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Dev blog: Download on Demand client for EVE Online

First post First post
Author
KIller Wabbit
MEME Thoughts
#221 - 2014-12-19 14:27:32 UTC
Noriko Mai wrote:
DoToo Foo wrote:
[..]
General comments; each of the freeezes I am experiencing feel like the client has crashed. One stated purpose is to get newbies in the game faster. so leaving me thinking that I have crashed is not going to inspire confidence in a newbie.
[..]

That's why I suggested a loading wheel. So you actually know the client is working on something and not dead.


This is a good suggestion. The only reason I knew I was getting data during my testing was to keep checking the properties of the SC folder.

Should it be on the launcher, the client, or both?
Jesse Kimina
Perkone
Caldari State
#222 - 2014-12-19 16:25:34 UTC
How's this going to work in respects of bandwidth usage and latency, especially when others are connected to the same network and possibly gaming too?

I can't test it on Duality atm so any feedback on this would be appreciated Roll
Mharius Skjem
Guardians of the Underworld
#223 - 2014-12-19 18:13:53 UTC
Quick question, when DOD is deployed will we have the option to download some nice new high definition nebulae as an upgrade to the we ones we have now.

I love the look and feel of eve particularly by region, but higher definition is a must for these backdrops.

Also it also paves the way to have nebula tailored to each particular star system instead of per region.

I'll happily pay extra to fund this type of artwork as an enhanced monthly subscription.

I'm aware that despite inflation and the recession my monthly sub hasn't gone up since I started around 2007-2008 perhaps it's time it saw a raise.

A recovering btter vet,  with a fresh toon and a determination to like everything that CCP does to Eve...

Don't take me too seriously though, I like to tease a bit on the forums, but that's only because I love you...

Salpun
Global Telstar Federation Offices
Masters of Flying Objects
#224 - 2014-12-20 00:40:17 UTC
A way to tell what a full client size is at the install menu would be good.
How does the DoD functionality work with less space then a full client would require and if there is no more space to down load stuff what is the smallest client size with full functionality.

If i dont know something about EVE. I check https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/ISK_The_Guide

See you around the universe.

DoToo Foo
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#225 - 2014-12-20 03:02:30 UTC
Ok. A complete reinstall of the duality.
Remove d:\...\EveDuality, remove d:\ProgramData\Eve*, also remove %appData%\ccp\eve\*duality*

Even after shutting down all eve sessions and launchers and attempting to re-install from EVE_Online_Installer_852537.exe, I get freezes during the initial installer process (Hitting next? after accepting licence agreement). Rebooting PC seems to solve this.

After installing, set /server on a new shortcut.
create another copy of duality's folder so I now have duality and duality2

Fire off duality1. Immediately turn crash it because I forgot log server
Start logserver from primary Duality install

Fire of duality 1 again

Read https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Log_Server, and from log server start file -> new workspace
(nothing appearing, am I doing it right?)

Duality loads 323.41 MB of data and sits at 100% for a minute or 2?

I check the resource download setting, noting it has remembered my previous session preference (so obviously not a 100% clean install, but I am ok with that)

Fire off duality #2 session. It doesnt seem to need to redownload stuff (nice)

log into both duality #1 and duality #2 Log server starts going nuts (good)

both launchers swap between launching and back to play (local time 12:58)

2 eve windows start but are 'not responding'

Log server shows 2 crash dumps uploaded
Log server shows a whole lot of resources being downloaded

after a couple of minutes I click again on one of the eve windows and I get a black fullscreen window. Alt tab a couple of times (mostly to update these notes - and I am a little impatient) and tab back and get a character selection window (no portraits - but thats ok at this point)

Resize window to a couple of configurations ; everything Ok

Click on second eve session and get a black screen but this time much shorter.

