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from MMORPG.com! You should definitely read the article, but we have a sneaking suspicion that if you area already a capsuleer, you probably have a good idea why this honor fell on EVE. Since 2003, New Eden has remained a pretty good place to be. Pewpewpwnage (as also celebrated on MMORPG) is definitely a contributing factor, but it is truly the "Massively Multiplayer" part that you are providing to CCP's "Online" contribution that makes EVE, well, EVE.

Source: www.eveonline.com

Tenth CORPS Briefing

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Previous CORPS Reports 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1

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IC References

War in Geminate Continues

Northern Coalition Engaged On Second Front As Triumvirate Invade Pure Blind

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Are you affected by the events in this article? Do you have information regarding another event in New Eden? If so, please contact us with any information that you may have.

Want to become a news correspondent with IC? We are recruiting.

Source: www.eveonline.com

Hulkageddon II's organizer, Helicity Boson, has hailed the event as "a resounding success beyond my highest expectations!" Over 800 pilots are recorded as having participated, racking up almost 1800 registered kills, some 275 billion ISK-value in damage done and the loss of some estimated 100 - 250 thousand crewmen's lives.

Reactions to the event have been wildly varied amongst the capsuleer community.

AeCha Anais of Cold Fusion Alliance protested SCC authorization of insurance payouts to those attackers who lost their vessels to CONCORD in the course of illegal assaults such as those committed during Hulkageddon II.

"It is not surprising to me that capsuleers are willing to sacrifice [their crewmembers'] lives as regrettably many of my kind have become immune to the plight of their crews and the crews of the ships they attack. What is surprising to me is that SCC (secure commerce commission) is subsidizing this atrocity at almost 100% to all the attacking ships."

Imagonnawhupya is a pilot who joined the corporation Hulkageddon Orphanage especially the event - the corporation was sponsored by Helicity Boson to give lone pilots wanting to take part an easier way of finding fleets to work with. He explained his feelings about the event very simply.

"This has been a great event. I know I had fun if my victims did not."

Even among industrialists, however, there were those who enjoyed the event. Nysse Alpha of Forward Thinking Industries gave her views.

"As a miner… I thoroughly enjoyed Hulkageddon II. My Hulk was safely parked in spacedock for the duration, but I found the whole event to be quite entertaining, and checked the killboards every day to see the Exhumer loses of all the window-lickers who thought they were safe, or thought they could out-tank the gank squads.

"Look forward to the next one."

Though Hulkageddon II is now officially over and the prizes awarded, suicide attacks against miners continue to occur and many industrialists still vociferously protest that no action was taken to stop the event. The Interstellar Correspondents will look more at the feelings raised by Hulkageddon in a forthcoming article.

GalNet References

Hulkageddon II Closure Announcement and Prizes

Official Hulkageddon II Site

Hulkageddon II Killboard

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Are you affected by the events in this article? Do you have information regarding another event in New Eden? If so, please contact us with any information that you may have.

Want to become a news correspondent with IC? We are recruiting.

Source: www.eveonline.com

" is a new EVE Chronicle written by CCP Abraxas. Published every other Monday, Chronicles are intended to examine the various aspects of life in New Eden. The entire list is contained here, and a comment thread for this particular story may be found here.

Source: www.eveonline.com

Hulkageddon II Ends With Over 1,200 Exhumers Destroyed

Abudban, Heimatar - The Hulkageddon II event, in which pilots competed to destroy the most Exhumer-grade mining vessels over the course of a single week, came to a close on the 14.01.112 with a claimed 1,220 Exhumers destroyed. The top prize of 3 billion ISK was awarded to The United, with Final Agony and The Bastards claiming the 1 billion ISK award for second place and the 500 million ISK for third, respectively.

Hulkageddon II's organizer, Helicity Boson, has hailed the event as "a resounding success beyond my highest expectations!" Over 800 pilots are recorded as having participated, racking up almost 1800 registered kills, some 275 billion ISK-value in damage done and the loss of some estimated 100 - 250 thousand crewmen's lives.

Reactions to the event have been wildly varied amongst the capsuleer community.

AeCha Anais of Cold Fusion Alliance protested SCC authorization of insurance payouts to those attackers who lost their vessels to CONCORD in the course of illegal assaults such as those committed during Hulkageddon II.

"It is not surprising to me that capsuleers are willing to sacrifice [their crewmembers'] lives as regrettably many of my kind have become immune to the plight of their crews and the crews of the ships they attack. What is surprising to me is that SCC (secure commerce commission) is subsidizing this atrocity at almost 100% to all the attacking ships."

Imagonnawhupya is a pilot who joined the corporation Hulkageddon Orphanage especially the event - the corporation was sponsored by Helicity Boson to give lone pilots wanting to take part an easier way of finding fleets to work with. He explained his feelings about the event very simply.

"This has been a great event. I know I had fun if my victims did not."

Even among industrialists, however, there were those who enjoyed the event. Nysse Alpha of Forward Thinking Industries gave her views.

