Gameplay footage from the Dust 514 keynote speech has just found its way onto youtube.  Expect the HD version from CCP within the next few days.

The final keynote speech at fanfest 2009 finished with a bang. Check out this music video from the staff at CCP.

Gameplay

• There will be a quickplay mode.
• There will be NPC faction warfare as well as the capture of player owned planets.
• Battles will take part on dynamic battlefields that are around 5 kilometres across.
• There will be a cap to the number of players per battle, which will be no less than 64 at launch.
• There will be a command structure: Squadleaders in charge of Infantry, will in turn be led by a player commander on board the MCC (Mobile Command Centre)
• The Commander will effectivly be playing a real time strategy game, and will be dependent on the situation awareness of ifantry players.
• There will be a number of sub-objectives, but the main goal will be to destroy the enemies MCC.
• DUST 514 will feature ten different vehicle classes, 8 of which will be available at launch. These include Warthog style buggies, Fighter Aircraft, Dropships and tanks.
• Infantry alike will be able to call in vehicles on the fly and have them dropped off by large dropships.
• Commanders will be able to deploy ground installations, which can house large gun and missile emplacements.
• Ground installations will also act as spawn points.
• Vehicles and installations will be purchased with "war points" which are a non-persistant game currency. This will allow each fight to have an "escalation of war" and will help prevent players with accumulated wealth from dominating.
• Rather than having a skill system like EVE Online or leveling system like World of Warcraft, DUST 514 will have an "achievement matrix" where objectives achieved in game unlock tiers which then give access to better items on the marketplace.
• Like ships in eve EVE, weapons and vehicles will be customised with module slots.
• There are two methods a DUST marine can use to get from planet A to planet B. The first is to clone jump, using similar technology to EVE Pod pilots. The second is to use their corps War Barge and fly to a hostile planet.
• DUST players will have to use the war barge to attack hostile worlds.

Interaction with the wider EVE universe

• EVE Pilots will own the majority of planetary districts, this will be introduced in the expansion following Dominion.
• DUST marines will be securing key staging area districts.
• Hiring Dust Marines will not be mandatory, but it will make the capture of planets easier.
• Initially Interaction wit EVE players will be done througuh the New Eden Social Network (COSMOS).
• Eventually CCP hope players in eve will be able to share the same social spaces as DUST 514 marines, presumably in stations.
• Initially at least, the economies of EVE and DUST will be kept as seperate as possible. CCP do not want co-dependency between the games.

Technology and Subscription Model

• It is rumoured that DUST 514 will use the Unreal game engine.
• There will be a microtransaction model, rather than a subscription model.

Other Facts

• All the races in factions from EVE Online will feature in DUST 514
• There will be racial weapons, the strengths and weaknesses for each race that we all know and love in eve will feature in DUST 514

The list in ths article is an accumulation of all the knowledge we have picked up through our interview with Hilmar and Ali, the Key note speech at fanfest, a rather good article over at eurogamer and the rest of the interwebs. If you have any extra information and can provide a source, please post it a comment either here or in our forums.

Officially CCP could not comment on the underlying game engine for DUST 514, other than to say that they would be using a tried and tested third party platform for their console release.  However, in his Dominion presentation, CCP's Torfi Frans Olafsson did let slip that artists and programmers working on the EVE client were using the same shader models as the developers for DUST 514 who are using the Unreal Engine.

For us here at DUST514.org this is welcome news, as over the years there have been some very cool games released using this engine such as: Gears of War, Bioshock, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Splinter Cell, Mass Effect and of course the Unreal Series itself.

It should also be welcome news for everyone who is hoping for a PC release as the current engine (Unreal Engine 3) was designed for DirectX9/10 PCs, the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.  This should mean that even though as far as we know, DUST 514 will initially only be a console only release. The hopes for a PC port after release remain alive.

For those interested in looking at the source of this information yourself, check out this video at around 1:10-1:50 in.

The planets of eve seen here in this footage will be visible from the DUST 514 Command Pit