Summer Expansion - Incarna

[Sir T]

The ideal way to do it (and tbh I'm not sure why they didn't do this to start with) would be so you dock and retain the shipspinning/etc interface, and you can select to disembark and enter the station interface.

Wait, I assumed this is always how it would be implemented.  Why in the world would they do it any other way?

To force people to use it. If they did it the other way people would just disembark once or twice just for the OOOH factor than then never bother with it again as the old interface fast faster and a lot less awkward.

And then you would never sell monocles, cloaks, wizard staffs, anatomically correct penises and gold cufflinks.

[tgr]

All and all, IMO, what I have read, and seen in game, is an old player base adverse to change. From what I can see, if you are new, you won't care you will likely even bee more drawn to the game, if you are years invested, you take the development of the toon portion as a slight. Even if on the whole its going to improve the game. Of course, i have found out while there have been improvements in the new user experience, it still needs work. Eve is just as much a browser game that happens to have ship graphics as ever.

heh toon.

I'm of the vocation that if they actually expand upon it and build the station interiors up properly with shit to do etc, then fuck yes this'll be a good thing. As it stands, however, forcing us to experience it just means that we've lost features which make rather important things like seeing which ship we're in more of a chore than it really needs to, for no real gain.

I do agree, in the CQ a more brisk jog may be needed. I also agree, leave pod should be an option, as it stands now, sometimes you don't need to go to your room.

Agreed, and agreed. But these are things that, if they listen to the playerbase/have usability tests, they'll be able to iron out in due course. That's a big if, though.

[tmp]

I found clicking on the screens, mirrors and ship hologram much more intuitive then using the old methods.

"The old methods" consisted of clicking on large icons grouped together on a side of the screen. Essentially a classic UI toolbar. You really found it more intuitive to hunt with your mouse some elements of the 3d scene instead, that might be interactive?

[eldaec]

If you are having trouble with the menu, you can expand it (click the arrow top left) so the icons have labels saying shit like 'fitting' and you click on the bit that says 'fitting' to go to 'fitting'.

[eldaec]

Just on the performance thing, it is fairly obvious this is a bug/compatibility issue which affects some and not others. I say this because...

1) It isn't exactly Crysis 2.
2) It effects people arbitrarily with no obvious pattern on the age of gear.
3) I get issues on a 12 month old Nvidia system.

Regarding Mittani's ~words~, people at this point are just projecting whatever they want to see. CCP said the most they reasonably could on RMT, and there really is no point screaming blindly at CCP about how retarded further Incarna development is if you want to influence them. They are wedded to this nonsense and there is no point pretending this will change, the only real option is to hope they burn out on it soon and keep reminding them about gameplay issues.

[Sir T]

Transparent white knight trolling

The act is getting old dude.

[Mrbloodworth]

I'm not white knighting shit. Its just my take. Feel free to disagree.

[Kageru]

CQ as it is now is, without question, shit. It adds absolutely nothing but some eye candy and a less effective duplication of the existing interface for a cost in hardware resources that far outweigh the visual appeal. The defenders tend to base their view on "what it will become" to which the answer is 1) CCP and 2) then why release this token effort now?

[ajax34i]

As far as the playerbase being adverse to change...  of course they are.  EVE is as much about spaceships as a chess game is about medieval combat.  Try to introduce avatars and a 3d interface-in-a-room to a chess tournament, see what the reaction is.

[Amaron]

I'm not white knighting shit. Its just my take. Feel free to disagree.

You are projecting a belief of competence on CCP that's beyond simply drinking the cool aid though.

[Setanta]

I'm not white knighting shit. Its just my take. Feel free to disagree.

You are projecting a belief of competence on CCP that's beyond simply drinking the cool aid though.

Without wanting to offend, I'd suggest that it's the cool aid that CCP pissed in and then marketed as the new Coke.

[Lantyssa]

As a new player, the CQ doesn't bother me that much.  I like how there are objects that bring up interface windows (and all are still accessible as buttons on the side).  It adds to the sense of being in a world.  Even if I mostly use the buttons, it has a more natural feeling to it.

I don't like having to awkwardly walk for a minute to actually get into my quarters every time I dock.

Mind you I never knew the old way.  One pitfall of UI redesign is regardless of the qualities, people grow accustomed to what they've been using.  I'm rather glad I didn't know the old way to have to relearn.

[TripleDES]

As for my opinion on Incarna itself, it's just half-assed. What did they do all these years? I mean, they were demoing station interiors already two years or so ago, including bars and what not. And what did we get the last big patch? A captain's quarter. And only of a single fucking race. What's the winter expansion bring? Another race's CQ? I'm willing to bet that station interiors don't come before Christmas 2012. If that were the case, it'd make this project even more of a farce.

