EVE Information Portal

I thought there was a plan in place to enable turning letters/ icons black in to bright situations. One of the reasons the last text change happened was so this would be a less cost intensive action for the client. The client was changed to having dark boxes behind some text instances which helps for some things but not others.

Haha! The Golem looks like it has been drifting in space for centuries now. Derelict Ships Online.

First of all I was like what? Dirt in space? These ships aren't landing on the planets, where are they going to be getting so dirty?

That being said I've never really liked the shader system everything went bland and washed out and some ship colors got lost altogether. This is a welcome refreshment and gives the ships a more realistic look. I would like to think that you could adjust the dirt on your ship though. As a shiny new ship in the hangar is like a Christmas present under the tree. I like the idea of wash stations or the time based idea of being dirtier the longer your docked or possibly the opposite- the more time a ship has out in space.

However I agree that considerations with not making this too graphic's intensive need to be looked at. Especially in conjunction with the new implementation of new ship skins which I like, but am worried the new graphics will spoil playability. I already feel like the new map has ruined it's playability vs. graphic balance.

Great job though definitely an improvement on what we have currently as long as balance is struck and we all don't feel like we're flying in garbage bin by the end of the process.

They sure did.

I opened those files with a hex editor and they show up empty of any content, just a bunch of zeros. dds files are raster packages and are notorious for having a wide variety of headers that can frustrate opening them, but I have never hacked one and found zero data before.

It is unlikely that CCP put zero based dds files in their models to mess with folks, so my guess is that triexporter is hitting a security wall when it saves the dds file out.

Alternatively, it may be that the dds files are now dynamic place holders, and that the game now asks for the texture details as required. This would make sense according to the new system of skins on demand: when you choose a skin the game now loads new textures onto your ship.

In any case, PBR (physical based rendering) creates all sorts of new challenges to modelling. The biggest is the lack of currently available shaders that implement PBR. So, even if we could obtain and open the texture files for the various skins (maybe we can? Darwin, hello?), you still have the challenge of using the new texture maps properly, according to the rapidly evolving black arts of PBR.

My current thinking is that CCP do not particularly wish to share their texture maps, and that is fine. Artists work pretty hard on those patterns and textures, I can see why they would get all proprietary about them.

We can still make our own texture maps and experiment with PBR using whatever shaders we think work with PBR. Or we can make our own specular based maps and go back to the old way of making textures for models.

It really isn't that much work to create your own texture maps, especially once you break out you UV map. Roughness and dirt are just binary black and white shader values, and how the values are spread across the hull shape is pretty simple to approximate. The point is, in the time I have spent wondering "what CCP are doing in there", I could have painted six different texture maps on my tristan.

Further, CCP have changed the way they are going about PBR within 6 months of changing to PBR. This is a rapidly evolving scene, and CCP are probably still feeling there way into PBR. From what I have read, there is no "correct way" to impliment PBR, in is just a general theory of texturing that can be pursued many different ways.

I suspect the CCP team are hesitant to share their methods until they have explored all the possibilities, and so for the moment I think player modellers should go with the flow, and experiment with PBR ourselves, with our own texture maps.

I can design a better tristan skin than CCP, anyways. To those guys, it is just another ship. Those guys don't understand what this ship means to the militia who maintain common decency and martial discipline in the moral cesspool of new Eden.

The notion is even funnier if you consider building the ship yourself.
Apparently as I roll it off my production line, I make sure to "distress" it like a designer pair of jeans.

I don't care how many passes you guys make. Ever since you introduced PBR ships look like ****. Why? Jaggies EVERYWHERE.

Ship is sitting still and not moving in a hanger? Jaggies! They are so bad it looks like **** is actually moving on the ship!

I'm impressed that you all (CCP art folks) decided to go with PBR when you did. Pretty gutsy move into new tech. A lot of work, too.

For the moaners, what this means is that the CCP art department are equipping themselves with the tools and skills to make the best possible graphics in the years to come.

Everytime artists, anywhere is the industry, inovate more effective techniques, these will be represented by new shader pug ins and CCP will be able to take advantage straight away. As graphics hardware is optimized for such techniques, Eve will run better, and look better.

It is great news for the future of the game.

Also, remember that you can choose (in the launcher settings) to download all assets.

Yes, my race is finally getting an update! The Minmatar ships have always looked like they should be up on blocks somewhere in an Alabama field. The concepts for the Thrasher look awesome and I like the look of the Stilleto. Keep it up!

What your saying sounds great, until you look at subscription numbers. EVE sure hasnt collected that many players in 12 years. Maybe these 'older, intelligent' players are out there, but there arent very many of them. CCP needs to attract MORE players, and if that means catering to younger ones with different tastes, then so be it. Its obvious CCP's idea of only catering to 'older, intelligent' players hasnt worked very well, sure, they are still here, but subscriber numbers are nothing to brag about. 12 years and still so few players? Yes, they need to change things. If we had a million players and people were actually complaining about overloaded servers, I would agree with you. But, its not like that, and I dont.