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.

Re:So long GPA....

[kcbanner]

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.

Patch Notes

[kcbanner]

For those that can't log in to see the patch notes:

Patch Notes for Revelations 2.3 As announced in Hellmar's Fanfest Keynote presentation, CCP has teamed with Transgaming to provide additional operating system support for the EVE client. EVE will now run on Macintosh OS X and Linux. For further information, please see this news item. Also, a new section concerning the new operating system support will be added to the Frequently Asked Questions on Monday. * Several 'Need for Speed' code optimizations have been added to the client. * The newly supported Linux and Macintosh operating systems can now be specified when submitting technical petitions. * Various fixes and enhancements have been added to our billing and petition systems, as well as to GM tools. * If an office's rent expires while a BP is in production and is not re-rented before the job is completed, the BP's will return to the impound. * The wallet mouseover display will update correctly on balance change. * A rare error that prevented a recently podded player from opening their wallet has been resolved. * An exception occuring upon client resize has been resolved. * A number of drop down menu now have larger boxes. * A number of minor Unicode errors in right click menus have been resolved. * Several unused or outdated DLLs/binaries have been removed from the client. Important Note: If you receive an error message when starting the EVE client claiming the existance of illegal files in your bin folder, it will be necessary to manually remove them. The following are the valid DLLs/binaries that should remain in the EVE client's bin folder: o Folder: Microsoft.VC80.CRT + Microsoft.VC80.CRT.manifest + msvcm80.dll + msvcp80.dll + msvcr80.dll o _ctypes.pyd o _PyFreeTypeP.dll o _trinity.dll o alut.dll o audio.dll o blue.dll o boost_python.dll o chartdir.dll o db.dll o dbghelp.dll o destiny.dll o ExeFile.exe o NetClient.dll o NetUtil.dll o ortp.dll o pyexpat.pyd o python25.dll o RedistD3DXOnly.exe o vivoxsdk.dll o wrap_oal.dll * The following Alliance logos have been added or updated: o Daisho Syndicate o Dune Heretics o YouWhat o BORTHER'S WORD o Space Weaponry and Trade o The Immortality Project o Blue Sky Consortium o FreeFall Securities o The Order of the Red Locust o Dark Taboo o National Capital Region o Angelus Errere - Where angels lose their way o Order of Khaos o Friend or Enemy o Brethren of The Sky o The Covenant Alliance o Shinra Alliance o Sev3rance o KIA Alliance o Cold Fusion Syndicate o Ethereal Dawn o Abyss Alliance o Division of Eden o Minuit. o Acid Alliance o Deus Ex. o INTERDICTION o Daem Exalter Oni Noegene o The Gurlstas Associates o C0VEN o N O V A

Don't worry

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, you gain skills even while offline, so you should have no problem studying for the finals, knowing that you're being 200% productive.

Re:Hopefully

[Darko8472]

Need I mention that WoW (and any number of Blizzard games) are already fully Mac compatible? Not Linux, admittedly... but it's a step in the right direction that's been going on for years.

Re:It uses Cedega on Linux

[timmarhy]

you fail to understand that the problem isn't blizzard, it's directX, which currently doesn't 100% work under wine http://www.winehq.org/site/status_directx [winehq.org]

it's insane to expect blizzard to start supporting it's game on such an unpolished platform.

Also, MS provide very good tools for migrating your applications from XP to Vista. Can you say the same about Wine?

I have no doubt blizzard have looked at the numbers and found supporting a linux version to be unprofitable.

Re:So long GPA....

[cloricus]

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:Wow!

[EotB]

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 with for some people though...

Re:It uses Cedega on Linux

[kcbanner]

Your wrong. I can play WoW under wine just fine, getting better FPS than in windows. WoW has an OpenGL option, next time don't start yelling before actually reading things.

Re:Hopefully

[kcbanner]

First of all, nothing is better than a native port. I don't care if it runs "fine" under wine. Maybe the shaders don't work, maybe there are graphical glitches. I want games companies to care enough to compile the damn thing for linux. All they have to do is just lose the dependency for silly windows libs, use OpenGL, its 10x better than directx in my opinion.

Re:Hopefully

[JohnBailey]

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, the game is practically platform agnostic already. All the animations, the meshes, the skins, the sound and music files are all independent of one particular platform, and if the engine is developed properly, the resources involved are minimized.
Just the engine and a few other bits need to be ported and compiled for the other platforms. And in this day and age, when companies often release Windows, PS2/3 and Xbox versions of the same game, isn't it more practical to design the game as easily portable from the start? Then they can tap into the growing Linux and OSX markets with minimal extra development.

Re:So long GPA....

[InvisiBill]

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.)

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

[analog_line]

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:So long GPA....

[Dwindlehop]

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.