EVE Online Coming to Linux, Mac OS X

An anonymous reader writes "Linuxlookup.com is reporting that CCP today announced a partnership with TransGaming to bring EVE Online to Linux and Mac platforms starting later this year. From the article: '"EVE Online has always ranked highly with our Linux users and there is significant demand for it among other platforms, including the rapidly growing Mac base," said Vikas Gupta, CEO of TransGaming Technologies. "As EVE takes place within a single-server persistent universe, it's vital that the game is identical in every way across different platforms. This challenge is what makes the partnership with CCP both important and rewarding."'

Comments

Well then

[Necreia]

It seems I'll be comming to Eve then.

Re:Well then

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Ditto. I always get into MMOs, only to leave two months later when I realize that you can't win and it'll be three years before I even become a force to be reckoned with at the rate I play. Eve looks at least a little different though, with their real-time skill upgrades. I already own a copy of the game; it was the very last one I tried before removing Windows from my house forever. I only got to play it for about two weeks before removing the micro-shaft from my butt, but it seemed cool, just not cool enough to leave that thing in there for.

Re:Well then

[theMerovingian]

Eve's main "innovation" as an MMO: it takes three years to become a force to be reckoned with, REGARDLESS of how much you play.

Re:Well then

[Ash-Fox]

I'm more likely to play Eve too because of this move.

Re:Well then

[nschubach]

That's pretty much what turned me off. The time based skill up. No matter how much you play, you can only increase skills at a predetermined pace. Your play time is spent trying to make money to buy things that you won't be able to afford later.

Re:Well then

[buffer-overflowed]

Well it depends on what you want to do. You can be useful in PvP within a few days from start, or be able to fly a hulk(top-tier mining barge) within two months, an inty in a few weeks, a ratting raven in a month.

I don't like that there's basically no way to catch up, but meh, it's not a horrible game for it.

Re:Well then

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is not to catch up, but to better people with higher SP.

One issue with Eve is high sec griefer corps (read Repo Industries and the like) who spend their time in high sec trying to war dec low SP players. My corp luckily got in a low sec alliance and handed their arses to them, but this kind of action does turn people off the game (these kind of people get -5 sec deductutions from admins).

Eve is great fun, but at the same time there's a lot of dickheads with moderate amounts of SP that are going to grief you into leaving the game.

Yes, AC so I don't cop any more grief from these arsefarmers.

Re:Well then

[Shadowplay00]

One issue with Eve is high sec griefer corps (read Repo Industries and the like) who spend their time in high sec trying to war dec low SP players. My corp luckily got in a low sec alliance and handed their arses to them, but this kind of action does turn people off the game (these kind of people get -5 sec deductutions from admins). Could someone please translate this to English? Thanks!

Re:Well then

[Alzheimers]

I'll do my best:

One issue with Eve is teams of people who hang out in the safer* areas of the universe (such as a gang called Repo Industries) who spend their time in these safer* areas using an an-game mechanic to, for a fee, declare war against other groups of players who would otherwise be protected by the police in the area, simply for the fun of ruining someone else's day, and usually target new players who can't defend themselves properly. My team was fortunate to have been accepted by a group of other teams that are more accustomed to staying in the unsafe areas and are thus better at protecting themselves, and using this knowledge returned the favor to the unfriendly gangs by sending them home to mommy with a bloody nose. Even though the game masters look down upon the kind of behavior that ruins the experience for new players, the current solution of limiting the ability of unfriendly players to only enter unsafe areas has a way of souring the experience for everyone involved.

Hope that helps!

*there are no "safe" areas in EvE, except for being docked. Once you're in space, even in newbieland, you can be attacked and blown up. The difference is that in "safer" areas, there's a fast police response (aka CONCORDOKKEN) that will end up with the aggressor being destroyed. However, you're still dead.

Fascinating!

[seebs]

I think it'll work well for them. I know at least 4-6 people who have WoW only because it has a Mac port, even though only one of them got WoW to actually play it on a Mac.

Re:Fascinating!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a person that only plays WoW due to having a Mac. Well, I tried Wurm Online but it runs like poop on my machine. In all honesty, Eve likely will too, but hey ...

Re:Fascinating!

[Greyfox]

WoW runs fine on a Mac. The shitty ATI 1900 in my Macpro desktop overheats and crashes the system pretty consistently though. I'm upgrading to the Nvidia card which will hopefully allow me to play the game without turning the system fans up to maximum. Some people might consider the Nvidia a downgrade but 1) It's not ATI and 2) If it lets me push 3D without crashing the system or forcing me to turn my system fans up so high that I risk permanent damage to my hearing then it's a upgrade in my book.

Re:Fascinating!

[seebs]

Yeah, I've been quite happy with it; I actually got a macbook pro recently, and it's replaced my Windows box for WoW.

But the reason we got WoW, and not one of the others, was that my spouse had an iBook. So, we both got WoW, then I got a second account, and our roommate got one, and a friend got one... All because we wanted an MMO that my spouse could play too.

Re:Fascinating!

[njfuzzy]

It's not accurate to call the Mac WoW client a "port", I'd say. The release was simultaneous, like all Blizzard releases since they were a "Mac-first, then Windows port" company.

I suspect that the cross-platform nature of WoW helped them get off to a good start. It's just the kind of game Mac users hunger for, and knowing that all of your friends could play at the same time was appealing. Sometimes I wonder if that wasn't actually the special sauce for WoW's success.

Re:Fascinating!

[njfuzzy]

Not to be pedantic, but isn't spouse the general term? Since you only have one, there's no need to conceptualize it. Is it a wife or a husband, or are you intentionally keeping your (or their) gender mum?

Re:Fascinating!

[Maury Markowitz]

> The shitty ATI 1900 in my Macpro desktop overheats
> and crashes the system pretty consistently though.

