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New dev blog: The Eve Online Launcher: T-minus not that much

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Bloodpetal
Tir Capital Management Group
#121 - 2012-03-09 23:59:16 UTC
CCP Atropos wrote:
Ersteen Hofs wrote:
I wish it'd be possible to exit to the character selection screen instead of just closing the game...

Or at least make the launcher remember all passwords used this session (until the launcher is closed) so I would not have to enter tnem every time I want to get another character into the game.

Also I hope it will make the loading faster. Even with SSD the game starts too slow...


The first release won't change the mechanics of actually loading the login screen and logging in there. We do want to move the login mechanics into the Launcher at some point however, so that people can log in there, and bypass the current login screen, but this requires more work that we weren't comfortable squeezing into this release.



But i like our animated login screen Sad

Where I am.
Lolmer
Merciless Reckoning
#122 - 2012-03-10 01:19:32 UTC
Today when trying the new launcher I see a newly coloured screen (Crucible colours instead of blue), but when I click "Play" I get the Crucible logo, and then nothing, it just exits. This last worked when the launcher was first announced on this Dev Blog.

OS X 10.7.3 x86_64
MacBookPro6,2
nVidia GeForce GT 330M 256M
CCP Atropos
C C P
C C P Alliance
#123 - 2012-03-10 12:43:06 UTC
Lolmer wrote:
Today when trying the new launcher I see a newly coloured screen (Crucible colours instead of blue), but when I click "Play" I get the Crucible logo, and then nothing, it just exits. This last worked when the launcher was first announced on this Dev Blog.

OS X 10.7.3 x86_64
MacBookPro6,2
nVidia GeForce GT 330M 256M

Out of interest, what version of the Launcher are you using? It should say in the top of the window when it starts.
Tanaka Aiko
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#124 - 2012-03-10 15:20:59 UTC  |  Edited by: Tanaka Aiko
CCP Atropos wrote:
For those asking about multiple clients using junction points, I'm following the article on the wiki, and I'll let you know exactly how junctions fare (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Multiple_clients#Method_1_-_Junctions)

CCP Cascade wrote:
I'm afraid that this isn't really an option, as we require everyone to have the same client version when they connect.


as a junctions user, i think the real question here was "what happen with your new systems for "client update" type patchs ? those optional, and that currently are installed on ALL virtual folders, not on the real one.
in case you don't know, when a "client update" patch have to be installed we have to install it on the client we ran, but after we'll be asked to download and install it also on the other clients when we launch them.

CCP Cascade wrote:

With the risk of getting shouted at: What is the benefit of having multiple client installs over just launching 3-4 instances of the same eve.exe from the same install? Is it to have seperate folders for your settings/cache and that the client opens in the right monitor? Do you get anything else? If any of you awesome multiboxers would be able to detail the benefits, perhaps we can come up with a solution that gives you all that you want, but without having to install a 10GB game multiple times.

using junctions give us more stability as they use different cache, and of course the ability to have different settings on each one.

CCP Atropos wrote:

The first release won't change the mechanics of actually loading the login screen and logging in there. We do want to move the login mechanics into the Launcher at some point however, so that people can log in there, and bypass the current login screen, but this requires more work that we weren't comfortable squeezing into this release.

this is something we would like, as it would offer us reason to like the launcher ;)
Grey Stormshadow
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#125 - 2012-03-10 15:49:36 UTC
CCP Cascade wrote:
[quote]
With the risk of getting shouted at: What is the benefit of having multiple client installs over just launching 3-4 instances of the same eve.exe from the same install? Is it to have seperate folders for your settings/cache and that the client opens in the right monitor? Do you get anything else? If any of you awesome multiboxers would be able to detail the benefits, perhaps we can come up with a solution that gives you all that you want, but without having to install a 10GB game multiple times.

From traditional hard disks clients start and run simultaneously smoother if there the clients are on separate hard disks. If client restarts would not be needed every time you switch character, perhaps this would not be as big deal.

Get classic forum style - custom videos to captains quarters screen

Play with the best - die like the rest
CCP Atropos
C C P
C C P Alliance
#126 - 2012-03-10 16:15:20 UTC
Tanaka Aiko wrote:
CCP Atropos wrote:
For those asking about multiple clients using junction points, I'm following the article on the wiki, and I'll let you know exactly how junctions fare (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Multiple_clients#Method_1_-_Junctions)

CCP Cascade wrote:
I'm afraid that this isn't really an option, as we require everyone to have the same client version when they connect.


as a junctions user, i think the real question here was "what happen with your new systems for "client update" type patchs ? those optional, and that currently are installed on ALL virtual folders, not on the real one.
in case you don't know, when a "client update" patch have to be installed we have to install it on the client we ran, but after we'll be asked to download and install it also on the other clients when we launch them.