[tmp]

There's a tidbit in their recent blog which sheds some light on why the current version of Incarna is probably the way it is:

Bottom line: Code written in Stackless Python can only execute as fast as your fastest CPU core can go. A 4 or 8 CPU big-iron server will burn up a single CPU and leave the others idle, unless we span more nodes to harness the other CPUs, which works well for a lot of the logic in EVE which is stateless or only mildly reliant on shared state but presents challenges in logic which is heavily reliant on shared state, such as space simulation and walking around space stations.

(..)

Now a c++ system can receive and send packets through BlueNet and never care about or need to acquire the GIL. This was originally coded for Incarna, which needs to send a significantly higher volume of movement packets to support a walk-around MMO. In space you can cheat, but not so with close-up anthropomorphic motion. Early projections showed that even with a modest tick-rate, Incarna would bring the Tranquility cluster to its knees.

Apparently they're only now switching to upgraded tech which allows to avoid this minor issue

[Mrbloodworth]

As for my opinion on Incarna itself, it's just half-assed. What did they do all these years? I mean, they were demoing station interiors already two years or so ago, including bars and what not. And what did we get the last big patch? A captain's quarter. And only of a single fucking race. What's the winter expansion bring? Another race's CQ? I'm willing to bet that station interiors don't come before Christmas 2012. If that were the case, it'd make this project even more of a farce.

I don't even think eve had an animation system before this patch.

[Sir T]

I don't even think eve had an animation system before this patch.

It did to a certain extent. Take a look at a mining barge the next time you pass a macrominer. All turrets turn and point in the direction of a target if you have turret effects on. Tower modules spin and do stuff. And Rouge drones have little legs that claw at the air. Gasses vented from stations.

As for my opinion on Incarna itself, it's just half-assed. What did they do all these years? I mean, they were demoing station interiors already two years or so ago, including bars and what not. And what did we get the last big patch? A captain's quarter. And only of a single fucking race. What's the winter expansion bring? Another race's CQ? I'm willing to bet that station interiors don't come before Christmas 2012. If that were the case, it'd make this project even more of a farce.

Anyway I had a quick look at youtube for old videos on Ambulation. These are from 2008.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeanIPs0yws&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoOyvRTA2Ps&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l_ZjVyRxx4&feature=related

Basically they had the Caldari captains quarters... erm..

This was a teaser from November 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8sfaN8zT8E&feature=related

So you tell me what the hell they have been doing. You had a promenade with shops and lots of players in Air Rivals, a free game I played a bit in 2008...

[palmer_eldritch]

As for my opinion on Incarna itself, it's just half-assed. What did they do all these years? I mean, they were demoing station interiors already two years or so ago, including bars and what not. And what did we get the last big patch? A captain's quarter. And only of a single fucking race. What's the winter expansion bring? Another race's CQ? I'm willing to bet that station interiors don't come before Christmas 2012. If that were the case, it'd make this project even more of a farce.

I don't even think eve had an animation system before this patch.

My guns on my SPACESHIP were animated. They twisted and turned and did all sorts of shooty stuff.

I don't understand how anyone can seriously argue that the introduction of walking avatars has added any gameplay to Eve Online. The room with the little holograms and screens to click on might be a nice touch, but you don't actually need to include a character who walks around with the WASD keys to have that. In fact, it would be easier if I actually didn't have to walk down that ramp thing to get to the room with the shiny stuff in.

I do like the screen that flashes up news. That does add to the immersiveness of the game imho.

I'm not sure anyone really disputes that walking avatars could potentially be fun if some sort of fun content is created for them, but the problem is that this is supposed to be a major expansion, not a demo of something that might one day be released properly.

Also, it's just wrong to claim that the anger among Eve players is all about disliking change, if by change you mean avatars. It's about not trusting CCP's plans for RMT.

Where I think some people are being silly is in complaining that CCP should be investing resources in the spaceship side of the game "instead". CCP are investing resources in Dust and World of Darkness, which is what the avatar technology is all about, and if they didn't try to bring that technology into Eve then it wouldn't somehow free up money for spaceships. They're making their other games no matter what.

[tmp]

My guns on my SPACESHIP were animated. They twisted and turned and did all sorts of shooty stuff.

Think that was a simple rigid body animation system though, quite different kettle of fish from the skeleton/weight/skinning approach. Way less hungry for processing power, too.

[palmer_eldritch]

I mean, it's really hard to walk. How do I get my guy in the middle of my screen? When I zoom in, the camera moves so he is on the left.

[Mrbloodworth]

That's just object rotation.

My guns on my SPACESHIP were animated. They twisted and turned and did all sorts of shooty stuff.

