Devblog: Preparing For The Future – Retirement Of Captain’s Quarters & Twitch Integration

EVE Information Portal Dev Blogs
1031

For about the last year and a half, I’ve been working on Eve’s 3D character systems. A substantial percentage of my time (though not the majority) is spent finding and fixing years-old bugs.

There have not been a lot of obvious changes or improvements over this time because much of what I’ve been doing is reimplementing or updating existing systems to unblock other technical improvements to the client (like enabling a potential future 64-bit client) or improve our internal asset authoring processes. However, we’re now in a much better position to consider new character-based features than we were.

A few long-standing bugs have been very tricky to identify and fix because they are very sensitive to accidents of timing (race conditions, to fellow software developers) and occur very infrequently and without obvious reproduction steps. But, I’m still able to take some steps to lessen the impact of and reduce the frequency of some of these issues, so they should be occurring less than perhaps they used to.

Please keep reporting bugs, even old ones. If you experience a crash, we collect some telemetry ourselves, but it’s still very valuable to get a bug report, submitted from in-game, as soon as possible afterward.

Finally, I’ll note that since I’ve been working on these systems, we have had a substantial reduction in the number of Eve crashes in character systems, as reported by our crash telemetry. So, bugs are getting fixed and the character creator is getting better. But, as with any very complex system, it’s always an ongoing struggle.

At least as to the topic of this thread, we do have a clear vision for Eve, and it does not currently involve previous concepts of avatar gameplay as represented by Captain’s Quarters. When I refer to the possibility of new features to make better use of 3D character avatars in the game, that’s not what I’m suggesting.

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1032

Thanks for clearing these points, CCP Darwin.

A lot of people want the old stuff back, but I do agree that a new approach is needed.

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1033

Ah, okay. This is the stuff that you can’t see from the outside and CCP has been pretty tight-lipped about anything avatar related since 2012. I just lost faith a long time ago that anything was done on that part of the game. But thank you for your hard work. My rants aren’t aimed at you or any singular dev, ever.

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1034

Where is it new tho? :thinking:

I see that CCP Darwin wrote on reddit about the stuff that makes everything take so long.

cpu939
3 points ·
1 day ago
what is the bottlenerck then?

ccp_darwin
CCP Games
18 points ·
1 day ago
Designing and implementing the concept, role, and gameplay features. Anticipating its impact on existing gameplay, understanding what we hope to accomplish with it and what it should enable players to do, and verifying, as best we can, that those goals will be met with the design.

Its like these visions, even when clear initially in their general direction, doesnt really look easy to implement and are starting to look blurry every day they are worked on in detail. I suspect there is too much people with different opinions there, something like this forum.

Or maybe there is not much of oppinions and ideas about how to fill knowledge gaps on all those steps…

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1035

I know what I want to see, for example in planetary interaction:
https://forums.eveonline.com/uploads/short-url/xWv0QhOMs7Iip4uIJSE0ENFp5Fz.jpg

But here only model of a structure is made by CCP. There is so much potential in the game visuals! It could have huge impact on the player just by showing the world out to him/her.

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1036

Totally understood, and thanks for the kind words! Just wanted to correct the impression that these features aren’t being maintained.

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1037

I hope we can hope for a better Linux / UNIX support going forward. It may come as a shock to some of you but the hardware costs the same for any operating system.

Another rather shocking news for some of you may be that the developers and contributors for Linux / UNIX are not sleeping and continue to deprecate 32bit support going forward.

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1038

Look, if you’re not intending actual avatar gameplay, stop wasting resources on garbage Barbie Dress-Up and just go back to 2d facial portraits and be done with it.

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1039

The majority of the work creating the character system is done, maintenance is not nearly the drain on resources that new programming requires.

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1040

If Eve would be a mobile app I would agree, but for a 2018 pc video game the lack of even basic Avatar gameplay is a shame.

With Eve as a scifi game, it always will be a niche product with a limited player base and therefore limited fundings. It’s hard, maybe even impossible to make big jumps with that, like player build jump gates for example.

But space Barbies? Whoa that’s where the money’s at!

Nearly two decades ago, an other game developer hit the jackpot with one of the most successful game series ever. That developer was Maxis, best known back then for Sim City and a few other way less successful titles. Maxis’ jackpot was The Sims.

Something that probably wasn’t much anticipated by many hardcore city builders too. - Who wants to play a person who is doing the same stuff like in real life? Working, eating, cleaning, spending way too much time on toilet. Just think about all the good stuff they could have added to Sim City instead. A monorail already in Sim City 2000?! That would have increased the sales by … nothing.