For now, the behavior is unchanged; you will start the client, and then be prompted to install the client update. This is due to legacy issues regarding how the server offers these updates, that we didn't feel comfortable changing for this release. It will come though, that I can guarantee.

Once that's there, you'll simply start the Launcher, update the client and then login.
Mograthi
#127 - 2012-03-10 16:52:08 UTC
I use junctions in order to run 3 separate clients so that they have 3 separate settings and cache folders for things like window size, which monitor, etc, etc ,etc.

If we must go down this path I am fine with the Launcher provided you provide the option of creating basically profiles in it which you store the location of the settings and cache folders etc or for each account that is started by the launcher just create and folder with the account name and under it store the current settings and cache folder structures that we have now.
Lolmer
Merciless Reckoning
#128 - 2012-03-10 19:27:20 UTC
CCP Atropos wrote:
Lolmer wrote:
Today when trying the new launcher I see a newly coloured screen (Crucible colours instead of blue), but when I click "Play" I get the Crucible logo, and then nothing, it just exits. This last worked when the launcher was first announced on this Dev Blog.

OS X 10.7.3 x86_64
MacBookPro6,2
nVidia GeForce GT 330M 256M

Out of interest, what version of the Launcher are you using? It should say in the top of the window when it starts.


Says "EVE Online Launcher v.1.0" at the top and doesn't try to patch (though the first time I launched it did some patching).
Tommy Shanks
#129 - 2012-03-12 17:48:59 UTC
I have the worst luck with game launchers and a laundry list of MMOs I can't touch because of them so I hope we can still maually patch and load the game, in fact, I can't currently patch with the installer you guys have now and I need to apply the direct download patch.
StuRyan
Space Wolves ind.
Solyaris Chtonium
#130 - 2012-03-12 18:01:15 UTC
Welcome back eve.....

I have to say the last few months have been brillant all aimed at improving the experince of playing eve.

Thats why i pay my sub and i remained loyal whist it went through the difficult period. Everything your bringing out at the moment looks a finished article - i hope this one doesn't dissapoint..

we want spaceships and content :)

CCP Cascade
#131 - 2012-03-12 18:53:02 UTC
I added an FAQ and a link to the Evelopedia article on the first post. Read them and let me know if you have more questions.

Tommy Shanks wrote:
I have the worst luck with game launchers and a laundry list of MMOs I can't touch because of them so I hope we can still maually patch and load the game, in fact, I can't currently patch with the installer you guys have now and I need to apply the direct download patch.


I would suggest that you have a look on Singularity and try it out to see if you have any luck with the EVE Launcher. If you run into any problems, please let us know. We're more than happy to have a look at the logs and resolve anything we find to be an issue.

Associate Technical Producer - Core Technology Group
Sarrein Razor
RazorEnterprise
#132 - 2012-03-12 18:53:33 UTC
Just a side note to CCP and a couple of things u allready messed up:

If i log in here and want to post, i do NOT want to land on Eve Gate but on the FORUMS and post right away as on the old one. Not all here are Facebook-Addicts (and Eve Gate is just the Eve Version of it).

If your shiny new launcher just COULD mess up with multiboxing, you'd better make sure u DONT put it live until there is ABSOLUTLY NO DOUBT that it wont mess with it.

I personaly regualry run 3 clients at the same and i definatly have the machine for it. I scratch at 5 TB (yes, 5000 GB) of internal disk space and i run 16 GB of Ram just to be able to multibox without problems, so having a couple of more GB for multiple clients is realy not an issue for me.

But any more work that i need to do just get online IS something that bothers me. And from my past experience with launchers and with CCP i realy realy fear that this will backfire badly.

So if there is any reason to belive that this will affect your customers gaming experience and especially the gaming experience of those who pay mutliple times to play with multiple chars at the same time, STOP IT RIGHT NOW.

I realy hope that this time i am just paranoid, but past experience told me some harsh lessons in that regard. And most of them had a CCP sign on them.

As a(nother) side note: I am realy concerned about the lack of knowlegde show by CCP in regard of the masses of players that multibox. Actually, the biggest part of the people i know have at least 2 accounts, some few even up to 9 or more. So multiboxing is more or less the norm at least in the circles i am present. And in the case that my fears become reality this would mean a shitton of pissed of customers.

Multiboxing should be TOP PRIORITY from that point of view and nothing *we are looking into for the future*.
CCP Cascade
#133 - 2012-03-12 19:07:44 UTC
Sarrein Razor wrote:
Multiboxing should be TOP PRIORITY from that point of view and nothing *we are looking into for the future*.