File a bug report! Apple is convinced I'm the only one having this problem! The OS simply isn't listening to the temperature in the PCI bay and correct for it properly. Making matters worse, the OS doesn't look at the temperature from the card itself at all.

And to actually "fix" it, go get a copy of smcFanControl. Make a setting called "Gaming" and crank the PCI bay fan to about 900-1200. Presto, the problem is gone. Unfortunately this sets the _lower_ speed of the fans only, so the noise level goes up even in idle.

But to put this in perspective, I can run WoW and Halo all day long completely maxed out at 2560 x 1600 without any problems. And when I'm not playing, I simply reset the fans to Default.

Maury

Re:Fascinating!

[juuri]

Definitely calling the WoW Mac client a port is incorrect. The Mac version actually has more features (iTunes support built in) currently. The next major client release (for 2.2) adds video recording/encoding to the Mac client, this is still a ways off on the PC side.

Re:Fascinating!

[seebs]

It's sort of a social experiment. It is fascinating how many people become upset if they can't tell, despite the very low probability that it will ever become any of their business.

Does it matter? Ever? Are you going to be providing either of us with medical care? Do you plan to have sex with one or more of us? If not, how can it possibly matter?

And yet, people always ask. I find this fascinating, so I keep doing it.

Re:Fascinating!

[Greyfox]

It seems to get worse over time, and I'm pretty sure it's not the PCI bay temperature that's the problem. It ran fine with slightly higher fans for a month or two, then it started overheating again. It eventually gets to the point where even with the fans at max it was crashing 3-4 times a day. At that point I ordered a third party VGA cooler with heat pipes. It still requires the fans to run at max but it's not crashing anymore.

I suspect that the problem here may be at least partially seasonal. I don't have AC at my place and it can get up to 90 or so on the hottest days (It's so dry here it's not particularly uncomfortable.) Now that we're getting the cooler fall temperatures again I'm seeing that it's a lot more stable.

If you look on the WoW support forums though, you'll see that this problem is not limited to just you or me. There are pages full of people having the same exact video and crashing issues that I was seeing. If you talk to the WoW mac support guys about the problem, the first thing they'll suggest is that your system is overheating. These are NOT isolated incidents. If Apple still thinks they are, it's because their problem tracking system is woefully deficient.

Re:Fascinating!

[njfuzzy]

You may be misreading those of us who comment. I am not upset, I'm merely confused by the misuse of language.

The word spouse is meant to refer to a case where the gender is ambiguous, such as general cases like "People tend to spend more time with their spouses than their siblings." If I use any such term, when there is a specific term available, it's strange-- For instance, I don't talk about my "sibling", my "parent", etc. when I know which individual I am talking about, as "brother" or "mother" are clearly the correct word choices.

I suspect the reason people comment so much is not because they mind your little "social experiment", but precisely because you are conducting an experiment. You've basically said that your word choice is in order to get a reaction, so you must be aware that it stands out. People noticing it is hardly surprising.

I guess that I'm saying is that your "experiment" lacks a control, and your results will be whatever you expect them to be.

Re:Fascinating!

[seebs]

Yes, but what's interesting is that people seem to feel it's important to find out which term applies. People sometimes get downright obsessive; I've had forum staff demand that I tell them which specific word applies.

It's not that I think people mind the experiment; just that they seem to be very uncomfortable not knowing. There was research done in which people were asked to hold a baby with a name like "Pat" or "Sam". Many of them looked in the diapers rather than stumble over pronouns...

Re:Fascinating!

[Hardhead_7]

> It's sort of a social experiment. It is fascinating how many people become
> upset if they can't tell, despite the very low probability that it will
> ever become any of their business.

I don't really think he was upset. He just asked why you were using a generic term when you (we hope!) knew the more specific term, which would have been expected.

You state that you're doing it, essentially, so see how often people will ask, so you're aware it's an odd turn of phrase. Your answer as to why you do it seems to be "because I want people to ask me why I'm using the odd phrasing." I think that's kind of a stupid reason, because, as you said, it has no real personal impact whether we know if your spouse is a man or woman (indeed, even if I did, I still wouldn't know what sex you were). So it seems like a pointless "experiment" to me. What's your hypothesis? That people will as you why you use such odd phrasing when you use it? Seems like kind of a pointless experiment.

> Are you going to be providing either of us with medical care?
> Do you plan to have sex with one or more of us? If not, how
> can it possibly matter?

Even though it was rhetorical, I'll answer. Because we are social animals, and we pick up many social cues on how to react someone based on their sex (both meanings, too - their partners and their gender). Therefore, someone purposefully obscuring those qualities draws questions about why they would do so, because it piques or socially wired ape brains. It's pretty simple.

Re:Fascinating!

[njfuzzy]

One might argue that language, and the narrow classifications that it demands of us, are inherent to the manner of thinking that separates humans from animals, for ill or good. If we can name something, we can think about it in shorthand, and that allows our thought processes to flow more smoothly. Personally, I don't care about your gender, or that of your spouse-- it just bugs me that you go out of your way not to say it.

Re:Fascinating!

[seebs]

Well, it's not that I want them to ask. I just want to see what they do. If they ask, I want to know why.

I haven't been able to figure out why people care. It never occurred to me to care whether people I knew online were male or female; the number of people whose sex or gender I've cared about in my life is solidly under a dozen. If I'm not planning to have sex with them, why should I care?

(Disclaimer: Yes, I have an actual diagnosis of autism from a real doctor. I suspect this may be one of those things.)

What I've found is that, in general, it turns out that mostly people are trying to apply stereotypes, and they apply the stereotypes that fit their expectations. If you tell them someone's female, they imagine that person as mapping onto their stereotype of females; same for male. Since I don't particularly wish to be judged by such stereotypes, and my spouse doesn't either, I avoid the words. If you ever end up in bed with me, I'll happily answer relevant questions at that time. :)

Re:Fascinating!

[seebs]

It's not really very far out of my way. "spouse" is no longer or more complicated than "wife" or "husband".