Think that was a simple rigid body animation system though, quite different kettle of fish from the skeleton/weight/skinning approach. Way less hungry for processing power, too.

Yep.

So you tell me what the hell they have been doing. You had a promenade with shops and lots of players in Air Rivals, a free game I played a bit in 2008...

Due to the technical undertaking, we should be thankful they did NOT just slap in all of this stuff. The measured approaches was a good call. Adding an entire animation system to an existing platform is no small task.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8sfaN8zT8E&feature=related

Had not seen that one before. Thanks. Looking at it though, its clear to see the avatars have been revamped a number of times.

[palmer_eldritch]

It obviously didn't have an animation system for people before it had people.

[tmp]

I mean, it's really hard to walk. How do I get my guy in the middle of my screen? When I zoom in, the camera moves so he is on the left.

With this blog about how key input drives the pressure on the system through the roof i'm mostly surprised they went with WASD rather than click to move -- the latter works well enough for the korean MMOs and is more inline with the spaceship part of the AV control.

[Mrbloodworth]

I mean, it's really hard to walk. How do I get my guy in the middle of my screen? When I zoom in, the camera moves so he is on the left.

There is a setting for camera location/offset.

[Sir T]

That's just object rotation.

My guns on my SPACESHIP were animated. They twisted and turned and did all sorts of shooty stuff.

Think that was a simple rigid body animation system though, quite different kettle of fish from the skeleton/weight/skinning approach. Way less hungry for processing power, too.

Yep.

So you tell me what the hell they have been doing. You had a promenade with shops and lots of players in Air Rivals, a free game I played a bit in 2008...

Due to the technical undertaking, we should be thankful they did NOT just slap in all of this stuff. The measured approaches was a good call. Adding an entire animation system to an existing platform is no small task.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8sfaN8zT8E&feature=related

Had not seen that one before. Thanks. Looking at it though, its clear to see the avatars have been revamped a number of times.

As I have shown they had the animation pretty much locked down 3 years ago and it still looks pretty much the same. So the deal breaker was not animation code.. The rest is network code and code to display the stuff you buy with your real money.

And as for grafting this onto eve, they did it the same way they always did station spinning. You log off the session in outside space and you start the internal station session. all this is is a fancy wrapping for the buttons you used to press.

And as I mentioned there was a lot more than just object rotation in Eve.

Fuuck I'm falling for your trolling...

[Sir T]

I mean, it's really hard to walk. How do I get my guy in the middle of my screen? When I zoom in, the camera moves so he is on the left.

With this blog about how key input drives the pressure on the system through the roof i'm mostly surprised they went with WASD rather than click to move -- the latter works well enough for the korean MMOs and is more inline with the spaceship part of the AV control.

Yeah the Free korean MMO I mentioned before simply had click to move and it worked pretty well for what it was. Everyone understood you were just there to shop and then get the hell out killing wasps and penguins.

[palmer_eldritch]

I mean, it's really hard to walk. How do I get my guy in the middle of my screen? When I zoom in, the camera moves so he is on the left.

There is a setting for camera location/offset.

Do you really move your character up and down that ramp? Be honest, how long have you actually spent moving your character? Not clicking on things on those holograms (which are pretty cool actually), because you could click on them whether the character was mobile or not. I'm asking how long you have spent actually doing stuff with the character.

He (or she) can sit down, he can stand up, he can walk around a small room and he can walk out of that room on to a ramp. Has this given you minutes of play, hours of play, days of play? I am asking for firm numbers here, precise figures please.

(If you are a male player who has made a female avatar then your answer is suspect and you need not respond)

[TripleDES]

Apparently they're only now switching to upgraded tech which allows to avoid this minor issue

Python biting them in the ass! Well I never...

Seeing how much performance issues they're having, while the same time trying to maintain an one shard maximum people per system mantra, why don't they just fucking ditch it and start converting their code slowly towards some native language that compiles down to machine code? Like C++? That language seems to work for almost all other recent and not-so-recent games in existence. Unless they're making heavy use of dynamic code generation, I don't see a point at all in using an interpreted language, even if only as glue between native components. Stackless Python's task system, which they're regularly praising sky high, is nothing special that isn't available elsewhere. And no, Stackless doesn't JIT.

[IainC]

Do you really move your character up and down that ramp? Be honest, how long have you actually spent moving your character? Not clicking on things on those holograms (which are pretty cool actually), because you could click on them whether the character was mobile or not. I'm asking how long you have spent actually doing stuff with the character.

He (or she) can sit down, he can stand up, he can walk around a small room and he can walk out of that room on to a ramp. Has this given you minutes of play, hours of play, days of play? I am asking for firm numbers here, precise figures please.