It is without doubt top priority to make sure that we do not intentionally break or make it uncomfortable for multiboxers. One issue we have though is that running multiple clients has never been officially supported by our technology. This has lead many people to come up with their own way of making it work by for example installing the game multiple times in many different locations, other people use symlinks and junctions and third party multiboxing tools.

This is a problem for when we decide to update the way we want to launch, install and patch the game. Catering to all different versions of multiboxing software and installed clients would lead to the Launcher ending up a bloated swizz army knife. So there will be ways which might no longer work after this change, but the most common ways should still work. The recommended, yet unsupported way, is to use what is described here: http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Multiple_clients

So... to the big question: What have we done to support multiboxing:

1. You can make the Launcher only appear when there is an update by selecting that under the startup tab in the settings for the Launcher. That means that the EVE client will start just like it did before, unless there is an update. This is good for those who have installs in multiple locations.

2. Those who have multiple installs or multiple computers at home; You can use the patch import/export feature to import and export patches between installs and computers. Check out the export/import section here

3. If you want to start multiple clients you can just click "Play" again and it will start a new client instance. If you don't want the Launcher to stay after the client is started, you can set this in the settings menu.

How does this sound?

Associate Technical Producer - Core Technology Group
Philboyd Benoit
#134 - 2012-03-12 19:10:58 UTC
I have a question about obtaining future expansion rollouts. Will this tool be the ONLY way to obtain the new expansions?

I am in a situation where 90% of my gameplay time is played over a very slow and throttled internet connection. It's a cell based ISP. I don't have any other choices on how I connect to my internet.

I am a truck driver by trade IRL so I have no access to high speed internet such as you would find at home. I do have highspeed internet at home but I am only home 3 days every 4 weeks. As such if you deploy a rollout when I'm 2 weeks into my tour, then I'm basically stuck until I can get home.

My cell ISP breaks any downloads after 40megs or so. They TRY to break torrent DL's but basically fail as torrents automatically restart any stopped connnections after I reconnect to the cell service.

I have the same issue with the various truckstop ISP's as well so I don't use them as they are even WORSE then a cell based ISP. The truckstop ISP's automatically shut me off after 300 megs and they try to force me to pay upwards of $60 per 2 gigs after that.

If I try to DL a 1.5gb expansion rollout, the only realistic way I can get it done is via torrent. Any direct DL is always broken at 40 megs and I can never finish the expansion DL.

This is why I am very concerned about how the new expansions will be rollled out. I did see in the patch notes about being able to have multiple connections and resuming DL's

Quote:
It has a built-in download manager, ie. downloads using multiple connections to the internet in order to maximize bandwidth usage and resumes previously incomplete downloads automatically without giving you lip.


Will this be included in the upcoming rollout of this feature? Will it work similar to torrents?

.
Gilbaron
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#135 - 2012-03-12 19:28:59 UTC  |  Edited by: Gilbaron
about patching multiple clients

what do you think about downloading the patch to a (user) specified location and having the launcher search this location before downloading ?

when my first client has patched my second one should find the files it needs in that location without me having to manually import/export/create the patch

sorry for bad english
CCP Cascade
#136 - 2012-03-12 20:08:13 UTC  |  Edited by: CCP Cascade
Philboyd Benoit wrote:
Will this be included in the upcoming rollout of this feature? Will it work similar to torrents?


Peer-to-Peer download is not implemented and we don't have any release date in mind yet. But I imagine that when we start implementing it and getting closer to releasing it there will be dev blogs coming, so keep your eyes open in a couple of months.

Regarding your situation, I don't think the Launcher will be worse or better. One thing that Launcher will allow you to do is pause the download. You can basically can run the Launcher and then just close it when you start hitting the download cap. Then when you get to a new connection you can start it up again and let it continue where it left off. I am guessing that this will help you if you have access to multiple different connections while travelling.

Does this answer your question?


Gilbaron wrote:

what do you think about downloading the patch to a (user) specified location and having the launcher search this location before downloading ?


This is one way to do it and we are happy to take in the user feedback after tomorrow on what you think would be better. Currently the export/import feature uses the same folder by default. The folder is under %localappdata%\CCP\EVE and called Patches.

When you export and import you can of course change this to desktop or any other folder you like.

Associate Technical Producer - Core Technology Group
Philboyd Benoit
#137 - 2012-03-12 20:22:58 UTC
CCP Cascade wrote:
Philboyd Benoit wrote:
Will this be included in the upcoming rollout of this feature? Will it work similar to torrents?