Wouldn't the "smooth" flow imply "preconceived notions" which might well be wrong? Perhaps it's better for thoughts to flow a tad more roughly...

Re:Fascinating!

[mhall119]

Personally I was more thrown by the fact that you have a spouse AND a roommate.

If you ever end up in bed with me, I'll happily answer relevant questions at that time. But I guess that may explain it to some extent.

Re:Fascinating!

[Fatal Darkness]

Apple is currently replacing these cards.
There is a thread on the WoW support forums discussing this.

This problem is not unique to the cards from Apple or to the Mac Pro. I purchased the ATI x1900 G5 edition for my PowerMac G5 directly from ATI and ran into the exact same problem. Unfortunately there is no SMCFanControl for PPC Macs.

Mac Pro owners who have the luxury of going through Apple for their replacement cards should consider themselves lucky, as unlike ATI/AMD Apple actually cares about their customers. My experience with getting a replacement card to a month and a half going through ATI's warranty process; during which I was lucky to still have the 6600 the machine came with or else I would have been without a machine during that time.

Re:Fascinating!

[myowntrueself]

Its incredible that there are so many problems on the Mac Pro...

My partner plays WoW on a Mac *Mini* and has no problems whatsoever... :-\

Re:Fascinating!

[toriver]

Nah, EVE is a spreadsheet with a purty animated background. And some icons. Runs fine on practically anything. Except in large battles. And there are... non-technical... issues... aw, just google it.

Re:Fascinating!

[alexgieg]

What I've found is that, in general, it turns out that mostly people are trying to apply stereotypes, and they apply the stereotypes that fit their expectations.

Oh, but you don't avoid it yourself. When you say "my spouse", and not "this spouse of mine" (with can mean one or more), you're implying a very specific social construct: monogamy. You're making very clear you have only, and only one, spouse. Sure, that doesn't mean you don't have additional "lovers", but even so, only one person ends up being the socially acceptable, officially recognized, spouse.

In short: if you want really odd reactions, you must not only abstract the sex, but also the number, all the while keeping the official determinant. It'll be determined on one hand, but doubly undetermined on the other. Way to have fun! :)

By the way: I'm not a native speaker of English. In my language, Portuguese, the friend of the English "spouse", and its usual translation, is "esposo", which is a male word, the female one being "esposa", and both being formal version of the most informal "marido" ("husband") and "mulher" ("wife", but also our generic word for "woman": "a mulher de" means "the wife of", while "uma mulher" means "a woman"). Thus, oddly enough, when I read your first post I just understood you to be a very formal woman. It was only by reading the comments by others that I realized you were doing word tricks. In any case, though, in my case it worked reversed. Instead of producing an abstraction, your selection of words had the effect of crystallizing a concept in my mind.

And right or wrong, it's still crystallized. ;)

Re:Fascinating!

[seebs]

Actually, spouse doesn't necessarily imply only-one. It usually does, but not always. I have more than one roommate; I don't have to specify. Similarly, I have more than one friend (and yet I post to slashdot, go figure), but I'll say something like "my friend told me that..."

So there isn't even a strict implication there.

(And to the person shocked by the spouse/roommate thing: We have two roommates. It's cost-effective.)

Re:Fascinating!

[elrous0]

knowing that all of your friends could play at the same time was appealing

Actually, it's precisely because I like to play with friends that I *DON'T* play WoW. Moving between servers on WoW is a pain in the ass. If your friend is on one server and you're on another, you're SOL unless you create a whole new character. I play Guild Wars because it's pretty much seamless to move between servers, even foreign ones (literally, you use a drop-down menu to move your character around to any server at any time).

Re:Fascinating!

[necro2607]

Nice FUD disguised as friendly conversation... I have WoW running no problem on both [recent] Macs I own, an iBook G4 1.2ghz and a Mac Mini intel Core Solo 1.5ghz. In fact, to even further contrast your post, WoW had less problems (aka none) on those computers than it did when I installed it on my new $1500 Windows machine I had built for gaming. ...

Re:Fascinating!

[sanosuke76]

Heh, my mom's freaked out by the fact my fiance and I don't plan on kicking out my roomie once we get married. It seems that folks have this idea that as soon as you get married, you immediately either gain access to some sort of money tree and living cheaply no longer applies.

Oh, to clarify: I'm male, my fiance's female, my roomie's male, and there's a cavity on the underside of my pet turtle's shell which diagnoses it as a male. And I don't expect anyone to try to have sex with any of the above (well, ok, my roomie's up for grabs)

Re:Fascinating!

[nschubach]

Well, to add to your experiment results...

I only found it odd (that you put it the way you did) because someone else pointed it out. (The same applies for the use of "we" instead of "all of us")

If it truly is an experiment, it's been spoiled by one of your subjects for all of your subject.

Re:Fascinating!

[Draek]

Does your or your spouse's sex matter in online discussions? no, not really. Does the reason why you try to hide it matter in online discussions? no, not really. Does the history behind your username matter in online discussions? no, not really. Does the OS+Browser combo you used to post that message matter in online discussions? no, not really.

But yet we ask, because we're curious. As the saying goes, "Curiosity is the mother of invention", so don't blame us, being geeks we're even more curious than your average guy on the street =D

Re:Fascinating!

[rkanodia]

A few years back, a former boss of mine died in a helicopter crash. The story ran on slashdot, because the passenger he was carrying was a Linux kernel hacker. There were a plethora of homophobic posts about how he was a 'faggot' and so forth - because he referred to his 'partner' on his website, which hadn't been taken offline at the time. As it turns out, his partner was a woman, but that didn't stop the trolls. Not that I support homophobic trolls, but in this case they weren't even directed at a homosexual; just using the gender-neutral term 'partner' was enough to make him a target. It doesn't surprise me at all that you get angry responses.

Re:Fascinating!

