Because you're digital, possessions are a little bit worthless to you, but what you know, who you are and what you can master - that becomes the currency you deal in. "I look at it as The Matrix: you can know Kung Fu. You can die and come back via technology. "You're a pirate in a larger story after all. "The player will have a pilot which is theirs," Smith says. Those mechanics reveal the glue holding Valkyrie together between battles - the persistence, if you like. There are also Ground Crews that customise your ship further, but specific details about them are locked until later. And every time you customise, your ship's look does too - a nice visual touch. There are different ships, such as the Heavy and Support (not in the build I played), and there are load-outs to alter them towards different styles of play. A decoy counters cannon fire, and while it's not implemented in the build I played, Smith tells me you'll be able to nudge and direct its course of flight, perhaps sending it one way while you bank the other.Īnd those are the specific tools of just one ship, the Fighter. But they take time to reload, so it becomes a matter of holding your nerve until the last moment to have the greatest salvo-destroying effect. Ships have counter-measures to defend themselves with, such as laser-zappers that pop up to destroy incoming missiles. Missiles require a choice, too, in how many you let fly, a circular motif filling with dots to indicate how many you've loaded for fire. Take the way the cannon fires now: the bullets speed out then slow to a steady rhythm, the weapon overheating if you thunder for too long.
#Eve valkyrie flight stick skin#
The changes are more than skin deep, and introduce a layer of tactics beyond frantically loosing barrages of missiles before the three-minute battle timer is up. "Visually it's a whole upgrade," he says, and it also lays solid foundations for years of support ahead. The ship is new, the cockpit new, the HUD new, and space dazzles with beautiful new effects.
"It's four more months of work," lead game designer Chris Smith puts it bluntly, and of course it's now running on Unreal Engine 4, not Unity. It's head and shoulders above what we saw recently at GDC. Eve Valkyrie is at the vanguard of the virtual reality gaming charge, and it's testament to the belief Oculus has that more than half of its brand spanking new Oculus Rift DK2 dev kits were in Iceland last week at Eve FanFest to showcase a brand spanking new build of the game.