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EVE - Fanfest Info on Ambulation
Today, MMORPG.com's News Manager Keith Cross lets us in on what was being said at this year's EVE Fan Fest about Ambulation. For those of you who might not be aware, EVE's Ambulation project will see players able to move around outside of their ships for this first time in the game's history.
Back when I was in my teens, some of my favorite games were space combat games such as the Wing Commander series. Of that series I was particularly fond of Privateer, a game set in the Wing Commander universe, but instead of playing a military pilot you are cast in the roll of a space vagabond, going from system to system looking for work as a cargo hauler, a bounty hunter, or a pirate, or whatever else pays the bills. What I
loved about the game was that you could fly around to any system that you pleased. The universe was as open as the gameplay. It was fun. But I’ve always said that the mark of a truly great game is to be able to play a game, and love it, and yet still be able to sit there and come up with a hundred ways to make this game better. When I was playing Privateer I would be in the middle of a particularly hairy dogfight and wish I had some friends on my wing. Or I’d blast a pirate to space dust without breaking a sweat, and wish that there was a real person behind the controls, not just the predictable AI. The point is, back then my ideal of the perfect game was a space fighter game with a big open universe, where I could play in the style of my choosing, and I could play cooperatively or competitively with real people. Some years later, CCP gave us all of that and more when they created EVE.
Like I said earlier, the best games are the ones that you love, but you can still think of a hundred ways to make the game better. One of the other things that I always wanted to be able to do in Privateer was walk around on space stations, which is exactly what CCP intends to allow EVE players to do some time next year. At this year’s EVE Fanfest, Senior Technical Producer Torfi Olafsson gave a presentation on the Ambulation project, also known as “walking around in EVE”.
Whenever ambulation comes up, there are generally two reactions among EVE fans. People either say “that’s awesome” or “who cares, why would you want that?” Luckily, Torfi was on hand to explain why ambulation is cool. First off, your character is not a ship, you’re a human. Some people just can’t relate to a ship, and these people who would have otherwise been good players may have been turned off by EVE. CCP’s hope with ambulation is not just to add a cool feature to the game, but to widen the game’s audience. After all, EVE is a social game, the more the merrier. Or as Torfi put it, “Why hang out mining when you could be hanging out having a beer.” EVE’s roots aren’t just in the Wing Commanders and space flight sims of the past, but also in role-playing games, and ambulation is just anther conduit to new role-playing options.
So you find yourself standing on a space station, what are you going to do? Are you going to stand around doing a silly dance all day or are you going to have some fun? “Well, what is there to do?” you ask. I’m glad you asked. At first, not a lot. There will be player run shops where players can create, buy, and sell clothing and items. There will be bars to hang out in, and corporate offices to meet and plot and scheme in, but more on that later. Torfi explained that EVE grew with the community, the devs patched holes and created new material to keep up with the player base. Much like the way the alliance system came into existence, where players were making there own alliances out of game, so CCP added in-game tools to support alliances; ambulation will provide the basic building blocks and community actions will influence what comes next.
;)
That’s not to say that ambulation won’t come fully loaded with some interesting building blocks. The devs asked themselves, what would a person look like if they spent their whole life in a pod? Would you be a bit heavy from sitting on your butt all day, or would you be thin from not eating properly because you have a tube up your nose. That’s something players can decide for themselves when they buy food on a station. If you eat more, you weigh more. Don’t like your ugly mug? Buy a new one at the player run plastic surgeon. Or maybe you don’t need surgery, maybe you just need to smile more. The basic emotes will all be there, but as Torfi said, “Smiley is not a deep emotion.” That’s why you can set your character’s basic emotional state, which will influence how your avatar expresses other emotes. If you’re a Minmatar in a bad mood and you walk past an Amarr slaver, your frown will be all the deeper.
