By Jim Rossignol on December 21st, 2009 at 12:15 pm.
RPS chum RoBurky spotted this the other day: Perpetuum Online, which is a robot MMO being developed by a Hungarian studio, Avatar Creations. Nothing too unusual there, except the design of the game looks rather intriguing. If you take a look at the feature list then the game seems to be far closer to Eve Online than any other MMO out there. In fact, taking a closer look, it also seems to have the same kind of fitting-screens and third-person control of the robots that Eve has for its ships. Could this, finally, be an MMO that takes its inspiration from Eve? Let’s sign up to the beta and find out. (Disclaimer: dunno how much time the beta has let, to be honest, but worth a shot.) The most recent teaser trailer for the game is posted below.
The screenshots on the website look pretty much identical to EVE’s interface. Even down the ‘station view’ where your mech sits in the center of a huge hangar.
The same can be said for the fitting screen, and combat interface.
I had to laugh at the “undock” button too.
From what i’ve heard, and it may not be 100% true, the team behind it, includes a number of ex-BoB members. After seeing the screenshots, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised.
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Would be really interesting if those guys are from BoB.
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Although they really should try to be at least a little bit original with the docking screen visuals, that thing there borders on infringement. Seriously.
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Sounds interesting.
The beta blog looks like a good place to start to get an idea of what it is all about :
http://perpetuum-online.blogspot.com/2009_08_01_archive.html
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This looks suspiciously like a MechWarrior MMO, which leads me to wonder why on Earth there hasn’t been an official one yet.
Mind you, I’m glad that this is taking a leaf from EVE’s book and not WoW’s. Let’s hope more MMOs do so.
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i think there was a mechwarrior MMO under way at one point but got canned pretty early on
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Woohoo!! A mech based MMO with an EVE style skill system?!
Fucking win!!
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I’ve never seen mechs that looked that much like Mechwarrior mechs, though I can see these are apparently scale models. I suppose that’s not actually a bad thing. I wonder if it all comes down to circle-strafing.
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That looks like wholesale idea theft to me. Still, it’s never mattered to all thise MMO designers creating new versions of WoW. Also: BIG STOMPY ROBOTS.
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Oh hell yes. Internet Battlespreadsheets!
This is even better than being able to bomb consolegamers from orbit once Dust 514 comes out!
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Do we get to STOMP PUNY HUMANS?
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Here’s hoping it doesn’t have EVE’s major problem:90% of your time is spent looking for the good bits
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Note that most of Hungarian demoscene group Conspiracy is working on this (!)
Edit: damnit, should’ve been a reply to Deerhoof etc. Props for the edit function though.
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Nice one this! I do hope they have some good lawyers though, as this seems to be infringement. Not only on the Eve features, but also on the mechs. I saw one robot which was looking exactly like a Madcat really.
If this makes it past beta, i’m certainly going to check this out.
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why has no-one made a mech mmo before? It seems a perfect match.
Avatars that can be customised, upgraded, and combat that’s a little slower and more hands-off than with human avatars.
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I can see (whoever holds the IP) of Mechwarrior sueing soonish. I recognised a few robot designs there bordering on infringement (wildcat anyone?)
Then, EVE’s UI all over the place…
Hope these guys have a strong legal team
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Given that a lot of Battltetechs designs were lifted wholesale from the anime series Macross (aka Robotech in its weirdly mangled localization), it almost seems like karma that they’d be pilfered by the next people in the creativity chain.
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Battletech licensed them, they didn’t steal them.
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@kedaha: I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, but the story of the ‘Unseen’ is well known in the battletech community – See here
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Ignore me. Apparently there was an update to the entire story… a sort of coming out of the litigation closet so to speak.
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There was an MMO in development called Multiplayer Battletech 3025 years ago but arguements between EA and Microsoft killed it. I’m not so sure that these mecha look all that much like BT mechs. I am seeing a lot of similarities to Starsiege hercs, specifically the dual mounted cannons atop the mecha’s back. Those are signature hardpoint locations for SS weapons. If it’s a hungarian firm I’m going to have to say that a lot of the aforementioned companies are going to have a hard time filing suit against them, international copyright laws being what they are.
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I just want to give a shout out for MechWarrior 3025 being the most fun I’ve had with the license ever. The beta was a blast.
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This game seems from a alternate universe where Eve is made of robots…
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They say they’re going to have “one server, one universe” which IMO is the most important EVE feature. I wonder how the plan to achieve that without investing massive amounts of money in server hardware like CCP has apparently done.
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Is a shame is a ripff even to the smaller details :( (even things i don’t like from eve, usability problems)
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You shouldn’t take anything “you’ve heard on the internet” as truth. The people behind this game are demosceners, and have absolutely no connection to EVE. At all.
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Heh. Have you actually played both games? Someone has.
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For those interested, there’s a thread in the Perpetuum Online forums where one dev comments on the EVE similarities:
http://forums.perpetuum-online.com/topic/675/the-obligatory-eve-online-thread/
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Can’t wait to goonrush this game
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Kinda looks like the bastard child of a cyberpunk version of Mech Warriors and Borderlands draped over the skeleton of EVE online.
Looks interesting. Lets see if they can reach critical mass where they have enough users to create a self-sustained user generated economy like in EVE.
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I just got into the closed beta (two day wait…I guess the lines aren’t long).
I’m all for more games similar to EVE but this game takes it too far. It’s not just similar to EVE, it’s identical in so many ways. In my mind it shows a lack of imagination on the part of the developers which doesn’t bode well for the long-term prospects for the game.
Listen, if you want to copy what made EVE successful all you need are:
- Single server
- Player run market
- Conquerable territories
- Significant death penalties
And probably a number of other things I’m failing to think of. You don’t need to copy every UI element and game mechanic to the degree that these guys have.
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