And let there be more change

[Cruin]

Well, it seems CCP is at it again. (Here if you want to read it yourself. Plenty of geeky technical gibberish.)

With last years bump from the Classic client to the Premium client, came a few graphical goodies to sate our appetites; T3 modular ships, new star fields, new effects and most noticably upgraded planets. According to a CCP artist, the art director wasn't happy with how several of the ships looked with all the newer graphics. The ship itself didn't feel like a nasty big battleship, nor did the textures really work well on it anymore.

If you're already on the task of rebuilding a ship from the ground up, why not improve all of it while you're at it. It took the art team awhile to come up with a new method of encoding the textures and shaders to work with the existing client. The good news is that for a file roughly equal in size to the old files, the game will now be able to display ships with crisper textures and colors (this should mean no more washed out colors on the factional ships). To start off this whole new agenda they've rebuilt the iconic Caldari battleship: the Scorpion. It has both new textures as well as a whole new look and feel. All the factional and tech2 iterations have also had their textures redone.

Feeling left out because you're ship isn't changing? They've stated that they will now be working on refreshing all the ships with the new process. It doesn't state if they'll be reworking any other ship designs like they have the Scorpion. Time will tell. Either way it will take some time and they hope to have some of the new ships packed in the summer expansion: Tyrannis. (If you haven't heard about it, info is here.)

[Psygnal]

That looks rather promising... and I'm sure that both of the people who use the Scorpion will be thrilled to bits about the design change.

I'd love to see an updated Raven, to be honest.

Encouraging to know that they're not just planning on sitting there basking in the glow of previous efforts.

As for Tyrannis - Not much in there for me at the moment that I can see... what happened to Incarna?

Psyg'

[Cruin]

[Gawain]

Nice design - I might have to get me one - been looking with envious eyes at the Rattlesnake variant lately.

Also looking forward to this interaction with planets business. The potential for a nice addition of depth there.

[Psygnal]

I'm a bit worried that it's just going to be similar to moon mining, in that your entire interaction with the planet will be planting something in orbit, and waiting for a storage bay to fill up.

This would be a shame. I'd love to have some kind of close up interaction with the planets surface, even if it's only something shiny to look at while deciding what to extract off it.

Psyg'

[Claude_Levi]

Wow, ol' scorpy looks like it's there to kick ass and take names. Big up on the old 'mobile toothpick salesman' look of the orig. HMAS Sinclair will have to have a coming-out party.

Er.

You heard me.

[Cruin]

[Claude_Levi]

The pipe dream is that with any planet interaction, they're paving the way for integration with Dust, surely?

Though we've all seen before what happens when big-idea gaming runs afoul of reality.

[Psygnal]

Honestly, at this stage, I'm putting Dust in the same basket as Walking in Stations and Atmospheric Flight until I'm actually playing it.

Psyg'

[Claude_Levi]

Oh My, it looks like the interstellar war has mired on Planet Generica.

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

Given that trailers do love to whore 'unique' features and exaggerate the fun you can have, this is a dismal showing.