Incarna and Multiple Client Users

[CCP]

Incarna and Multiple Client Users
14 June 2011, 11:43 am

In response to my devblog two weeks ago, Incarna, welcome to your future, there were some concerns raised on what kind of performance was to be expected, especially since the minimum hardware requirements for EVE are still pretty accomodating when it comes to old hardware.

Well, we always aimed at getting acceptable performance at what we consider acceptable visual standards in our supported hardware range. That goal has never changed. As we progressed in development we started hitting all of our targets for both high-end and medium spec machines while still making the entire thing look absolutely amazing.

But we have a bit of a unique situation to deal with that not all game developers have to take into account.  People love EVE so much that they don‘t just want to play one EVE, they want to play two EVEs at once...and sometimes even more!  

So the only place we really ran into trouble was with low-end machines and then only when running multiple clients in an Incarna environment. We still marched on and tried to squeeze all we could out of the graphics engine without making everything look like an 8-bit brick.

However we‘ve unfortunately hit a bit of a wall when it comes to running multiple clients on low-end machines while docked. For the sake of a smooth transition we therefore decided to temporarily add the option to not load the Incarna interiors while stilll retaining full access to all options and menus. This allows us to accomodate users with old and gnarly hardware, a group we‘ve been proud to be able to serve in the past, while for some limited time also develop for those with top-of-the-line gaming computers.

This simple option will primarily benefit players with Nvidia 6000 series, or low-end 7000 series cards or compatible hardware,  trying to run multiple clients while docked.

To highlight this and to future proof ourselves a bit we‘re in the process of revising and updating the EVE minimum and reccommended hardware specification.

Again, to be really clear; running a single client works fine on all hardware supported by us. This is a temporary solution for your convenience that we intend to solve more gracefully in future deployments. We are still determined to make Incarna a seamless part of the EVE experience so that one day there will be no Incarna, there will only be EVE.

Arnar Hrafn Gylfason

Senior Producer of EVE Online

 

 

 

Source: eveonline.com | devBlog