1:04 click on 1 pilot from each session and get black windows for about 30 seconds; and windows nag about allowing network traffic.
1:06 : 'smoke effects' showing on eve session 2. presented with 2 docked windows and everything black
1:08 : eve session 2 starts having a flashing set of lights . Eventually both windows show up

(so maybe 3.5 minutes of an unusable black screen when I first start? Would be a good time to show a movie or tutorial, or something to inform/distract user while resources are loading)

Open up market and get 'no messageId for a couple of marget groups (plex; Moongoo??) screenshot

undock at the same time (still at default resolution, I will dial this down later)

Autopilot search for a system fails
setting Autopilot from personal assets works
While stuffing around with autopilot settings something flashed up on session 2. The background nebula in Bei loaded?

maximise window 2 : freeze starts 1:17 local
unfreezes 1:18 but ... probalby was 10 seconds?
Get stopwatch app on phone. Restore window. this time was freeze for 2 seconds
reszize window width : no problems
Resize window height : freezes for 11 seconds (from stopwatch)
Can now resize window 2 without any freezes
can also resize window 1 without any freezes

set auto pilot to dock. Dockup.
Session 1 docks first (bei Vi moon 8?): again getting grey smoke for a while (subjective 30? seconds) before station background shows up
session 2 docks up : also gets grey smoke, this time roughly stop watch time of 30 seconds before station background shows up.
(all stations are new to client)
Undock client 1; dock client 1. Station background loads immediately

undock client 1, dock at different station (Bei planet 7 moon 8). Still have a brief 'grey smoke on back blackground) but 2? seconds (longer than at previous station but still ok)

dock client 2 at the same station as client 1 currently in (bei P7M8) takes 1:30 for station background to load.
undock. redock. station background takes 1:00 for to reload

log off both sessions

Try to workout what data I have captured with the logserver (and partially fail) and worry that I lost some usefull stuff regarding the resizing issue.

Copy screenshots and what logfile server info I have into google drive https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B1HsU_rOxWl4MTdyMjcySUZHc2s&usp=sharing

http://foo-eve.blogspot.com.au/

DoToo Foo
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#226 - 2014-12-20 03:29:29 UTC
Salpun wrote:
A way to tell what a full client size is at the install menu would be good.
How does the DoD functionality work with less space then a full client would require and if there is no more space to down load stuff what is the smallest client size with full functionality.



CCP can tell us what *should* happen, but possibly not what *will* happen.

Try repartiioning a drive, or possibly installing the program cache to a smaller USB stick

http://foo-eve.blogspot.com.au/

Salpun
Global Telstar Federation Offices
Masters of Flying Objects
#227 - 2014-12-20 07:40:49 UTC
DoToo Foo wrote:
Salpun wrote:
A way to tell what a full client size is at the install menu would be good.
How does the DoD functionality work with less space then a full client would require and if there is no more space to down load stuff what is the smallest client size with full functionality.



CCP can tell us what *should* happen, but possibly not what *will* happen.

Try repartiioning a drive, or possibly installing the program cache to a smaller USB stick

True.

Nice notes.

Not having character portraits is a bigger issue then you think it is.

My experience:

Setting up was difficult because I was using a duality named file for my current Sisi install. What?

Portraits missing on selection screen. No auto load at this stage?
Created a new character. Really needs a loading icon on the way to the race selection screen like between the selection and character creator steps.

Is the database not connected to duality? Portraits still not showing up after the system did not load like normal.

Captains Quarters required a switch to hanger and back to get the high rez render.

Duality is not current to current TQ version of the UI fixes.

Allot of the Tutorial icon bugs are active on TQ however. Some of the icons have bot been changed to see thru yet.

If i dont know something about EVE. I check https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/ISK_The_Guide

See you around the universe.

Blue Harrier
#228 - 2014-12-20 13:05:19 UTC
Just a minor note;

If you uninstall Duality using the uninstall.exe program in the folder it may reset everything in your TQ Eve client back to a new install. I did this while testing and on starting my TQ Eve client got worried when it started playing the introduction video on login. Once in the game I found everything was completely reset, overview, windows, esc menu settings, everything, so be warned.

