EVE Information Portal

I would grant them their adds in a launcher, that is ok AND convenient IF I actually want to use on of these features. But in this case eve gate and forum should be added as well as launch option.

Different Settings is a good point, actually I would add different accounts into this. I want ONE launcher for Singularity, and Tranquility. And I want to start as much instances of clients as I want from this single launcher.

I want to choose furthermore which Characters I want to log in, and which what preset of configuration I start this, and while you are at it, the launcher could offer a status of all running clients: "Character, Location, docked or in space", maybe add even a mini preview of what is running in this client.

Password Saving for Multiple Accounts would be nice too (decent encrypted for sure), and beeing able to restart a client with a different character via launcher sounds good too. Oh and iirc eve login is right now not encrypted, so adding here a bit security for people which play on open networks would be nice.


Ok, enough of wet dreams, looks good so far. You could again integrate that sisi launcher into the tranquilly launcher at least and give us a look at our eve gate page, because there is a lot of space right now, used for advertisement right now.

I would prefer manual patching to stay but if it's inevitable please could we have a setting for temporary folder selection because changing TEMP variable every time to apply patch is a pita.

Actualy, they are way behind the industry "standard" already! These kind of things: online patching, using a launcher is a common thing now for years in the software industry, even in those games that are not online! And these things are common for a good many reasons. So where have been you hiding?

They have asked your opinion on this matter, very nice, so be polite and helpful, and spend some time answering them your own reasons for the manual patches, and why you need them.

The only thing that bothers me about launcher programs is it adds yet another step to launching eve, something I tend to do several dozen times a day, normally swapping alts residing on 1 account (where is my 'return to character selection' button!?).

Hopefully there is in fact a hide or skip button so it doesn't make it take even more time to switch characters.

If it makes it easier to design or deploy patches then I'm all for it, but I worry it will end up being a waste of time/clicks 99% of the time (normal use) and helpful 1% of the time (patch day).

would be cool to be able to log in using the launcher interface, too.

If this was possible the players attention would be required once less in order to get into game.

log in and start game through launcher (wait)-> choose character (wait)-> play
instead of:
start game through launcher (wait)-> log in (wait)-> choose character (wait)-> play

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against supporting patching multiple installs of the EVE client, and supporting it for 3 will probably be just as easy as supporting it for 30. However, some of these requests sound like the botting community is asking for CCP to support patching all their bot clients in one go, and I'd rather have CCP fight botting instead of making life easier for people who run bots.

Will it still be possible to execute eve.exe directly?

Or do we always have to use the launcher to start?

im not a bot. and yes patching all my clients at once woudl be good.

but tbh at this point id take not seeing this thing every dam time i wnat to open a client.

auto patchers should only be seen when patching

In regards to the launcher:

I have two monitors and three accounts. I want one account ALWAYS on the LEFT screen in full-screen mode and the other two accounts ALWAYS on the right screen in windowed mode. As I'm sure you know, having multiple monitors can mean that you have multiple display "targets" for your graphics drivers. You *can* render on a display other than the one targetted, but it results in lower framerate. To save on installation space and merge chat log files (yes, I actually DO use those!) while still making sure that the graphics settings don't have to be reset every time I want to log in to another account, I have two shortcuts to EVE on my desktop. Actually, they're batch files.

One is simply labeled "EVE LEFT.BAT"



The other is simply labeled "EVE RIGHT.BAT"



In Windows 7, your graphics settings are pulled from %home%\appdata\local\ccp games\etc. Then, using some NTFS magic, I create a directory junction which points the Documents folder in each of those directories to my main user documents folder. Magically, the graphics settings are stored in C:\Left (or Right)\ while the chat logs (and all other end-user-useful game logs) are merged together in my documents folder. Also magically, it allows me to patch all of my clients all at once because they all share the same installation folder (well, except sisi and friends).

Convoluted, I'm sure. But it works well IMO.

I would very very very much like you to make sure that this new launcher does not break that. Or, if it does, make sure that you document another way of not making multiple-monitor multiple-account people angry.

On a side note, I would very much prefer to *not* see a "launcher" unless a *required* patch is available or an *optional* patch is available which I have not yet *declined*. If an optional patch is available which I have declined now and also declined to see in the future, then please don't show the launcher. Just take me to the login screen.

Hi

Me and the misses both have multiple Eve accounts, along with multiple computers and then house mates with them too. Each machine has Eve installed.

Some of the recent expansions have been reasonably big, which isn't an issue even on our low bandwidth connection due to being able to copy over the stand alone update patch to each machine and run it. Subsequent minor patches we don't bother with though, and just let the auto updater handle it.

I appreciate that we might not be the normal Eve user, but we have about 7 machines dotted about that have the game installed. That's a long download / patching process on a crappy speed connection, never-mind download limits from the ISP.

If you don't mind me asking, why do manual patchers complicate the build process? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it the Eve installation in program files/CCP/Eve is 'stand alone' in that it can be moved from machine to machine without issue (I've done it a few times). The userdata does not appear to be stored there, but in the sensible location of the users profile.

If this is the case, then the Eve directory can very easily have a patch differential file made for it using one of many methods. At work I do something similar (but on a much smaller scale ) by using PAR2 files.
I have my application installed and just generate a load of PAR2 files for the directory. I check on an older installation of the software that there is enough parity blocks to make up the difference between the versions. Once done, I wrap this in a silent installer for network deployment. It's nice because for older versions you just generate more PAR2 files, up until the point where you can just do a full reinstall of the application if they get too many / large.

I know there will probably be better methods than PAR2 for this scale, but ultimately if Eve is stand alone then you only need to make a differential file across an older and a newer install? The actual generation of the installable EXE after this is the easy part in my experience.

I suppose the main issue is how to patch / update any userdata outside this directory. For example, if there are changes to an ini file. I don't know how this is currently handled: Is it by the patcher (if so, a problem), or by the main Eve client itself? If it's the latter then it's super easy and no additional work is needed, otherwise it would either need to be moved to the client, or a small standalone patcher perhaps?

Coming back to the issue though - I would only really not like to see the loss of 'large' manual patchers for expansions. For everything / most pushed updates after this, I wouldn't care and will use the auto patcher anyway. Copying a few meg file on a pendrive / across the network is rather pointless as the auto patching process is quicker.

Chase