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Old EVE portraits to be backed up -- log in today for high-res captures
EVE Online's Incursion expansion's final phase is upon us, bringing with it the cataclysmic destruction of several hundred thousand disembodied heads. Those passport-photo-style mugshots next to characters' names on the forum and in-game chat channels will all be removed in tomorrow's patch. In their place, we'll create new photos using an advanced new full-body avatar generator. We've seen this new character generator in action, and it can produce some really impressive results that far outshine the old avatars we currently use. More importantly, the new avatars will be full-bodied characters for use with the upcoming Incarna expansion, rather than just small passport photos. Players have expressed concerns about losing those EVE character portraits they've have had since as far back as 2003. In response, CCP has announced that all of the current portraits used on the forum are being backed up to an alternative web-server which will be kept open to public access. However, these portraits are limited to a width and height of 256 pixels. If you'd like to capture your current character in full high-resolution glory, you'll need to log in tonight to capture it. In a new last-minute devblog, the hilariously-named CCP Purple Tentacle has just posted details of the portrait backup service and instructions on exactly how to capture your character in high definition. If you're caught away from your PC tonight and unable to capture your portrait, we'd like to help out. Please leave a comment with your character name and I'll be available for the next few hours to log in to capture the image for you. I'll then email the image to the email address you use on Massively. If you'd like it sent to a different email address, please include it in your comment or mail your request to brendan@massively.com and I'll send it to that address. When I'm no longer available to process requests, I will update this post. UPDATE: The deadline has now passed and old portraits an no longer be catured in high resolution. Lower resolution portraits of up to 256 width and height can be downloaded using CCP's portrait backup service, which is now live.
EVE Online dropping support for old CPUs
An inevitable consequence of EVE Online's periodic graphical upgrades is that support for old graphics cards and computers has to be dropped. The last major change to EVE's system requirements removed support for graphics cards lower than a Shader Model 2.0 standard. A very small number of players were affected by the change, and the dropping of support for old shader models gave CCP the freedom they needed to keep EVE's graphics above par. When tomorrow's Incursion 1.10 patch goes live, EVE's minimum system requirements will see another increase as support for Pentium 3, Athlon XP and older CPUs will be withdrawn. The decision to withdraw support for these old processors comes as a result of internal testing on the expansion codebase. Some of the new third-party libraries being used in the patch were found to be causing a crash when starting the client on systems with CPUs that that don't support the SSE2 instruction set. The likely culprit is the new APEX PhysX library set, a crucial part of the Incarna clothing simulation process, which was recently updated to an SSE2 standard. CCP estimates that this change will affect less than 0.3% of users, meaning just over 1,000 players will need to upgrade their systems if they wish to continue playing. Unsupported processors date back to the summer of 2003 or earlier, making most of the affected systems older than EVE itself. With the revelation of just how old those processors are, the response from players has been generally neutral. CCP Zulu apologised on the forum for the extremely short notice of the announcement on tomorrow's change, stating that he was bringing players this news as it happened.
EVE's incursions go live on Tuesday, Sansha events to follow
The first two stages of EVE Online's new Incursion expansion were released in November and December, bringing us some much-needed UI fixes and removing learning skills from the game. Citing a commitment to polishing the expansion's main features before publishing them, CCP delayed most of the expansion until a third major patch. Scheduled for release on Tuesday, January 18th, the third phase of Incursion will include the extremely impressive new Incarna character builder and periodic Sansha invasions into constellations across EVE. In a new devblog, CCP has revealed that the Sansha incursions will be starting with some well-deserved build-up events. In previous expansions, new content was simply present as soon as players logged in, with little more than a few lines in the patch notes and a devblog or two to describe the new additions. The fact that the incursions are being heralded in with live events is sure to be popular with players, and it may represent a change in the way CCP delivers new major features. When the final Incursion patch goes live on Tuesday, players may begin to see some odd occurrences that seem very out of place. Events will build up to Sansha's Nation inevitably beginning its crusade against all the systems of New Eden and the incursions going into full swing.