"You wait - time passes, Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold." from The Hobbit on ZX Spectrum 1982.

KIller Wabbit
MEME Thoughts
#229 - 2014-12-20 19:54:08 UTC  |  Edited by: KIller Wabbit
Blue Harrier wrote:
Just a minor note;

If you uninstall Duality using the uninstall.exe program in the folder it may reset everything in your TQ Eve client back to a new install. I did this while testing and on starting my TQ Eve client got worried when it started playing the introduction video on login. Once in the game I found everything was completely reset, overview, windows, esc menu settings, everything, so be warned.


Perhaps some OS experts will chime in, but given how self contained EVE is a simple directory and icon delete is probably all that is needed to remove an EVE test install. Let the OS clean up any link foo later on.
Blue Harrier
#230 - 2014-12-20 23:01:37 UTC
KIller Wabbit wrote:
Blue Harrier wrote:
Just a minor note;

If you uninstall Duality using the uninstall.exe program in the folder it may reset everything in your TQ Eve client back to a new install. I did this while testing and on starting my TQ Eve client got worried when it started playing the introduction video on login. Once in the game I found everything was completely reset, overview, windows, esc menu settings, everything, so be warned.


Perhaps some OS experts will chime in, but given how self contained EVE is a simple directory and icon delete is probably all that is needed to remove an EVE test install. Let the OS clean up any link foo later on.



Normally that is all I would do, just delete the folder containing the Duality files, but for the sake of testing I used the uninstall program. It was a bit of a surprise when I started the TQ client and found everything reset.

I must admit this is the first time its happened to me and I’ve been testing both SiSi and Duality clients for quite a few years. Eve is usually pretty good at keeping things separated and just removing only the files needed and as there is no real integration with the registry etc removal is usually clean and tidy.

I’m still trying to work out what happened but have been busy today (Christmas and all that),if I find anything I’ll post it up.

"You wait - time passes, Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold." from The Hobbit on ZX Spectrum 1982.

Jake Weyland
2.7K
#231 - 2014-12-21 00:41:08 UTC  |  Edited by: Jake Weyland
So i tried this on Linux


Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon 64-bit
PlayOnLinux 4.2.2 / Wine 1.7.33 (32-bit)

Created a new wine prefix

  • Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 v8.0.56336
  • Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 v10.0.40219
  • Wine Mono 4.5.4
  • Wine Gecko (32-bit) 2.34


Installed without problems.

start up LogServer
start up eve.exe /server:87.237.38.60
launcher downloads 329.75 MB
log in, click "Play"
EvE starts up,
character selection pops up
select character, black screen for about 18sec - station interior loads

undock, black screen for about 7 sec
dock, docked without problems
undock, grid loads normally
warp to top asteroid belt
~10 sec to load asteroids after exiting warp
kill a few belt rats, wrecks load ~2 sec
warp to second asteroid belt, asteroids load almost instantly
warp to another station, loading finishes while exiting warp
warp to another station, loading finishes while exiting warp
set destination to Jita from personal assets
warp to gate, loading gate textures finishes while exiting warp
jump, Traffic Control, retry, Jump sound delayed by 2-3 sec
warp to next gate, gate already loaded
.
.
.
warp to next gate, loading finishes before exiting warp,
jump, planets load after 1-2 sec
warp to next gate, loading gate textures finishes while exiting warp
.
.
.
warp to station, loading station textures finishes while exiting warp
dock, black screen for ~7 sec, station interior loads
look at a few ship previews from ISIS
loading ship model and textures for each ship took 3 to 6 sec
open market browser, loading icons under 1 sec
view character portrait, portrait not loaded
view full body, loading took about 17 sec
open fitting window, loading ship background took about 2 sec
end session, "drive_c/users/Public/Application Data/CCP/EVE/SharedCache" contains 14431 items, totalling 1,8 GB


Game client seems to run just fine and the wait for assets to download is not so bad, however the launcher crashes every time i try to open the launcher settings.


