We recently had the opportunity to ask a few questions about the new planetary visuals that will be introduced with the new Dominion expansion of EVE Online. CCP jBot was kind enough to tell us a bit about some of the new features coming with the expansion.




 

Can you tell us about the process you use to generate the redesigned planets for the upcoming expansion?
We start off with gathering material and references as well as having the concept artists paint to create a visual guideline for the programmers and technical artists to work from. We also worked with the Dust 514 team in Shanghai for previsualization of shaders and texture work. The shaders are written in HLSL (High Level Shader Language) to use in our in-house development environment. The art director and programmers work with our artists and technical artists to create the textures needed for the shaders. For example the terrestrial planet shader uses several height maps that's used to control the amount of landmass vs. ocean areas as well as maps controlling the varying density of clouds. The Terrestrial planet shader uses a combination several different textures to assure variation and detail and to generate everything from city lights to vegetation areas.

How unique will each of the newly generated planets be?
With the number of textures used for each of the 10 different planet types and the way they are being combined in the new Planet shaders should ensure that every planet in EVE is unique. Will the new visuals require more resources from our computers? Yes, to some degree. That was unavoidable since the previous planets used low resolution textures and aging shader technology. Although care is being taken that they are as light as possible without sacrificing their visual excellence.

What effect do the planetary attributes like surface gravity and pressure have during the planet generation process?
The art direction in EVE is something we like to call “Hyper Realism”. What this means to us is that while we do strive to make things look realistic and scientifically accurate we don’t strictly adhere to realism as a rule. If we can improve on reality for the sake of making more pleasing visuals for our players then we will do so. That said we've got a number of planet archetypes such as Gas Giant, Terrestrial and Ice(dwarf) with various attributes that are unique to each archetype then procedurally generated so each planet is unique. The range of the attributes is then constrained so the planets are pleasing to look at and a beautiful backdrop for space warfare. Will these planetary attributes become relevant to us pod pilots in the future? It is entirely possible that as EVE players are allowed to open up more functionality of the planets in a future expansion that the attributes of the planets will have an effect on that gameplay. In Dominion however we're just focusing on making the best looking planets possible and leaving the rest for some future expansion.

 

 

Can we expect that the newly generated planets will look the same in EVE and in DUST514?
As seen at FanFest 2009 the mercs in DUST 514 will stage above planets in their War Barge and look down on the planet they are about to fight on. DUST 514 and EVE share the same IP during the exact same timeline so it's our goal to make space look the same in both games. We're working hard to make sure when you're in space over your favorite planet in EVE or on the ground of that same planet in DUST 514 that it feels right. Obviously there are different constraints between console and PC that we live under which could mean a slight difference in the look but we're pretty excited about how things are looking on all platforms.

Will it be possible to visually recognize forms of civilization or life on a planets surface and will we be able to detect valuable resources present on a planet or moon?
It will definitely be possible to see both organic (vegetation) and civilian (cities) life on planets that have it. It won't be possible to visually assess the value of a planet or moon in Dominion however. Is it possible that planets will change visually or will gain other properties over time? Everything is possible ;-) for Dominion though as was mentioned earlier we're just focused on making beautiful planets. Will planets have similar attributes and visuals throughout the whole universe, or will planets be different depending on the solar system, constellation and region? The solar-system is definitely the main factor planets and their appearance are depending upon. For one this is due to their visual appearance being influenced by a solar-system's ambient. Furthermore the spectral class of a solar-system's sun and a planet's distance from the sun influence what kind of planet you are more likely to find. And some planets even change their appearance slightly over time.

 

 

How will we be able to interact with planets and moons in the future?
It's already possible to interact with moons through Starbases and Moon Harvesting Arrays. The sky is the limit as far as where we take it from here. Battles in DUST 514 take place on planets so one could definitely speculate that planets are going to play a bigger role in the future of the IP. That would be speculation though. One thing is assured; we live in interesting times. Will we see new types of planets in the future (different from the gas giants and terrestrial planets we have now)? After Dominion you will have 10 different planet types in the game. We previously had 9 types, but we've added a new mysterious one we aptly call "Plasma". Who knows what the storyline will bring forth in future but currently we're only focusing on making the ones we have as pretty as possible. Can you tell a bit about the repositioning of planets within a solar systems that the dev-team mentioned at fanfest? The planets themselves aren't being repositioned but the warp in point is being moved to make more sense. Prior to Dominion the warp in point of planets was a fixed ratio to the size of the planet. That might have been more scientifically accurate but it had the terrible side effect of making all planets big or small look exactly the same size from the perspective of the player. That is fixed in Dominion. Not only will we be closer to planets to see the unique beauty of each individual planet we will be at a distance that makes the really big gas giants look HUGE.

What other visual improvements are coming with Dominion (i.e. the redesigned stars and backgrounds)?
The Planets and the updated Starfield will be the biggest visual change coming with Dominion. The Starfield, when zoomed into actually reveals more stars the deeper you go. We're also adding 4 brand spanking new Fighter Bombers along with art assets related to the Sovereignty update, the Infrastructure Hub, Territorial Claim Unit and Sovereignty Blockade Unit. We've also redesigned the Titan weapon effects for the 4 races that now all have new racially unique doomsday weapon effect. We've also improved the collapsed EVE-Gate in the New Eden system, changed the Field of view (FOV) in the client to give the player a better sense of scale, new illustrations for the epic mission arcs and other minor updates.

Since you are a member of the graphics team for EVE Online - what other visual improvements can we expect to see in future expansions or patches?
We're constantly striving to improve the look of EVE. We've got a lot more in store but we're not ready to talk about the graphics in future expansions at this point in time as we're laser focused on Dominion right now.

Thanks go out to CCP jBot for making this interview possible! More information about the features coming with Dominion can be found here.