[malf-uk]

You're missing an 'e' there then. 'Fiancé' is masculine; 'fiancée' is feminine.

Re:Fascinating!

[sanosuke76]

Wow. That's pretty interesting in and of itself. Everyone I remember reading on the internet spells fiance the same way for both genders, and this is the first I've personally been corrected on it. I'll be careful of that in the future - I just find it amazing that, among all the spelling and grammar nazis on the various forums I'm on, neither I nor anyone I've seen use fiance as a dual gender word has been called on it. Sounds like a whole new world of grammar nazi'age just opened up...

Re:Fascinating!

[malf-uk]

Well it's a rather common mistake. Thankfully it's one you can get away with in speech!

I tend not to correct people's language*, but as it was a discussion regarding gender it was far too tempting to point out that this word changes according to gender.

* except for the occasional bricks through the window of shops that use greengrocers' apostrophes.

Re:Fascinating!

[NotWorkSafe]

You can pay a fee to move a character (depending on server; I know you can't move a PVE character to a PVP server) to another server. I think the fee is like $12 USD or so.

Re:Fascinating!

[seebs]

I think you misread my post.

I didn't say that only one person was able to make WoW run. I said that only one person got WoW with intent to run it on a Mac.

The rest of us were Windows and Linux users -- who wanted to play online with the Mac user.

Re:Fascinating!

[seebs]

I was trying to figure out your comment, until someone else made it clearer.

You misread me. I didn't say it didn't run; I just observed that only one of my immediate group of people was even TRYING to run on a Mac.

"got WoW to actually play it on a Mac" is not the same as "got WoW to run on a Mac". The first is a statement of intent, the second one of technical compatibility.

Re:Fascinating!

[Greyfox]

Oh right. I misunderstood too.

I got my Mac first. I got WoW because it plays on my Mac. My choice of what (if any) games I play is dictated by the platform I'm currently on, not the other way around. If WoW didn't run on my Mac or if they dropped support for the Mac, I would not play WoW. If some other game I was interested in added support for the Mac I would check them out.

Re:Fascinating!

[seebs]

Yeah, I'm sorta the same way. I mean, I will get machines just to play games -- see also "consoles". But really, I wasn't about to start supporting artists on Windows machines, so I just picked something that could work on a Mac so I wouldn't have to.

Re:Fascinating!

[muridae]

I don't know that 'uncomfortable not knowing' is the right concept either. With a baby, there are not many cues to tell the person what pronoun to use, and I suspect they are more uncomfortable getting it wrong by mistake and, in their own perception, possibly offending the parent. There seems to be huge social pressure to not insult a person's child. If a person doesn't know the pronoun to use, they either stumble over the name they are given, using that instead, or just pick one. They can't pick one randomly, that might insult the parent, and they are holding the baby, so why not just check?

In counter to that experiment, try it with an older subject. Since I get called sir as often as ma'am at restaurants, I started raising my voice when they called me sir, and lowering it when they call me ma'am. Neither of those get people to change their pronoun or honorific. Not shifting my voice gets them to, almost always, change to using ma'am or miss. Why that happens beats the hell out of me.

I know this is offtopic and I'm burning karma. Oh well.

Re:Fascinating!

[elrous0]

Yeah, but paying $12 for a single server move and switching back and forth between servers several times each night to buy stuff, play with friends, etc. for free are FUNDAMENTALLY different beasts. I didn't say it was impossible to change servers in WoW, only that it was a pain in the ass compared to something as easy (and free) as Guild Wars.

Hurrah!

[Funkcikle]

This is excellent news. Truly this will be the best 2003 ever!

Re:Hurrah!

[Anonymous Coward]

It better be. We've had like 5 tries so far.

Linux On The Desktop this time?

So what?

[sinner6]

The mac version of Eve was reported as in development as far back as March but as of yet no offical statements. http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/03/09/eve/index.php And people ALREADY run Eve on linux using Cedega. Running Eve on linux is nothing new, people have been doing it for at least 9 months, maybe more. Nice of slashdot to pick up a PR statement.

Re:So what?

[ATravelingGeek]

Eve also runs (almost) perfectly in CrossOver for OS X right now.

wine

[oliverthered]

But doesn't eve already run under wine for free?

Re:wine

[Scutter]

But doesn't eve already run under wine for free?

Not well. And if you want to do multi-monitor, it's a major PITA to get working.

Re:wine

[paleo2002]

The same argument can be made for Mac users running Windows via Boot Camp. But, native software has a tendency to be more stable and be optimized for the hardware.

Re:wine

[Anonymous Coward]

um EvE Online is free to start with. well free software, pay to play.

Re:wine

[Jugalator]

Not that this article is saying that it'll run natively.

Re:wine

[MBGMorden]

Wine is usually a pretty piss-poor substitute for a native port. Yeah a lot of stuff "works", but with little graphical glitches, significantly impacted performance, and an unexplained crashes. A lot of people play WoW on Wine too, and I did install it and get it working. Run around Ironforge for a few minutes, flew to WPL and played there for about and hour before just deciding that it wasn't worth it. The experience wasn't the same. Like taking a rusted out old Corvette with flat tired and plastic over the windows down the street. Sure you're driving a 'vette, and it technically works; patch up the tires and you might even be able to do your daily driving in it. But pretending that it's nice to drive is just a fantasy.

The Mac WoW client though (which IS native), runs simply amazing. I really wish Blizzard would come out with a native Linux version, and certainly applaud EVE Online for their effort.

Re:wine

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it does work under the latest version of Wine. I have it running on Ubuntu 7.04, and it's almost perfect. There's just a few minor graphical glitches, but it's 99% playable.

Re:wine

[Gogo0]

I partially agree that "porting" games with wine sucks, but if they heavily tweaked wine to run the game perfectly and then wrapped it all up into one binary -whats the problem? Releasing a half-assed version with graphical glitches and problems wouldnt be an option, considering this is a product they want to sell, so its a good bet that it'll be better than your average plays-mostly-everything wine install.

