Entropia Universe Unreal | May 10, 2022 | From Official Website

DarkMoonEnigma

Virtualsense Official
Staff member
Moderator
Community & Media Manager
Virtualsense Media Team
VCAT Team Member
Welcome to Entropia Universe Unreal

Greetings Entropians! I’m Dennis Antonsson, the Game Director responsible for taking Entropia into the new era that is Unreal Engine 5 — or what is known internally as the Odyssey project. We’ve built an amazing team here to make Odyssey a reality. But what lies ahead? Jump onboard, we’re setting sail on our Odyssey!

What is Entropia Universe Unreal?

Evolution and Migration

In the broadest sense, the project comprises activities related to:
  • the evolution of core systems, such as hunting, mining and crafting
  • the migration of items and value currently present in Entropia Universe
Preserve the Soul, Stay Fresh

The goal of this evolution and migration is to preserve the soul of Entropia whilst staying fresh.
To achieve this we will:
  • Improve and refine the core features of Entropia Universe
  • Appeal to both current and future users.
Many key aspects of Entropia will remain the same:
  • Users will explore and exploit resources
  • The world will be sci-fi themed and single shard
  • Users will have one avatar with no class selection
In addition, we will continue to appeal to a niche segment by remaining:
  • A sandbox MMORPG
  • With a user-driven, real-cash economy
  • Based on PED
Exploration: an End in Itself
We will focus our efforts on worldbuilding to make exploring our worlds more stimulating and exciting. Exploring will become an end in itself!

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Gameplay Experience
“Explore and exploit the resources of vibrant alien worlds as part of a real-cash economy that has grown over a period of two decades. Build trade networks and contract other users to work for you. Hone your skills and find your niche as you make a name for yourself in our thriving online community of daring entrepreneurs”.

Vision

The Holistic World
In Odyssey, exploration will take place in a world which is holistic.
This means that each part of our world will have a function and a purpose, with a defined relationship to other parts.
One of the ways we will achieve this is through systemic design.

Systemic Design
Systemic design involves different systems in the game reacting to each other:
  1. Entities in the game are set up to respond to predefined inputs and outputs
  2. If these inputs and outputs ‘match’, an outcome occurs involving these entities
Before we can really start populating our world with entities we must set up the basic rules of our world. These rules will form the basis for constructing reliable, consistent tools for maintaining our expanding world in the years to come.

A Living World
Users will be able to discover the ‘unspoken rules’ of our world by noting connections between world elements. Knowledge of these connections will help users 'navigate' the world more successfully.

On a grand scale, systemic design produces a living, vibrant world that reacts to the user and to elements within itself. It can lead to emergent gameplay, i.e. gameplay emerging from the interaction of multiple systems rather than the intentional designs of the developer. These varied interactions are stimulating, motivating users to experiment and explore.

Creating the Universe

What have we been doing?
Up until now we have focused on pre-production, learning Unreal Engine 5 and fleshing out our core system designs. We aim to create better open worlds faster by using a modular approach in accordance with systemic design principles.

Visual Style
We wish to set a visual target that incorporates the alien feel of Entropia Universe and stands the test of time.
Currently, we are evaluating a general art style that is defined as “Stylized realism with a sci-fi theme”. Stylized realism means we can enhance, exaggerate and remove real-life aspects to achieve certain effects — without being overly restricted by ‘true-to-life’ principles. This art style is subject to change, since fully defining our art direction is an iterative process.

The area pictured below is Setesh, a moon of Calypso. Setesh will act as our development ‘playground’ — a smaller area where we can test builds to gather data and feedback.


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Backend
We are building a completely new backend. This work is being achieved using modern techniques and is informed by our experiences from Entropia Universe.

We aim to create a dynamically scalable universe where the game world is regarded as a single world and the computational load is split among servers in a distributed way. All this should be completely invisible from the client side. We are also working with the Gameplay Team to ensure we can implement interesting gameplay utilizing the impressive features of Unreal Engine 5.

The Future

Teasers!
Using our holistic approach we will create something akin to a Metaverse: an alternate world made exciting by the sheer range of possibilities it offers.

Here’s a quick glimpse of what the future might hold:
  • Fully-functional user-driven economy with a wide range of goods, services and professions enabling users to gain expertise and a role within the community
  • Single shard universe with thematic consistency
  • Properly defined corporations with group characteristics
  • Developed background story helping users orient themselves within the game world
  • Defined biomes teeming with alien life
  • Introduction of environmental dangers
  • Interplanetary jumpgates
  • Contract system: inter-user contracts to harness user labor as well as NPC corporate contracts (i.e. 'missions')
  • Resources governed by consistent, clear rules
  • Relative value of items from Entropia to be kept
  • More information on resources and creatures
  • Ownership (estates, land areas etc.) with a larger range of customizable entry options
  • A truly open MMO world allowing users to drive their own projects, whilst including a multitude of optional goals
  • User revenue from interactions with user-created content
  • Hubs with centralized facilities and features to encourage users to congregate
  • Talent tree: visualized skill and professions with the potential to customize towards your playstyle together with the gear
Roadmap
We are currently focusing on Combat and Hunting; with Mining, Resource Gathering and Crafting to follow.
In about a year we aim to have a fully playable part of the world with close-to-final visuals, core functionality and mechanics — enabling us to lay the foundations for future systems and gather your valuable feedback.