Peer-to-Peer download is not implemented and we don't have any release date in mind yet. But I imagine that when we start implementing it and getting closer to releasing it there will be dev blogs coming, so keep your eyes open in a couple of months.

Regarding your situation, I don't think the Launcher will be worse or better. One thing that Launcher will allow you to do is pause the download. You can basically can run the Launcher and then just close it when you start hitting the download cap. Then when you get to a new connection you can start it up again and let it continue where it left off. I am guessing that this will help you if you have access to multiple different connections while travelling.

Does this answer your question?



Well It depends on if the manager will automatically pause when my connection is lost. I don't keep the connection active while actually moving. Its only active when I am parked. I don't see me having to monitor it and having to manually pause it every 40-50 megs on a ~1.5gb expansion rollout. I need to be able to retain my sanity...lol

The smaller patches are really no problem. It's just the big expansion rollouts I'm concerned with.

Is there any way that you can continue the manual expansion downloads via torrent? Chribba has been my HERO for the last 2.5 years!

Making manual patching go away is a mistake for those of us with bandwidth/cap issues. It may seem to be a common sense from a tech standpoint to you and the majority of the playerbase but it basically breaks me and my ability to play for up to several weeks at a time if this new downloader doesnt work as needed.

Just thought i would bring the issue to your attention.

Thanks for the above reply

.
Gilbaron
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#138 - 2012-03-12 20:36:57 UTC  |  Edited by: Gilbaron
CCP Cascade wrote:



Gilbaron wrote:

what do you think about downloading the patch to a (user) specified location and having the launcher search this location before downloading ?


This is one way to do it and we are happy to take in the user feedback after tomorrow on what you think would be better. Currently the export/import feature uses the same folder by default. The folder is under %localappdata%\CCP\EVE and called Patches.

When you export and import you can of course change this to desktop or any other folder you like.


dont put stuff in %localappdata% %temp% %cache% and friends

people are to dumb to find stuff there

i really like the wow approach, the client has everything it needs in the install path which is specified by the user

%localappdata% (possible to be changed by the user) will serve as an intermediate though, but in the long run you should really aim for a client where everything is in one, easy to find place with an easy and convenient way to launch different client instances with different settings from the same installation

in the short run there should be a "keep downloaded data" checkbox after installing a patch
and a "check for previous downloaded patches" checkbox before doing so
Oxigun
Halliburton Heavy Industries
#139 - 2012-03-12 21:28:33 UTC
CCP Cascade wrote:

So... to the big question: What have we done to support multiboxing:

1. You can make the Launcher only appear when there is an update by selecting that under the startup tab in the settings for the Launcher. That means that the EVE client will start just like it did before, unless there is an update. This is good for those who have installs in multiple locations.

2. Those who have multiple installs or multiple computers at home; You can use the patch import/export feature to import and export patches between installs and computers. Check out the export/import section here

3. If you want to start multiple clients you can just click "Play" again and it will start a new client instance. If you don't want the Launcher to stay after the client is started, you can set this in the settings menu.

How does this sound?


I'm sorry, I'm old and dense, as well as addicted to Eve with (too) many client installs:

1) This Launcher, will it be associated with one client or will it be a standalone application that just points to one of my many Eve directories? Or will I end up with as many Launchers and i have eve clients?
2) If I want to patch a second install, after the first one has been patched, how do I do that with the Launcher?
3) If something goes wrong, can I still copy/paste an entire EVE folder and simply run that client with new settings?
4) For Launcher 2.0, could you please work on a supported multibox solution? It would be great if I could specify my client preferences (e.g. [windowed 1024x768, all graphics to low] or [full screen 2560x1600, full detail]) and select the account I want launched. If the Launcher stays open, great, rinse, repeat...

Oh, and one more thing: Please do not hide behind your little "unsupported" finger. I have received more "the power of two" ads from CCP than I have fingers (and toes). If you really don't want me to quintuple-box, just let me know and I'll change some of my subscriptions....
CCP Cascade
#140 - 2012-03-13 00:04:33 UTC
Gilbaron wrote:

dont put stuff in %localappdata% %temp% %cache% and friends


We don't put anything there. It is the default location that the import/export goes to when you click export or import. But in that very window you can go wherever you like. It works much like word defaults to your documents or something like that.

So we are only defaulting to a central location that we know will be there, because that makes sense. And if you'd like it to be anywhere else, you can change it.

Gilbaron wrote:

in the short run there should be a "keep downloaded data" checkbox after installing a patch


All downloaded data is stored in the EVE client folder by default. If you want them to be removed you can check the box "Delete patches after use" under the patches tab in settings.

Associate Technical Producer - Core Technology Group