Side-note: i would certainly prefer things be ported properly, but if devs can tweak wine easily enough and well enough that you cant tell the (performance? graphical? audio?) difference, then maybe it isnt such a bad thing after all.

Re:wine

[oliverthered]

This probably isn't going to be a native port if transgaming is doing it.

Re:wine

[Maury Markowitz]

I never got it to work. Admittedly I didn't try THAT hard, but my experience is generally it works or it doesn't, so when it doesn't I basically throw in the towel.

Re:wine

[Ash-Fox]

Wine is usually a pretty piss-poor substitute for a native port.

Really it depends on the application.

Yeah a lot of stuff "works", but with little graphical glitches, significantly impacted performance

Yeah, WoW running faster on the same hardware under Linux is definitely a significantly impacted performance issue... Wait? What?

and an unexplained crashes.

I've had very little problem finding out what exactly was causing Wine to crash over the years (pretty much running a program off a terminal window and then looking at what was written there after it crashed was generally enough to figure out what had happened).

The experience wasn't the same. Like taking a rusted out old Corvette with flat tired and plastic over the windows down the street. Sure you're driving a 'vette, and it technically works; patch up the tires and you might even be able to do your daily driving in it. But pretending that it's nice to drive is just a fantasy.

My personal experiences with running games under Wine have been favorable. I could easily switch from fullscreen games to the desktop without having to wait at all for screen to go black.. do something then show me my desktop, it instantly gave me my desktop. Game playability was pretty much the same, I haven't noticed graphical issues in games I've played either.

When did you last try Wine by the way?

The Mac WoW client though (which IS native), runs simply amazing. I really wish Blizzard would come out with a native Linux version, and certainly applaud EVE Online for their effort.

The interesting thing is that certain applications, such as Firefox perform slightly better under Wine than they do under their native ports. That said, I tend to always prefer the native ports since they're better integrated with the system.

meh

[Anonymous Coward]

It will still run thru cedegas half-assed api which only works if you're lucky.

No.

[C10H14N2]

WoW works okay, but EVE does not, sadly.

Wha?

[Kantara]

Between this, ArsTechnica's report on Guitar Hero III Coming-to-PC and Macs via Aspyr, GameTap, and EA following through with their game announcements, It's finally looking 'not bad' for Mac gaming this year. I truly thought that Cider was a bunch of hooey, but it seems to be doing well.

At least they're trying.

[SanityInAnarchy]

If they actually do release a Linux port, even if it's only using a Wine wrapper, I call it a win.

At least they're paying attention. And maybe next time, they'll develop native cross-platform with SDL or something.

Re:At least they're trying.

[pieaholicx]

Shouldn't really need a wine wrapper. As far as I'm aware it's mostly written in Python, so going native shouldn't be a really massive undertaking (read: it won't take years).

Re:At least they're trying.

[mounthood]

Interesting that they are staying with DX and doing a port. They just re-wrote the client because the graphics were getting dated. http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=493

Re:At least they're trying.

[Anonymous Coward]

Releasing it as a Wine wrapper is about the best way to do it. Otherwise, they'd sink tons of money into a port that only a small number of subscribers will be using. Eve isn't free (as in beer), you have to pay a monthly fee, btw, which will prevent many Linuxalots from playing.

Re:At least they're trying.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Otherwise, they'd sink tons of money into a port that only a small number of subscribers will be using.

Or, they could simply design it properly to begin with, and porting would be close to as simple as a recompile. I'd also argue that truly portable code is likely to have less bugs.

They're also porting this to the Mac, which seems to be a good enough platform for Warcraft.

Eve isn't free (as in beer), you have to pay a monthly fee, btw, which will prevent many Linuxalots from playing.

You know, I kind of resent that, especially given I do play another game which requires a monthly fee.

Re:At least they're trying.

[nschubach]

I think it has to do with ease of adding that "nifty" effect. I'm not terribly familiar with both OpenGL and DX, but I think it's easier to do the "higher-end" looking stuff in DX than it is in OpenGL. I might be wrong on this (and I'm probably talking out my ass so I don't even know why I'm posting except to get a clarification on this), but I think DX is to CISC, as OpenGL is to RISC. DX has a load of features that you simply invoke and the language takes over while OpenGL requires a few more steps to perform the same thing.

Re:At least they're trying.

[nschubach]

Very true. I have no problem buying a game that I know will run on Linux natively. I think that's a very bad stereotype or some kind of strange urban myth that in order to survive on Linux, it must be free.

Re:At least they're trying.

[Breakfast Pants]

The server is mostly written in python, not the client (though it does have some python). They aren't talking about the server here.

Test hasn't started...

[sykopomp]

I'm actually signed up for testing this client. For those of you who don't realize this yet, the client they're releasing for linux and mac is actually just the windows client wrapped up with Cedega and Cider, respectively. There won't be much difference between the the performance for those that run it under Wine/Cedega and those that run it with this upcoming client. The biggest advantage, though, is official support (which Cedega has basically had for a while, now... no big change here). The news are not as big as this article makes it seem... Also, it'll be a little while before the official client is released. They've been taking forever to keep us up to date, sending one e-mail every two weeks or so with no real updates on the matter besides some examples of what we might be testing. They haven't even decided what the final list of testers is, even. Ah well, I guess something's something... and I think at least OSX users will be really thankful for this development.

Re:Test hasn't started...

[hollywoodb]

It might just be EVE, but I used to run EVE under Cedega and Wine at different points, even as recently as four months ago.

Performance was terrible. I mean really truly terrible. Now my system isn't top of the line, but if it can run Doom 3 (native) at near-full detail it should be able to run EVE as well.

This is not news. Give me a native client that performs worth a damn and I'll reinstate my subscription.

Re:Test hasn't started...

