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New blog: All quiet on the EVE Launcher front?

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CCP Atropos
C C P
C C P Alliance
#101 - 2013-03-12 10:17:31 UTC
Schmata Bastanold wrote:
But obviously metrics show something disturbing enough to be worth fixing because metrics are never wrong. Funny they don't show how much of needless hassle is switching between toons on same account, maybe then launcher would gain magic powers to handle that too.

I understand your point, but making changes of that magnitude to the EVE client isn't in the purview of my team Smile
CCP Atropos
C C P
C C P Alliance
#102 - 2013-03-12 10:22:11 UTC
The Groundskeeper wrote:
Verite Rendition wrote:
I apologize if this has already been posted, but I had a thought.

CCP will be in control of everything, including the tracker, right? So why don't you modify your tracker to scrub all the clients from the peer list, leaving only the CCP CDNs?

This means no two clients would be able to connect to each other, and consequently clients could only connect to the CCP BitTorrent seeds and the web seeds.


They want to use your bandwidth, saving them money, obviously.

The goal of going with BitTorrent is two fold: firstly to use a reliable and proven network transfer protocol that has more than one method for downloading data, rather than our own, custom implementation with a single point of failure, and secondly to improve the overall patching experience; the torrents being used will be backed by our CDN (as is already the case) to ensure a given quality of service, and the BitTorrent swarm is then used as an additional method for downloading.
Magic Crisp
Amarrian Micro Devices
#103 - 2013-03-12 10:33:05 UTC  |  Edited by: Magic Crisp
- deleted, doublepost due to laggy net
CCP Atropos
C C P
C C P Alliance
#104 - 2013-03-12 10:34:26 UTC
Vaerah Vahrokha wrote:
2) I have my default browser set to Firefox. I also have Chrome.

Guess what happens every time I press a link on the launcher?

A damn Internet Explorer is started.

Please either implement:

- a right click menu where I can choose which browser to use to look at the links

- a right click menu where I can at least copy the URL on the clipboard so I can start the browser myself.

- a mouseover event that shows the pointed to URL on some status bar or a tooltip.

- or maybe, just do it right and make so that the launcher uses the brower I have actually chosen as system default. Blink

The EVE Launcher uses a module in the Python standard library called webbrowser, to find and open the relevant browser. It does this by examining your computers system path for known browsers, and failing that simply uses IE. I would imagine that it's unable to find your chosen browser.

The irony is that we used to simply delegate the call to the operating system, by using the OS to open the associated application for the URL (ie: equivalent to going Windows -> Run -> http://eveonline.com) but we removed it in favour of the webbrowser module, for precisely the reason you list; in some cases we were incorrectly loading using IE rather than the users installed (and preferred) browser.
Magic Crisp
Amarrian Micro Devices
#105 - 2013-03-12 10:37:07 UTC
Regarding the multiboxing stuff, what are those changes?

If you haven't thought of it already, please (under windows) open screen/display properties, and there notice the diagram which displays how your screens are arranged. Now, put multiple launch buttons on the launcher, corresponding to the above mentioned diagram, each launch button corresponds to a screen - when you press it that client will start on the selected screen. Currently it's not so comfortable when clients starts popping up on random screens every time, and the first thing we have to do is go to the settings and move them to the desired screen. thanks.
CCP Aporia
C C P
C C P Alliance
#106 - 2013-03-12 10:39:03 UTC
Vera Algaert wrote:
my router crashes if I have more than 10-12 active connections, so I hope we will be able to limit the connection count or force HTTP (as other games allow the user to do).


There will be an option to limit the amount of total connections, as well as the number of upload slots you want to provide.

Cpt Underpants wrote:
Remiel Pollard wrote:
I can see problems with using BitTorrent straight away, particularly for those of us in Australia on Telstra. If the traffic is encrypted, though, it's easy to bypass.

Phext wrote:
Remiel Pollard wrote:
As far as I'm aware, if P2P traffic is encrypted, ISP's can't read it as P2P traffic and cannot throttle it. If you use data encryption, it should work fine.


ISPs may throttle well known BT port ranges (TCP 6881-6889 is used for transport). They don't necessarily need to look into the traffic. One may bypass this throttling by using different port ranges.

