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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
POKE 36879,8
If there is one word that sums up Vendetta Online nicely it would be barren. EVE is not barren.
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.
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.
> 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.
Why do people insist on calling EVE super-niche hardcore?
It has hardcore elements, but that's it.
It is not a game which forces you to play any which way, and especially not "hardcore".
I have a 3-4 year old character on EVE, and I've not ONCE touched the drama, politics, etc. (you can play freelance your entire eve career and have a blast - that was infact one of the atmosphere/mood goals of eve; to incorporate that 'lost in space' feeling.)
WoW was far, far more time demanding for an equally 'in the game' feeling (and I won't even touch advancement/gear...).
It's the same with most other mmorpgs I've played. Out of them; EVE is the one that has the *potential* (if you want it to be) to be very time consuming, however it is the one that forces you to stress the LEAST to still to stay ontop of the game.
It might be this "hardcore dream" (Hmm...) of many players in it, however eve is just as much a casual gamer's dream.
Sometimes I start thinking all these people calling eve hardcore and niche/excluding, are spreading that fud for a reason.
- A freelancer in Eve
So the difference between VO and practically every other MMOG is just that the developers are honest?
Says the man with square HTML tags.
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.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.