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EVE Evolved: New tools for the community
Earlier this week, CCP Games released a much-needed complete overhaul of the official EVE Online website. Having been in operation for nine long years, the old website had become a mismatch of marketing information aimed at new players and tools for the existing player community. The overhaul split the page into two awesome websites, with a new community site to cater to existing players and an impressive new main page to attract future players. The main page uses HTML 5 to deliver incredible interactive views of the EVE Online galaxy and dozens of in-game ships right there on the website. The community website houses all of the news, devblogs, knowledgebase articles, fictional chronicles, and support tools that existing players use, but with a much neater layout than the old website. In web developer CCP Alice's recent In Development video, she revealed that the team would be working on new community tools following the launch of the new websites. With the community site completely de-cluttered, there's now room to incorporate a lot of the tools players want or currently use, opening up some interesting possibilities. In this week's EVE Evolved, I discuss the new EVE Online website and community portal and speculate on awesome new community tools we might possibly see in the future.
EVE Evolved: Building a better UI
It's no secret that EVE Online has a poor user interface. With its drop-down menus for interacting with objects and text lists to show information like market orders and nearby objects in space, EVE has thoroughly earned the nickname "spreadsheets in space." The UI has changed drastically since I started playing in 2004, but in recent years, it's fallen behind the development curve. In a new devblog this week, CCP Snowlax suggested that the UI developers at CCP have lacked the framework necessary to do what they wanted with it. The existing framework had become bloated with eight years of development, and the underlying rendering engine wasn't even capable of using custom shaders. With Incursion 1.6, CCP pushed live a completely new UI framework that makes cool features like holographic UI elements possible. With the new Carbon UI framework in place, developers are taking another look at redesigning the EVE user interface. Screenshots of the new features being used in the upcoming Incarna expansion are impressive, but that's all taking place inside stations. I can't help but wonder how these new technologies could be applied to the space-faring portion of EVE and whether there are more fundamental challenges to overcome in UI design than adding flashy graphics. In this week's EVE Evolved, I give some thoughts on the development of EVE's UI, from the necessary evil of the overview to some things I'd like to see change.
EVE Evolved: A sneak peak at EVE Gate
Some time ago, CCP announced their unusual plans to develop their own EVE Online social networking website. Their plan was to tie it into the game, giving players a site they could visit to stay in touch with their EVE contacts and corporation while not logged in. It was expected to be ready by Winter 2009 but never materialised when the Dominion expansion was released. Now named EVE Gate, the website has been rescheduled for the upcoming Tyrannis expansion on May 18th. Recently, CCP released an early alpha version of the EVE Gate website and have begun the slow process of adding features and working out bugs. Some of the features are not active and the site is not yet tied into the active EVE server. Nevertheless, the current alpha build shows what we can expect from the site when it launches. In this article, I give a run-down of what features we can expect from EVE Gate at launch and what we can expect from it in future iterations.
EVE Online API sends apps offline
As many EVE Online players likely already know, Tranquility's server hamsters decided to take an unscheduled nap yesterday, causing the entirety of New Eden to grind to a screeching halt. While we're glad to note that the servers came up some time later without any major problems, the forums and API remained offline until this morning's regular maintenance at 7:00 AM Eastern. While the folks at CCP were able to get the forums back online and working without incident, they opted to leave the API offline today while they're trying to figure out what happened. Better safe than sorry, we think.For those of you who are occasional EVE Online players (are there really such beasts?) you'll notice the API shutdown in terms of changes not tracking properly in EVEmon, Capsuleer, or any other external programs that make calls to the API to pull your character information. The hope is that full functionality will be restored after tomorrow morning's regularly scheduled daily downtime. If not, might we suggest breaking out some chocolate covered espresso beans for the server hamsters?
EVE Evolved: Top five EVE Online apps
Back in 2004, a friend introduced me to a relatively new space MMO called EVE Online, where the markets were run by the players and there were undiscovered frontiers to chart. A short time after, I became obsessed with pre-calculating everything in the game. I thought that if the game server can calculate everything we do, I must be able to replicate the process and come up with some interesting results. I wasn't alone, many other pilots had previously created simple spreadsheets and web-databases of EVE's items. Rather than the game's developers hoarding the information required for such an undertaking, they took an unusual stance and released large portions of their main database for player-study. Websites began popping up listing information from the data dumps and it wasn't long before the first pioneering apps came about in the form of handy spreadsheets and interactive web-pages, my own fairly popular tanking spreadsheet among them. In this article, I look at how player-developed apps came about in EVE and give details on my top five EVE apps. Once you've tried these programs, you won't know how you lived without them.
