Tuesday, October 10, 2023

Patience Starhopper, Patience...

My first view of a Jump Point Nebulae...    Ahhhhh

 ~or "The Pieces Fall Into Place, Slowly But Surely."

Building, Creating, Developing... the concerted combined actions of hundreds of people across multiple international locations all working for the same unimaginable goal... A SciFi based, FPS/F, PVX, Sandbox MMO Virtuality.

An MMOG like no other in scope and breadth. First Person Primary Perspective, Third Person optional.
Millimeters in "Scale", Light-years in "Scope".
A True Sandbox MMO where you can pick up an object as small as a "Medal" and that object persists unless destroyed or "used up"... in a shared MMO virtual reality that is light seconds, even light minutes, in size. NO cut scenes... except Death and Reprinting.

Yea (sigh), that's me officer. I'd recognize me anywhere.

In SC we are actually 3D "Printed" from a quantum-connected "live mirror" image of "you". Using 3D Organic Printers, respawning in SC is having your entire body physically "Re-printed" and then reloading your brain's "gestalt state", top that off with a couple a shot's from a Defib kit to re-boot you, and Bob's yer Uncle. At least that's the idea, but I digress...

So you can only try to imagine the hardware and coding required. It would, and is, taking years to complete... but it IS coming together. And this past week has seen the addition of some of the foundational "pieces" of code... The initial pieces of "Jump Points" and their supporting Stations and other related hard/software.

Are these Completed and Polished and connected to fully realized,
Completed and Polished Star Systems? Are these Jump Points ready for the long awaited command... "Jump, Jump!"???

This is the flight path to the future Gate...

OH HELL NO. These are the "very first" building blocks which will be worked on and iterated on and added to and tested and retested and retested until it all DOES work.
Is it hard to deal with? Is it frustrating waiting?
OH HELL YES it is... but


You gotta crawl before you can walk,
You gotta walk before you can jog,
You gotta jog before you can run,
You gotta run many a weary, frustrating, pain filled, mile before you can win the race.

I, for one, am more than happy with these virtualconcrete & virtualsteel yet somehow very "real" Signs and Portents of "Things to Come"... but many of those of us who brave the Maddening Glitches, Deadly 30Ks and Outrageous Misfortunes of playing a game that is "Currently Under Construction", many will be very butthurt and whiney. Grow up.

You are taking part in something never seen before, take solace in your suffering, we are the one's who will one day say, with well earned pride, "I was there when..."

The EVE Gate

But for me personally, this was... momentous. You see back in EVE Online when scanning and roaming through Anoikis (wormhole space) for kills, lewtz and LOLZ, the most exciting moments for me, were when we would warp to a Corpmate or a Bookmark and land on a new wormhole... and that raw gut clenching fear and excitement grabs you...

"WTF's gonna kill me behind Door Number Two today Monty?"


Seeing, locking on and spooling up to jump to the "Stanton Terra Jump Point" in the HUD was soooooooooo Deeply Nostalgic, and yet... absolutely Brand New at the very same time.

"Stanton - Terra Jump Point" only 38.8 Mkm from Hurston

I deeply loved how we, the true Madmen of EVE, lived, built and defended our very own Space Stations in Anoikis (Wormhole Space). We were the real explorers of the Great Unknown... those crazy people who lived over the edge of the map where it says, "Here be Dragons!" (or far worse... Bob, the God of Holes)

And our wormholes themselves were the jewels of New Eden... Stunningly beautiful doorways into the deadliest spaces in EVE.

Warping to and landing at any of the three new Jump Points and
JPStations in Stanton is right outta my best scifi dreams...

THIS!!!  Stanton-Pyro Jump Point... So much WIN.

Huge Fully Functional Death STARrrr... oh, ummm... I mean... each JPoint has a Huge fully functional R&R Station nearby and the good people at CIG have outdone themselves. The sheer SCALE and beauty of the nebulae surrounding each JPoint rivals anything in, or outside of New Eden.

I have so far toured the Stanton-Terra and the Stanton-Pyro JPoints... haven't been to Stanton-Magnus, yet.

The R&R Stations at both are not named, BUT both stations have Full Medical plus ALL four standard station services available, Hangars & Habs, Galleria, Cargo Deck and Refinery.

I am not positive but I don't remember any other R&R's offering ALL four services.
The rest only offer a mix of three...
"
Hangars & Habs, Galleria & Cargo Deck", or
"
Hangars & Habs, Galleria & Refinery".

Interesting and makes sense as they are a gateway station between systems.

Jump Point Station

One other thing that brought back the ghost of my feelings for EVE... at the Stanton-Pyro JPoint, when I was spooling up Quantum, ALL the warpables, the planets, moons, stations, etc, etc. in Stanton are clustered together off to one side... you are on the edge of deep space outside of the Stanton system.  I remember that feeling from the Deep Safe's we once made in EVE.  Ahhhhhh.... memories.

There is ALL of Stanton system... a familiar sight from my EVE days.


One last thing I want to say.


I do not hate EVE Online or CCP... I played that game intensively and exclusively for 10 YEARS. I loved EVE... I truly did, but

ALL of their advertising now has "people" in it. ie Characters... 'toons... Avatars... "Capsuleers"... walking and talking and being PEOPLE in the world and that type of gameplay... FPS (the First Person Shooter perspective) simply does not exist in EVE, and it never has.

In the end for me, one reason I "won" EVE in 2020 was the repeated sad and ultimately failed attempts to bring FPS gameplay to EVE. DUST 415, Valkyrie, Project NOVA, etc. The other reason was discovering the AMAZING FPS gameplay available in Star Citizen.

I spent 10 years wishing I could be ME in New Eden. That I could opt out of the POD-Person meta and be myself in New Eden. WIS, "Walking In Stations" the very first attempt by CCP to bring First Person gameplay to EVE, and it was the worst attempt they ever made.

The "Incarna" Expansion brought what was, at the time, a truly ground breaking Character Creator giving EVE, for a very brief period, the best Avatar creator in gaming... but combine that with the absolute LACK of any REAL Content to utilize that amazing FPS Avatar IN... Well, all we got was a few different apartment layouts, each with a balcony view. That was it.

ALL we in EVE ever had, for the 10 years I played and still today, after 20 years total... is this

Your Portrait on the wall...

...and thousands of wartorn, flash-frozen, burnt up, charred and nude corpsicles...  that's it.

This is the TOTALITY of  FPS gameplay in EVE.
(I have Cargo Containers FILLED with corpses...)

I know this Turamarth wasn't happy...

But this older Turamarth...  now this guy is content.


Fly it like it's REAL... and I hope to see you in my sky!

=/|)=