EVE Online to get shiny new forums as part of Incursion
Despite calls for some new features, the EVE Online forums haven't changed much at all since their release in 2003. A search feature was added several years ago, but it failed to produce reliable results. As usually happens when there's something missing in EVE, the community filled in the gaps with Chribba's popular EVE-Search forum archive and search tool. In a new devblog, CCP Alice has revealed that the forum will finally get a face-lift during the Incursion expansion. Players will be happy to know that a useful advanced search feature is definitely on the way, with some handy innovations like the ability to subscribe to an RSS feed of your search results. In addition to displaying the shiny new avatars we'll create with the new character generator, the new forum has a quick-reply feature, a "like" button next to every post and a share option to link the post on various social networking tools. Each thread will also post to an RSS feed, so you can subscribe to interesting threads and receive replies on any device with an RSS reader. Players will also have a favourite thread list, which could be handy for saving a list of the various guides and information posts players find themselves looking up on a regular basis. The new forum will be integrated with EVE Gate, and the old forum will be left as an archive for posterity. The exact release schedule of the new forum isn't yet decided, but as it's part of Incursion, it will have to be released before the summer.
EVE Online player creativity -- Ship fitting edition
Two months ago, CCP started a new series of monthly EVE Online devblogs showcasing the game community's creative efforts. The EVE community is known for its artwork and incredible fan-made videos, but through CCP Fallout's monthly blog series, we've come to see some of the community's other creative endeavours. In previous editions, Fallout looked at in-game news and politics website EVE News 24, question and answer site Skill Training Complete, an impressive minecraft video of a scale Gallente shuttle, and a collection of EVE podcasts. In the latest issue, CCP looks at some of the latest developments that have drawn attention during December. There's an impressive video showing off the new EVE character creator that will be going live with Incursion 1.1 later this month. The video shows off both male and female avatars. Also covered is the Python Fitting Assistant, a cross-platform offline ship fitting tool similar to the very popular EVE Fitting Tool. The highlight of this month's blog has to be LOLFITS, a website where players can post some of the monumentally bad ship setups they've seen players use. If you think your ship setups are poor, I guarantee they're spectacular compared to some of the hilarious setups on LOLFITS.
Last chance to capture your EVE character's portrait
It's been a long time coming, but a major part of EVE Online's highly anticipated Incarna expansion is now just around the corner. Later this month with the implementation of the Incursion 1.1 patch, the existing character creator will be replaced by a shiny new Incarna character creator. We'll finally get to design an entire avatar, complete with arms and legs, rather than being limited to just a head and a pair of shoulders. Upon logging in after the Incursion 1.1 deployment, players will be prompted to re-create their characters using the new character renderer. In just a few short weeks, those characters we've grown accustomed to over the years will be gone. Now is your last chance to capture your character's portrait. If you'd like to preserve a portrait for posterity, be sure to log in and capture it in high detail before January 18th. In a new devblog, CCP Lopi explains some of the challenges associated with the new character creator. When we look at a character's info in-game or click on his name in a chat channel, the EVE client currently downloads information on the character from the EVE server and then renders a small passport photo. With the added complexity and higher-resolution textures used in the new character creator, rendering portraits on-the-fly in this manner would take an unacceptably long time. To get around this issue, portrait rendering will be done ahead of time, and the mug-shots we see in-game will be stored on a central webserver. The game will then retrieve the user's image directly from the webserver instead of rendering it. As a result, we should no longer get the short burst of lag associated with rendering a character's portrait, and server load should be decreased.
Improvements on the way for EVE Online's contract system
There are many professions open to players in EVE Online, but it's the trading that often draws players to the game. Due to the number of players buying and selling on EVE's single server and the fact that items are destroyed on death, a savvy player can find countless opportunities for profit. To avoid overloading the market window with thousands of items most players will never need to buy, CCP limits rare and unusual items to being sold on the contract system. Items can be listed as auctions or direct sales, and players can search for items by name. The system has been working amicably for years, but recently several back-end performance issues were identified in it. As part of CCP's on-going war on lag, major back-end optimisations were made. Due to this restructuring of how contracts are handled on the EVE server, several new features have suddenly become possible. In a new devblog, CCP Atlas explains the back-end improvements and what they mean for the average player. Several features players have asked for over the years are on the way, such as the ability to put damaged items into contracts. Ammo in the guns of a ship being contracted will now be moved into the ship's cargo hold rather than the item hangar, and ship insurance will no longer be voided when a ship is contracted. A whole host of improvements are also on the way to make the terms of courier missions more obvious. Players will be informed of the dangers of a contract before they accept it, including dangerous systems en-route and whether the destination station might refuse them docking rights. The upgrades are already live on the EVE test server and will be hitting the live server as part of the Incursion expansion's third phase in January.