Connection Speed
15Mb/s Down 1,5Mb/s Up

LogServer
http://dl.eve-files.com/media/1412/Duality_DoD_2014.12.21.zip
Sable Moran
Moran Light Industries
#232 - 2014-12-25 10:41:42 UTC
CCP Darwin wrote:
Sable Moran wrote:
Gave it a spin, did not end well. I encountered two major problems.


Sorry to ask for more help, but do you think you could submit a bug report either in-game (preferably!) or via our web bug reporting tool for this? The additional info (particularly if you do so in-game!) might help narrow down what's causing the problems you experienced.

If you're willing to do so, be sure to indicate that you were running the Download-on-Demand client on Duality!


Sorry for the delay but here is the bug report: EBR-30639

I reinstalled the DoD client and tested it again. The Cog -> crash error is still there, the launcher crashed every time i click the 'open settings dialog' cog icon.

The 'freeze' issue has disappeared, either you guys have fixed stuff or something has changed at my end.

Sable's Ammo Shop at Alentene V - Moon 4 - Duvolle Labs Factory. Hybrid charges, Projectile ammo, Missiles, Drones, Ships, Need'em? We have'em, at affordable prices. Pop in at our Ammo Shop in sunny Alentene.

Blaze Howert
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#233 - 2015-01-01 21:36:03 UTC  |  Edited by: Blaze Howert
Hi,

I tested the client on demand last week for about a week .
I let the installer use the proposed paths.
I went through this thread and I found out that my errors have already been reported here so I'm not repeating stuff that's already been reported here.
I got the error with the missing texts for certain elements (only MessageID xxxxx was displayed)
Looks like a missing or unlinked text table.
A little annoying on Duality was that every market needed to reopen and every jump gate need to activate before using it.
This can take quite a while when flying from Jascheris to B-R5RB (the monument took a moment to download).
Someone set the prices to 100 ISK for almost everything , so that I could use different ships (about 10) and check
if they downloaded correctly and fast enough, they did.

Overall my test was conclusive , the client and the missing parts downloaded fairly quickly and the client reacted quite rapidly
(even when using it through wine 1.6 (used with PlayonLinux on Ubuntu 14.04 64bit )
My download / upload speed is about 100/5 Mbit/s (cable)
I had even the impression that due to its smaller size the Eve client performed better on wine and had less crashes
even when full and high resolution was activated.

I'm looking forward to this feature in the new release.

Just my 5 ISK, hopefully someone will find this useful.


Cheers
Blaze
marly cortez
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#234 - 2015-01-09 00:58:14 UTC
For some reason I get really nervous when some Dev appears waving his prospectus like some over zealous politician asking us to pay heed to his new fangled ideas and the thought springs to mind that yet again CCP Devs are making assumptions regarding what the players actually want while ignoring what they really need.

This idea of there's that in some way all players will be able to instantly 'Download' whats required on the fly seems to utterly disregard the fact that not all have high speed fiber optic connections with speeds that make your eyes bleed. most in fact are still chugging along on good old broadband connections often restricted capacity and in the UK often as not crippled by BT's insistence for selling fiber optic connections when they are in fact still the ancient copper wires which were installed when Noah rowed in on the Ark in areas heavily dependent on how many people are online as to what speed they actually do get, and if it's anything like mine that's not much better than dial up on some days.

What worries me the most is again the assumption that we can actually manage to keep up with the games requirements using this method considering the problems we already have with latency 'Sold as the feature time dilation' , the recent Rhea update has introduced more of this for some players with unexpected hang ups in places we never had them before, un-docking, gate jumps resulting in constant E-warps and for some reason opening menus in stations.

