EVE Information Portal

This is really very impressive. I hope it gets greenlit, because I can imagine an amazing gameplay experience, especially if it can be integrated with Dust and EVE. This is all a hypothetical, pie in the sky situation, but here's what I thought of when I first saw the videos:

A planetary conquest engagement starts in Dust, and the defending corporation launches fighters from a ground based installation. Pilots can fly around and strafe mercenaries, blow up tanks, dogfight other aircraft, shoot the MCC, etc.

It turns out that an enemy destroyer has warped in and is preparing an orbital bombardment, so the pilot increases their altitude to a certain ceiling and hits a button -- the autopilot goes through a sequence and after a heavy burn our fighters find themselves in orbit and begin to attack the bombarding craft. I'm thinking that in space the fighter handles a bit differently and in general it's a faster paced kind of combat.

The attacking ships in orbit see the fighters as if they were fast, small frigates. Offhand, I'm not sure about how big frigates are supposed to be, so piloted fighters may actually be more comparable to drones in their damage output, size, and speed.

The encounter escalates and EVE-side reinforcements are called in. The attackers are beat for now, but it's time to go on the offence. The fighters can dock on a friendly carrier who jumps to a new system and deploys them over an enemy planet. They reenter the atmosphere and help take over the district.

So, like I said, really pie in the sky. There would be so many details to hash out, because you're talking about what amounts to three different games being flawlessly integrated, and that's a relatively simple situation. You end up with these multi-party asymmetric combat situations and you have to keep it fair and bug free. Kind of a Mount Everest of game development, but if you could pull something like that off it would be absolutely unbelievable.

It would be great if, for example, an EVE mining operation could choose to keep EVE pilots out with them as security, or they could keep a squad of fighters on retainer, and just launch them out of their Orca or whatever.

I'm thinking a EVE-VR pilot would log in, see a list of missions and the pay, available craft and weapons, and then pick one and get cloned in to their launch point. So they wouldn't have to sit in an Orca doing nothing until bad guys show up, the Orca would hit a button and send out a call that any fighter pilot can see and get in on (if they are part of that contract). When everyone docks back in the mission is over until next time. And if there are no player missions available right now, fighter pilots could pick up NPC missions.

If this is going to be real, it needs to be for EVE online. One Universe, Two sides, Three fronts.
I would buy the oculus rift for this alone.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/08/rubber-hand-tri/

This article claims that the brain cools down the body part that it has confused with a rubber hand

:( I hope prolonged use of a virtual reality wouldn't cause an injury

UGaDE (Unity Gaming and Development Engine) is a very nice development tool. After not being able to play Eve Online for a year I become so depressed that I began searching for game development engines. I have used Unreal SDK but after being banned for some of the ideas of thought of I have not and will not return to Unreal SDK.

I then found UGaDE (you god ee) and after the fist tutorial series called Lunar Lander by Gabrielle WIlliams I have become very fascinated with how the whole system works especially the Detonator Frame Work and Particle Systems.

Currently I am developing a side scroller where the pilot has to maneuver their cargo ship through various types of fields to deliver the cargo (the cargo really isn't seen or unloaded and loaded....yet) before their ship runs out of fuel or is hit by a roid.

The most recent addition has been adding Trolley Cars that move along a certain axis point and then respawn which adds realism to the setting.

Now I understand how the background scenes in the station and the Trader ships actually move the way that they do.

Awesome experience building a game even if it is only a small game.

Who would have known that website development would have turned into game making? After all each location in a solar system is really nothing more than hundreds of smaller scenes placed within the Skybox.

One question that I have is this. I have noticed in Unity that some of the textures look very funny as if material has not been added to the interior surface of the model which then creates what I call a shop light effect or light that appears at the seams of the model.

I have noticed the shop light effect in Eve Online as well. The way that I have conquered the Shop Light Effect is during model creation and texturing ( I use Sketch UP and then convert the model into .dae format.) I move a face of the model away from the main model and then select the darkest color that is present within all of the textures of the model and then paint the interior surface of the model the darkest color material. Once the model has been painted in this manner the Shop Light Effect seems to go away.

I can say that game development is a long process especially being the only one on the team. The best thing about being the only one is that there is no grief over decisions made and what gets done. There have been times that I wanted to kick myself around for making some very dumb errors though.

Here are a few screen shots from the game I am developing just to show everyone that if you simply follow the tutorials you too can make great looking games that are easy to play and provide you with extra income.

The first image is the players ship

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b285/dwighthuth/PlayersShip.png

The next three images are various staring locations. So far I have 13 locations which means 13 levels have a launching point.

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b285/dwighthuth/Stations3.png

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b285/dwighthuth/Stations2.png

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b285/dwighthuth/Stations1.png - This image is the station where Trolley Cars move between locations in the Tubing.

The ship does fly...and can be piloted which is rather quite remarkable to say the least. The ship also has its own collider, engine sound, Engine Thruster Particle System, Detonator Framework for when it crashes all of which I created using the very easy to follow tutorials from Gabriel Williams of Unity Cookie and Eteeski's tutorials.

I am currently working on a shielding system for the ship that will allow the pilot to bump into things and not explode right away.