CCP releases special EVE Online chronicle
The backstory in CCP's EVE Online often gets overlooked in favor of the pew pew, the internet spaceships, and the dastardly deeds of the title's infamous meta-gaming crowd. CCP has nonetheless continued to pump out a number of lore chronicles over the years, with the newest focusing on the brewing conflict between the Sansha and EVE's demi-god capsuleers. The latest installment, Uplifted, is penned by CCP Headfirst and is a special addition to CCP's usual chronicle publishing schedule. If you're looking for some sci-fi MMO reading material to round out your holidays, check out the full list of New Eden chronicles at the game's official website, and don't forget to leave your thoughts in the Uplifted comment thread.
UI upgrades on the way for EVE Online
EVE Online's complex user interface has been a sticking point for many new and prospective players over the years. Although the interface has been drastically improved in the seven years that EVE has been in operation, it lacks much of the customisability players expect from a modern MMO. Players have been asking for UI overhauls and customisation options for some time, and it seems CCP is finally poised to deliver on those requests. In a new devblog, CCP Optimal has explained some preliminary UI overhauls coming with the Incursion expansion's final release on January 18th. As expansions tend to add new features that must be accessed via the neocom, that little bar on the left of the screen has become cluttered. CCP aims to replace it with a new neocom bar along the bottom, moving many of the existing buttons to a familiar start-menu type system. The new neocom bar is customisable both in size and in what buttons are on it. Functions a player uses frequently can be dragged from the EVE menu onto the neocom bar, while underused options can be removed. Rather than gathering feedback on the new UI exclusively on the test server, CCP will debut it as a beta feature on the live server on January 18th. CCP hopes to use this new approach to gather more accurate feedback on several upcoming features before they're released.
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!
The Guild Counsel: Expansion pains
With winter comes a wave of MMO expansions, like EVE Online's Incursion, EverQuest II's upcoming Destiny of Velious, and, of course, Blizzard's Cataclysm. It's always exciting to have new content, but for guilds, a new expansion can lead to growing pains, competition, and major drama. The cohesive team atmosphere you worked so hard to build can quickly dissolve the moment servers come up, as members race towards the new level cap, new skills, and shiniest toys. How can guilds wade through the chaos of an expansion and keep an even keel? Read on for a few tips on how to avoid having a cataclysm within your own guild.
Second part of EVE Christmas present revealed -- the Echelon
Two weeks ago, we learned of CCP's plans to remove learning skills from EVE Online. Learning skills have always been a problem for new players, and their removal has been an issue supported by players for years. As the first part of a two-part Christmas present to players, CCP announced that the skills would be removed with the Incursion expansion's December release. Speculation on what the second part of that present could be has run wild on the forums, with many older players even wishing lost features would make a come-back. CCP has just announced that the second part of EVE's Christmas patch will be a new ship called the Echelon. As with previous presents, Every subscribed player will have one of these ships delivered to them through the item-redeeming system. The Echelon is a unique CONCORD design aimed at fighting the oncoming Sansha menace. The ship boasts impressive hacking capabilities, with a bonus to the operation of specialised Sansha codebreakers. A limited-edition Sansha codebreaker will also be included with the ship. Until now, hacking has been restricted solely to a mini-profession for the gathering of invention materials and completion of static COSMOS missions. This announcement is the first hint we've seen that the Sansha incursions we're looking forward to in January will include an element of hacking.