[sykopomp]

Well, to be fair... It's really admirable that they're willing to put in the time and effort to take their game and officially support it with a wrapper. Porting EVE to Linux and Mac is a whole 'nother set of problems... it won't happen for a long time. CCP is already developing a DX10 version that they plan on having around for a while, and they don't seem to have people that work with OpenGL. That alone should stop any native lin/mac client from appearing. It's a damn shame, but that's how the game world rolls.

I, for one...

[eugenewithanaxe]

welcome our new interstellar overlords! Seriously, I just installed Eve on my bootcamp partition. Though it would be nice to not reboot, or worse, use Parallels (BSOD w/VMWare Fusion when starting game), I don't see what the big deal is. Gimme a native port, and I will celebrate. Still, this is one step in the right direction.

Cross Platform Future?

[p0tat03]

With companies seemingly jumping aboard the Mac gaming wagon (great for a Mac user like myself), I wonder if Cider will become a stopgap, or the future. On the one hand, the recent move towards Macs is obviously because publishers feel the Mac market is now worth capturing, but at the same time will companies continue to rely on the crutch that is Cider far into the future, or will developers shift towards developing for both platforms natively?

Re:Cross Platform Future?

[jmauro]

It's the future since it's the path of least resistance for creating Mac Games, as sad as that is.

Where's the post on Vendetta Online?

[Qbertino]

Where's the Article on Vendetta Online? Their employees don't cheat, and they've had a Linux (even a seperate one for AMD 64 bit) and Mac client from the very beginning. And they are a small independant gaming company that actually deserve some attention for their very neat Space MMORPG.

Re:Where's the post on Vendetta Online?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the thing is... EVE is actually good.

Re:Where's the post on Vendetta Online?

[rabbit994]

Because fun of EvE is the sandbox gameplay (debatable with all the developers lately) which Vendetta doesn't seem to be offering.

Re:Where's the post on Vendetta Online?

[rwa2]

I haven't even been able to google a good EVE vs. Vendetta article. Most of the Vendetta players I've talked too say it's better than EVE, but none of the EVE players I've talked to have even heard of Vendetta :P

I've played through the trials of both somewhat recently, so here's my quick synopsis:

EVE has nicer graphics and a good business & economy simulation. I'm a bit disappointed with lack of realism. There's no collision damage (in fact you can fly right through most objects such as ships and stations). Mostly you just approach objects such as stations and warpgates and "interact" with them without having to align with a flight path to dock or anything. To my knowledge you can't even just grab the controls and "fly". The interface is strictly point-and-click on objects, send a command, and wait. A lot of people play EVE while doing other things. Combat is mostly based on "dice rolls", though you still have to be there to select targets and activate weapons.

Vendetta actually lets you pilot aircraft, so there's a lot more actual player skill (not "stats") involved. I'm a bit annoyed that they introduced "licensing" to follow EVE's "skill points" thing. But at least the licensing is based on completing tasks and not on simply selecting a skill to "train" and waiting a bunch of real life time.

So EVE probably appeals more to the RTS player, and Vendetta would appeal more to the FPS player. Neither has very realistic physics... haven't seen much improvement in that in video games since Wing Commander.

Anyone know of space games with more realistic physics? Vegastrike (http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/) is a little better, but doesn't quite seem to be multiplayer just yet. And of course there are the outright simulators like Orbiter (http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/) which are neat to tinker with.

Re:Where's the post on Vendetta Online?

[happyemoticon]

It's still the closest thing to a real sandbox out there that I've seen.

Re:Where's the post on Vendetta Online?

[Ornedan]

Kind of offtopic, but, if you want pretty realistic physics in a space sim, try the I-War games. The second one is pretty free-from, especially after you add some mods. Vega Strike and some of it's derivatives also use a Newtonian flight model, but they are still somewhat work-in-progress.

http://www.i-war2.com/
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/

Re:Where's the post on Vendetta Online?

[Alcyoneus]

I liked Vendetta Online. I thoroughly disliked EVE Online.

EVE is an MMO which has been won by BoB and MC. I don't know if they had benefit of cheating devs or not. If they did, shame on them. If they didn't, congratulations to them for achieving total dominance.

But either way, the game is won. If you are in BoB or MC, then you win. If you aren't, you lose. Period.

Find another game in which the outcome is up for grabs. Porting the game doesn't change anything.

Re:Where's the post on Vendetta Online?

[will_frag_for_food]

EVE is by no means 'won' or 'over'... you might do well to familiarize yourself with the changes introduced in the last major past (which, btw, does not require additional funding on top of the monthly fee).

The more complex processes required to take and defend territory have forced BoB onto the defensive (as there is no way they could instantly develop and defend all of the territory they previously laid claim to) and there is a lot of room for other corporations (EVE's version of the guild) and alliances to grab some land.

Their main challenge at this point appears to be support of large scale fleet battles. The new game mechanics call for huge fleet fights in contested regions, and the reality of these fights is a 600+ man lag fest.

If you left because you thought the fight was lost... hop on the forums and take a look at the latest maps... chances are the conquered stations where you left all of your gear are open again for business.

Good luck!

Re:Where's the post on Vendetta Online?

[Anonymous Coward]

BoB has by no means won eve. Since Revelations, RSF (That's Red Alliance, Goonswarm, Tau Ceti Federation) has reclaimed most of the space they lost to imo broken supercaps, and even killed the leader of BoB's titan/unofficial flagship(although they don't get a permanent wreck for it, only the first kill gets one, even though this was the first actively-piloted combat titan kill). And the northern coalition is beating up on BoB's pets in the north. Every day that passes, the previous newbies of Goonswarm close the SP gap with BoB, and there are a hell of a lot more of them.

RSF hasn't won, due to PoS/soveriegnty changes they may not be able to win, since defenders of Sov 3 systems are the only ones who can deploy caps into them because of cyno jammers, but if it comes down to that, BoB can't win either.

And of course, historically, when you pit a bunch of Americans(and Canadians), French and Russians against a european power, who wins?

