Today, for the first time in eve, I’ve done something I’ve been promised I would be able to do since 2008.  I walked in a station.

That’s right, I just spent some time playing around with Captain’s Quarters in Eve.  While it’s still very much alpha-test quality, I can sort of see where CCP is going with it.

You start off in a room standing on a raised platform with three large screens on a wall in front of you. the middle screen shows data about the system & station you’re in, as well as incursion information.  I’ll assume it’ll eventually show more things such as market data.  The screen on the left basically opens your corporation menu, and the screen on the right opens your planetary interaction menu.  I’ll also go ahead and assume they will show more pertinent information at a later date as well.

You can walk around the area a bit, and even sit down on a “sofa” (which looks more like a bench on some form of public transportation).  Walking is currently horribly un-intuitive and you get stuck on just about everything that comes within two meters of you, but hey, that’s not too bad for an 8 year old video game where you’ve been nothing but a ship.   There’s a hall behind you that leads to a balcony where you can overlook your ship.  I wandered out to look at MY ZEALOT in all it’s majesty.  Basically it’s just a different version of the current station view.

I’m optimistically pessimistic about this.  I’m very confident that CCP will find a way to fuck it up somehow.   It’s nowhere near ready for a release.  You can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.  For example, ou can only push one button at a time while walking. You push “W” to move forward, then you have to let go of “W” in order to push “A” to turn left.  If you try and push “A” while pushing “W”, nothing happens.  Even mouse controls are wonky, and require you to stop walking in order to turn.

Edit: Apparently this is only true if you’re holding down a mouse button like a retard.  I tend to hold down my right mouse button when walking around to adjust the camera. However, let’s not get into camera controls, and just leave it at “they’re really bad”. When you’re not holding down your mouse button, you can turn about 45 degrees while walking.

As I mentioned, this is an alpha-test version.  It does worry me that CCP was confident that they were going to have this pushed out to Singularity before Fanfest last month, as I think there’s quite a bit of work to do before it’s ready to go be moved there.

I do wonder if this is how far CCP is along with properties like Dust and World of Darkness.  I mean, if this is the state World of Darkness is in, I fear that game will take another 5 years to come out.  But, I shall post some other time about my love of the original WoD.