News from the Pod

On Captain’s Quarter, World of Darkness and Carbon

A recent twitter conversation with @ecpliticrift & @Thorvik_EVE went pretty hot about how Incarna, World of Darkness and Carbon, specifically about how connected they are, and Twitter isn’t the best place to have a real and rich conversation, so here are my thoughts about this.

It’s been common knowledge for some time that EVE and WoD will have some shared DNA, called Carbon. Carbon, as I see it, is a set of common tools easily re-usable for different games, kinda like we web techies are using CodeIgniter or Ruby on Rails frameworks, for instance, to build up websites using a common set of tools. Yet, two websites could be running the same framework and still appear very different for customers.
My guess is that Carbon is basically the same. CCP devs will be working with Carbon for EVE and WoD alike, creating two different games using the same base tools.

Now, here comes the Captain’s Quarter. As stated before by many people before me, CQ isn’t really that exciting for most of us because basically, that’s just walking in a closed room. But the main point of CQ isn’t for us player, to be perfectly honest. The main point is for CCP to field test their newest tech, specifically the whole “walking in station” part that did not existed in EVE before.

Obviously, that part is sharing the core tech of the future WoD game, because why would a game company have two teams working on two games that both need a common set of tools ? You guessed right, the main tech behind Incarna will belong to Carbon. And, of course, the same tech will be powering WoD.

So, basically, with Captain’s Quarter, CCP is field-testing both the Carbon base tools for walking characters, and the specific EVE interface built on top of it. WoD will probably benefit from the Captain’s Quarter field test, and that’ pure logic.
I can totally see CCP using both EVE and WoD feedback and bug reports to keep on improving Carbon, and thus, both games at once.

CCP vs The Web

As some of you may know, I’m working on an userscript that will give you the ability to get a fix of your favorite Internet Spaceships while at work. As I mentioned in my previous post, this is taking longer than expected due to the awful front-end coding outputted by EVE Gate. When I say “awful”, I’m still being kind, since we’re not far from the perfect “things not to do” case.

Here’s a quick recap of what’s wrong with the gate, from a pure front-end coding point of view.

#01 - Hard-coded decorative images

Yeah, I’m getting straight to (one of) the most awful thing you can see on the Gate’s code. Take a good look at the main menu. It’s composed of two lists, each one containing a set of “li” tags, nothing bad for now. But sadly, it looks like the CCP Web team is still looking for a way to get borders straight, since they inserted additionnal “li” tags in between navigation elements. This, my Internet friends, is without a doubt one of the most stupid things you can ever do while coding a front-end. In fact, I think that’s what you learn first when you start doing HTML.

#02 - ID and Classes with the same name

I almost fell of my chair when I saw this.

IDs are supposed to be a unique, identifying name for an HTML element. Classes are supposed to be generic and re-usable. You can script using classes or IDs alike, so there’s simply no excuse for this.

#03 - Javascript to place boxes in a table

I’m looking at you, EVE Gate calendar. As you can see over there, the table cells from the Calendar view are empty, with the exception of the day number. The actual content of those cells is located in a bunch of div’s located underneath. Those are then placed above the table cells with some javascript. Once again, I really don’t see the point of all this.

#04 - Everything else

I’m not gonna post every single line of code that makes me die a little inside, because I simply stopped looking. Making EVE Gate safe for work should be as simple as a CSS file swap. Unfortunately, CCP Web devs seems to rely heavily on automatically generated HTML/CSS/Javascript code (yeah, much like Frontpage do). As for me, I’ve been struggling for the last days with the calendar view, the main spike in the foot of my #sfwevegate project, and it’s driving me real mad.

“Maybe they’re good at back-end, it’s not that bad after all” was what I thought at first. Now the great forum debacle is over, I really don’t know what they’re good at.

EVE Gate, safe for work edition

Things are going okay for now, but more roughly than I’d expected.

The HTML code generated by the gate is extremely heavy, bloated with tons imbricated divs with little semantic purpose and non-content relative code. I must say I’m disappointed with the CCP web team here, you might as well have used HTML tables like they did in the 90’s. And i’ll refrain from talking extensively about the mix of stylesheet-based and inline styles, which is a complete nonsense. If anyone have a good reason for these, feel free to enlighten me, because what I’ve seen in the Gate code is mainly in complete contradiction to every single good principle the web have since… I don’t know, maybe 5 or 10 years.

This unnecessary code complexity has forced me to go the Userscript way, instead of using a single CSS file, because with a userscript, I can get totally rid of the original CSS file and remove the most disruptive HTML code - seriously, CCP, “li” tags in navigation with nothing but images, to force the buttons separations ? - and present a nice and clean user interface.

Anyway, I’m progressing at a good pace, and I should start rolling a “beta” version of the script soon (TM).

The downside of the userscript is the legitimate security concern one could have. EVE is a cold, harsh, place, and trust is not easily given. I’m okay with that, and I can swear my good will as much as I can, nothing will ever beat the open source. I’ll make sure my script will be as readable as possible so you guys can check out what the hell it’s doing.

Morsus Mihi, best Mihi.

Today, Morsus Mihi turns 5 years old.

Back on track

That’s what Irumani is looking right now. Crazy eyes, huh ?
Fortunately, it seems that CCP is so overflown with petitions for character portrait issue they’re gonna throw a free re-design for everyone. Neat.

Also, I’m kinda getting back on track with New Eden. I’m playing a bit more, and trying to attend more operations. Mainly capital ones, since my last subcap experience, a few weeks ago, was a scathing reminder that the big lag monster is still around.

The jump-in took me around ten minutes. Then I got stuck moving towards the enemy in my MWD’d Malediction. Of course, I eventually got well past their position by the time the ship started to respond. So I went back for the gate, went well past the position again, Warped away then back, and there I got stuck again. I got shot down and podkilled without even locking, and I knew I got PK’d because of the blinking notification “clone activated” since i got stucked again on the clone jump.

Next thing to do is to get some iskies back, so I can afford some bigger, thougher ships than a single Interceptor. I know the corporation could help. I just don’t like to ask.

On another topic, I’ve scanned through the CSM minutes, and I was unimpressed. Not by the work of the CSM members that have my full and vocal support, but by the NDA card CCP pulled out pretty hard this time. I guess they don’t want to see players rambling all over the forums about something that slipped away from the VIP’s lips again (yeah, Nathan, i’m talking about that quote).

Random thought

There will never be a true, independent, troll and/or propaganda free website talking about politics in EVE nullsec, since the most important part of EVE warfare is not about blowing stuff up, it’s about the grunts’ morale.

Failing to understand that exposes you to be trolled again and again and again and again.

A lot of the so-called “RMT scandal” supposed to happen in nullsec alliances have been made-up to troll people. And it worked well beyond the wildest expectations.