Goonswarm currently comprises the main Penny arcade corp, Ars Technica corp, and of course the main Something awful corp. None of them publically recruit. But you could start a slashdot corp and try to round out the pre-2000 internet community representation.

And of course, that's just 0.0 alliance warfare. It'd be really hard to "win" eve, since there are so many different ways to play it(and they all have spreadsheets and math in common!).

Re:Where's the post on Vendetta Online?

[myowntrueself]

L. Neither has very realistic physics... haven't seen much improvement in that in video games since Wing Commander.

You know, I was thinking of making a similar comparison between Wing Commander the movie and Phantom Menace.

Re:Where's the post on Vendetta Online?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice troll. Thankfully, in EVE we can kill and loot those supposedly cheating players just as easy, so most of us who enjoy this game don't give a toss about opinions like yours.

Re:Where's the post on Vendetta Online?

[Zeussy]

You maybe after realistic physics, but it sometimes makes me laugh too. Realism != fun (most of the time). If in EvE you had to fly to a planet, get into orbit, match orbits with the station, approach it, properly match velocities, pilot into the docking bay. You would get pretty sick of it by your 5th go. That's why in my opinion the players should be kept away from game design, as the majority do not have a clue. I have had a couple of conversions with friends along these lines

Wouldn't it be cool if you had to properly dock with stations.
No it wouldn't.
But it would look so cool!
It would look cool, but how many times do you dock with a station?
About 10-20 times a day
How long do you imagine it would take to dock?
About 3-5 minutes
So you want to spend an extra hour of you day to just look cool while you dock.
Well I suppose not.

Although saying that some developers don't have a clue about game design either, and I'm no game designer myself.

Re:Where's the post on Vendetta Online?

[Mentorix]

Never heard of vendetta online. I have played eve for around 4 years now though, and while bob and mc are powerful they are just alliances like any other. Kinda sad that the tinfoilhatters keep making stuff up and then pretend it's real. It's like dealing with creationists ffs. Big colourful rhetoric but rather short on actual evidence for their assertions.

Disclaimer: I've flown with and against both bob and mc (and countless other (more) interesting entities in EVE).

Not fully Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Kotaku, the Mac version uses the Cider engine. So us pre-Intel Mac owners are left out in the cold, just as we are with Battlefield 2142. My dual G5 has plenty of horsepower for games, but without true universal binaries it might as well be a Mac SE.

Re:Not fully Mac

[cbhacking]

I'd like to sympathize, but do you realize you're talking about commercial software that was released initially for a single OS on a single hardware infrastructure? EVE Online already works (mostly, and often only for every 3rd or 4th revision) on Wine, which at least works across all Unix-like OSes I know of (though still only for a single architecture). Turning that into a supported product (by the company that employs the primary Wine devs) isn't that big of a deal. Asking them to port the entire flipping thing to another ISA, with different bit-order and everything... does Stackless Python even run on PPC? If not, they'd need to either port the entire runtime (out of the question) or re-implement the client from the ground up using a different framework (economically unfeasible).

So... while I'm sorry that you're missing out on a great game, you're also still using an architecture that the PC (in the sense of personal computer, not IBM clone... wow, I haven't seen that term in a while) industry has abandoned. Anything that wasn't written with PPC in mind in the first place, or with the considerable care and attention to detail necessary to make it cross-compile properly (some, but not all, open-source software) isn't ever likely to come to PPC. Sorry man... I don't know what to say, except that the industry has rendered your machine obsolete before its time, and I'm sorry about that for your sake. The G5 might burn with the heat of a thousand suns, but it's a great chip in general.

awesome

[Is0m0rph]

Now Mac and Linux users can experience a corrupt game make sure you get in THE corporation that company plays for.

Cedega / Wine

[Sparr0]

I played EVE for a few months under [not-]emulation. I would probably give the game another try if they released a native Linux client. That is the only reason I started playing Second Life again.

hmmm..

[pjr.cc]

Its a mixed bag really. I'm really not a huge fan of cedega at all and never have been. It would have been nice if they'd said to the eve community "you want a linux port, heres what we need coded" and see how that went. Eve already does run under wine thanks to a number of very useful eve community guys (have a look at the wine db entries for eve).

But still, its a step in the right direction and I wont complain - on the contrary, I will love CCP to bits for it (being an already-active long-time eve player anyways).

Re:Well then (why we quit MMORPGs)

[WillAffleckUW]

I always get into MMOs, only to leave two months later when I realize that you can't win and it'll be three years before I even become a force to be reckoned with at the rate I play

You just need to go fishing in Mulgore and catch a 12 pound fish and hold it in your off hand, get a Lucky Stone (they are grey), and a Rabbits Foot.

Then you'll find it easy.

WoW under Linux

[zoward]

I've been playing WoW using Wine under Ubuntu Feisty (Linux) for about the last six months or so. Runs like a champ, sound works, smooth framerate on an nVidia 6600. It required surprisingly little tweaking to get running.

Re:WoW under Linux

[seebs]

Agreed. I actually switched from Windows to Wine because, except for some sound quirks, it ran dramatically better on the same hardware.

Real-time skill upgrades

[Lonewolf666]

Here's a data point for you:

My main char (allrounder with some bias towards industry) is about 9 months old and
-a fairly good Drake pilot
-pretty good at producing standard stuff aka Tech 1
-has recently acquired the skills to invent and build some Tech II items, where profits are much higher :-)

I consider myself a semi-casual player, and while I make not as much ISK as our hardcore mission runners, it is sufficient to buy the toys I want to play with.
So when the Linux version comes out, I guess it is worth a try.

And here I got my hopes up...

[d0rp]

I thought this was finally the announcement that they were done with the linux and mac clients.

I first heard about this back in April when I was still using Linux on my gaming machine (I've since put winXP on it because I was growing irritated with the performance of WoW and how every patch for both WoW and EVE was like a coin toss whether or not it would bork the whole game).

