EVE Online's Linux/Mac Client Goes Live Tuesday

The official EVE Online site has details of upcoming patch 'Revelations 2.3'. Along with a number of bug-fixes to the PvP-focused Massively Multiplayer Online Game, this game fix will offer up compatibility with Mac OS X and Linux. Though the Mac client is a native port, Linux will require the used of Cedega. The post suggests that if you'd like a preview of what the game will be like on your rig, you can download the client and tool around the test server. System requirements are also listed, as are the distributions of Linux they are specifically supporting: Ubuntu 7+, Suse 10+, and Linspire 6. Update: 11/04 14:32 GMT by Z : Fixed implication of native Linux client.

So long GPA....

Oh god... no...why? Crap, the only thing that has kept me from trying that game was the lack of a linux port. And Tuesday? Lets see 3 weeks before finals.... Well it's official, I'm switching to business.

Re:So long GPA....

Its not a linux port. They simply packaged Cedega with EVE. I wish people would stop praising them for that...its not a native client.

Re:So long GPA....

Its not a linux port. They simply packaged Cedega with EVE. I wish people would stop praising them for that...its not a native client.

Sure, a native port would be better, but this is still a step in the right direction. They deserve *some* praise for it.

If it lets a few more people not have to dual-boot into Windows to play games, then they are doing something right. Hopefully this will grow the non-Windows gaming market enough so that eventually native clients *are* released for Linux / Mac.

And as for Cedega not being truly open-sourced, and the games themselves certainly not, well, as a Linux desktop user and FOSS supporter this bothers me. But the fact is, at this point in time hardcore games are mostly a closed-source environment, whether on a console or a PC. Games are different than most typical desktop apps for various reasons. Hopefully in the future this will change, but meanwhile lots of Linux users want to play games, so this announcement is positive news.

Re:

Cedega isn't open-source, but they contribute back to wine, which is.

CCP paid for significant work on Cedega (and so wine) for EVE to run.
They changed their own code to improve compatibility.
As a result, you can now run EVE on wine, if you don't want to use the Cedega packaged client.

No, Cedega doesn't generally contribute back to Wine. The two are basically completely separate projects now. http://www.winehq.org/?issue=329#Cedega%206.0%20&%20Wine%20Benchmarks [winehq.org]

Here's the facts you need to know about Wine & Cedega:

• Cedega's core is based off the original Wine tree and was forked in 2002. There are several core components that no longer share a similarity with Wine as it exists today.
• TransGaming has not actively contributed to Wine in about 5 years with the exception of a few patches (less than 5 a year.)

Re:So long GPA....

Correction: They simply packaged Cedega with EVE for no additional cost. You don't have to subscribe to Cedega in order to play Eve. That's the important distinction.

Re:So long GPA....

Compare EVE Online under WINE (currently performs slightly better than Cedega at running eve) to Doom 3.

Oh you wanted more to this comment? Guess you honestly don't understand the difference between native and the limitations of compatibiliy layers. There is simply no comparison to a native supported application.

Re:

He said compatibility layer. Which means that when the programs try to call the Windows API they're actually calling the WINE API which then calls the relevant Linux functions. Which is slower than the API itself.

Re:

Says the man with square HTML tags.

Re:

Its effectively the same yes but native Linux ports are usually somewhat faster than running the same game on the same rig under Windows.
Using Wine throws away the benefits of Linux's superior video and audio libraries due to overhead.
The gameplay is similar to using it on Windows ironically.

Wow!

WoW, really.

I know a lot of people who play WoW. All of us play it, across a mix of Windows and WINE and other systems, because one person we know had a Mac. We wanted to play together, so all of us went with WoW, even though some other games sounded interesting.

I hope the same thing happens for EVE, and they find a sales boost that goes beyond just the influx of Mac and Linux gamers.

(I won't be one of them; I have zero interest in PvP, or in playing a game which is built around real and lasting consequences for mistakes. I play a game like that about 14-18 hours a day already, and I want something different for my recreation.)

Re:Wow!

> I have zero interest in PvP, or in playing a game which is built around real and lasting consequences for mistakes.

WoW has "real" consequences for mistakes?

"Lasting", in a virtual world?

Bah.

I believe you're looking for an "activity". "Games" are for people ballsy enough to keep score.

Re:Wow!

No, WoW doesn't. EVE does. They keep bragging about how a minute's play can wipe out months of work. Not interesting to me. In WoW, I can lose an amount of money that will take me as much as an hour to earn back. No problem, I can cope.

Re:

I didn't think that the 'danger' aspect of the game would really appeal to me, but it gives you an amazing sense of consequence for your actions. I got bored with WoW and the repetitive PvE/BG grind where the worst that can happen is that you don't make progress (although arenas are a good start). In EVE, when they say you can lose a months worth of work in minutes, they mean it. Thats what makes the game unbelievably thrilling to play.