Not easy to bypass, the way a lot of the filtering boxes work is they look at the SSL certificate used to encrypt the data. Certain data patterns are flagged as potentially P2P, it is analysed centrally and if found to be P2P the certificate itself is then used to confirm P2P and implement throttling. Next comes the issue of carrier-grade NAT which can further limit the ability to use P2P.

Also in Australia most ISPs count both uploads and downloads against our data caps. We pay for Eve Online, why should we pay more by potentially doubling the amount of data used for each update? A lot of countries have data caps, a lot of internet providers have detection for P2P to throttle or block.

Next we have the potential issues with the new USA "six-strikes" P2P policies and the equivilents in other countries. There is talk it detects all P2P traffic, not just illicit ones. Even with white-listing certain things, many people may receive warnings before the Eve launcher is exempted.

Will P2P cost CCP less than a network of content nodes? I think it will. As long as the number of CDNs is adequate and I can turn off torrenting before anything starts, I'll be happy.


Again, to get experience with ISP throttling or even blocking then that is why we would like to see this out in the wild for testing. So we are not going to role this out for TQ without getting some experience and a chance to improve parts of it first. And also, again, HTTP is still being utilized, so in worst case you will still have that. Also, the port range to use can be changed in the options.

Another point worth mentioning probably is that here in Iceland people usually have data caps as well, however, they only count for oversea traffic: Everything that is hosted within Iceland has unlimited bandwidth, but everyone you download from abroad eats up your monthly allowance. The usage of bittorrent is supposed to help with this eventually, because you can setup your regional network that would avoid overseas traffic. That being said, we have no knowledge on how every single ISP around the world is going to handle it so any information is welcome.

With regards to six-strikes: We'll look into this and see if there is anything more we can do about it except for disabling non-HTTP transfers.

Friend of walking avatars, currently hibernating until he gets to open that door.
CCP Atropos
C C P
C C P Alliance
#107 - 2013-03-12 10:39:05 UTC
Mashie Saldana wrote:
Whatever happened with the idea of having a tabbed client for multi client users?

No idea. It wouldn't be something my team would be looking at, since we're focused on the EVE Launcher and associated tech.
CCP Aporia
C C P
C C P Alliance
#108 - 2013-03-12 10:56:01 UTC
Kiran wrote:
Not had a lot to do with Bit Torrents, but if we are sharing information with other Eve users wont this open our PC's up to viruses that can be installed within the Eve file system ?

So you therefore share a virus over the net to all other Eve users through the patching ?


No, it won't. The EVE launcher retrieves the torrent meta information via secure mechanism, and the torrent protocol makes sure that all the data it receives has the expected checksums from said meta information.
As long as you use the launcher and not any external torrent client to download the EVE client you should be all good.

Friend of walking avatars, currently hibernating until he gets to open that door.
Verite Rendition
F.R.E.E. Explorer
#109 - 2013-03-12 12:23:09 UTC
CCP Aporia wrote:
With regards to six-strikes: We'll look into this and see if there is anything more we can do about it except for disabling non-HTTP transfers.
Six strikes won't impact EVE players unless CCP starts filing copyright infringement notices with ISPs. It's a self-reporting system: the rights holder (or their approved agent) has to complain to the ISPs, which for obvious reasons wouldn't be happening here.
Chrono Guardia
MuffinMen
#110 - 2013-03-12 13:29:19 UTC
I think the new download method sounds interesting, but I have a slightly off topic thought.
I would like to suggest that you also might add a menu into the launcher that allows for the user to change the graphics options out of game, specifically whether or not the game runs in full screen, fixed window, or windowed mode. This would have helped me a lot in the past when the switchable graphics on my laptop caused eve to crash my computer every time I tried to start eve, because I could of just changed the graphics options instead of temporarily disabling one of my graphics cards.

Chrono
Scaugh
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#111 - 2013-03-12 13:47:15 UTC  |  Edited by: Scaugh
CCP Aporia wrote:
Vera Algaert wrote:
OTHER stuff.


Another point worth mentioning probably is that here in Iceland people usually have data caps as well, however, they only count for oversea traffic: Everything that is hosted within Iceland has unlimited bandwidth, but everyone you download from abroad eats up your monthly allowance. The usage of bittorrent is supposed to help with this eventually, because you can setup your regional network that would avoid overseas traffic. That being said, we have no knowledge on how every single ISP around the world is going to handle it so any information is welcome.