I'm still excited about the new EVE client though, even if it is just in a wine/cedega wrapper, because then it (probably) won't bork the whole game when theres a new patch and (presumably) I won't have to pay the $5/month for Cedega (not that that was much of a problem)

Great

[popo]

Now Linux and Mac users can experience a completely unfair game-world full of cheaters and insanely boring gameplay sprinkled with moments of outrage.

Have fun kids.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

God I hope you get modded up.

There is no skill in this game, there is no ingenuity, there is no balance.

There is lost friends, lost time, frustration out the wahzoo, dev stacked races, clueless balance team.

All within a game with NOTHING TO DO.

Future tech MMORPG/RPGs out there?

[kiberovca]

Since Eve has been the topic here...

I was wondering for a while now, is somewhere out there an futuristic MMORPG of some kind, be it Fallout lookalike or just plain guns, or/and cyborgs and stuff...? Where there are no superpowers, no spells, no psyonics...

I'm getting tired of "cast a spell, drink a potion, kill a goblin and save the damsel while wearing green tights and unhygienic underwear and pretending that middle ages have never ended" RPGs of all kinds that have been regurgurated for decades now.

I've tried to search for them, but either I'm a lousy google user, or there aren't any?

Re:Future tech MMORPG/RPGs out there?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not out yet, but keep an eye on Fallen Earth - http://fallenearth.com/ - they're hoping to enter beta by the end of the year.

Re:Future tech MMORPG/RPGs out there?

[Knara]

Tabula Rasa

Eve

[brkello]

It always surprises me Eve is trying to get more people to play their game. Obviously, it makes sense from a business standpoint...but every time I go back and try it out they have incredible lag problem due to their shard being over-populated. At a certain point you have to say...yeah, it's really cool we can say that we have the most people in a single universe, but maybe we should have another one so that the play experience is better and stop leaving large warfare battles to random chance of which side gets control of their ships first through the lag.

Re:Eve

[Knara]

The fact of the matter is that most people who play the game quit fairly early because you can't zoom through the skill progression (that and the "mmo spreadsheet" factor of it, which never bugged me that much). So, they get a cash boost from people who subscribe but don't end up playing for whatever amount of time they subscribed for (which CCP hopes is 2 weeks of a 6 month subscription, I'm sure).

Re:Eve

[brkello]

Yeah, I didn't mind the skill system or the complexity (though, I really didn't think it was all that complex, just more of a clunky UI than anything). Other than the lag, my main problem was that Eve is one of those MMOs you really have to dedicate yourself to to get in to it. I tend to have less time these days (and patience) to give games as I like to balance my life with other stuff.

I think you are right that they just hope people subscribe and don't play (the whole I am leveling while I am not playing so I don't have to log in). Just seems that having a business model revolve around hoping the people who pay don't play isn't really healthy for your game.

Re:Eve

[Anonymous Coward]

So, they get a cash boost from people who subscribe but don't end up playing for whatever amount of time they subscribed for (which CCP hopes is 2 weeks of a 6 month subscription, I'm sure). In that case it wouldn't really make sense for CCP to give out 2 week long free trials for Eve, would it? That's what they are doing anyway, and they don't even require a credit card, so everyone is able to try it out.

Interesting that this piece of news popped up here right now, since I just yesterday registered a trial account and was going to try the game, in Wine under Linux. Couldn't get it to work though, not yet anyway.

Re:Eve

[Synic]

It does work under the (somewhat) recent release of Cedega (6.0) though.

Re:Eve

[stix213]

You haven't tried out Eve lately it seems. They used to have some pretty bad lag problems, but in the last 6 months CCP has make significant hardware upgrades to where I very rarely notice lag problems.

Re:Eve

[Alzheimers]

There's really only two situations in EvE where you experience intolerable lag. One is fleet battles, which isn't an issue for the majority of casual players since they're not likely to be involved in a 300 v 300 slideshow if they've chosen a profession like mining or trading or even pirating. If you do decide to join a huge alliance, there are other ways to help out your team besides being a meatshield on the front lines. Jump in a covert ops ship (a smaller ship with an invisibility cloak) and scout, or train up for a logistics ship like a carrier and repair the wounded.

The other lagfest is the most populated system in the game: Jita. The simple solution is to just not go there. There are plenty of other market systems in the game where you can find just about anything you're looking for. There's no logical explanation for the Jita clusterfcuk other than people are lazy.

Re:Eve

[WuphonsReach]

There's no logical explanation for the Jita clusterfcuk other than people are lazy.

I can give you two:

1) CCP still has mission agents stationed in the Jita system. Which means you have mission runners mixed in with all the trade hub customers. Those agents should've been moved out to the surrounding systems back in the spring when they attempted to "fix" Jita.

2) CCP still hasn't stopped mission agents in the surrounding systems from sending you to Jita to run a combat mission. Nothing like a mission that generates 10-50 rat ships to add to the lag, eh?

So it's not just the players' fault. CCP isn't helping the situation by sending mission runners there. There's also the issue that they need to add one or two more stargate connections around Jita so that players can bypass it without adding 1-2 jumps. Because a lot of times, the auto-pilot settings will route you straight through Jita.

Re:Eve

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, whoever thought python + C was a good idea versus C + ASM... gah.

Eve on Linux

[mknewman]

Now, if they would only move the servers to Linux or Unix they'd be in good shape. 2 crashes yesterday. Marc

Mac, righ...

[Keyframe2]

"including the rapidly growing Mac base"
"it's vital that the game is identical in every way across different platforms"

right, with that wonderful choice of three shitty graphics cards for my mac pro.. argh

Your Cheatin' Heart

[Anonymous Coward]

Now everyone can play a game where the admins cheat. Yay?

Two Words:

[Doc Nielsen]

Wooohooo Finally!!

I hate having to boot to windows just to set my skill...