EVE skill training tracker for the iPhone
Previously, I mentioned Characters here on TUAW as one of my favorite iPhone apps, and here's another good iPhone app that will assist you with playing a great MMO. EVE Tracker is available in the App Store right now for free, and will let you track your EVE Online skill training (which can happen even while you're away from the game) from anywhere an iPhone can get online.Just punch in your API account key, and just like EVEMon (a great EVE character tracker which isn't yet available for Mac -- hint hint EVEMon devs), you'll be able to see what your character is learning, where you're at in the skill trees, and so on. Also like EVEMon, you can't actually play the game from the app, but if you're away from the client and need to know just when that cruiser training will be done, it'll do ya.It's too bad we haven't seen more official clients for the iPhone -- Blizzard and CCP both have been rumored to be working on mobile clients for at least parts of their games, but the App Store has only seen unofficial software for now. Someday, we hope MMO players will be able to play the AH or check their in-game mail from the iPhone, but for now, stuff like EVE Tracker is what we've got.[via Massively]
The 10 Commandments of EVE
EVE Online tends to appeal to MMO players who like the depth and complexity of a sci-fi game where players have the freedom to act as they wish in a vast galaxy. But that freedom comes with a price; EVE can be a harsh setting, particularly for newer players trying to get a handle on the game. For the newer player who's recently completed the tutorial, EVE largely remains a mystery... one which only reading, learning from other players, and just 'going for it' can solve. Still, it's always good when someone passes on advice to newer players as many of us learned our lessons the hard way. To that end, we bring you The 10 Commandments of EVE. Truth be told, there are a lot more than ten essential things to know about the game, but this is a good start. Feel free to add your own "commandments" or lessons learned in the comments below. Behold The 10 Commandments of EVE >> %Gallery-30634%
Wayfaring through New Eden with EveMap
EVE Online has an active community of 3rd party developers who release free tools for the benefit of other players. While tools like EVEmon, used to plan skill training, and EVE Fitting Tool, used to experiment with ship fittings, are widely used by players, there are a number of other great programs out there that have gotten less attention. One of those out-of-game tools is EveMap, created by Paul van Santen -- otherwise known as "AcriQuo." The galaxy of New Eden has over 5000 solar systems, and plotting safe routes or simply some optimal wayfaring can be a bit involved. When in-game, you can pull up an interactive map to help navigate, but it takes up the entire client window while active. Some players prefer to view their maps off-screen, and there are some 2D options available to help in this regard, but until recently, going 2D was the only option players had. That's all changed with EveMap, which is a fully-functional 3D map of the EVE universe, with myriad display options and filters. The beauty of the program is that it literally displays all of EVE's systems without being confined to the client. The system requirements to run it are minimal: Java Runtime Environment version 1.5 or higher, and an OpenGL-capable graphics card. EveMap has been well-received on the official EVE Online forums. If having another way to navigate in EVE sounds good to you, why not fire up EveMap and see how useful it can be?
EVE Online API improvements to track the Empyrean Age
EVEMon, EVE Fitting Tool, and other essential programs that benefit from the EVE API platform were offline yesterday while EVE Online's Tranquility server transited over to the new Empyrean Age 1.0.1 build. With more pilots than ever participating in Empyrean Age's factional warfare, CCP has also enhanced the EVE API so players have more functionality to help track and report on the state of the war.The factional warfare data is only calculated on the Tranquility server once a day during downtime, but will cache every hour to make sure that new data is available in the API. Official API documentation isn't included for the new stat-tracking improvements but the regular documentation is online. CCP is also planning long term development and support for the API including a test server with reduced cache times. The EVE Online developers have given players quite the toolbox to work with, and some tools are already benefiting from these changes like EVEAI.Live. The full list of API improvements and changes are listed after the click through below.
Have Clone, Will Travel: 3 Essential Tools for Capsuleers
With Empyrean Age finally released, I wanted to give it a try to get this old Carebear in some pew pew action. Since my main character, Treenara Mazouk, was part of an industrial corporation that wanted to remain neutral throughout this war time, I decided to create an alternate character (Alt) to test out Factional Warfare.What I didn't know, and didn't expect, was being humbled by the whole experience. You see, I've been immersed in EVE Online for almost four years now, and playing a new character reminded me how much work new players have to go through to get ahead. Talk about a major flashback!Despite my experience and knowledge of the game, I still felt very limited by my new characters (lack of) abilities, assets and skills. It reminded me of my early days in New Eden, and how little I knew of what to do, where to go or who to ask. Through it all, I've gained a respect for the brave new players who start off in New Eden.I felt I needed to do something about this. Something more then the initial list I had made a few months back. The following is a list of 3 basic tools that I feel every new capsuleer should have in order to survive the harsh landscape of the EVE universe. So strap yourselves in, buckle-up and start taking notes.
EVE Online Skill Monitor widget monitors your skills
We've posted before about EVEMon, a program that you absolutely must use if you're playing EVE Online, but here's another cool dohickey for tracking your EVE character out-of-game. Corp Teacher on the forums posts about the EVE Yahoo! Widget, a slick little widget that shows all the important stats for your character, including where your skill training is at, and how long you've got left. It doesn't have nearly as much functionality as EVEMon, obviously, but if you want to watch your SP rise at work where applications aren't allowed, but widgets are, it's perfect.And though it used to ask for your name and password (a security risk if there ever was one), it now works through EVE's API key program, so you don't have to worry about giving an untrusted program all your personal info. According to the changelog, it hasn't been updated too recently, but if you're looking for a low-footprint way to track your SP, and figure out whether Tranquility is up or down (so you can pine for the vastness of space while trapped in your tiny cubicle at work), here it is.
EVEMon was down with API update, is now back up and working
The good news on this one is that there is no news: EVEMon, the out-of-game app that is a must-have for EVE players, wasn't working for most people after the Trinity patch this week, but a series of bug reports over on the developer website (EVEMon is open sourced) confirms that the problem was just that CCP had taken down the API for testing. By now, EVEMon should be back up and running, ready to help you plan those skill changes out.And in other EVEMon news, the New Features page over on the developer site is a fun read, too, if you haven't seen it in a while. Very cool to see all the new features planned for the next release: Battleclinic loadouts, a new plan printing feature, and updates to the Ship and Item browser. EVEMon is already a terrific app (definitely the best MMO-related out-of-game app I've ever seen), and it's great to see the devs are hard at work making it better.
