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EVE Tyrannis expansion trailer confirms May 18th release date
Just under a month ago, CCP announced Tyrannis, the next big expansion for EVE Online. Tyrannis centres around the planets of New Eden, which have so far played a purely visual role in the game. The expansion promises to open these planets for exploration and industrialisation, with players scanning for juicy mineral deposits and setting up vast, sprawling industrial networks. An early prototype of the planetary interaction feature has even been put on the EVE test server and players can help develop the expansion by giving their feedback. CCP typically release two expansions per year and Tyrannis has been roughly slated for this year's summer expansion. Although the summer expansion can sometimes come as late as July, CCP have just released a new teaser trailer confirming a May 18th release date. This gives the developers just over 8 weeks to get the expansion into shape. This should give the team more time to work on the next expansion, which most are hoping will be Incarna. Skip past the cut to watch the official Tyrannis teaser.
Help develop Tyrannis on the EVE test server
EVE Online's Tyrannis expansion is due for release in a few months and players are looking forward to the new planetary interaction mechanic. Although the core ideas for the expansion have been settled on, many of the game mechanics have not been fully fleshed out. In an effort to get players involved, CCP have begun releasing early prototypes of the planetary interaction feature on the EVE test server Singularity. It's important to keep in mind that nothing on the test server is final. As a studio that makes heavy use of agile development strategies, CCP will use feedback from players on the test server to incrementally refine the design. Dierdra Val, director of EVE University, has been on the test server to bring the EVE community details of CCP's current designs. They've released a video showing the process of installing structures on a planet and setting up factory links. So far, planetary interaction seems very similar to the moon mining and reacting industry but it's definitely a much more active process. While moon mining operations produce an endless supply of moon minerals at a steady rate, planet-based material deposits will vary in total size and yield per cycle. The materials produced on planets are also different than those produced by existing industrial operations. Skip past the cut to watch EVE University's test-server planetary interaction tutorial or set up a test server client and try it out for yourself.
GDC10: Torfi Frans Olafsson gives details on Tyrannis, Incarna and more
For the last few weeks, EVE Online players have been getting excited about the up-coming Tyrannis expansion with its Planetary Interaction feature. We received our first taste of what Tyrannis will hold last month when the expansion was announced and since then we've speculated on how its planetary interaction feature might work. Although CCP haven't answered our interview questions on Tyrannis yet, we caught up with EVE Senior Producer Torfi Frans Olafsson at GDC 2010 to get the inside scoop. Torfi was keen to point out that a lot of what CCP are doing in Tyrannis is laying the foundation for future updates and expansions. He calls Tyrannis "a stepping stone toward something even bigger." In addition to providing some inside info on the upcoming Tyrannis and Incarna expansions, Torfi revealed that there are more people working on EVE today than ever before. In contrast to MMOs that cut down their development team sizes once the game is out, CCP's ranks have been increasing at a huge rate in recent years. The ever-increasing revenue generated by EVE subscribers allows them to fund a large development team dedicated to making the game better for EVE players. "We've never had as many subscribers as we have today", says Torfi, "330,000 subscribers, like actual paying subscribers, not counting trials." It's thanks to all those subscribers that CCP are beginning to realise dreams they were never able to achieve when the game was less popular. Skip past the cut to see what Torfi Frans Olafsson had to say about Tyrannis, Incarna and more.
EVE Online's Scorpion to receive graphical overhaul in Tyrannis
When high-quality ship models were introduced with EVE Online's Trinity expansion, not every ship reacted to the graphical upgrade in the same way. Some ships, like the Megathron and Crusader, saw dramatic visual improvements with panel details and sharp lines. For the Scorpion, however, the upgraded detail exposed design flaws in the original model that spoiled its look for some players. The Scorpion has long been held as one of the ugliest ships in EVE, sporting the signature Caldari asymmetric design and odd metallic pylons. For a battleship, it's always looked small, light and flimsy; a look that perhaps suited its original role as a long-range electronic warfare ship. With it being rebalanced for a close-range "brawler" role last year, the old model really started to look out of place on the field of battle. In a new devblog, the CCP art department have released screenshots of a new Scorpion model they're planning to roll out with the Tyrannis expansion this summer. Using design themes from their work on Tech 3 strategic cruisers, the team have turned one of EVE's all-time ugliest ships into a masterpiece. Not only does the ship now look more like its namesake, it has a much more solid and aggressive look to it that better suits its role in PvP. This may mark the start of a change for other Caldari ships, many of which sport elements of the same bizarre asymmetric design that spoiled the Scorpion's appearance. As an added bonus, CCP's graphics programmers have created a new texture packing system that vastly improves the visual quality of small details on ships. If you're interested in the new Scorpion model or the finer details of how CCP texture the ships in EVE Online, the latest devblog is definitely worth a look.
EVE Evolved: What could planetary interaction be like?
On Friday, CCP released the first details of EVE Online's next expansion, Tyrannis. The expansion's main feature is a form of planetary exploration and control but details on what exactly that will entail have been limited. Like walking in stations, planetary interaction has always been a major missing component from EVE. It's been on the drawing board from day one but the technology and resources were never really there to do the feature justice. A prototype planetary flight system was even demonstrated at EVE Fanfest 2004 and while it impressed Fanfest attendees, the feature never materialised. The announcement that Tyrannis will include a form of planetary exploration has a lot of players excited but is their enthusiasm justified? The information we have so far on the expansion is limited to a single devblog, which provides only a general mission statement for the expansion. In the absence of further information, I find myself wondering what the planetary interaction in Tyrannis might be like. In this speculative opinion piece, I look over the information we know for sure about Tyrannis and go on to speculate on what it might be like.
EVE Online's next expansion revealed: Explore planets in Tyrannis
It's been known since the last EVE Online Fanfest that the next expansion would be based around planetary interaction, but details on exactly what that interaction would constitute have been thin on the ground. In a bumper devblog today, EVE's Senior Producer Torfi Frans Olafsson gave a first glimpse of what we can expect this summer. Following the graphical overhaul planets received in the Dominion expansion, the next expansion is set to place them in a functional role. The expansion, aptly named "Tyrannis" after the Latin for "Tyrants," will put the fates of New Eden's populated planets in the hands of pod-pilots. Players will be able to survey planets and build planet-bound industrial infrastructures to tap into previously unobtainable resources such as minerals. Planets with harsh environments such as gas giants and plasma planets will be harder to manage infrastructure on but the rewards could be well worth the effort.