After the shields come a shield health pick - up system, a fuel pick - up system plus a choice of adding either laser, blaster or projectile type weapons to the ship later in the game to combat.....well.....you'll have to wait. But the player will start out having to destroy small objects to access areas of importance.

Game development I difficult to say the least but once you grasp the basic concept of scripting its nothing more than a bunch of
.tranforms and Instantiate calls really.

If anyone has any ideas that you would think would be cool to add send me an in game email. Especially if you are a model builder, texture or coder

Been at FF, seen it, loved it !

Guys, you need to work out how to tie this into TQ ! Someone posted that the "ticks" of TQ would not allow a twitch game built into it. But I disagree : while running in its own client, of course, EVR fighter positions need not be represented to TQ and Capsuleers all that precisely ! There need not be millisecond feedback between the two clients.

Just like AI drones and fighters when orbiting do not actually describe a perfect circle but turn in segments, an EVR fighter's position in the EVR client would only roughly have to correspond its position in an EVE client for Capsuleers. As long as the Capsuleer can click the bracket or overview entry and target and fire upon the fighter. Likewise, Capsuleers are totally used to an approximate feedback of shots given off by drones and fighters.

On the gameplay side, I am not sure if players would mind all that much to "wait" until being launched into battle. Because I can see me playing some low effort EVE or a casual DUST match and then switching into EVR when it's time. And I suspect other game modes can be built into EVR, where the player could be active and then, when it's time, switch to a Capsuleer battle.

Please tell us you'll work out the connection into TQ !

So... That's one vote for 'don't spend time on this'

And how many for 'Shut up and take my money'?

tbh, don't go for "big style release"...keep it simple.

Implement an arena in EvE, let us participate in small scale arena battles (extra fast server, use dust localized server infrastructure) in fighters...

let us bet on the fights, let us record the fights to replay them, get a ladder in a visible place, put achievments in, DONE.

If you go for fancy, you can still do that later. If you want some promotional effect NOW, do this. Should be possible in 6 months time, no more.

Put in some nice deal in your store to buy the ORift to top it off. If you want to make money, put in some PLEX mechanic to participate, 1 plex/month or something affordable. No 1time sale, way to small market share to make it profitable that way.

That would be AWESOME! I'd LOVE to take direct control of my drones!
I still wouldn't strap a large, expensive, ridiculous box to my face though...

Are we going to need to buy the whole VR cabinet or is it going to be a "Steel Battalion" like controller? If you never seen a REAL "Steel Battalion" controller, look it up, it is awesome.

I am hoping for the VR Cabinet, perhaps even see CCP go into the console market for VR systems. I would be willing to pay a couple thousand but only if there were going to be more then one game for this. BUT if it is a stand-alone controller, I would still be willing to pay a couple hundred (not counting Shipping). I guess how much I will pay, in the end, is how good the system is.

I still really want to see this come and too flourish.

Don't know if anyone has suggested it, but this demo can be flushed out with a few more locations and a few game modes and then released as a standalone game that impacts faction warfare in Eve.
Maps:
-carrier VS carrier.
-carrier VS planet (Flying in atmosphere around super-high mountains and exploding super-volcanoes and nuclear explosions, attacking side having to also enter the atmosphere without burning up, etc. This will by my favorite I think. Since you can make environments unlike anything that exists on earth).
-carrier VS moon.
-carrier VS asteroid-base.
-Carrier V space station.
-Carrier V fleet consisting of various ships from frigs to carriers.
-fighter/bomber v all the above (player exits warp into the battlefield instead of exiting carrier. Good for Free for all game-mode).
Game-modes:
-Fleet Death Match (Basically TDM, but with the option of having 3 or more teams at the battlefield at one time).
-Free for all (shoot everything for your own glory).
-Wing Death Match (a wing of 2 to X vs one or several other wings, and/or all the above targets).
-Capture the asteroid (hitch up a valuable asteroid to your fighter (multiple fighters are faster) and tow it to Refining ship, while being shot at by the other team (option to have one or many valuable asteroids on field at one time).
-Survival (wave after wave of enemies. Fex Sansha, sleepers, faction NPC's, pirates etc).
-Assault (Like Rush in Battlefield bad company 2, only with fighters and fighter bombers as players, and carriers and whatnot as COM stations).
-King of the hill (or "king of the [insert Eve-suitable word]". Fex, King of the solar system, King of the planet, king of the star, etc. 1-3 points must be held, how many your team holds at one time affects how many tickets each dead teammember costs).
-Broadside (Carrier V carrier fight where the objective is to destroy the opposite carrier with fighter bomber bombs (slow ships) and to do that fighters must protect the bombers).
-Doomsday (half a dozen titans vs half a dozen titans. Your team's titans target the titan your team does the most damage to. Have my doubts about this one, but maybe it'll spark a good idea).

Perhaps just a selection of these, and then the rest as multiple expansion packs. Though I must say the thing that could set this game a part besides the immersiveness, is scale. Carriers that are ripped in half, asteroids that swirl around bumping and crushing each other, nukes and doomsday weapons. Heck, throw in relativistic effects and inertia for good measure (fex, speed adds and adds since there is no atmosphere, then you release the bomb and must use thrust to change direction. If you speed up bullets coming at you from the front hit harder and the ones coming from behind hit with less force etc).