Dual Universe: a possible successor to Eve Online?

[Quartz-1]

What caught my eye about this is that unlike (as I understand it) Eve, players can design and script their own ships.

 

[Powerslave]

I thought that I would bring this back up. They have reached their goal, and there are 3 days left on KS.

 

[RanceJustice]

The game itself seems pretty ambitious and is enough for me to add to my stable of crowdfunded MMOs! We're now down to the last day on Kickstarter, so if you want to lock in a pledge now is the time to do so as the first KS/crowdfunding campaign always offers the best value! They've broken the 600,000 euro stretch goal to allow Construct vs Construct combat (and there's an update detailing what that is)! The 650,000 goal is for upgraded character customization and I'd love to see that kind of thing unlocked, so feel free to spread info of the title far and wide! Oh and the game's official (no KS) homepage is at - DUAL Universe | Sci-Fi single-shard Sandbox MMORPG game . There is already a thriving community!


Its worthwhile to note that CIG and Chris Roberts, developers of Star Citizen, helped spread the word about Dual Universe and gave it their seal of approval - Note from the Chairman - Roberts Space Industries .

"
Greetings Citizens! There’s a new universe in the works! Last week, a project called Dual Universe kicked off a crowd funding campaign and the team behind it, Novaquark, is aiming to do something massive: create a single-shard, persistent universe that won’t just be played… it will be inhabited. To make this possible, they’re aiming to give the player as much freedom as possible to have a real impact on their surroundings. Players will have control over everything from the world’s economy to the designs of their bases and spacecraft. The preliminary work they’ve done looks fantastic, and I think it has the potential to be truly outstanding.

The customization systems in Dual Universe look to be very impressive, an example of the old ‘minutes to play, lifetime to master’ aspect that rules game design. Creating a simple ship or station in their system is quick… but you also have full control over everything from the 3D appearance to the under-the-hood LUA scripts that control how the actual parts function and work together. Think Minecraft in a science fiction world you help to define.

Dual Universe is a perfect example of why crowdfunding is important. It’s something big and bold that I am pretty sure a traditional publisher wouldn’t feel comfortable greenlighting. If you are interested in massive space games (and I have reason to believe that many reading this are!) then I encourage you to check out Dual Universe’s trailer below and their Kickstarter site here. There is certainly quite a few similarities between what Dual Universe and Star Citizen are both aiming to achieve, but that’s not a bad thing! Space games are not a zero sum game. Different games, even with similar feature sets can have wildly different sensibilities and play experiences. Choice and a little friendly competition is always a good thing.

It’s a great time for space games, and I look forward to welcoming Dual Universe to the growing brotherhood."

There's a lot of nice stuff you can read about Dual Universe from the campaign pages Quartz-1 linked above (not to mention all the Updates, which show and discuss a lot of gameplay), but its noteworthy that The link to the Dual Universe forums has even more of them in text format, besides the video. For instance, they took multiple questions of mine, including those about Linux support...

"First, we love Linux! Actually, several of our programmers are running Linux on a daily basis as their main programming environment. The game currently runs on Linux every day, on these programmers machine. Now, it does not necessarily mean that we can ship the game on Linux, there are many issues that we need to solve: compatibility of all the third-party libraries we use, selecting a distro, deal with the maintenance efforts that goes with having a code base that runs on clang and visual studio, etc. It is not impossible, we would love to do it, but ultimately it will depend on the market size relative to the costs of maintenance. So, if we can see a strong movement of the community in favor of Linux, it will significantly increase the chance of the game being released on Linux. "

So for those of us that prefer Linux, they're definitely open to it as long as there is enough groundswell for Linux support!

Overall, it looks like another MMO looking to create something new and for me, that's worth getting in on the ground floor and seeing how it develops.

 

[Powerslave]

Les than 2 hours left. For about $17 you get the game and 2 DACs (basically EVE Plex, can be used for 30 day sub, sold in game for game currency.)Its not a bad deal if you think that you want to try it. For about $28 you get the game and 4 DACs.

 

[zrikz]

Almost forgot about this game until a friend brought it up last week and ended up giving me one of his extra beta keys.

I've put in a good 8ish hours now at least, and damn, there is so much to do and learn, feel like a complete noob. Pretty damn cool though, and I was fortunate to have been gifted a basic atmospheric ship to fly around the starting moon so I can go between my base and the market.

I'm now training skills so that I can mine easier, and then make a ship capable of actual space flight.

It's like Empyrion for base/ship building, but MMO eve like in regard to having giant world and people.. and PvP it sounds like.

 

[vegeta535]

Almost forgot about this game until a friend brought it up last week and ended up giving me one of his extra beta keys.

I've put in a good 8ish hours now at least, and damn, there is so much to do and learn, feel like a complete noob. Pretty damn cool though, and I was fortunate to have been gifted a basic atmospheric ship to fly around the starting moon so I can go between my base and the market.

I'm now training skills so that I can mine easier, and then make a ship capable of actual space flight.

It's like Empyrion for base/ship building, but MMO eve like in regard to having giant world and people.. and PvP it sounds like.

So you saying after 4 years of dev time they have a solid core of a game unlike another space flying game that been I developement for 10 years?

 

[zrikz]

So you saying after 4 years of dev time they have a solid core of a game unlike another space flying game that been I developement for 10 years?

hah.. perhaps. I can't comment on many of the mechanics as of yet, but based off the group of people I talked with for a while and got help from, there is a ton of content implemented and being actively played, and it looks like they have a roadmap for full release later this year?? I think I saw that somewhere.