EVE Online player creativity -- Gallente shuttle in Minecraft and more
Over the years, the EVE Online community has produced some stunning creative works. From epic videos that have been years in the making to fictional stories or artwork, EVE has inspired some fantastic creative efforts. Last month, CCP posted the first of a new monthly series of devblogs highlighting the creative efforts of people in the EVE community. In last month's installment, CCP Fallout looked at two of her favourite fan-run websites -- EVE News 24 and Skill Training Complete. In this month's second part of the series, Fallout is joined by CCP Zymurgist to discuss some of the awesome things players have done throughout November. The report kicks off with some videos of the awesome new Incursion character generator in action, produced by players on the EVE test server. Also in the news is a list of player-run podcasts called the EVE Pod Pack, maintained in a similar manner to CrazyKinux's EVE Blog Pack. The highlight of this month's piece, however, is undeniably the video of a full scale Gallente shuttle faithfully reproduced in Minecraft.
EVE Online: Incursion boosts into stage one
"Engines?" "Go Flight!" "Life support?" "Go Flight!" "Brutal politics and savage mining in the dark, hard vacuum of space?" "Go Flight!" And thus, with a proud tear in the corner of our eye, we salute the liftoff of the first stage of EVE Online's latest expansion, Incursion. Although the expansion has been fractured into three parts to ensure quality -- with the second coming in mid-December and the third in January -- Incursion 1.0.0 is worth checking out for a brand-new salvage ship, the Noctis, and many game improvements and fixes. This patch is also notable for the increased amount of graphics options, including windowed mode, the ability to split the game between two monitors, and the introduction of anti-aliasing. You can read the patch notes at EVE Online, visit the Incursion website, and prepare yourself for the game-changer that is this expansion with the help of our very own Brendan Drain!
New EVE chronicle tells a tale of revenge against the Sansha invasions
EVE Online is currently buzzing with news of the Incursion expansion, which is being released in three parts over the coming months. The final release in January will be bringing the expansion's key feature, constellation-wide incursions by Sansha pirate forces. The incursions themselves began as a live event several months ago. After discovering the secrets of controlling the formation of wormholes, Sansha forces began using them to invade populated systems across EVE and kidnap citizens of the four empires. The abducted people were brought back to Sansha territory to be converted into mind-controlled slaves of the nation. In a new EVE chronicle, CCP loremaster Abraxas tells the tale of one man's dealings with the pending Sansha invasion. It's a chilling story of a Sansha scout sent to talk to the leader of an asteroid colony and one man's dark revenge against the Nation. For those of you who have been following the Sansha lore with interest, this latest Chronicle "The Plague Years" will give an interesting glance into the inner workings of the Nation.
CCP releases EVE Online Incursion patch notes
EVE Online's Incursion expansion has been several months in the making. With the official release date drawing near (Tuesday, November 30th to be exact), CCP has graced us with the patch notes for the meaty update. While pod pilots everywhere are showering the Icelandic dev team with huzzahs due to the decision to abolish learning skills, New Eden is also undergoing some additional significant changes this week. The patch notes are broken into three sections (features, changes, and fixes), and are worth a read due to info about weapon and ammunition tweaks, market changes (specifically the removal of loan contracts), and a new salvage-specific ship called the Noctis. Finally, (and yes we do mean finally) CCP has added the ability to resize the game client in windowed mode. Check out all the details on the official EVE website.
EVE Online santa patch to get rid of learning skills
The noise in EVE Online this morning is something to behold, for it seems that CCP Games has let slip the details of its planned December "Santa" patch early -- and as Keanu would say -- whoa. According to the newest Devblog by CCP Greyscale, starting today, all NPC sales of Learning skillbooks have been canceled. Player-run sales orders are currently still in the market, however. From here, a second patch will be deployed on December 14th (if all goes well in QA-land, mind) that will officially nuke Learning skills from the map, and give players who have them trained a full refund of all skillpoints they've invested in Learning. At that time players can apply those skillpoints however they'd like until they're all gone, without waiting for them to tick off over time. Another thing to note with the planned December 14th patch, all player-owned Learning skillbooks will additionally go away. More importantly, the ones you have in your hangar, etc. will be reimbursed, whereas the the ones you inject into your head will not. As such, if you were looking at starting an alt within the next couple of weeks, don't waste your time or ISK picking up Learning skills, or be prepared to eat the loss of whatever you paid for the books if you inject them. Finally, another huge change comes with this upcoming patch, in that new capsuleers will no longer be getting the 100% learning speed increase up to their first 1.6 million skillpoints. The reason is that everyone will be receiving 12 new non-remappable base points in each attribute! CCP states that this change will offset the loss of speed bonus by effectively turning the current 2x speed bonus into a 2.5x speed bonus once the 12 new base points are added. Definitely not a bad trade off for starting capsuleers -- and no more sitting around waiting for those learning skills to tick down before you get to the fun skills, either! For all the holiday happiness in one place, pop by the EVE Online site, check out the newest devblog, and marvel at the shiny graphs.
