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EVE Online News - Dev Blog: The Premium Lite Client
Posted by Keith Cross on Jan 14, 2009 | 13 comments in our forums
CCP has posted a new developer blog which looks at the Apocrypha expansion and their plans to phase out their Classic client and replace it with the new Premium Lite version.
The way things are
One of EVE's unique features (along with being an awesome game on a single server) is that it can run on pretty much any computer built after 1998. The minimum spec for graphics card and CPU has always been very reasonable to say the least, so the barrier for entry into EVE has been relatively low compared to other games. Developing the client in this manner hasn't always been a given. It requires us to downtune our graphics engine quite a bit, for one, as well as maintain the "Classic" client version of EVE along with the Premium one. That means creating two versions of each art asset we want to put into the game. It complicates build and patching processes considerably and, for the most part, it simply doesn't allow us to make EVE look as beautiful as we want. The core issues we deal with are:
• Spending too much time and resources maintaining 2 clients
• Due to a dual pipeline we have less time implementing performance enhancements
Where do we go from here?
Currently, EVE can be played on GeForce 2 or ATi Radeon 7000 series cards. The support of these cards was discontinued in 2002 by their manufacturers, a full year before EVE was first published. The development in graphics and graphics cards since then has been, to put it mildly, phenomenal. What we want to do is simplifying our development as well as exploit these new technologies to their full extent.
Read more here.
Hmm, I'm sure certain people will bitch about this.
Personally I liked the fact that Eve could run on a toaster.
While I use a high end system I could understand why people would get upset with CCP.
Oh well adapt or die is what we say in Eve and I guess this goes for out of game also.
You low end guys better upgrade or Eve goes bye bye.
I use the Classic client for everything but full scale galactic exploration because of its small and lightweight footprint. I'll really miss it if they take it away.
Premium running classic has a much smaller footprint, especially since it uses less cpu.
What is "premium running classic"?
There are currently three different setups:
Classic
Premium Client
Premiumc Client with classic graphics.
The difference between pure classic and premium running classic content if a noticable fps increase on most machines in favour of the premium client.
Ah, I see, thanks. Premium client with Classic graphics is actually what I run, I just didn't know it had a name :)
Nobody is playing this game, except for some low sec gate campers. Gave it one more shot last month, there is nothing to buy on the market and nobody to talk to. Even most Vet's have quit! Advice keep your 15$ in you wallet!
Um yeah right... There is always something on the market and there are quite a few players out there... I am a little bit of a manufacturer and I never have a problem selling my wares. And before you say I'm some die hard EVE fan, I've only been playing since 2006 and I haven't only been playing on and off in that time.
Anyway its a very fun game.
The forum's are jam pack with opinions and facts, That was an opinion and that is all. I could say I will never play this game again, but without why that would be silly. Most reading this and contradicted me, know this you are not playing eve but yet on here yet again!
this of course is why eve set a concurrent user record last week. eve has the most people playing a game on a server in the world.
obviously nobody there. certainly not 46 thousand people at once over a weekend.
But this is the reason why they are doing it. The premium client on many tests shows a performance *increase* over the old classic client.
This means, as time goes on and the more they implement "better and more efficient" graphics into the trinity engine it will get to the stage were the premium-lite will out perform the old classic client completly - this is especially true for people running multiple clients.
Im really glad about this change because it will mean even more advances.
I have been getting into Eve lately and the community is great. What's remarkable about this game is how much the company actually cares about its playerbase.
Their 'stage 1' of these upgrades is 2 months away. The are not keeping a lid on things until they implement them, they actually WANT player feedback. Gratz to them for treating their playerbase with respect.