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Role Playing (Games) Businesses Software Apple Linux

EVE Online's Linux/Mac Client Goes Live Tuesday 205

Posted by Zonk from the mmogtastic dept.
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.
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EVE Online's Linux/Mac Client Goes Live Tuesday More

EVE Online's Linux/Mac Client Goes Live Tuesday

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  • So long GPA.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by lordofthechia ( 598872 ) on Sunday November 04, 2007 @02:39AM (#21229457)
    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.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by kcbanner ( 929309 ) * on Sunday November 04, 2007 @02:51AM (#21229495) Homepage Journal
      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: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Spit ( 23158 )
        Honestly, what difference does it make to you whether a closed binary is compiled against Windows or Linux APIs? If the software runs well, there is no difference except in your head.

        • Re:So long GPA.... (Score:5, Informative)

          by cloricus ( 691063 ) on Sunday November 04, 2007 @04:13AM (#21229773)
          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.
          • The EVE client is slow even under Windows.

            In the "Guristas Treasure Hold" in Friggi the older of my two PCs (P4 2.4 GHz, Radeon 9600 Pro, 1 GByte RAM) has significant lag. Entering the same complex with my newer PC shows better performance on a slower DSL line. So it is obviously not a network problem but a client side performance problem.

            Any well programmed FPS game has better graphics performance ;-)

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Maserati ( 8679 )
              Client performance in large fights is due for an upgrade by the end of the year, The Trinity v2 update is supposed to offload an awful lot of the processing to the GPU, plus the new engine is specifically designed to handle fleet engagements better. We can only hope it really pays off.

          • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

            by rustalot42684 ( 1055008 )
            Wine Is Not an Emulator. Programs running with wine do run natively. Read their Web Sight - the section on debunking WINE myths.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by WilliamSChips ( 793741 )
              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: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by cheater512 ( 783349 )
          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.

      • Re:So long GPA.... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by kripkenstein ( 913150 ) on Sunday November 04, 2007 @05:33AM (#21229991) Homepage

        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.
        • 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.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by InvisiBill ( 706958 )

            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.)
      • 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.

        The question is: does it matter? If it runs just fine (as well as on windows), and it integrates with the OS (launch menus, hardware recognition, ...), does it matter that it's not a "native" version?

      • Re:So long GPA.... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Dwindlehop ( 62388 ) on Sunday November 04, 2007 @03:34PM (#21233965) Homepage
        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.
    • This isn't a port, it is the windows client wrapped in transgamings cedega.

      EVE Online has been working nicely under Cedega for around a year and a half now, under WINE for around a year, and under Crossover for around six months. Honestly if you really want to play this game under Linux or Mac you are spoilt for choice as this new Cedega wrapper and Crossover both offer seamless install and at least in Crossovers case almost seamless game play.

      Hopefully this will help EVE Onlines large L

  • Wow! (Score:4, Funny)

    by seebs ( 15766 ) on Sunday November 04, 2007 @02:42AM (#21229467) Homepage
    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! (Score:5, Funny)

      by dameron ( 307970 ) on Sunday November 04, 2007 @02:52AM (#21229501)
      > 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! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by seebs ( 15766 ) on Sunday November 04, 2007 @03:05AM (#21229543) Homepage
        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: (Score:3, Informative)

          by EotB ( 964562 )
          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! (Score:5, Funny)

          by Antique Geekmeister ( 740220 ) on Sunday November 04, 2007 @05:40AM (#21230017)
          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" (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Per Abrahamsen ( 1397 ) on Sunday November 04, 2007 @06:45AM (#21230243) Homepage
          > 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.

        • And in WoW you will have adrenaline rushes worthy of that one hour you'll have to spend earning back that money.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by e1618978 ( 598967 )
          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.
          • Get a group together and do all the pre-requisites for the Ogrila daily quests. Those, along with the ones up in Skettis will get you 50-60g per day for basically falling off a log.