It is also of concern that a lot of resources and money are being diverted to this project spun off as a 'New Feature'. yet linked to other changes in game a lot of players are wondering were CCP are actually going with all of this sudden zeal for change which appears on the surface to be a negative positive to some were changes made are causing a lot of players to unsub accounts due to features installed without request yet vaunted as being something that makes the game better in some way, One wonders if the players with lots of now dormant and useless accounts and CCP financial controllers feel so enthused about these so called game improvements.

It is not so much the time taken to download the game initially that causes a problem here for players as once done it is a one off investment in time, instant gratification is not required here, just a method to update on the fly by increments. I am sure that if Micro Robbery can do it, CCP can also manage to devise a simpler method of updating a client and if time to enter game was so much of an issue in there eyes why introduce that ridiculous start up screen in the first place and not retain the EVE.exe as primary entrance tool that most of us actually use, yes I know the advert reptiles cannot resist getting in your face with crap but really is it required to have the nexus store linked into it as well, if it was such a magnificent feature how come we hear so little of it in the game or is the stench of pay to win still lingering after the departure of you know who.

To conclude:

Is this feature actually going to improve game play experience, Doubtful.

Will it's introduction actually make playing EVE worse, Probably.

And why do we actually need to do this in the first place, Now that is the real question.



Humanity is the thin veneer that remains after you remove the baffled chimp.

Dunpeal Hunter
Zervas Aeronautics
#235 - 2015-02-12 02:59:34 UTC
marly cortez wrote:
To conclude:

Is this feature actually going to improve game play experience, Doubtful.

Will it's introduction actually make playing EVE worse, Probably.

And why do we actually need to do this in the first place, Now that is the real question.



Because of, reasons.

But in all seriousness, i can see some upsides to it. Lets say in the old system that the devs want to add a special secret event that will happen at the busiest time when the most players are playing.

In the old system they have to update everyone their client during the latest downtime with the content for the event, without revealing too much in the patch note what the update is for. But along comes some technical smartypants (Blink) who takes a look at the changed files, takes them apart (keep in mind, my technical coding/hacking experience is not so big, so i have no idea if this actually is possible) and sees what ccp wants to do at the special event and decides to be a jackass and post it on the forums.

With this new system something like that would not be possible, since the event could (in theory) only made available only minutes before the actual even happens, and only to those people in the vicinity.

Also its a silent wish of me that this could potentially mean that Eve Online gets support from online game streaming services like Onlive and Gakai, to name a few. Again, no experience in this field, but i can see that it potentially might make things easier to make the game more ready for those systems.

I dont know if this is important or not, but i have chickens.....

Soldarius
Dreddit
Test Alliance Please Ignore
#236 - 2015-02-12 14:56:59 UTC  |  Edited by: Soldarius
Since the original post seems to be gone, I will relate my experience testing this feature on Duality. For the record, I have ADSL in the north-east of the USA.

From a completely blank slate, It took about 15 minutes to get a minimum install and get into the game.

My first undock black screened for about 1 minute as the minimum necessary environmental graphics were requested and received. This happened once and only once. All subsequent undocks and jumps went just as they normally do.

My first jump into a new system had a very brief black-screen of about 10 seconds. But again, once minimum functional graphics were obtained, this never happened again.

Minimum functional graphics require very little time. This new system does its best to get you flying and functional at the minimum graphics, and then updates the graphics quality as you go. You can actually see this effect the first time you undock into a completely celestial-free black universe consisting only of your ship and a station. Then the celestial stuff starts to appear and is quickly populated.

This system works very well. If you already have eve installed, you will not notice a difference. But for those with a new install, you will may have a few initial black-screens of short duration, which will never be seen again.

Your experience may be better or worse depending on your connection. But I assure everyone this works exactly as advertised.

http://youtu.be/YVkUvmDQ3HY

Agrikaan
Absolute Order XVIII
Absolute Will
#237 - 2015-02-25 15:41:26 UTC  |  Edited by: Agrikaan
Another effort to solve a problem that's really not that much of a problem...
In a time where disk space and download speeds are better than ever.
5-10 years ago; it would have been awesome.