One potential downside of ambulation is that players will have to recreate their avatars. Still, considering the wealth of options and details that will be available, many will consider this an upside. Characters start with a basic head for their bloodline, and go from there. They use a skeleton system to give players more options with customization. There’s one skeleton used for character creation (the sculpt skeleton), and when you’re done, this translates to the animation skeleton. In the sculpt skeleton the avatar’s skull has 65 different “bones” in its face, which can all be altered until you get your look just right. Once you’ve got your bone structure worked out, you can move on to the surface details, adding things like wrinkles and freckles. But there isn’t just one template for each of these details. In other MMOs, if you want to have wrinkles, you’re stuck with a limited number of skins to put on your face. In ambulation, you choose where the wrinkles go, and with what intensity. You can put a few light wrinkles around the eyes, and then turn the rest of your face into a prune if you like.
Of course if you’re picturing a literal prune for a face, you’re in for a disappointment, this isn’t going to be Second Life. CCP’s goal with ambulation is to aim for a more realistic look, with a style that fit is the EVE universe. Characters will look like people, and they’ll be able to dress in fashions drawn from the various races and cultures within the game. And the clothing looks great. CCP says they’re aiming for high detail, right down to the stitching, but there is a drawback. Because of the high detail, players will only be able to mix and match tops and bottoms, so there’ll be no special boots and gloves. At the character customization presentation, we were told that the reason for this is that too many splits would mean that they would have had to go with a less detail and a more cartoony look. Still, with the level of customization available, more clothing options are really unnecessary, and it is very unlikely that a character will meet their doppelganger.
;)
Unlike the avatars, which players will have to remake themselves, corporate leaders will not have to buy new office space. Corporate offices will be upgraded to the new ambulation offices. The new offices come in a variety of looks and sizes, but share a number of features. There can be private and public areas in the office, with an NPC receptionist that can be programmed to give a recruitment message, or a generic greeting. The receptionist can also be programmed to give specific messages or items to specific individuals, but the standout feature of corporate offices is the tactical map, where corporate high-ups can observe and direct a battle in progress by giving orders and setting waypoints. Of course there need not be a battle going on for leaders to make plans for victory. The tactical map can be used even without a fleet deployed. Torfi said to think of it like a battle plan whiteboard.
Corporations won’t be the only ones to have their own private places. Players will get their very own captain’s quarters, which is like a home that you attach and detach from your ship. This is where your character keeps their stuff. The neat thing about this is that if you wade into battle with your captain’s quarters still attached, and you get blown up, so does your stuff… so be careful.
As mentioned earlier, players will be running their own shops and there will be a focus on player owned stations. Ambulation will start off empty and it will be left to the players to fill out the universe. The artists, architects, and level designers at CCP have designed the stations with an open concept, so expect to see a few grand open spaces, although life support limitations have set a maximum number of 60 people per room.
At the end of his presentation, Torfi Olafsson took a few questions from the audience, and one thing that was on the minds of many players was whether or not there would be combat on the stations. CCP is considering combat, but there are a few game design issues. It seems odd that an immortal pod pilot who commands a fleet of battleships, and has their mind downloaded into a clone when their pod is breeched could be killed by some guy who stabs him in the eye with a teaspoon in the cafeteria of a space station. Also, EVE is not an FPS. They say that there will eventually be some form of combat, but it’s too soon to say what form it will take. So what do you do in a bar if you can’t get into a brawl with your enemies? The answer is twofold. First, there will be gambling mini-games. Second, intoxication is in the design documents.
So really, I lied at the beginning of this article when I said there wouldn’t be a lot to do at the start. CCP is looking to roll out all of ambulation’s features slowly, planning for the long term and letting player interest drive the pace, keeping with CCP’s stated philosophies. As a final note, I just wanted to mention that “The Ambulation Project” is just a working title for this game feature, so you may hear it called something else in the future. Ambulation is after all just a fancy word for walking, and the project has gone well beyond that basic function.
Consider yourselves ambulated.
Excellent article. I am also really looking forward to ambulation!
So do we all
Personaly i cant wait. Its the only thing i was realy mising in Eve :)
They were initially talking about a February/March release, but I think it will be more like a June/July timeframe.
good article
lol grifin me too man me too, aww man im so looking forward to this.
In-freaking-credible. I can't wait to see how well the procedural animation system works out; it looks killer in Spore, in a more realistic setting, well, bye bye goofy running animations (humans in WoW, anyone?)