With regards to six-strikes: We'll look into this and see if there is anything more we can do about it except for disabling non-HTTP transfers.[/quote]


is there any information on what additional/extra bandwith useage we should be expecting with these changes. I'm on a fairly limited data package as it is, with large charges for execeeding it.

I know any answer would probably be dependant on hours played but surely with a change like this you have some sort of calcuations done (even if its on your ownserver side).
Tom Bodett
Corwan Academy
Kanen Federation
#112 - 2013-03-12 13:49:10 UTC
Thank you for this change!
Bittorrent is by far the best distribution method available.
CCP Aporia
C C P
C C P Alliance
#113 - 2013-03-12 14:01:32 UTC
Scaugh wrote:
is there any information on what additional/extra bandwith useage we should be expecting with these changes. I'm on a fairly limited data package as it is, with large charges for execeeding it.

I know any answer would probably be dependant on hours played but surely with a change like this you have some sort of calcuations done (even if its on your ownserver side).


So, because of the way we are changing things the amount of data downloaded for a fresh client install is round about 11 GB. This is roughly double the amount of the current installer, but this should only be happening if you have absolutely no files installed, or everything in your installation is corrupted our outdated. Since you already have an installation then this case should be of no immediate concern to you.

From measuring the differences of 13 EVE client updates we ended up with the smallest patch size being about 9 MB and the largest 2.4 GB. The extra bandwidth on your end that might be opposed by seeding files depends upon the speed at which you seed. A simple calculation: If you upload at 1/10th of the speed you are downloading, and the client update is 2 GB, then the extra bandwidth is pretty much 200 MB.

Hope this helps. :-)

Friend of walking avatars, currently hibernating until he gets to open that door.
CCP Aporia
C C P
C C P Alliance
#114 - 2013-03-12 14:02:06 UTC
Chrono Guardia wrote:
I think the new download method sounds interesting, but I have a slightly off topic thought.
I would like to suggest that you also might add a menu into the launcher that allows for the user to change the graphics options out of game, specifically whether or not the game runs in full screen, fixed window, or windowed mode. This would have helped me a lot in the past when the switchable graphics on my laptop caused eve to crash my computer every time I tried to start eve, because I could of just changed the graphics options instead of temporarily disabling one of my graphics cards.

Chrono


We are looking into this but there are some things to be considered to get this working properly on the Mac.

Friend of walking avatars, currently hibernating until he gets to open that door.
Salpad
Carebears with Attitude
#115 - 2013-03-12 14:05:24 UTC
Sentient Blade wrote:
Another thing which would help for updating would be pre-release updates.

By that I mean if you're going to go sending out hundreds of MB to a hundred thousand people in the next days patch, then publish it a day or two before, let us be downloading it to a staging directory, and then apply it as necessary (plus any other changes) come patch day.

It would also give the torrent network time to spread itself out.


This is a good idea!
Salpad
Carebears with Attitude
#116 - 2013-03-12 14:06:54 UTC
Sedilis wrote:
With the support for the Test server I hope this includes a button people click to build a test server install. Would be great if you could get it to launch and start the log server as well if connected to sisi.

I'm sure giving that some love would help with numbers for your mass tests as well as helping us guys out who have to try and talk members though setting up a Sisi client for our own testing.


Indeed! I've never messed about with the test server, because it's my impression that it's fairly complex to set things up to be able to access it. If it could be done easily via a more powerful Launcher software, just 3-5 LMB clicks and a download into a separate hard drive folder, I'm sure lots of players would try out the test server; not just me.
Salpad
Carebears with Attitude
#117 - 2013-03-12 14:16:58 UTC
Proddy Scun wrote:
Also bittorrent is not particularly good at the initial mass release of large files. Until a critical mass of complete files are online as seeders -- bittorent tends to stall for lots of people as the network gets obsessed with giving everyone the first MOST available part of the file. Until a fair fraction of people have the parts you are missing you can end up just sitting in a bittorrent traffic jam. Your idea of having people with complete downloads signed off of bittorrent will make this much much worse.
If mapping to nearest-least busy regional server cache of client, bittorrent may or not have good available.