Personally, I always prefer having it all downloaded before I start playing a game. When I play a game, delays are worse than when not playing. I can have some coffee or play something else while downloading and updating goes on. Or work, or sleep. Or watch TV, whatever. It's like starting to drink the coffee before it's hot. Or watch a streaming movie with stutter because it takes to much time to put the DVD in... Shocked

---

Today I have separate installs for each separate account. That works great. It also means I can use a nice BATCH file to automatically backup up all the little settings that won't save to servers for each account. Which I also transfer over to my laptop, so I don't have to do every change "# accounts * 2". That saves a lot of time and effort. I use the "/end /LUA:OFF" options.

I have different color schemes for the separate accounts, to visibly show me which character I'm playing , as I may switch between them. This works worse now since the latest changes BTW, as the mandatory color schemes are few, weaker and fairly similar. This also means every account login page has the correct account name as default. Means logging in is much faster, as you seem to be concerned with saving minutes of time for the users. Idea

Question time: Will this new "feature" ruin any of that?

Out of topic but related (rant): All settings to a game, every game, should be in a folder called "SETTINGS" in the game folder proper. Saves should be in a folder called "SAVES". Same for applications. How hard is that?? Easy to find, backup and transfer between computers. The way it is now, files are all over the place, and it's extremely illogical, madness and evil. How many hours do we all spend finding save locations and settings? How much hair has been pulled as settings and savedata gets lost when reinstalling or getting a new computer? Or having to do everything over again for laptop use? How many times and hours should I spend getting my EVE windows and UI the way I want it?

Whatever team at Microsoft that thought up the existing solution, with settings and saves being part of a cryptic registry and/or way inside some hidden folders on the C: drive, roaming data, appdata, userdata, programdata etc should be taken to the court in Hague and hanged for crimes against humanity. DOS did that better... And it was probably the same team that got us Windows Vista and the Windows 8.0 UI anyway, so good riddance! Twisted
CCP Snorlax
C C P
C C P Alliance
#238 - 2015-02-25 18:23:29 UTC
Agrikaan wrote:

Question time: Will this new "feature" ruin any of that?

No.

CCP Snorlax - Software Architect - Team RnB - @CCP_Snorlax - http://ccpsnorlax.blogspot.is/

Makari Aeron
Imperial Shipment
Amarr Empire
#239 - 2015-02-25 18:33:30 UTC
Agrikaan wrote:
(snip about multiple installs)

As stated elsewhere, you could also use symlinks instead of multiple installs for storing your settings as EVE recognizes the symlinks as separate directories.

CCP RedDawn: Ugly people are just playing life on HARD mode. Personally, I'm playing on an INFERNO difficulty.

CCP Goliath: I often believe that the best way to get something done is to shout at the person trying to help you. http://goo.gl/PKGDP

Agrikaan
Absolute Order XVIII
Absolute Will
#240 - 2015-02-25 18:47:50 UTC  |  Edited by: Agrikaan
CCP Snorlax wrote:
Agrikaan wrote:

Question time: Will this new "feature" ruin any of that?

No.


I love it! AND the fast reply. Big smile

Brings me to another topic that I've been thinking about: Do CCP have any plans to make a feature to export all (ALL) settings to file?

I mean colors, bookmark folders, window positions and sizes, drone settings, overviews, keyboard shortcuts, EVERYTHING the users can change and manipulate on the client? Now some stuff can already be backed up here and there (overview, fittings), but I'm talking the next step here.

To move between computers. I use 3 myself; my desktop, my laptop for travels and an older desktop at my GFs house, and it's a chore today to keep up. Either by doing changes on every account on all PCs, or copying the various setting files. If so, there would no longer be the same need to backup all these setting files from all over... Options, import, ok, done.

What a dream! ;)

Well, either that or moving every single setting to the server/cloud, but that might be asking for too much... Right? Big smile