Kudos CCP, even if it is a summer launch, well, it'll be worth it.
Paired with the previous EVE article, I think this shows that EVE is one of the few games with DEV's that make the right choices, instead of turning a large part of their own population against them. They had issues of course, but most of the drama comes from players with a grudge :P
I'm looking forward to this, as being able to party was the only thing that I missed from other games.
I'd be surprised if they put as much into ambulation as they're hoping.. all those face and clothing customizations sound great, but imagine the lag of downloading all those minute details while you're on a busy station! I'm sure there'll be an LOD, but I wouldn't like to see how the game holds out when you walk into a bar in Jita..
Imagine all the freightes full of beer kegs to hold up the demand.
I admit, I haven't been paying much attention to Ambulation until now but I could have sworn I heard the devs discussed the possibility of letting players round around inside their ships as well. Does anyone know about this or is my brain making stuff up?
I play eve and I'm all for ambulation. The problem is they have trouble with lag as it is. Just guessing here but I'm guessing that instituting ambulation is going to be a challenging technical issue from a hardware perspective. Jita is a pain the ass as is, how will it be with ambulation? Regardless I hope they can pull it off.
You will have officer quaters inside your ship, you will be able to store your items, cloths etc inside ;)
Ah, I assumed they meant walk around the ship and have your own quarters. Well that's still cool.
Thanks :)
Actually it'll take load off systems like jita because the ambulation content will be on different servers. So it should actually speed up jita somewhat as 90% of the people in that system are station jockeys anyways.
Actually I thought they were toying with allowing you to walk on your bridge. Likely only while in port though, if you're not in your pod while undocked well ...
Well as for now its hard to say about details like that, but if you ask me i doubt that ccp will leave nice things like more detail ship walking. It might not be available right away but it will be available in time :)
Also some points that are confirmed concerning ambulation.
- Its on a seperate server so as not to lag space based EvE.
- It is confirmed for 2008 as most of it is done now apparently its mainly just the textures that need finalising.
- Yes i can open my Bar - Casino in jita [YAYYYY]
- Yes weare getting a ships cabin that we can tool out with funiture and alternate clothing etc.
- And yes im hoping for other rooms in my ship as well.
wow thats great news. i'll be giving eve another go when ever this goes in effect.
Dont expect too much in content when it begins its a bare bones thing at first.
It seems were comming out of are shells,so to speak.
I've always wanted to play EVE, but always felt something was missing. This is it. Once this thing goes live, I'll give this game a try.
it has been a while since they talked of this new project CCP is setting out to do. i just never thought it would reach the point where they would actually get to it. i hope they release some screenshots of what it will all look like soon. i will definetely get back to EVE and try this new feature when its released.
You can view one of the two ambulation related lectures here: http://www.eve-online.tv/fanfest.aspx
There are also other lectures there you can watch if you want as well. They're pretty interesting.
here is a whole hour of what your looking for :)
i can't wait, now if we could only drive our ships with a joystick...
God bless your words brother!!
... rooms in my ship.... got to love that.
Actually that to has recently been announced as something for after ambulation is settled down. I belive it will be for the smaller ships as the larger ships would be a bit big for that type of controll.
You know, and I may get flamed for this, but Eve really is a better game than WOW (I like to call it World of Wetads), and I hope that once CCP adds Ambulation and gets it all working and running smoothly, with a good set of features, that it will give Blizzard a run for it's money. I just cannot stand WOW.
Anyway, I can't wait for this to come out, and I am soooo looking forward to Trinity!
Maybe, but then again, I think it is a different type of player that plays wow. I play wow, but I've also played EVE. In time I'm sure I'll get tired of wow, but if you notice my post count... really low......., I don't spend much time dwelling on subjects like this, or talking bout anything in general
, so my opinions arent necessarily valid or correct, just an opinion. Ambulation looks/sounds awesome, I remember way back in beta when people asked about this, and CCP said it was a possibility for the future, that there were many comments on the actual possibility of it, but it seems quite possible now. I might have to give EVE another go after Ambulation is released.
