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Should CCP port to Open GL for Tablets and Linux?
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Shaine Masi
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#1 - 2013-06-11 11:45:57 UTC
If CCP ever consider porting Eve to the tablets, then moving to OpenGL would make sense, not just for Linux. Since the major tablets iPad and the Androids are open GL.

Eve would work well on a tablet, as it interface is pointy clicky in nature. CCP will have a whole new platform for eve, and in the process have an easier port to Linux.

So maybe petitioning for Tablets should be the course of action for getting Eve running natively on Linux. Android is basically Linux with the Android framework on top.
Nebu Retski
Lead Farmers
#2 - 2013-06-11 16:26:47 UTC
Dammit, 2 similar threads with slightly out of sync periods.
Knights Armament
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#3 - 2013-06-11 17:41:36 UTC
The mac client is opengl, I don't know if their is a mac emulator for linux/gnu but I wonder if they can make an OS X client, why can't they make one for openbsd, or linux?

I would wager a linux client would be more popular than the mac one regardless.

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Katrina Bekers
A Blessed Bean
Pandemic Horde
#4 - 2013-06-11 18:10:34 UTC
No, the Mac client is a DirectX client wrapped up with a similar technology as we linux users leverage with WINE.

<< THE RABBLE BRIGADE >>
Marsan
#5 - 2013-06-11 20:05:24 UTC  |  Edited by: Marsan
Last I checked they were using a commercial fork of wine to do the Mac port. Which sucks for the Mac users, but helps us as it's most likely why wine works as well as it does with Eve.

Former forum cheerleader CCP, now just a grumpy small portion of the community.
Neuntausend
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#6 - 2013-06-12 18:33:43 UTC  |  Edited by: Neuntausend
Emulate a Mac on a Linux-Tablet, so you can run Eve on a Mac-port of a Windows-wrapper for Linux. Genius!

Marsan wrote:
Last I checked they were using a commercial fork of wine to do the Mac port. Which sucks for the Mac users, but helps us as it's most likely why wine works as well as it does with Eve.


I doubt that this is the case. Many other games without an "official" wrapper version for Mac or Linux work well with wine. That's mostly thanks to the good work on the Wine side and not much else.
Karak Terrel
Foundation for CODE and THE NEW ORDER
#7 - 2013-06-13 16:13:46 UTC
why would you turn a PC game into a ****** tablet game?
Shaine Masi
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#8 - 2013-06-16 21:00:54 UTC
Karak Terrel wrote:
why would you turn a PC game into a ****** tablet game?


Because tablet sales are on the rise, while PC sales are on the decline, high end tablet are becoming more powerful, quad-core, and it's a market that makes more commercial sense for CCP than a straight Linux port.

The main point of my post is that a tablet port would require a conversion to open GL, something that CCP would be less likely to invest solely for Linux. Hence, a tablet port means that majority of the work is already done (i.e. moving from direct x to open gl), which means a subsequent native Linux client would require less effort for CCP.
COMM4NDER
Legendary Umbrellas
#9 - 2013-06-17 22:45:32 UTC
Shaine Masi wrote:
Karak Terrel wrote:
why would you turn a PC game into a ****** tablet game?


Because tablet sales are on the rise, while PC sales are on the decline, high end tablet are becoming more powerful, quad-core, and it's a market that makes more commercial sense for CCP than a straight Linux port.

The main point of my post is that a tablet port would require a conversion to open GL, something that CCP would be less likely to invest solely for Linux. Hence, a tablet port means that majority of the work is already done (i.e. moving from direct x to open gl), which means a subsequent native Linux client would require less effort for CCP.


Thing is its not only the DirectX libraries that are used that are Microsoft specific.

CCP uses heavily both Microsoft C++ libraries and also corner cases for python. Its not just a straight to just port the graphics engine but allot more.

They are also using probably hard coded paths for all this in Windows and same goes for the launcher (that's why the developers are so against a Linux launcher at this time).

If this should be successful CCP needs to start dedicating time to start working on a team that would make the code OS transparent not only in the graphics engine but the rest of the client and launcher.

This takes time and dedication. Its not something that cannot be done, look at Valve for example. They ported Source in about 6 months and learned allot in that process but I think that also the groundwork and how Valve really works on projects help that process as well. (Their move to github is really something i looked forward to).

