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Dev blog: Download on Demand client for EVE Online

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Ishtarael La'Horae
Star Eagle Industrial Services
#181 - 2014-12-17 20:47:49 UTC
This is nice, but what I would like to see is a background downloader for patched content similar to what Blizzard does in their battle.net games. This way, we can download the next patch in the background while online in the game so when patch day comes, it won't be such a long wait for the patch to be installed for those 1.5GB content updates.
KIller Wabbit
MEME Thoughts
#182 - 2014-12-17 21:04:02 UTC
Ishtarael La'Horae wrote:
This is nice, but what I would like to see is a background downloader for patched content similar to what Blizzard does in their battle.net games. This way, we can download the next patch in the background while online in the game so when patch day comes, it won't be such a long wait for the patch to be installed for those 1.5GB content updates.



That doesn't solve the real motivation behind this - getting brand, spanking new customers into EVE as quickly as possible.

Mixed feelings about a delaying the release and having a background loader - it basically requires dedicating 8GB+ more disk space for the patch to preload. That makes EVE a 20GB game?
Manssell
OmiHyperMultiNationalDrunksConglomerate
#183 - 2014-12-17 21:05:52 UTC
CCP Snorlax wrote:
Manssell wrote:
So how is this going to work in conjunction with the ever present bug on Macs that causes the client to freeze up if things are downloading while in in game?

Well, the good news is that we finally have a reproducible bug that we are investigating.



Wow, that's actually really good news in itself. I get that this implies a whole mess of "bad news", but for as long as you've been trying to get a reproducible bug in house I'll take it!
Masao Kurata
Perkone
Caldari State
#184 - 2014-12-17 21:41:53 UTC
CCP Snorlax wrote:
The cache is shared between the different versions of the EVE client (or EVE Probe), so identical resources between the versions are not duplicated. If any given resource is not the same between versions there will be two different versions in the cache - the files will have different names. The name of any given file is simply a hash of the original filename, combined with a checksum of the contents of the file. This ensures no duplication of identical files, reducing downloads (and disk space) when jumping onto a test server while still accounting for different versions of content between the different servers.

We will provide a cleanup process to trim the cache to the current client version (possibly taking test servers into account).


That sounds fantastic if it works, but I hope that you can do better than "possibly" taking test servers into account or people who log into sisi often will hate this system.
Masao Kurata
Perkone
Caldari State
#185 - 2014-12-17 21:49:58 UTC
The launcher's downloading and patching routines are the most inefficient of their kind I have ever seen, bringing computers to their knees. Is the background downloading better coded than that?
KIller Wabbit
MEME Thoughts
#186 - 2014-12-17 22:29:42 UTC  |  Edited by: KIller Wabbit
Part 3.

13) Made it to Jita. SC is now 1.72GB. Open Market browser - icons for in browser view for sections ripple in quickly. Look at buying a couple of different ships. Text info on each is immediately available. Hull icon graphic pops in after 3 to 5 seconds for each. Hull looks low res. Preview takes 15 seconds to load. Initial is medium res. Another few seconds popped to hi res, stretching open and zooming in the view confirms at hi res. Abaddon is smexy! :) Repeating the entire process for a Rhea - everything is much faster! hmmm.. I guess shared elements might have helped there.

14) Quit out of client. Launch another client session from launcher that I still had up - launcher locks up!!! This is the second time it has happened, first time I thought I had done something wrong on my end. BUG CCP. Quit out of launcher and restart again. Launch client, quick look at mail, market browse for Tornado, info check Tornado, preview ship (same loading delays as second trial of looking at a hull) . ESC, Quit Game. Use Launcher to start a client again - no problem, although as last time "logging in" screen is up much longer than typical for TQ.
So, whatever is bugging out the launcher I would say it is something that takes time to show up.

15) Pop on a different toon. Check PI - open neocom ui for planet selection, double click first planet in list to invoke planet view. Takes 50 seconds for planet view to load. Double click an extractor to program a cycle - everything comes up immediately. Extractor head movement works just fine. Double click select a different planet to view (first was a Barren) and encounter 15 second delay with black screen. Try a Lava - black screen for 25 seconds. The little unit 3-D hovering icons (extractor, factory, advanced factory, command center, etc) all are there immediately.

