EVE Online developers have posted a new blog related to recent complaints of fleet lag since the last update. First off, devs want players to know, “We hear you!”. Find out more below:

Following the release of the Dominion expansion we started to get reports from players about an increase in “fleet lag.” Before we go any further, I would like to assure everyone that a taskforce of developers has been working on this continuously, but tracking down the source has proven a very difficult task.

 

So, what is the problem?

“Lag” is an ambiguous term and can refer to many things. The graphics in the client might be slowing it down, the network might be congested or a host of other issues may be coming into play. We have spent a long time trying to reproduce the issue on the test servers as well as monitoring fights as they have been unfolding on Tranquility, where we have received help from the players in the form of testing and bug reports. You might see names like “CCP Atlas”, “CCP GingerDude” and “CCP Warlock” poking about in Local. Don’t be alarmed, we are simply monitoring the node, looking for glitches. There are senior software engineers spending their evenings and weekends on Tranquility monitoring and measuring since we have not been able to see issues when testing because the sheer number of people required to trigger the problems and the specific ‘usage pattern’ of the game systems in question are outside what can currently be tested in the lab (although this is something that is being worked on).

What we are looking at now specifically is the fact that the performance of the sol nodes (the computers in the clusters handling the solar systems) appears to be worse than before. Even though CPU across the cluster has not increased with the Dominion expansion, each reinforced node is no longer able to handle the same number of people fighting as gracefully as it did before.

EVE Online players are spoiled by a dedicated development team. The bunch charged with making *cues Godlike voice* AWESOME planets is no exception. Find out how it’s done! 

 

The scrum team responsible for the updated planet graphics in Dominion was Team Oli Dan. Here we will explain how the planets came into existence; but the team also redid the star field background, created sovereignty structures, fighter bombers, and factional ships.

We have several types of planets in EVE: Gas giants, Temperate (Earthlike), Barren, Ocean, Storm, Ice and Lava. In addition we have moons, which from a programmer’s perspective are also planets. A new type was added in Dominion, the mysterious Plasma planets.

In order to make an omelet you have to break some eggs

Height maps

Almost all the shaders use a height map at its base and this texture determines much of the surface features. It is generated by blending two textures together to get variations. The textures are grayscale and square, but they are combined with different scale and position. Our artists created different types of height maps for the different worlds we were creating. For instance, the Ice planet textures are very cracked and craggy, while the Temperate planet textures are based on height maps of Earth.

 

And here’s what makes it unique: It has it’s own special probe launcher (for wormholes) and Sleeper NPC’s won’t shoot it in the same way that all NPCs won’t shoot pods. While flying the Zephyr is as easy as a shuttle, using the launcher will require some core probes and training of the skill Astrometrics to level 1. You can find both on the market or get the Astrometrics skill book by doing EVE Online: Dominion’s new exploration tutorial.

Beginning Dec 18th 2009, you will find the ability to redeem it on your account login screen. You can then assign it to a particular character and the Intaki Syndicate will deliver it to your hangar bay. You will be able to redeem the holiday ship once per active (not trial) account and will no longer be available after Jan 6th 2010, so make sure you log in to receive yours.

Read more about the Zephyr at the link above.

 EVE Online Dominion is now live. One of the major new features included is the client repair tool. Devs recently took some time to talk about the many ways in which the tool is used. Check it out!

 

 

With EVE Online: Dominion about to be released, and most of the features covered in blogs and forum threads, one of the new upcoming Engineering improvements we’re including is the awesome Client Repair Tool.

It does what it says on the tin; it repairs your client.

 The EVE Online development team has published a comprehensive look at the upcoming in-game web utility, COSMOS. Find out about the release schedule and details about what COSMOS has in store for users.

 

 

COSMOS is an ambitious project and as such is many things to many people. Though the description “social networking tool” is fitting, “EVE away from EVE” is much closer to our long-term vision. In order to be a bit more concrete, I thought I’d give you a quick run-down of what exactly we expect COSMOS will be in its first of many incarnations, and how the pieces fit into the bigger picture.

On the core feature list we have: home, profiles, improved contact list and an improved mail system. Both the improved contact list and the mail system will also be made available in-game, finally giving a much needed overhaul to the arcane and archaic in-game mail system.

 The EVE Online development team is always hard at work for players. Since Apocrypha debuted, the busy folks have been hard at work on epic arcs for each of the major factions. Grab more info below:

Redefining Missions

 

Epic arcs are a different breed, a different style of mission altogether, and as such require the player to approach them from new angles and perspectives. Fundamentally, these current epic arcs we’re releasing are equivalent to level 4 missions in difficulty, possibly a bit harder than most level 4s. However, you should not approach them as if you were grinding “Worlds Collide” or “Damsel in Distress” from your agent’s base in Dodixie. You are not playing disparate scenes chosen from a random list by a chatty robot in a space station. No, sir.

CCP, makers of hit space MMO Eve Online, paid staff in foreign currency to help them out during the bank collapse earlier this year.

Those of you who follow non-gaming news might recall that Iceland was particularly hard hit by the banking crisis. Its top three banks collapsed and nearly took Iceland’s entire economy with them, leading to a massive devaluation of the Icelandic krona.

Fortunately for the employees of CCP, a little help was at hand: “CCP isn’t anything to worry about, because we’re in multiple locations and our revenue was all in foreign currency anyway,” said Nathan Richardsson, CCP’s executive producer. “What really was the problem for us was how many of our employees were hit by the crisis, so we tried to leverage some of the strengths of CCP to help them through the turbulent times.”

EVE Online developers were faced with the herculean task of cleaning up factional warfare. Huh? If you’re not sure what that means, keep reading and find out!

Control bunkers on steroids

First of all, a small but necessary change; we noticed that System Control bunkers are quite fragile next to Starbase Control Towers since they lack any kind of armor or shield resistances while having far less hit points. This often leads attackers to capture a system before a proper defense force can be gathered, thus defeating the whole purpose of having them in the first place since they are supposed to promote PvP interactions.

 

We are also aware that increasing their durability too much will only mimic starbase siege situations and encourage blobbing, which are points we absolutely would like to avoid in such scenarios. As such, control bunker shield and armor hit points are going to be increased by 50%, which should hopefully give a bit more flexibility for any defence force to mount up a fleet before the system is taken. Of course, we will monitor the situation and possibly adjust hitpoints again in the future if the need arises.

EVE Online devs have announced that the next large expansion isn’t due until winter and, as a result, they are planning an Apocrypha ‘mini expansion’, AKA Apocrypha 1.5, in August. Find out what’s in store below:

Things have been silent on the dev front since the release of Apocrypha this March. Apocrypha was a major success for EVE Online. We rose to new heights in terms of concurrent players and subscribers, and more importantly, we are very proud of the new features and functionality it provided.

 

Now we are working hard on our winter expansion. Winter is quite far away, and we felt because Apocrypha was really early for a summer expansion, we should put out a mini-expansion, rather than wait until winter to release all the stuff we are working on. It should come out mid-August if all goes well. We refer to it as Apocrypha 1.5.

Small, Medium and Large rigs

Ever wanted to build the ultimate speed kite frigate but couldn’t afford the rigs? Tank your cruiser to the max? Mod your little hauler? Now you can!