EVE Online: Social Ambulation

MMORPG.com had the chance to discuss EVE's new "Ambulation Project", social environments for players.

As far as I could I see, there wasn't really too much new information about what ambulation would include, but the team seems to be farther along each time I see the presentation, and it has been interesting to watch the evolution of the project thus far. As fans of EVE and non-fans alike may already know, EVE is known for its stunning space visuals, which were highly regarded even before the recent Trinity upgrade which dramatically increased the level of graphical detail. Now their stated goal is to make sure that the characters on the stations are in tune with the level of detail that players have become accustomed to on the outside of the station.

The characters that represent the human avatars of EVE players currently look like stylized caricatures appearing ina 2D image at the bottom of your screen. In the new system, players will have to make new avatars themselves, as making an automated system to do this for players would ultimately be a waste of the developer's time. Why spend all that time making a complicated system that could never do the job as well as an actual human? Besides, with the previously mentioned level of detail that's going into these new avatars, making a new avatar should be fun.

The article has a lot more details about the finer points of avatar creation so head on over.