EVE Evolved: Preparing for Incursion
Several months ago, pirate faction Sansha's Nation began invading the populated systems of New Eden in force and abducting colonists from the defenseless planets. Using a frightening new technology, Sansha's forces have been able to open controlled wormholes directly in orbit of their target planets. CONCORD and the local faction navies have been unable to defend against the incursions, leaving the fate of EVE Online's planets solely in the hands of capsuleers. EVE players immediately began to organise intelligence networks and corporations dedicated to detecting and fighting the Sansha threat. In the upcoming Incursion expansion, Sansha's Nation will be stepping up its attacks to full-scale invasions of entire constellations. Having converted the millions of colonists they've abducted to mindless drones of the Nation and even having moved a conquered Jovian space station into their hidden wormhole home, Sansha's forces have never been stronger. When the Incursion expansion's main feature goes live in January of next year, players will find themselves on the front-lines of a war. We'll group up in fleets of 5-10, 10-20 or 20-40 players to tackle the various incursion sites and ultimately destroy each invasion wave's mothership. With the first Incursion release scheduled for this month and less than two months to go until the constellation-wide Sansha attacks begin, now is the perfect time to prepare for the expansion. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at some of the ways you can benefit from the upcoming expansion and what players can do to prepare for the war against Sansha's Nation.
The Daily Grind: Should trailers use only in-game footage?
The purpose of a game trailer is undoubtedly to showcase the game and generate some excitement for it. Many companies opt to release trailers using in-game footage, making a big selling point of their game's graphics. This strategy has been used to successfully promote games from World of Warcraft to TERA. With a trailer containing actual game footage, players can get a good impression of what the game will look like before giving it a try. On the other end of the spectrum, some companies choose to create vivid cinematics to showcase the game's story and get fans excited. These tend to show some key point in the game's lore, which fans of that IP are likely to respond well to. We've seen some pretty epic cinematics for World of Warcraft's Cataclysm expansion, DC Universe Online's in-depth story, Lego Universe's unique gameplay ideas and Star Wars: The Old Republic's epic backstory. With the latest few EVE Online trailers, there has been a strange merging of those two ideas. EVE's trailers were once filmed using only in-game footage, but over the past several expansions, CCP has begun moving into a more cinematic style. The trailers still depict the in-game environment but are rendered in an external scene-composition suite using higher resolution versions of all the models and textures in-game. The latest trailer for EVE's upcoming Incursion expansion certainly looks good and tells the story of what's to come, but is it missing something fundamental by using out-of-game graphics? Where do you stand on this issue? Should game trailers use only in-game footage or do you find well-done cinematics more enticing? And is there a middle ground where the two can meet? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
CCP delaying Incursion to ensure excellence
With the Sansha set to descend on EVE Online en masse, a new character creator that is the precursor to Incarna (when all will be blessed with feet), and a plethora of other goodies large and small, Incursion has been garnering a lot of attention from both active and retired capsuleers. According to a dev blog posted today by EVE's Senior Producer, CCP Zulu, the company has made a tough decision about the release date for its eagerly anticipated expansion. Rather than push it out with potential bugs and issues, CCP is opting to split up Incursion into a three-part deployment. The important part is that by doing so, CCP expects to be able to give each particular chunk of the expansion the time it needs to be "excellent." The first chunk, which will release on November 30th, offers a host of requested and needed tweaks. While CCP isn't willing to confirm the exact list of features at this time, the list of potentials is expansive, including changes to rockets, T2 ammo, 80 new storyline missions, faction ships' addition to the market, and more. From there, the second patch will be released in December and will contain wonders that "only Santa knows." January 2011 is when the company plans to release the third chunk, which should deliver Incursion's new character creation tool to the masses. If you're curious about more details on the reasons for the change in deployment dates as well as a bigger listing of all the things to come, pop on over to the EVE Online site and check out the devblog.
