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Capsuleer iPhone app for EVE ceases development, CCP responds

Brendan Drain — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 15:30:00 EST

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Culture, MMO industry, News items

When it comes to useful apps for EVE Online players, Capsuleer is one of the most well-known and popular tools available. The app allows iPhone users to check their characters' skill training progress, the latest EVE news and other items of interest. Until now, Capsuleer has been developed as an entirely non-profit enterprise, with creators PyjamaSam and Roc Wieler running the servers for free and absorbing all of the development costs. At the 2008 EVE fanfest, EVE's developers CCP Games expressed great enthusiasm for the project. Executive Producer Nathan Richardsson even mentioned the app in his keynote speech, and several screenshots of it were shown off during a talk on mobile development.

Recognising that Capsuleer was reaching the point where free development was becoming infeasible, CCP flew the app's developers out to Iceland to discuss licensing arrangements. As EVE Online is CCP's intellectual property, the Capsuleer team would have needed to get a business license from CCP before charging for anything. The initial plan was to port Capsuleer to multiple platforms, including the Android OS and Windows Mobile. Features requiring access to a user's full API key, such as searching through assets or checking market orders, would be added to a new subscription service. A free version of the app would have allowed non-subscribed users to make use of limited API features, such as checking a character's skill training. With direct co-operation from CCP, additional features which are not currently possible with the app may also have been possible.

Continue reading Capsuleer iPhone app for EVE ceases development, CCP responds

Capsuleer iPhone app for EVE ceases development, CCP responds originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 08 Oct 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EVE Evolved: Top five EVE Online apps

Brendan Drain — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 18:00:00 EST

Filed under: At a glance, Sci-fi, EVE Online, Culture, Tips and tricks, Opinion, EVE Evolved

Back in 2004, a friend introduced me to a relatively new space MMO called EVE Online, where the markets were run by the players and there were undiscovered frontiers to chart. A short time after, I became obsessed with pre-calculating everything in the game. I thought that if the game server can calculate everything we do, I must be able to replicate the process and come up with some interesting results. I wasn't alone, many other pilots had previously created simple spreadsheets and web-databases of EVE's items. Rather than the game's developers hoarding the information required for such an undertaking, they took an unusual stance and released large portions of their main database for player-study. Websites began popping up listing information from the data dumps and it wasn't long before the first pioneering apps came about in the form of handy spreadsheets and interactive web-pages, my own fairly popular tanking spreadsheet among them.

In this article, I look at how player-developed apps came about in EVE and give details on my top five EVE apps. Once you've tried these programs, you won't know how you lived without them.

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EVE Evolved: Top five EVE Online apps originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 09 Aug 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Massively looks at Capsuleer 2.0, an iPhone app for EVE Online

James Egan — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 13:00:00 EST

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Massively Interviews

The newest generation of smartphones has begun to deliver on the ideal of having continual access to your data on the go with persistent web connections. As such, the iPhone is becoming ubiquitous, helped no doubt by its ease of use and the ever-growing number of apps available to users. In the relatively short time the iPhone has existed, it's already begun to have an impact on the gaming world. Given how stat-centric massively multiplayer online titles are, it was inevitable that there would be some steps made towards a marriage between the iPhone and our games; some developers are creating iPhone apps that extend certain aspects of MMOs beyond the game client.

This can be especially useful with a game like EVE Online, where players typically have a number of things going on, even while they're not logged in to play. While the EVE iPhone apps don't act as game clients, players can, for instance, check in on the skill progression of their characters, check their wallet balances as market transactions and contract sales take place while away from the client, and in general keep tabs on their virtual involvements in New Eden.

Capsuleer 2.0 is one such iPhone and iPod touch app for EVE Online that aims to be a portal into New Eden for whenever players are away from their computers and on the go; in some respects, it's a persistent real-world analog to EVE's in-game Neocom used to keep tabs on your characters. Capsuleer 2.0 was approved by Apple just this week, so Massively caught up with its two creators to find out more about what they've been up to. Marcus Dickinson is known in EVE as Roc Wieler and is likely a familiar name to many players from his Roc's Ramblings blog. The other half of the Capsuleer duo is Chris Whiteford (PyjamaSam in EVE Online), and they were both kind enough to take some time out to speak with us about their work on Capsuleer as well as their plans for its future. Read on for Massively's Capsuleer interview and our impressions of the app in a brief visual tour.

Gallery: A look at Capsuleer 2.0

Continue reading Massively looks at Capsuleer 2.0, an iPhone app for EVE Online

Massively looks at Capsuleer 2.0, an iPhone app for EVE Online originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 09 Apr 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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