    • Re:Wow! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Sunday November 04, 2007 @03:09AM (#21229557)
      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.
      • Interesting...I'm sure last time I looked Linux held around 5% of the desktop market, and Apple held a touch more. Oh and strangely enough Vista was sitting just under 5%. Guess those game makers developing for Vista must be out right mad in the head to go DX10 in a market that is saturated ... Or they could do dx9/opengl/sdl and develop for the 10% of the market that is completely untapped instead while still keeping the other 85% who use regular Windows as well.

        Please think through what you say befor

        • I'm sure last time I looked Linux held around 5% of the desktop market
          Hah! Where did you see that? In the logs of slashdot?

          • Hah! Where did you see that? In the logs of slashdot?

            I'm sure it's exactly where you saw the data that you're basing your "Ha!" reaction on - out of someone's ass.

            The fact of the matter is that it's impossible to determine the exact overall installed base (which is different from market share) of the various operating systems - and even if you could the number would be meaningless for any of the stuff that you'd want to use it for (because the population distributions of subpopulations are different - the

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by SL Baur ( 19540 )

        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.

        I am so tired of this argument, especially when Microsoft Windows is justified by "Hey, you've got to have it to play games." WoW is a lot more fun with a Mac than Microsoft Windows XP and I hope the same is the case with EVE (though I won't play it, I'm no fan of PvP).

        Go alternative platforms. Choice Is Good.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tom ( 822 )
        You are majorly deluding yourself.

        The Mac gaming market is growing considerably, with all those people switching to Macs. Yes, most of them can dual boot, but know what, we don't want to. I haven't booted windos for weeks, and I refuse to buy windos games. But I will gladly buy a Mac game, one that I can just start up without having to boot and all that.

        Same discussion as we've had with playing Linux games vs. dual-booting windos, with one crucial difference: Mac people are people who put their money where

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by doomy ( 7461 )
      When World of Warcraft alpha was given out to some of us there was a very alpha Linux client included. I have no idea why they dropped support for Linux back then. But it's probably due to driver support that was lacking.
    • You could always vow to delete your character after he/she dies for the first time...

  • It uses Cedega on Linux (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kcbanner ( 929309 ) * on Sunday November 04, 2007 @02:46AM (#21229479) Homepage Journal
    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 (Score:4, Insightful)

      by QuantumG ( 50515 ) <qg@biodome.org> on Sunday November 04, 2007 @03:01AM (#21229537) Homepage Journal
      If more games companies (*cough* Blizzard) would test their stuff with WINE and support it, we'd have a different PC industry.
      • Wow, no shit. Thanks for illuminating that for me.

        You know if more game companies (*cough* any of them) made native clients we'd have a different PC industry too.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by _|()|\| ( 159991 )
      I don't think it's correct to call the Mac port native, either. It uses Cider, which is basically the same thing. In some cases, it is possible to use one game's Cider wrapper (e.g., Heroes of Might and Magic V) to run other Windows games, although a no-CD crack may be required [macworld.com]. I've also read on some forums that the registration program for the Mac version of Madden NFL '08 does not recognize it as a Mac version. You have to register as if you're running Windows.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Yvan256 ( 722131 )
        Indeed, if it really was a native OS X program it would also run on my PowerPC G4 Mac mini.

        EVE on the Mac? Not really.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kindbud ( 90044 )
      Until this patch, EVE running under Cedega or anything else was not a supported combination. Now it is. Stop whining, it's supported. You have a problem running EVE on Cedega, it's now OK to make a bug report and it will get some developer attention.