16) Inventory - Randomly checking through a large inventory through Personal Assets, found a bunch of Decryptors with "no messageID: 296725" tags on them for item name and similar 296724 for group name. As I scroll through the asset list for this one hanger it takes 10 to 15 secs to load icons for each page. Some come singly, others in batch. There were 156 item stacks that I scrolled through. Opened an "Inventory" UI - it would take around 5 seconds for each container view to populate item icons. One container of 102 items took over 20 seconds to populate the T2 BPC icons. This is all for the graphics only. I could work with each icon immediately (info, open to Industry, etc) without issue.



SC size check: 1.72GB
Running out of things to try and been at it long enough for now. I'd say it is all working pretty darn well for this stage!!

Edit 1:
PS Shut down client, since it had been a while tried to kick off client from launcher again - which froze. So definitely a launcher up time related bug that is hard core.
Vincent Athena
Photosynth
#187 - 2014-12-17 22:51:25 UTC
CCP Snorlax wrote:
Manssell wrote:
So how is this going to work in conjunction with the ever present bug on Macs that causes the client to freeze up if things are downloading while in in game?

Well, the good news is that we finally have a reproducible bug that we are investigating.

Which version of the Mac freeze do you have a repro for? There is the full freeze, where the client stops, but the ship remains in space doing whatever it was last doing, until you force quit the client. There is the hard freeze where the entire computer locks up and stays that way until you do a hard reboot. And there is the micro-freeze where the entire computer locks up for just a few seconds. (The latter is the one I am currently plagued with, and became quite bad with the Rhea release.)

Know a Frozen fan? Check this out

Frozen fanfiction
Mara Kell
Herrscher der Zeit
Pandemic Horde
#188 - 2014-12-17 22:56:16 UTC
From the Blog:
Quote:

There are many implications to this change, but rest assured –that none of this will be deployed until we have full confidence in our new deployment method and are sure it will not disrupt your gameplay experience in EVE.


I actually like the idea of the lightweight launcher, but my gameplay experience is still disrupted from the UI patch. It would be great if you could delegate some Dev resources to that issue before creating new ones. ok? :)

What i really appreciate is the sharing of resources between client versions. I may actually try out the testserver then.
290xanaots
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#189 - 2014-12-17 22:59:22 UTC
Soooooo... we're headed *away* from the hi-res textures that we are/have been begging for forever. Sad

A download is a 1 time deal, and storage is laughably cheap these days. Hook it up with those sweet, sweet hires textures. I don't care if it's 200+GB. I didn't buy a multi-TB HDD to not use it.
Sgt Ocker
What Corp is it
#190 - 2014-12-17 23:01:50 UTC
Ok now i am confused.

I moved the cache (and changed path) to the same drive as the install and the same folder as the install.
Start launcher (no problem here)
Enter password, Login (no problem)

PLAY goes green very quickly. Hit play and it just hangs for several seconds on Launching then goes back to play, did this 3 times before game finally loaded (to character selection).
As it was loading I noticed my bandwidth monitor was going off the rails. So closed the game down to investigate.

What I found -
I now have 2 "SharedCache" folders, 1 on C:\ has 125MB the other on F:\ has 977MB
It seems there was a new CCP\EVE\SharedCache folder created on C:\ when I loaded the launcher (going by time stamps) and both of them updated. The original folder on F:\ was only 925MB

What I have
F:\Duality_DoD/SharedCache (created, 17/12/2014 9:46PM)
C:\ProgramData\CCP\EVE\SharedCache\ResFiles (created, 18/12/2014 08:23AM)
C:\ProgramData\CCP\EVE\SharedCache\res_temp (created, 18/12/2014 08:31AM)

My opinions are mine.

  If you don't like them or disagree with me that's OK.- - - - - - Just don't bother Hating - I don't care

It really is getting harder and harder to justify $23 a month for each sub.
Sgt Ocker
What Corp is it
#191 - 2014-12-17 23:08:23 UTC
290xanaots wrote:
Soooooo... we're headed *away* from the hi-res textures that we are/have been begging for forever. Sad

A download is a 1 time deal, and storage is laughably cheap these days. Hook it up with those sweet, sweet hires textures. I don't care if it's 200+GB. I didn't buy a multi-TB HDD to not use it.

