CCP continues making improvements to EVE Online. This time, the team has begun implementing some of the EVE Evolved changes first announced at Fanfest, with the new audio and tech improvements taking center stage in a new dev post and video.
With a new expansion on the way, CCP has been working on enhancing the game, from performance to technical capabilities, and the visuals. EVE Evolved is designed to be an ongoing process that keeps building upon the game and improving things to keep shoring up EVE into this decade and beyond.
Today's improvements include a new sound prioritization system, which will boost important sounds, and those relevant to what's going on, while also reducing CPU usage. The game won’t play every sound at the same time, but will keep the most important and relevant ones. Bringing down demand on a player's system while still keeping everything you need to pay attention to is one step. Another effect of this change will be more sound clarity on the battlefield overall.
Another change that also reduces demand on player systems is what they're calling controller refactoring. If you’ve spent any time in EVE Online, you know that things can get pretty busy on the screen. This new tech improvements will adjust memory usage and reduce it during busy scenes. This will also help reduce load and unload times too.
For those with AMD FreeSync or Nvidia G-Sync monitors and GPUs, there’s an additional change for supported systems. This will use a variable refresh rate to offer a smoother experience better than v-sync alone, again, without extra demand on your system.
Finally, the team describes a modernization to Photon UI. This is being introduced as an opt-out beta, so that more players will see it by default and be able to try it before deciding whether they want to keep it. What this does is make the UI more legible, modern, and customizable. CCP is still working to shape this through feedback and data.
The Uprising expansion will be out in November, and there will be additional evolves features coming then as well. this will be an ongoing effort to improve the game, so expect future updates in the coming months.
For more, read the full blog over at EVE Online.