The Trinity 2 engine seminar was one of the ones I was looking forward to seeing. The actual Fanfest content on Trinity 2 was spread around a lot, so I’m going to lump together as much as I can here for easier consumption.

We were shown a bunch of new details on specific effects being added with the new engine revamp. After seeing all the goodies being added I have to say that I’m pretty impressed so far with all big brain thinking going on over there. They’re working on individual technologies and effects which directly affect the realism of the rendering of the game’s visuals, taking what we have and launching it into orbit. At the same time, the enhancements are intended to drastically reduce the current workload imposed on your poor CPU by portioning off the work properly between the CPU and the GPU.

New videos were shown of ships like the Avatar, Megathron, some faction frigates, Rifter, Thorax, and more. Then we were shown the new teaser for the Trinity trailer (no word on when that’s coming out). Let me just say, the detail being shown on ships like the Nyx is just mind blowing. Each and every one has a level of polish that has to be seen to be believed, and the shakeycam footage and other screens you’ve probably seen does no justice for this stuff.

All of this makes it easier for CCP’s developers and artists to create and experiment, and get the most they can out of the new tech like they’ve taken the old tech as far as it has. In the meantime, models are being updated by an outsourced company to make sure the content is ready. Hopefully that process doesn’t introduce its own type of delays to Trinity2’s release.

First thing’s first though, and the initial releases will only deal with stations, some objects like stargates, and ships. What’s not getting the new coat of paint at this point are things like weapons effects, planets, starfields (nebulae apparently were rendered by a now-forgotten method, whoops), etc. Once they get the core material and technology in place, they’ll turn their eye towards things like the above.

One of the big gotcha moments was when someone asked how this was going to work with multiple clients on the same machine. Well on the scale of priorities, multi-client efficiency was not high on their list of things at least for the first releases. I expect given the reaction from the presenters when asked about this, that the results will NOT be pretty on day one for those who are used to doing this without the benefit of more than one PC.

The question of graphical lag came up, and this was quickly addressed. The amount of work the new engine does to get something rendered on the screen is being cut by a huge factor when compared to the old one. It was put to the audience that a nicely defragged hard drive would solve a lot of the current issues when the game client has to load all the textures and goodies of ships which jump through gates and such, which is why your client thinks for a critical second sometimes. T2 utilizes asynchronous loading, so instead you might get some lag time in the ship itself being rendered but the interface itself will not lag out. That means you can start killing the guy while your client works in the background to render things instead of locking up briefly. No no, allow me: o/

One thing’s for sure, EVE is about to look a hell of a lot prettier. CCP’s got some seriously talented technical guys working on this, and the results so far look insanely good.

One of the long talked-about features coming to EVE is ambulation, and this one has the player base pretty polarized. Some additional information was given at this year’s Fanfest by the uber Torfi Frans.

Historically EVE’s motto has been “you are your ship”. When you log in, you’ve got a character portrait, but your presence isn’t your person, it’s the big hunk of tritanium you see rotating around in the station. Ambulation is set to change all of that, letting you step out of your ship and wander around in station.

First, some new bits. And a note that hey, Ambulation’s not final, so these details are probably subject to change as CCP evolves the design.

To begin, station areas are limited to 65 characters as a maximum. That means you won’t see fifty thousand Goons blobbing a particular station, or doing the galaxy’s biggest line dance. This is a start, and would be raised at a later date. One would hope, because a 65 character limit is pretty useless if this is to be anything interesting.

One idea presented at the Fanfest seminar about Ambulation was how you as a player could create items for people. You’d rent a slot of some kind at a station, and build yourself (or get one built) a store, for instance. Install it, then go put your wares in it for sale, even having a NPC avatar standing there hawking your stuff to passers by. Items such as clothing, accessories, facial reconstruction, you name it. Imagine becoming a famous plastic surgeon.

More details stated that your captain’s quarters can be used to store items including your uniform or whatever you want on your character. The point was made that if you lose your ship, you lose those items you’ve got stored on it, just like you currently lose modules, etc. If you want to keep it safe and sound, don’t take it with you.

CCP’s hired an architect to translate the amazing concept art to workable livable spaces, and even a costume designer to make sure all the guys don’t look like storm troopers while the girls don’t all walk around in thongs and white t-shirts. Clothes will be practical, stylish, no doubt a bit risque, but nothing that looks like it’s done by a bunch of sex-starved otaku.

You can change your body shape, refining what kind of character you’d like to be. Beanpole or beanbag, and everything in between. You can set your current emotion, which affects the visual emotes. Wave while sad and you’ll wave in a sad way. Set yourself to happy and you’ll wave all enthusiastic like.

At some point CCP’s going to have to bridge the gap between our current stylized looks and the new more realistic looks (think Mass Effect’s character generator). Presumably when ambulation goes live we’ll be presented with a converted avatar and have the ability to tweak as we see fit, then start life as a new and improved resident of New Eden.

Sounds pretty nifty, but the seminar was pretty light on the point of why we would jump for joy for this just yet. None of this affects the pewpew, or does anything for our current internet spaceships. I like social interaction in EVE, but typically have done this at the end of a gun or some shrewd market dealings. It’s obviously looking at the Second Life market, seeing if it can snag that segment which likes to have their MMO grounded by something with two legs and a /dance emote.

I’m still iffy on this. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s amazing the level of attention and detail that’s going into the design of this thing. There’s a passion there that we see in the current EVE. I like the approach they’re taking – it doesn’t support people running around like idiots dressed like clowns. And I for one would love to not only fly around in the world of EVE, but also to walk around in it. Only time will tell whether Ambulation will be a worthwhile addition to the game when considering it’s intended to have no impact or direct benefit to the systems currently in place.

Just lazing around my hotel lobby right now, got another hour and a half or so to go until my taxi shows up to take me to the airport.

Put up a few pics last night before I hit the sack, just of a small wandering excursion I did in the area around the hotel. I’d wanted to see more of the sightseeing type things, but I managed to come down with a cold here on my last days so I haven’t been up to much. At least that waited until after the party was done. Oh well, next year I’ll plan things a bit better. 🙂