Introducing Our Core Technology Platform: Carbon

The Carbon Framework is a crucial component of CCP's strategy. It is the foundation upon which our virtual worlds are built.

The technology was initially created by harvesting code from EVE Online, code that had already been hardened through years of development and real world use. We call this Battle Testing. This code has then been refined and extended to serve the needs of other CCP projects.

What is in the Carbon Framework?

• The Trinity Graphics Engine renders the stunning appearance of our virtual worlds. Since 2003, it has powered the graphics of EVE Online, and during this time has been constantly improved to maintain its position at the cutting edge of graphics technology.

• Ambulation Technology builds on Trinity to provide full body animation, avatar movement, real world interior and exterior spaces.

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• Carbon Cluster Technology is the Peak Concurrent User record breaking cluster framework that out-scales all other MMOs in providing a single player universe experience.

• Carbon Database Technology is common data structures, maintenance systems and support applications for our virtual worlds.

• Our Single Code Repository is a consolidated development environment within which the source for each of our games resides. All changes are integrated into a common code base, instantly making available the benefits of improvements to Carbon technologies for developers at each of our studios worldwide.

• The Carbon Build System works with the Single Code Repository to produce deployable versions of CCP virtual worlds in just hours instead of days.
• The Carbon Technical Art Pipeline converts visually stunning artwork into detailed models and textures that can be rendered by Trinity. This optimized process represents ten years of experience for both in-house and outsourced art production.

• Our Lightweight Authoring Tools provide CCP outsourcing partners with the ability to view their work as it would be rendered by the Trinity graphics engine, including lighting and special effects. These tools vastly reduce the amount of time it takes to integrate outsourced work into production builds.
• Middleware components are carefully chosen and integrated into our solutions library to complement CCP's proprietary technology.

You can read more about the Carbon framework and CCP's Core Technology Group in this EVE Online dev blog post: Carbon and the Core Technology Group.

The Carbon Framework is used by CCP to create virtual worlds, and not intended or available for licensing.