"As a miner… I thoroughly enjoyed Hulkageddon II. My Hulk was safely parked in spacedock for the duration, but I found the whole event to be quite entertaining, and checked the killboards every day to see the Exhumer loses of all the window-lickers who thought they were safe, or thought they could out-tank the gank squads.

"Look forward to the next one."

Though Hulkageddon II is now officially over and the prizes awarded, suicide attacks against miners continue to occur and many industrialists still vociferously protest that no action was taken to stop the event. The Interstellar Correspondents will look more at the feelings raised by Hulkageddon in a forthcoming article.

GalNet References

Hulkageddon II Closure Announcement and Prizes

Official Hulkageddon II Site

Hulkageddon II Killboard

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Are you affected by the events in this article? Do you have information regarding another event in New Eden? If so, please contact us with any information that you may have.

Want to become a news correspondent with IC? We are recruiting.

Source: www.eveonline.com

EVE Online Dominion 1.1.1 has been deployed

EVE Online: Dominion 1.1.1 deployment has been completed and Tranquility is back in service. We encourage anyone experiencing game play issues to submit a bug report. A feedback thread and issues thread are also available for you to help make us aware of any problems or feedback in general.

Source: www.eveonline.com

for review and a discussion thread is available here.

Source: www.eveonline.com

EVE Online installer error on PC Gamer DVD

The latest issue of PC Gamer is landing in the mailboxes of their subscribers and includes a special disc that features the EVE Online game client. It's come to our attention that there is an issue with the disc that prevents a successful installation. The game client is available, along with a free 14-day trial, through our website at http://www.eveonline.com/future.

Source: www.eveonline.com

Last year's introduction to the Jump Clone Services

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Are you affected by the events in this article? Do you have information regarding another event in New Eden? If so, please contact us with any information that you may have.

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Awesome looking planets

"We need awesome looking planets" - Torfi Frans.

The scrum team responsible for the updated planet graphics in Dominion was Team Oli Dan. Here we will explain how the planets came into existence; but the team also redid the star field background, created sovereignty structures, fighter bombers, and factional ships.

We have several types of planets in EVE: Gas giants, Temperate (Earthlike), Barren, Ocean, Storm, Ice and Lava. In addition we have moons, which from a programmer's perspective are also planets. A new type was added in Dominion, the mysterious Plasma planets.

In order to make an omelet you have to break some eggs

Height maps

Almost all the shaders use a height map at its base and this texture determines much of the surface features. It is generated by blending two textures together to get variations. The textures are grayscale and square, but they are combined with different scale and position. Our artists created different types of height maps for the different worlds we were creating. For instance, the Ice planet textures are very cracked and craggy, while the Temperate planet textures are based on height maps of Earth.

Preprocessing

The aforementioned texture combination is static during the rendering of the planet, and it is wasteful to do the same calculation for every pixel rendered, every frame. We decided to optimize the process by generating a new texture from the height maps as a preprocess. We use the GPU to render this texture using a novel Render Job system in Trinity, our graphics engine. The texture generated has four channels, 2 for the normal components and the other two contain the transformed height maps.

The size of the pre-generated texture depends on the distance from the player, and changes if the player decides to zoom in. Another thing we did was estimate the distances to planets before warping to have the correct sized textures generated when the players fly past them at break neck speeds.

Poles

Mapping a sphere with a rectangular texture is always a problem. Our solution was to have two texture coordinates, a planar projection for the poles and spherical projection for the belly. We then interpolate between them, making sure there are no discontinuities.

Detail of a Temperate planet.

Clouds

We soon realized that the clouds are the most noticeable feature of a planet and they needed to look very good. These textures are the biggest textures used by the planets, 2048×2048 pixels when your client is set to ‘High' texture quality.

The shader starts by adding a shadow underneath the clouds to give them some depth. We have the direction to the sun in texture space so we simply make a new lookup into the cloud texture but shift it by a certain amount. We then perform a regular texture lookup into the cloud texture and add it on top.

The cloud maps each have a corresponding pole texture mapped using the pole coordinates. Where these overlap with the belly texture we combine them using a max() function.

Varying the ocean coverage on a planet

Light Scattering

Physical accuracy was important for us to make a believable atmosphere. Scattering controls the color of the atmosphere as well as making the light terminator creep further into the dark side of the planet, since the light is bouncing inside the atmosphere. We started by calculating the atmospheric scattering in real time, but ended on a pre-baked solution. Scattering is view dependant so we created a lookup texture where the view dependant factor is on one axis and the light direction dependant factor was on the other.

The atmosphere on the horizon was treated differently. There we have separate geometry and calculate the bulk of the scattering equations in the vertex shader, but feed the result to the pixel shader and complete the calculations there. This gives us the nice effect that light behind the planet will still scatter towards the camera.

Let there be city lights

Some of the Temperate planets are inhabited and their cities can be seen from space. We use one texture covered in UV texture coordinate patches, spherical mapped, to provide surrogate texture coordinates. The texture coordinates fetched are used to look up into a texture atlas. We then mask the fringes of these patches with a separate grayscale texture. The UV patch textures were baked in Maya.