I can understand why that may be a little bit too risky to cope wi

Re:Wow!

If I wanted a minute's play to wipe out months of work, I'd just run my programs from a root account all the time. No need to take that kind of risk for fun.

"Months of work"

> They keep bragging about how a minute's play can wipe out months of work.

I would never get that far, I refuse to play any game for which playtime feels like work.

Re:

I just accidentally enchanted my boots with "+7 Agility" when I meant to use "+7 Stamina", wasting 90 gold in WoW. This would take me a week or so to earn back - so you just aren't trying hard enough to lose money in WoW.

Re:Wow!

It won't, really. The Linux and Mac gaming markets aren't all that large, especially since in both cases the option always exists to boot to Windows if you really want to play games. EVE's small market share isn't due to its lack of cross platform, it is sue to its game design. They chose to make a very hardcore game. This really doesn't appeal to a lot of people since they find it to not be fun. As such, it is always going to be far more niche than World of Warcraft. One of the major reasons WoW was so much more popular than any other MMORPG before it is because Blizzard heavily took the attitude that a game isn't supposed to punish you for failure. It functioned more like a single player game, where failure means reloading a save and trying something again, rather than being set back a large distance.

So while I'm sure it will get a boost in sales (they wouldn't do it if they didn't think they'd make some money), it isn't likely to be that huge. The game simply appeals to a much more narrow group of people than WoW. WoW is one of those games that I'll recommend to anybody. I believe it is simple enough for anyone to learn to play, and anyone to find enjoyable. That is not true of many games, and EVE is certainly one it isn't true of. I'd only recommend that to people I know that are very intense gamers, and that can deal with the consequences for failure that game has.

It uses Cedega on Linux

Its not a native client. It uses a stripped-down version of the commercial fork of the now-obsolete xwine (what with normal wine having most dx things now), Cedega. People have been running the eve online client under wine and cedega for years now, I can run it under wine and get better fps than windows in some cases :P.

Anyway, the point is that they didn't actually take the time to write a native client, its simply packaged with Cedega, so this isn't really anything to praise them for.
I just thought I'd mention that because they don't until it actually starts installing.

Re:It uses Cedega on Linux

If more games companies (*cough* Blizzard) would test their stuff with WINE and support it, we'd have a different PC industry.

EVE vs Vendetta

I can't speak for EVE since I am a Mac user and never played the game however the idea, game play and such seem an awfully like Vendetta Online who natively support Windows, Linux (64Bit too), and Mac and looks great. Not to mention a great backstory.

It is also quite cheap compared to other online games. Can anyone vouch for EVE being any better than Vendetta? Although I quit playing VO it was one of the few MMOs that still support PPC.

Cheers,
[J]

One of the only MMOs worth playing.

It doesn't change the rules to cater to the lowest common denominator, unlike WoW and other MMOs - it follows a specific vision, and users can either adapt or leave.

The openness and freedom of an old-school PK MUD combined with the concept of Elite/TradeWars/etc. make for an amazing, engrossing game.

Given its quality and lack of compromise, I'm surprised it's managed to survive so long.

Am I mistaken? Mac "port" doesn't appear "native"

I thought Cider was basically Cedega-for-Macs? No actual code was ported, they just created a DirectX compatibility layer for Mac.

Or am I wrong here? I'd love to think so, but I'm not sure.

Re:Hopefully

Because depending on wine makes you look like you don't care about your market and your relying on a third party such as winehq to make your game work.

If Eve brings out a patch that no longer makes it work under wine and 100 people send in hate mail then you can see why maybe a native client might be a good thing.

Re:

"Blizzard wrote a Windows client for WoW that is ported to Linux with Wine for free"

So you didnt know that WoW was written on linux and working in beta before they moved it to windows then?

Re:

Why would companies spend resources on a Linux version of their software if their software works with Wine just fine? Blizzard wrote a Windows client for WoW that is ported to Linux with Wine for free. What more can a company want than someone else doing the work for them for free? Any company that spends vast amounts of resources to port a product to Linux when it can be emulated with wine just fine probably isn't making good business decisions anyway, and won't stay in business long. On the flip side, Wine could very well be hindering games from being 'Linux native' because wine is capable of providing the performance needed to get the job done. There is no incentive to provide such software for Linux users because they can use Wine.

Because Wine doesn't always work consistently. An upgrade can break some apps that were running well with wine, and a native client is going to work better. Games are also much more likely to do something low level that hasn't been thought of which could cause problems with Wine.

There doesn't need to be vast resources devoted to porting a game from one platform to the other. They don't have to write the whole thing from scratch..

The majority of the work is already done, and if the system is well designed,