(If you are a male player who has made a female avatar then your answer is suspect and you need not respond)

Nine times out of ten when I log in it's to do PI stuff. To do this I need to open the cargo hold of my active ship. There are two ways to do this; I can either open the ship hangar, right click on the currently active ship and then select 'Open Cargohold' or I can mouse over the little hologram then click on the AR elements that pop up. This last option is much more convenient however when I log in, my character is stood behind a sofa that has an interaction volume blocking access to the things on my coffee table (the agent finder and the ship hologram). To interact with those things I need to walk around to the other side of the almost entirely pointless sofa and its equally pointless interaction volume because CCP have no idea how to write user cases. The sofa is doubly pointless because I can't interact with it from behind, I need to walk around to the front of it anyway if I want to use it so the interaction volume it has serves no purpose at your login position except to prevent you from being able to do common tasks without moving first.

[Amaron]

Seeing how much performance issues they're having, while the same time trying to maintain an one shard maximum people per system mantra, why don't they just fucking ditch it and start converting their code slowly towards some native language that compiles down to machine code? Like C++?

Yea I'd feel a lot better about Incarna if it meant they were essentially throwing out Python.   I can't even begin to imagine how many man hours they've wasted over the years because the original devs were too fucking retarded to know you don't make an MMO in python.   CarbonIO sounds like a step in the right direction at least.   Essentially they've got a bunch of C++ modules that they've probably made since they hired some real programmers.   Those modules were still fucked though since they had to do IO through python.   So now they've got this system that can go around python for small IO at least.

So in the background at least something good came from Incarna.  In the future they could phase out python even more if they use this system as a stepping stone.

[palmer_eldritch]

Thank you for your

Do you really move your character up and down that ramp? Be honest, how long have you actually spent moving your character? Not clicking on things on those holograms (which are pretty cool actually), because you could click on them whether the character was mobile or not. I'm asking how long you have spent actually doing stuff with the character.

He (or she) can sit down, he can stand up, he can walk around a small room and he can walk out of that room on to a ramp. Has this given you minutes of play, hours of play, days of play? I am asking for firm numbers here, precise figures please.

(If you are a male player who has made a female avatar then your answer is suspect and you need not respond)

Nine times out of ten when I log in it's to do PI stuff. To do this I need to open the cargo hold of my active ship. There are two ways to do this; I can either open the ship hangar, right click on the currently active ship and then select 'Open Cargohold' or I can mouse over the little hologram then click on the AR elements that pop up. This last option is much more convenient however when I log in, my character is stood behind a sofa that has an interaction volume blocking access to the things on my coffee table (the agent finder and the ship hologram). To interact with those things I need to walk around to the other side of the almost entirely pointless sofa and its equally pointless interaction volume because CCP have no idea how to write user cases. The sofa is doubly pointless because I can't interact with it from behind, I need to walk around to the front of it anyway if I want to use it so the interaction volume it has serves no purpose at your login position except to prevent you from being able to do common tasks without moving first.

Thank you, but I am looking for someone who actually enjoys moving their character around. Who feels that their walking avatar actually adds to their enjoyment of the game, rather than taking it away. I'm wondering how long they have spent enjoying this new gameplay element. Do they spend hours moving their avatar around their small room, carefully avoiding the sofa? On the ramp, off the ramp? Sit down, stand up? How many minutes of enjoyment has this given them?

In your case Iain it seems to have generated negative enjoyment so I am giving you a score of minus five hours and 37 minutes.

[ajax34i]

Thank you, but I am looking for someone who actually enjoys moving their character around.

CCP devs could reply... you never know, this is a dev+ haven.

[Amarr HM]

CCP have no idea how to write user cases.

They have got this far without them, why start now?

I haven't played CQ or Incarna and yet all you say doesn't surprise me, CCP have always thought cockblock is a good thing. Adding to this I have no idea why they are trying to tap into the console market, cause no-one will buy their games with these design philosophies.

[TripleDES]

So in the background at least something good came from Incarna.  In the future they could phase out python even more if they use this system as a stepping stone.

It's still nothing to write home about. Their dev blog is a lot of blahblah that essentially means "We've implemented send and receive queues".

The only marginally interesting thing is this layer 5 (or whatever) routing they've implemented. But that's only useful, if they actually manage to hotswap solar system sessions to other servers (to keep forwarding user connection data until they've negotiated a connection with the new server).

[Amaron]

It's still nothing to write home about. Their dev blog is a lot of blahblah that essentially means "We've implemented send and receive queues".

That was just the end goal.  The important stuff is what they had to change to put that in.   Concurrent access to blocks of data is not fun.   They should have done it long ago though just to save money on server costs.  

[palmer_eldritch]

should of

Shud of

should've or should have