The UV lookup map and the corresponding mask

The UV texture can be quite small, but the mask needs to be of a higher resolution. The atlas texture has corresponding patches.

Atlas texture

This gives us the option of getting much higher texel density on the surface and since we can rotate the patches and mirror them we get a lot of variations from a single atlas texture.

Early ring test

Rings

The ring geometry is a plane. We generate texture coordinates for the ring and map it with a sort of cross section texture. The shadow of the planet is calculated for the rings.

The gas giant rings posed a bit of a problem. Both the planet and the rings are transparent, and the rings circle the planet, which causes a draw order issue. If we draw the planet first and the rings after, the horizon of the planet will look wrong. If we render the rings first then they can't go in front of the planet. The solution was to render the rings in two parts and clip the pixels in the pixel shader. The two parts were then given different sorting values to make sure the planet would be rendered in between.

A moon in Jessica

Shader Model 2

For the Shader Model 2 shaders (SM2) we needed to cut considerable corners. We created the Shader Model 3 shaders (SM3) very modular, so that every step, such as ocean, or vegetation, is a method. For the SM2 shaders we rely even more on the preprocessing step. Instead of making the height map/normal map combo, we render a color texture, with a specular factor. SM2 is limited to 64-pixel shader instructions so we split the preprocessing into multiple passes using the same exact modules as in the Shader Model 3 shaders.

In the end

The last whole month was spent optimizing (LODs, texture sizes) and ironing out the last kinks. Planets were quite a big risk factor for the release but in the end fallout from the release on TQ was minimal.

Thank you and fly safe!

- CCP Mannapi

Source: www.eveonline.com

Tournament Experts Announced
With all the applications in, interviews conducted and time spent deliberating, the CCP staff has decided on the experts that will be announcing the…
Source: evevault.ign.com

Tenth CORPS Briefing

---

Previous CORPS Reports 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1

---

IC References

War in Geminate Continues

Northern Coalition Engaged On Second Front As Triumvirate Invade Pure Blind

---

Are you affected by the events in this article? Do you have information regarding another event in New Eden? If so, please contact us with any information that you may have.

Want to become a news correspondent with IC? We are recruiting.

Source: www.eveonline.com

Daedalus X Execute Revenge-Heist Against Tenichigo Kaigun Inside Wormhole

Hisoufad, Domain - Icarus3, CEO of Daedalus X [DX4] successfully carried out a wormhole assault against his former employer, Eurzadahn, who is CEO of Tenichigo Kaigun [-KGN-] in an attempt to recover ISK he believes to be owed to him and the members of his corporation.

As the former -KGN- recruitment officer, Icarus3 claims that Eurzadahn stole hundreds of millions of ISK that was rightfully due to the members of the corporation. Icarus3 and other members grew concerned when funds generated from activities such as wormhole mining and security details found its way into the personal wallet of Eurzadahn rather than shared amongst those that contributed to the effort.

Relationships broke down within Tenichigo Kaigun, amidst rumours that further ISK and ships were disappearing from the corporation. Icarus3 left with other aggrieved capsuleers and formed DX4. Their plan for revenge was devised, taking four months of preparation before the final blow was struck.

Having discovered the wormhole in which Eurzadahn resided, a wormhole dubbed ‘Cake’ by capsuleers, Icarus3 entered the starbase owned by -KGN- using passwords he had acquired. Once inside, and with the help of his fellow capsuleers from DX4 he set about taking anything he could before Eurzadahn could act.

Among the items taken from Eurzadahn were a Thanatos, Absolution and Orca as well as whatever the Orca could carry. The total value of goods stolen from -KGN- to is estimated at approximately 2 billion ISK, with further damages being inflicted militarily. On a final note about Eurzadahn, Icarus3 had this to say: "I've never known a single [capsuleer] to accept so many loans and donations as Eurzadahn does. It's rather embarrassing to know I used to be under his command."

The Interstellar Correspondents have recently managed to contact Eurzadahn, who adamantly denies Icarus3's allegations. A follow-up article will be published shortly.

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Are you affected by the events in this article? Do you have information regarding another event in New Eden? If so, please contact us with any information that you may have.

Want to become a news correspondent with IC? We are recruiting.

Source: www.eveonline.com

MMORPG.com Game of the Year

J S LL! Splendid! 哦耶! Awwww yeah! These are just a few of the phrases yelled by the CCP devs in the past 24 hours. Some were not fit for print, but quite celebratory.

EVE won the Game of the Year Award from MMORPG.com! You should definitely read the article, but we have a sneaking suspicion that if you area already a capsuleer, you probably have a good idea why this honor fell on EVE. Since 2003, New Eden has remained a pretty good place to be. Pewpewpwnage (as also celebrated on MMORPG) is definitely a contributing factor, but it is truly the "Massively Multiplayer" part that you are providing to CCP's "Online" contribution that makes EVE, well, EVE.

Source: www.eveonline.com