Captain's quarters, sah-weet!
...
...
...
...will I be able to 'see' the exotic dancers I've been stowing away in my cargo hold, in my captain's quarters?
I've been with EVE off and on. What always turned me off at the end of the day was lack of an avatar. or lack of connection with the character i created. Great i created him. I think he looks awesome. Now i'm confined to a ship where i'll never see him again aside from what can be compared to his galactic drivers' license. So for CCP to have announced the idea of avatar content and now have it planned, especially on such a scale... has me drooling for EVE all over again. When this hits out i'll no doubt activate my account again... infact I'm sure of it.
Can't wait.
For those of you 'considering' or planning on returning, do yourself a favor and re-up now so your pilot can continue learning skills while waiting for Ambulation. I lost about a year while my pilot wasn't training while I was playing other MMO's but looking back, I wish I had kept up his skill training because I would have several more million skill points earned.
Its always after you leave and come back to a game that you wish you hadn't stopped training (or leveling). At least with EVE you can passively play.
eve online and eq1 and FFXI and MapleStory all good 3 to 7yrs long games so you play game tell it dies or you die i play eve online for 2yrs and i play eq1 7yrs and MapleStory 120days
Well, I don't see how the writer can compare Wing Commander / Privateer with EVE. EVE is nothing at all like those two games. Nothing. In Wing Commander / Privateer, you were a combat pilot actually flying your ship in 1st person mode.
In EVE, you are playing a 3rd person spreadsheet game with some graphic display elements.
Is fine for the folks that like that sort of thing.
More power to them.
And not trying to take anything away from them or their enjoyment of EVE.
But EVE is no Privateer or Wing Commander.
Not even close.
"They say that there will eventually be some form of combat, but it’s too soon to say what form it will take. So what do you do in a bar if you can’t get into a brawl with your enemies? The answer is twofold. First, there will be gambling mini-games. Second, intoxication is in the design documents."
This is an easy one. For those that played Jumpgate remember the simulator? EVE just has to implement a simulator in station for players who want to fight it out. Avoids death issues etc. I guess the easiest simulator would be ship on ship but that kinda defeats the point of walking around. I would happy to see a table top game that required some sort of skill, we don't always have to see people getting blown away.
The generall consensus on the EvE community is to have Mindclash Booths \ Arenas in the larger casinos\Bars.
I'm certain to get flammed for saying this but I doubt ambulation will be here before mid-late 2009 if at all. It just reminds me of the atmospheric flight promises, and they had alot more to show off back when that was being worked on. I mean they can't get half of what they promised in the expansion to live, and with 25-50% of subs in EVE being alts ambulation could well kill the space game in my opinion. I'm probably wrong but that's the way I feel about all this ambulation hype, no offence intended to anyone eagerly awaiting it.
Less than 15% of eve's players have multiple accounts, which is about the same as in any other MMO on the market, the majority of those with multiple accounts live in 0.0, which accounts for roughly 9%-12% of eve's population according to the economics blog. guess that blows your 25-50% 'pulled-out-of-ass' statistic right out of the water doesn't it. The devs are still planning planetary interaction but they are not going to do it until they feel it will benefit the game and they have the resources to do it. They actually talked about planetary interaction a bit at this years fanfest.
As for ambulation I fully believe they can have it out by this time next year in it's initial basic form. From the vids they showed at fanfest it is actually pretty far along at this point, they seem to have a lot of the art assets done or close to done by now and are actually starting to put it all together. Granted it's still got a long way to go but a lot can be done in the 8-10 months between now and when they hope to release it.
When Ambulation comes out, STAY AWAY FROM JITA
Let me guess your uninformed and think that the ambulation section is going to be on the same server as the space EvE. It is not, it will be on a seperate server to reduce lag. So this will actually reduce lag in eve asa all those sitting in stations wont be on the space server.
Don't be so negative man, it'll be fun sitting back drinking a space brew watching the VETs and trial accounts doing mass synchronized line dancing to "Things can only get better!" by D:Ream everyday!
Just as well as there will be NO dancing E-motes then.