVE remained largely unchanged from March 2009's Apocrypha expansion until Crucible at the end of 2011, but since then, CCP has made huge leaps in iterating on ship graphics and gameplay. This week we saw an impressive new video of the revamped Drake model, and CCP announced details of a complete mining barge and frigate revamp due to hit the servers before this year's winter expansion. These changes seem set to put a sizeable dent in EVE's notoriously steep learning curve. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the recent graphical updates to EVE's ships and explore the upcoming ship overhauls in more detail.
EVE dev video shows work on engine trails, custom ship skins and more
If you're a fan of EVE Online, I apologise in advance for the funny looks you get when you jump out of your seat yelling "HELL YES!" while watching the latest In Development video. In this second part of CCP Games' new video devblog series, CCP Guard takes a live hand grenade into EVE Online's art department to show us just what's going on behind the scenes. We've already seen the impressive nebula effects and new Raven model due for release in the winter expansion, and today CCP showed off some massive shadow improvements, but those upcoming additions pale in comparison to what's planned for after the winter period. The latest In Development video shows that CCP is currently working on engine trails, custom ship skins, a new cyno effect, a new warp tunnel, and graphical upgrades for every single ship in the game. It's a tall order, one that's unlikely to be fulfilled in the winter expansion despite developers' recent laser focus on delivering new features. The video gives a sneak peek at the models for the Amarr and Caldari tier 3 battlecruisers, which were selected from fan-submitted entries to last year's design contest in a similar manner to the already revealed Minmatar Tornado and Gallente Talos. Read on to find out why custom ship skins are more work to implement than most of us realise and to watch the new video in HD.
EVE Online developers discuss the depths of character design
"So our key theme for the new character creator is that the player was to feel that he personally, single-handedly, through his decisions and skill created a hyper-realistic human representation of his character in-game," Torfi Frans Ólafsson, creative director of EVE Online, explained to Gamasutra in a developer diary describing the intent of the new character creator in the Incursion expansion. EVE Online is breaking new ground by giving players the ability to create "hyper-realistic and yet slightly exaggerated and cinematic" characters, as Art Director Ásgeir Jon Ásgeirsson says. As fans of the industry, we are excited by the insight into what exactly goes on behind the scenes of our favorite games. This developer diary gave the artists of CCP a chance to let us know what they thought of the process and the outcome of the latest innovation to EVE. Art Manager Benjamin Bohn says they were looking for an "all-or-nothing quality level" and, it "was obvious that this was going to involve sweat and blood." However, the end results would leave both the players and CCP employees in awe. To get more insight into the vision and actual work involved in rebuilding the character creation system from the ground up, be sure to catch the whole developer diary. And for those already playing, the next part of Incursion hits December 14th!