We’ll release a devblog regularly so you can travel with us on our Odyssey to a new and exciting Entropia Universe!
Until next time!

Dennis Antonsson,
Game Director, Entropia Universe Unreal


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MindArk strives to provide you with useful, accurate and timely information on this Devblog. However, MindArk assumes no responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of the materials or information published on this Website. You acknowledge that MindArk may, but is not committed to, change or update the content of this Website at any time without notice.
 

DarkMoonEnigma

Virtualsense Official
Staff member
Moderator
Community & Media Manager
Virtualsense Media Team
VCAT Team Member
I added this thread to our Entropia News section from the official Entropia Universe website so that we had it at our forum in case anyone missed it, and also in case anyone wanted to have their own discussion here.
 

DarkMoonEnigma

Virtualsense Official
Staff member
Moderator
Community & Media Manager
Virtualsense Media Team
VCAT Team Member
This all sounds amazing. I truly hope they're not biting of more then they can chew. :p

Planning is crucial, and this didn't happen overnight, it's something that's been in the works for quite a while, so it will be (I think) interesting and exciting to see how it all unfolds. I'm sure the speculators and those with more of a negative mindset (yes, they do exist) will set chats a'buzz, but it might be more helpful to ask questions than try to guess where all this is going.

It was requested on the EU Discord to have another MindArk AMA (Ask Me Anything) and MyAntonnson said that she would pass that request onto the team to see if that can be arranged, so that's a start. Following their Unreal Dev Blog will keep us updated too.

It's understandable that some have hesitations about the transition based on their years of experience with MA and Entropia Universe (the VS Team has been around for 17 yrs), but I think it would also be helpful to consider that we've already transitioned to a couple of game engines in the past, and as many have expressed, the CryEngine 2 isn't the most adaptable game engine to work with, especially for the type of game EU is ... I think Unreal 5 will give us more flexibility and bring a whole new dimension to our gaming experiences.

All that said ... it's always interesting to learn what the community-at-large is thinking and feeling about major changes to our universe.
 

Littlestar b-k

Well-Known Member
VCAT Team Member
It is exciting for sure.
While the cryengine looked great it completely destroyed the Calypso feel that i loved. I found this again on Toulan.
So my biggest fear is this will happen to Toulan.
When the VS team took over Toulan i had the same fear. But this turned out to be the best thing that could have happened.
So i have my fingers crossed and hope for the best.

Maybe a question from me is : Who will transfer Toulan to unreal? Will it be MA's team or the VS team?
 

DarkMoonEnigma

Virtualsense Official
Staff member
Moderator
Community & Media Manager
Virtualsense Media Team
VCAT Team Member
Maybe a question from me is : Who will transfer Toulan to unreal? Will it be MA's team or the VS team?

At present, this is a question that we won't be able to respond to because all information about UE5 is coming from MA for now.

However, I want to thank you for your feedback on Toulan and what your experience has been after we added it to our virtual family, it's really appreciated. We love Toulan and will continue to develop and create content that works for the community, which is why we continually ask that everyone post Suggestions and Feedback so we know what you would like ... we may not be able to implement all that is asked for, but I think we've made the effort over the years to do the best we can for all locations based on all the variables involved.
 

RJ-Rob

Active Member
Well I wont say what I wanted to say because I dont want to get into DME's bad books lol

But yeah it is amazing and very exciting times ahead going forward. But I am glad I chose Toulan as my home now and the future should be bright as long as all of us stay healthy and we all will still be around to see the new EU on UE5. :)
 

whitequill

New Member
Greetings Entropians! I’m Dennis Antonsson, the Game Director responsible for taking Entropia into the new era that is Unreal Engine 5 — or what is known internally as the Odyssey project.
I do have a question. Why move to UE5 and not CryEngine 5.6? Wouldn't the development be faster to port everything forward then remake all the assists again? Or has the format of CryEngine changed SO much that it doesn't matter and is a moot point this many years later?

Or is the idea to re-imagine the whole game in a new way with the new engine and use of the new features is the main draw and not portability of assets? Which could be done just as easily in CryEngine or easier depending on the need to teach everyone a new engine.
 
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