[url=https://github.com/CommanderAlchemy/.bin/blob/master/eve] EVE - Online Launcher [Linux] [/url] Installs, launches character prefixes (both SISI & Tranquility). Simplescreenrecorder shm inject
Erin Myles
Myles Sisters Holding
#10 - 2013-06-18 11:22:04 UTC  |  Edited by: Erin Myles
Knights Armament wrote:
The mac client is opengl, I don't know if their is a mac emulator for linux/gnu but I wonder if they can make an OS X client, why can't they make one for openbsd, or linux?

I would wager a linux client would be more popular than the mac one regardless.


The best way to think of the Mac client is just the Windows client bundled with WINE (Cider). That is why it can be very slow and unresponsive (amongst other issues) when compared to its WIndows counterpart on identical hardware.

That said making the move over to more "open" technologies would be a great move for CCP imho. There's a considerable amount of Mac players and an increasing number of us playing on Linux. With the number of Linux gamers in total on the rise (in part thanks to Valve and the Humble Bundle pushing out Linux-native executables) CCP would do well to jump on that bandwagon early and reap the rewards later, unlike EA, Activision and the like who still haven't quite keyed that Linux exists yet. It's a fairly similar principle to the next-gen consoles (Xbone, PS4) moving to x64/x86 architecture instead of sticking with PowerPC (Xbox 360/PS3). This has triggered a lot of talk from developers about porting games over to the PC platform, because at the end of the day porting from an x64/x86 project can be much easier than porting across from a PowerPC project (at least I think that's how it all works - I'm not a developer nor a programmer, so I'm not 100% qualified to comment but that is how I understand it..)

What CCP could do now is change over to those growing technologies now (like OpenGL) and ditch the Microsoft dependencies and in the next few years, when Linux gaming has really taken off due to Valve pushing out the Steam Box and pumping out more titles that run natively on it, they will be properly prepared and able to take advantage of the shift in dynamics of desktop gaming.
xvart
ARK-CORP
#11 - 2013-06-30 03:47:44 UTC
The port issue CCP dealt with when they dropped support for Linux, stating the statistics for uptake were low for Linux yet showed growth for MAC.

The usual caveat of bad research should have raised it's head here though as unlike MAC users Linux users can and do dual boot so that M$ machine is really a Linux workstation with Winshit for games. As a result Linux support would have always been seen as lower, not for the stated reasons of low uptake but for the reason that we dual boot .

I have 3 accounts and dual boot for games only, my FPGA and PCB design tools run in VM's on Linux, EVE is not free for me as I have to maintain a winshit partition with the associated OS cost and maintenance.

Should CCP move to OpenGL, that's not a question that any forward looking product manager would need to ask. The tablet arena is OpenGL and growing and with Steam demonstrating that with OpenGL you can achieve the same or better frame rate from OpenGL than the usual the question should not be why, but when.

Carmack (yes that Carmack), supported OpenGL and clearly stated it was as good as anything (read DirectX) on the market.

An oldie but a goodie on the whole issue "http://rmitz.org/carmack.on.opengl.html"
Greg Arosa
Sebiestor Tribe
#12 - 2013-06-30 20:35:42 UTC
Please no. It's often easier to run a windows game with wine, than it's linux port. I don't want to spend evenings trying to figure out what went wrong again and why I can't run eve anymore, as it happens with other softwares when some internal linux library apis change. Screw that.
Phext
SIGBUS
#13 - 2013-07-05 17:12:49 UTC
xvart wrote:

unlike MAC users Linux users can and do dual boot so that M$ machine is really a Linux workstation with Winshit for games. As a result Linux support would have always been seen as lower, not for the stated reasons of low uptake but for the reason that we dual boot .


Which is true for Mac / OSX also. We can and are also doomed to dualboot into a Windows partition just for the sake of playing this (and other) games with reasonable performance and stability. We would appreciate a native OSX version just as much as you like to have a native version for your chosen OS (be it linux, *bsd or whatever).

Would be interesting to see numbers of how many Mac Eve users are running bootcamped Windows Macs instead of the Cidered Mac Client. CCP has the metrics but they didn't generate a graph for us yet.

:wq!
tasman devil
Puritans
#14 - 2013-07-06 14:38:15 UTC
+1 for this thread!

I don't belive in reincarnation I've never believed in it in my previous lives either...
Strings Askiras
Stdio Corporation
#15 - 2013-07-14 01:07:26 UTC
easier way to do this is to abstract directX and OpenGL. by this I mean eve would have its own API, that is either backed by directX or OpenGL where needed. there is duplication of code but would make things more portable. IMO though just use OpenGL and have done with it.