General Discussion

Today, MMORPG.com's News Manager Keith Cross lets us in on what was being said at this year's EVE Fan Fest about Ambulation. For those of you who might not be aware, EVE's Ambulation project will see players able to move around outside of their ships for this first time in the game's history.

 

Back when I was in my teens, some of my favorite games were space combat games such as the Wing Commander series. Of that series I was particularly fond of Privateer, a game set in the Wing Commander universe, but instead of playing a military pilot you are cast in the roll of a space vagabond, going from system to system looking for work as a cargo hauler, a bounty hunter, or a pirate, or whatever else pays the bills. What I

loved about the game was that you could fly around to any system that you pleased. The universe was as open as the gameplay. It was fun. But I’ve always said that the mark of a truly great game is to be able to play a game, and love it, and yet still be able to sit there and come up with a hundred ways to make this game better. When I was playing Privateer I would be in the middle of a particularly hairy dogfight and wish I had some friends on my wing. Or I’d blast a pirate to space dust without breaking a sweat, and wish that there was a real person behind the controls, not just the predictable AI. The point is, back then my ideal of the perfect game was a space fighter game with a big open universe, where I could play in the style of my choosing, and I could play cooperatively or competitively with real people. Some years later, CCP gave us all of that and more when they created EVE.

 

Read it all here.

Excellent article. I am also really looking forward to ambulation!

So do we all

Personaly i cant wait. Its the only thing i was realy mising in Eve :)

They were initially talking about a February/March release, but I think it will be more like a June/July timeframe.

good article

  Dam,I drooled.Gotta clean the keyboard.

lol grifin me too man me too, aww man im so looking forward to this.

In-freaking-credible. I can't wait to see how well the procedural animation system works out; it looks killer in Spore, in a more realistic setting, well, bye bye goofy running animations (humans in WoW, anyone?)

Kudos CCP, even if it is a summer launch, well, it'll be worth it.

Paired with the previous EVE article, I think this shows that EVE is one of the few games with DEV's that make the right choices, instead of turning a large part of their own population against them. They had issues of course, but most of the drama comes from players with a grudge :P

I'm looking forward to this, as being able to party was the only thing that I missed from other games.

I'd be surprised if they put as much into ambulation as they're hoping.. all those face and clothing customizations sound great, but imagine the lag of downloading all those minute details while you're on a busy station!  I'm sure there'll be an LOD, but I wouldn't like to see how the game holds out when you walk into a bar in Jita..