I'm just a pleb but my understanding of this change, you will indeed be able to have high textures, if you have your game (graphics) setup for high textures. On the other hand if like many you have your graphics set for performance rather than pretty, you will only get the textures required for your current settings.
If I can ever afford a computer to run multiple clients on high texture settings the new client will download what is required, at the time they are required.

My opinions are mine.

  If you don't like them or disagree with me that's OK.- - - - - - Just don't bother Hating - I don't care

It really is getting harder and harder to justify $23 a month for each sub.
Mara Pahrdi
The Order of Anoyia
#192 - 2014-12-18 06:12:43 UTC
Should help, if the install breaks while you are limited to a moblie connection. So fine for me, as long as you don't mess up like you did with the second launcher release in summer / fall 2013.

Remove standings and insurance.
Sentient Blade
Crisis Atmosphere
Coalition of the Unfortunate
#193 - 2014-12-18 07:26:18 UTC
CCP Snorlax wrote:
The name of any given file is simply a hash of the original filename, combined with a checksum of the contents of the file.


Does this mean the client's resource storage will be moving more towards many smaller files vs the current setup of big .stuff archives?
Slavealt
Sheep Can Hear A Zipper From A Mile Away
#194 - 2014-12-18 08:00:03 UTC
CCP Darwin wrote:
Jennifer Spearshield wrote:
I also doubt that downloading 7GB worth of content ahead of actual game-time, which assures me 0 delay later on when loading assets or anything else in EVE's universe is really a big issue for most people these days.

Isn't that project kind of a waste of precious human resources?


A surprising number of potential new players sign up for a trial and start the download but don't complete it. This feature gives those people an opportunity to try the game more easily.

We throw around the term "New Player Experience" a lot around here, but this feature allows EVE to make a much better impression before people even get as far as making their first character.


Are you seriously wasting dev resources trying to attract the type of player that is too lazy/has too small of an attention span to even finish the download? People like that won't get anywhere in EVE, by its very nature, so why not spend the resources on something more useful?
Lucas Kell
Solitude Trading
S.N.O.T.
#195 - 2014-12-18 08:12:56 UTC
So when you're saying "the resources live in a shared location", by shared location I take it we mean "We're going to dump a load of stuff on your C Drive". Make sure the location of this cache is able to be set in the installer, and will not dump straight to the C Drive, since not all of us use that drive for storing bulk files.

The Indecisive Noob - EVE fan blog.

Wholesale Trading - The new bulk trading mailing list.
KIller Wabbit
MEME Thoughts
#196 - 2014-12-18 08:35:57 UTC
Lucas Kell wrote:
So when you're saying "the resources live in a shared location", by shared location I take it we mean "We're going to dump a load of stuff on your C Drive". Make sure the location of this cache is able to be set in the installer, and will not dump straight to the C Drive, since not all of us use that drive for storing bulk files.


A dialog box in the settings of the Launcher sets this path. See the "Resource Download" tab.
KIller Wabbit
MEME Thoughts
#197 - 2014-12-18 08:40:24 UTC
Sentient Blade wrote:
CCP Snorlax wrote:
The name of any given file is simply a hash of the original filename, combined with a checksum of the contents of the file.


Does this mean the client's resource storage will be moving more towards many smaller files vs the current setup of big .stuff archives?


Straight from the Dev Blog (3rd sentence in):
"We're moving away from having resources packed into the stuff files in the EVE installation folder, to downloading individual resources on demand. "
CCP Maxwell
C C P
C C P Alliance
#198 - 2014-12-18 10:59:47 UTC
Noriko Mai wrote:
KIller Wabbit wrote:
Now able to get on today - thanks for the account mirror (although why it came up with only showing "less than day" on the sub time is odd??) [..]

Do you encounter problems with you current TQ client after trying it? I had to redownload >7GB and all my settings are gone Cry I don't want to set up everything again CryCry Cant' play with default crap CryCry Want play CryCry I don't want to set up everything again CryCry ...



Most unfortunate. All of our installers make a shortcut named 'EVE', no matter if they point to TQ, SISI or other test-servers.