The Sims like Avatars in Eve have something in common, they have faces. They are characters people can relate to. Emotions and psychology are the keywords here. Something I’m pretty sure about is one reason why we still have 3D Avatars in game, beside their paid clothings.

Can Eve work without Avatars? Yes, like Excel. But people use Excel because they have to and not for fun reasons. As soon as they can they put it aside and spend their time with something else.

So if you think there is no place for Avatars and Avatar gameplay in Eve, you couldn’t be more wrong. The only question is, what kind and types of gameplay it has to be.

Avatar gameplay isn’t the end of Eve, it’s the key to the doors to more popularity, more players, more money, more possibilities to improve this game for us all.

9 Likes
1041

Try reading what I actually said again. “Look, if you’re not intending actual avatar gameplay,”.

I did not say avatars were a waste. But what is the point of a damn window with a Barbie in it? That is “fun” to you? That is worth the dev resources to you just so they can sell some rather crappy outfits that come in a dozen reskins each? Sorry, no. Walking in stations, and any sort of space legs gameplay in EvE, is gone. CCP has neither the talent nor the inclination to make avatars a real contribution to EvE, so just stick to 2d head portraits and be done. There will be other space games that have actual avatar gameplay, and probably better than what CCP would have ever come up with. Until then, play EvE within CCP’s developmental limitations.

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1042

Or not play as more and more people are choosing.

After 11 solid years in this game I’m tired of the same old crap. I’m about to just give up and move on.

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1043

Well that’s definitely sad news indeed, and a good way to alienate more of your existing paying customers as well as discourage possible future customers.

Hopefully these new features will incorporate client-side control over the game avatar allowing real-time interaction with the game server, not just some giant hologram of a character being projected outside of a station.

Hopefully those features will also include the apparel items currently in the game and allow the player some aspect of visually portraying the character’s attire.

It doesn’t have to be an environment with multiple avatar interaction either, just needs to provide client control on game avatar actions, like I had previously posted here…

If not then whatever you implement will probably lack in gaining client usage, much like Resource Wars, FOB’s, Mining Fleet’s, etc.

2 Likes
1044

Could you explain how resource wars etc have the slightest thing to do with avatars.
if you want to point at rw the only issue with it was rewards vastly out of scale with risk and time investment. As gameplay rw was fine.

1045

Because I was using it as an example of content that the Dev’s spent time and resources on to create that isn’t attracting a lot of client usage.

Regardless if the client usage issue is just about sub-par rewards or overpowered AI game mechanics, the point is the content is not attracting client usage, similar to the Captains Quarters.

1046

You have 2D portraits already everywhere, but they have to be generated from 3D objects. That was ALWAYS the case in EVE. If you mean to replace it entirely with 2D images, it would mean only few standard images. Where is personalization and customization in it? Such poor visual impact was unacceptable even for CCP when they created the game.

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1047

It used to be you customized a character from the shoulders up and took a pic. If you’re not going to be walking around in the game, that’s all you need. Bodies and clothing are superfluous fluff sucking up resources for absolutely no valid gameplay enhancement value.

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1048

If you want no legs, I have something for you.

1049

No, it isn’t fun. That’s the point why CCP has to increase their efforts in making it interesting.

Compared to the whole workforce of CCP, the resources spend for the current window are utterly small. Removing that too and assign it to other projects, won’t provide any noticably improvement. Quite the contrary. It only means another feature less in this game, a reason more to leave or not to join at all.

Well I’m still waiting for the huge improvements CCP promised by removing the captains quarteer.

There is a reason why car sellers so often are using young beautiful women beside their products. Never underestimate the power of a friendly face and the human nature to get attached to it.

Eve as a game where you, the player, can walk around your ship, look at its killmarks, the scratches from its last fight, touch it, go inside, jump in your capsule and fly away will attract more people than without. That creates emotions, bonding people to their ships, to this game.

That and a lot more is what I, a paying customer, want from CCP. That’s content worth checking out instead of the xth redesign of a ship, which you won’t notice in space anyway, or another useless ui change.

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1050

Hopped back into the game after 5 years absence… no more captain’s quarter?!
Back in 2013 when Dust 514 got released there was even a discussion wether cafeterias/lounges or something of that sort could be implemented into the stations or that we could enter a friend’s quarter - so that players could see each other’s chars while chatting. But no… taking it away and introducing “skill injection”… I nearly fell off my chair during this new tedious tutorial… what a choice, indeed. EVE went f2p but p2w. Why am I not surprised?
Bye bye. (Waiting for SC)

5 Likes