  • EVE vs Vendetta (Score:5, Interesting)

    by x1n933k ( 966581 ) on Sunday November 04, 2007 @02:55AM (#21229511) Homepage
    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]
    • Vendetta is a poor and shallow game compared to EVE, one of my flatmates was an EVE Online addict (and quite successful EVE hacker)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by toriver ( 11308 )
        (and quite successful EVE hacker)

        Thanks for reminding me why I left that sorry excuse for an Excel spreadsheet with an animated background.
    • It probably isn't a real great MMORPG. You can look at this from many different ways: Maybe the great ones charge because they can, maybe charging allows them to maintain the infrastructure and manpower needed to run it, whatever. Point is that you generally find that the no monthly fee games aren't the great ones. A lot of the time it's a situation like Diablo 2. Where there's a lot of multiplayer, but it is little isolated worlds sort of, not the real massive worlds that everyone is in that you get from g

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by FlyveHest ( 105693 )
      While VO is pretty impressive as a project, mainly due to its low developer-count, it lacks sorely as a game, and even more as an MMO.

      I tried playing, and after 4 of my 8 hours of trial, I felt like I had seen it all (Mining, mission running, transporting), except for PvP, because I hadn't had a single encounter with another player.

      And, as far as I could see on their webpage, there was a staggering 27 people logged on when the server was at its max .. I've been in Team Fortress 2 games with more players tha

  • One of the only MMOs worth playing. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 04, 2007 @03:22AM (#21229609)
    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.
  • I installed the "Linux version" (just a .deb that installs a shortcut that then downloads a stripped Cedega engine and the game data), but it will not run for me. It displays the splash screen... and that's it. I got the same results when trying to run Eve under plain ol' Wine a yeear or two ago. Lame. The game is so beautiful, too.
  • Why only nVidia supported? How they can go to Linux and ignore decent cards with available drivers (ATI r3xx, Intel), instead supporting binary only (thus really unsupportable) nVidia drivers? Why they ignore owners of older Mac Books Pro (with ATI cards)? Why they code support for nVidia instead of generic OpenGL renderer?
    • Because there's a big difference between "available" drivers and decent drivers? ATi's linux drivers until recently were famously flawed, and I haven't heard much about the recently released set. And the code is for the generic OpenGL renderer, but you still need a driver to be able to interface between OpenGL and the hardware.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by atrus ( 73476 )
      Intel probably boils down to a performance and shader problem.

      You haven't used ATI's Linux drivers have you? The fact that they work at all is a miracle. The current open source 'radeon' driver only supports older (non X----) cards. The fglrx driver is a POS: buggy, unreliable- especially in 3d operations, and nowhere near the polish and functionality of the NVidia driver. Yes, the nvidia driver is closed source, but at least it works.
      • There's an opensource 'nv' driver that works pretty well with 2d although unfortunately you need the blob for openGL.
    • EVE (and anything else) would work fine with ATI drivers if they didn't suck. Cedega has done everything possible on their end, the rest is up to ATI.

      Please AMD, just sack ATI's software side. Burn it down and start fresh.
  • Lately I have been playing a free (as in beer, optional "premium" content model) MMORPG which has a native client for GNU/Linux too (no client for Mac though). It's Realm versus Realm only, so it's extremely basic for the rest (no crafting, no non-combat skills, etc) but it's very good at what it is: a glorified chess-board for 50vs50 battles (there are three realms, a bit like DaoC). It's an indy Argentinian game developed by 7-8 crazies but it's getting better everyday. They don't advertise it too much be
  • Whatever you say, they have made an effort to make it easier to play the game on linux machines. Be fucking thankful that somebody is making an effort to reach into your tiny market, instead of whining that it's not perfect. Even if its not a native client, the game should run fine. People with decent computers can run 4 clients at a time in windows. If it was easy to make linux clients, and the money companies could possibly make by creating them was high enough, everyone would do it. The problem is there
  • Glad you corrected the Linux client in the summary, but you need to do the same for OS X.

    You're still implying that a Ciderized version of a Win32 application is "native" on OS X. It isn't, it's just another Wine-based port.

  • Am I mistaken? Mac "port" doesn't appear "native" (Score:3, Informative)

    by analog_line ( 465182 ) on Sunday November 04, 2007 @02:39PM (#21233421)
    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.

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