That was certainly my experience, back when I was a World of Warcraft subscriber. Blizzard uses (or used) some kind of p2p system, and every patch day, it took many hours to download a few hundred MB of stuff, almost certainly for the reason that Proddy talks about.

I guess that's also one reason why I intuitively suggested that I should have an option to continue seeding/sharing files for a period of time after my Launcher has completed downloading, e.g. a window of 90 minutes. That's sharing some of my bandwidth for the benefit of other players, but not the ultra-altruism of seeding forever.
Brad Zappigan
State War Academy
Caldari State
#118 - 2013-03-12 14:25:57 UTC
Game-launch-related question: The relog-function is very complicated atm. - you have to completely log off, the game restarts and then you can login again and select a different char. Would it be possible just to return to the char selection and select an other char without closing the client completely?
Different approach: Maybe even choose the char to login with in the launcher and login to the server already in the launcher-window?
Dersen Lowery
The Scope
#119 - 2013-03-12 15:06:46 UTC
Proddy Scun wrote:
Default to bittorrent. But maybe include alternates like HTTP 1.1 as fall back solutions. Even let user select which one to use. Maybe even have bittorrent status checks on seeder/leecher ratios and availability before selecting bittorrent as default.


The devs have clarified multiple times that HTTP 1.1 will be used as a fallback.

Your post piqued my interest, though. I've never really taken a close look at BitTorrent, but it sounds like an interesting protocol.

Proud founder and member of the Belligerent Desirables.

I voted in CSM X!
Luna Moonraker
LUNA-CORP
#120 - 2013-03-12 16:13:28 UTC  |  Edited by: Luna Moonraker
SamuraiJack wrote:
Quote:
However, there are ways to limit this, and by default the new EVE Launcher will only make you share the data required for installing the client while you are downloading; once your download is complete you will not be distributing it to others, unless you explicitly enable this in the options – after all it might be useful for sharing the installation across your local network. We are also, by default, limiting the upload rate so that it should not affect your normal internet usage.


That alone makes CCP's implementation of this much better than most Torrent installers. Flooding out your upstream just throttles your connection as you cannot send commands due to data floods. Shame Blizzard never took that onboard.

In WoW certainly there was always an option to disable the P2P and download directly from the HTTP source which negated any issue of upload saturation effecting download speed. This feature is included in both PC and Mac versions of the Blizzard downloader as you can see here.

In fact the proposal in this blog looks very similar to the WoW implementation, used for some years now. It uses the Bitorrent protocol built into the client so you do not have to use a separate P2P client such as BitTorrent (or any of the various alternatives).

It allows disabling of the P2P/ Bittorrent download and to download via HTTP 1.1 as it does now for those who have limited upload capacity/ behind firewalls or where ISPs' traffic shape or throttle P2P traffic.

They avoid the clusterfrake otherwise known as Pando Media Booster which by default continues to share your bandwidth even after competition and is surreptitious in the way it operates. This is especially so with the Mac version which relies on Java 6 which is not even part of the default OS X now for a number of years and with constant Java exploits and Apple even disabling it.

The ability to serve their client/ patch data via a multithreaded source which double checks the data as well is a good thing because, as they state, HTTP is not a reliable form of sharing the increasingly large file sizes that games now use. And a reliable method of resumable download which is useful for those with the average (at least in Europe) bandwidth around 2MB which means long download times and flexibility in computer use during that time.

There is some concern with the Mac EVE Online client which does seem to have an issue running with torrents running in the background and if this same traffic causes similar hanging issues then it means that specific issue needs addressing with even more urgency. I guess we will see from Sisi testing.

And any potential issues arising from the permissions/ user rights for additional file/ folder data checking that will be required. Not all users will have Admin privileges.

Overall though it looks like they have thought out the proposed changes and hopefully any issue are picked up and addressed during testing.

The other aspect of this change is CCP retaining competitiveness with it's competitors, nearly all of whom use some form of P2P in order to reduce bandwidth costs. It is not mentioned as a reason for change but costs for providing the very large bandwidth required to serve both new client downloads and ongoing expansions/ updates are not insubstantial for any company and as long as the client experience is not degraded to any great extent (in fact possibly enhanced for the reasons above) then it allows for cost savings which can be redirected to development etc.