The easiest way to avoid this is to, prior to running the Download-on-Demand installer, rename your EVE short-cut. The DoD installer will then make a new 'EVE' shortcut (might be a good idea to rename that one too).

Now, I realize these instructions are 'after-the-fact' for you, and my apologies for that. But you can take your current shortcut, and by changing the 'Target' and 'Start in' fields you will go back to your TQ setup.

(If you have used the default installation settings, the 'Target' field should have 'C:\Program Files (x86)\CCP\EVE\eve.exe' and the 'Start in' field 'C:\Program Files (x86)\CCP\EVE\')

CCP Maxwell - QA Engineer - Team RnB
CCP Maxwell
C C P
C C P Alliance
#199 - 2014-12-18 11:01:13 UTC
KIller Wabbit wrote:
Part 3.

13) Made it to Jita. SC is now 1.72GB. Open Market browser - icons for in browser view for sections ripple in quickly. Look at buying a couple of different ships. Text info on each is immediately available. Hull icon graphic pops in after 3 to 5 seconds for each. Hull looks low res. Preview takes 15 seconds to load. Initial is medium res. Another few seconds popped to hi res, stretching open and zooming in the view confirms at hi res. Abaddon is smexy! :) Repeating the entire process for a Rhea - everything is much faster! hmmm.. I guess shared elements might have helped there.

14) Quit out of client. Launch another client session from launcher that I still had up - launcher locks up!!! This is the second time it has happened, first time I thought I had done something wrong on my end. BUG CCP. Quit out of launcher and restart again. Launch client, quick look at mail, market browse for Tornado, info check Tornado, preview ship (same loading delays as second trial of looking at a hull) . ESC, Quit Game. Use Launcher to start a client again - no problem, although as last time "logging in" screen is up much longer than typical for TQ.
So, whatever is bugging out the launcher I would say it is something that takes time to show up.

15) Pop on a different toon. Check PI - open neocom ui for planet selection, double click first planet in list to invoke planet view. Takes 50 seconds for planet view to load. Double click an extractor to program a cycle - everything comes up immediately. Extractor head movement works just fine. Double click select a different planet to view (first was a Barren) and encounter 15 second delay with black screen. Try a Lava - black screen for 25 seconds. The little unit 3-D hovering icons (extractor, factory, advanced factory, command center, etc) all are there immediately.

16) Inventory - Randomly checking through a large inventory through Personal Assets, found a bunch of Decryptors with "no messageID: 296725" tags on them for item name and similar 296724 for group name. As I scroll through the asset list for this one hanger it takes 10 to 15 secs to load icons for each page. Some come singly, others in batch. There were 156 item stacks that I scrolled through. Opened an "Inventory" UI - it would take around 5 seconds for each container view to populate item icons. One container of 102 items took over 20 seconds to populate the T2 BPC icons. This is all for the graphics only. I could work with each icon immediately (info, open to Industry, etc) without issue.



SC size check: 1.72GB
Running out of things to try and been at it long enough for now. I'd say it is all working pretty darn well for this stage!!

Edit 1:
PS Shut down client, since it had been a while tried to kick off client from launcher again - which froze. So definitely a launcher up time related bug that is hard core.



Thanks for the excellent feedback! There are definitely a few things here we will be taking a closer look at.

CCP Maxwell - QA Engineer - Team RnB
Sgt Ocker
What Corp is it
#200 - 2014-12-18 11:03:55 UTC
KIller Wabbit wrote:
Lucas Kell wrote:
So when you're saying "the resources live in a shared location", by shared location I take it we mean "We're going to dump a load of stuff on your C Drive". Make sure the location of this cache is able to be set in the installer, and will not dump straight to the C Drive, since not all of us use that drive for storing bulk files.


A dialog box in the settings of the Launcher sets this path. See the "Resource Download" tab.

Do check it though..
I changed the default to my preferred location and on the next launcher start it had reverted back to C:\XXX
Ended up with 2 res folders both of which were downloading the same content.

X; After changing it a 2nd time to my preferred location it seems to be ok.

My opinions are mine.

  If you don't like them or disagree with me that's OK.- - - - - - Just don't bother Hating - I don't care

It really is getting harder and harder to justify $23 a month for each sub.