EVE General Discussion

It would be nice if the animation for jumping between systems was updated.

Disclaimer:
I do not think this needs an update, there are a million more important things, but in a world where we're drawing lines between stars, it's a nice side project for someone.

Current:
You disappear, the gate lights up and tosses your ship to another gate, your client chugs and then reloads somewhere else, and your ship hangs there, invisible.

My Initial Reaction:
When I joined EVE I was amazed. Maybe because I liked space, maybe because I'm a programmer and it bent my brain. Everything seemed fairly seamless except when I jumped from one system to another. My ship disappeared, the warp gate lit up (usually quite often, in the newbie systems) and presumably my ship shot out and flew somewhere else. On the other end, things appeared on screen, there was a progress bar or something, and then a slightly translucent ship hung there. Huh?

The Problem:
I understand, the jump gates are doing all the tricky business of handing off someone to another server. But while this is happening, the client shouldn't be sitting there idle. I know it needs to load a ton of new info and display it on screen, so I understand it's 'busy' but it's not very cinematic.

You make pretend that the ship goes into the gate, but in a busy system, or with a big slow ship, it visually would be sad to try to show the ship being shoved down the pipe.


Another concern I have with the current system is that it seems your computer speed and internet speed determine how fast a jump happens. Obviously the server has a lot of work to do, but the clients ability to get that new info and display it affects how fast the client can react. If we got an average of how long this took, maybe an artificial limit should be set, so that fast or slow, it takes 5 seconds to change from one serve to the next, even if the hardware can get it done faster. It would certainly make it easier to do a graphical representation of the ship moving from one system to the next. As detailed below.

Solution:
Let's treat Jump Gates like Acceleration Gates. When you hit jump your ship becomes invincible, aligns very fast, and blurs at the speed of light, just like the jump gate, but at the point of origin from where the ship was sitting.

I'm not sure what the best approach would be for the ship 'landing' at it's destination.

It would be nice to have the camera chase the ship, as it accelerates the blur could become quite severe, allowing for the eve client to transition between one set of background to another, without looking like it's just fading. Perhaps something akin to when an explosion goes off near you in an FPS, things could streak and the sound could dim. As the server you're jumping to loads, you appear at the gate and objects start to show up. Likely you'd have to be invisible, and then fade in. A mechanic I've never been a big fan of.

Alternatively, your ship jumps to warp as described, maybe a bit slowly and fades as it gets further, with the camera set to pan towards the ship, but not follow. The camera takes off after the ship, keeping it the target, and dumps the old server info and starts loading the new. At this point the ship can be observed speeding down it's path, but the camera is out-pacing it.
The camera lands at the gate, and pans to focus on the spot where the ship will land, maybe even have a UI marker that shows the spot. Now it's back to usual, except your ship isn't there, as it normally would be with the current system (invisible mind you). As soon as you perform an action that would uncloak you, a streak of light from the old system shoots your ship in, your camera pans to watch it come in, and you begin to perform the action. The streak animation would be very fast, and not add time you spend at the gate.

That is the polish that would make the experience of jumping pretty flawless, and would make EVE feel even more real and less segregated. Maybe it's just me?

If I've missed any crucial detail, let me know, I'd be happy to think of ways of improving or expanding this idea, if anyone else thinks it's worth thinking about.

Meh its not that ugly but i do agree on most parts, maybe change the model of some gates to not look like a "cannon" and more like somehting that builds up energy and pushes your ship faster then light.

but i wish they remade acceleration gates tho, they are horribly ugly and the model has no purpose then pointing were you going, its supposed be that your ship goes in the middle and gets accelerated but thats 99.9% never the case beacuse you warp in at so many different angles, just make it a point to point beacon were you need to accept coordinates from the first beacon to "warp" to the second one AKA npc mission room.

Also a AFK timer for the horrible BOT spree there is :P

and make it so that ships dont level out like there is some universal horizontal level, a ship approaching you upside down or at the side would make the "space" imersion so much more :D

Thankies ;)

This.

I think the current concept is fine; the gate powers up and your ship is hurled across in a ball of energy.

I just don't like the way the gate "powers up" it looks dead; they don't have any energy / static discharges pouring out of the gate to form that ball of light that's supposed to envelop your ship. It's just an animated ring that doesn't change in any way, as a miniature sun appears in its center. I'd like to see some energy build-up bleeding off the gate rings, like when they power up the main laser weapons in that Independence Day movie, or even better.

Even the Mass Effect 1 intro movie looks better, and it's essentially the same thing: a ship jumps through a gate. Looks a lot more believable with that static discharge, and gate distortion effects.

I agree. At the moment it looks like the gate and the ship are doing some completely different things.

The gate seams to build up something and shoots it in the direction of the destination.

At the same time your ship disappears in something that looks like a wormhole. You can actually see the nebula of the destination system in the animation. So how is that connected to the something that just got shot away?

Would also be nice if the lore gets updated in line with the change.

imagine how cool it would be if you would have to fly through the gate to jump, instead of bumping against it while bashing the jump button. Same concept could be used for docking where you have to fly through a station shield of the docking bay. (yey docking games fixed).
but yes eve would have to catch up with physics and collisions first before this could happen.

But there IS a universal horizontal, its common in scifi, and agreed to be a requirement for interstellar travel in the real world.

to orient a system for navigation, and inter-ship interaction/communication, space HAS to have a referenced up/down. and then for on-ship sanity and ease of use, all ships automaticaly orient to that universal direction so that the crew can more easily identify their position/vector on a system map.

There was a (short) time on the Testserver when the new Stargates were coming out in 2008. The Gates had very nice (and a bit buggy) particle effects. But it didnt made it to TQ.

Amarr 0.0 Regiongate with HIC bubble
Amarr Empire Regiongate
Amarr Empire Regiongate

Be careful what you wish for. This is CCP. They fried videocards when implementing 3D captain's quarters. Imagine how many computers they can kill with more stargate animation...

I think I have the "/thread" idea for this. When you press jump, this happens

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDq4a6PqAvM