ESO and MacOS Catalina

Carmina

So, since very conveniently for ZOS and thanks to certain parties the original thread became "unconstructive" and had to be closed: When will ZOS come up with a 64-bit launcher, keeping in mind they knew for a very long time it would not run on Catalina anymore?

C.

alterfenixeb17_ESO

1. Tbh I do not think that ZOS knows that at this point. They should but history so far shows this is unlikely.
2. Actually i.e. Steam is also still 32 bit so ZOS is not alone in it on the other hand
3. To be more constructive than just criticism: if they do not provide i.e. this month then this is still ok. However if in September we have to wait even 1 day after new macOS release then this, on top of current ongoing issues (for already almost a year and still not attended) this will be a joke of the year.

jeroenhmg

I would not expect a game launcher to be difficult to rebuild in 64 bit. But, who knows, maybe it's written with some weird 32 bit voodoo to protect the Crown Jewels.... or... in other words: could it be some copy protection scheme that is currently only available in 32 bit?

jeroenhmg

Also makes it a bit difficult for a Mac or iOS developer to learn All The New Things™ on Catalina while still being able to play a fun game of Elder Scrolls Online. I know, I know, we can partition a drive or get an external drive or whatever...Such a great game but so frustrating to run on a Mac.

Apologies for two comments, I was not able to re-edit the previously published comment.

alterfenixeb17_ESO

jeroenhmg wrote: »

I would not expect a game launcher to be difficult to rebuild in 64 bit. But, who knows, maybe it's written with some weird 32 bit voodoo to protect the Crown Jewels.... or... in other words: could it be some copy protection scheme that is currently only available in 32 bit?

Who cares really? Announcement that Apple is abandoning 32 bit apps was done A FEW YEARS AGO. Info that Mojave is to be the last system supporting 32 bit apps was made A YEAR ago. This is really more than enough time to get prepared for this move.

In other words ZOS is supposed to make it available before macOS 10.15 is available (not counting betas) and company clients should not be even bothered with such change - we should just get product that at least some of us are paying for on regular basis. And if company cannot do it in time then at the very least extended subscription to cover missed time once problem is fixed.

And nobody should be forced to either give up on new OS or switch to Windows (yeah, I still remember support suggesting that as a workaround - very unprofessional).

demerdecanswrath

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on that code base for technical reasons, because Elsweyr is utilising the new particle system, which was part of the reason they wanted to move to Metal (aside from Apple rightfully deprecating OpenGL imho). I honestly think we'll have some good news come fall on the performance and the stability of the game.

But the .app packages are a different story.

I know for a fact that all Mac work is outsourced to contractors (small studios/freelancers?) and that a lot of things have changed since 2013 on macOS development. Chris Dillman worked on the original Mac eso.app, which held up fine for OpenGL. As soon as the transition was made to Metal, the .app became an absolute mess. I have numbered all issues several times on social media, this forum and on support tickets. I won't do it again.

The Launcher.app, from a stability and performance perspective, is the most consistent macOS guideline-defying app I've ever seen in my life. Poorly updated too.

And I ask, for the millionth time: ZoS, why in Vehk's name don't you give Mac code any love?

Even the shortcuts on your website use CTRL+(key) instead of CMD+(key). Have you guys ever heard of the Mac platform at all?

jeroenhmg

alterfenixeb17_ESO wrote: »

Announcement that Apple is abandoning 32 bit apps was done A FEW YEARS AGO. Info that Mojave is to be the last system supporting 32 bit apps was made A YEAR ago. This is really more than enough time to get prepared for this move.

Yep, there is no excuse really. We use the beta period for new iOS/macOs to make sure our product works with the new OS.

alterfenixeb17_ESO wrote: »

And nobody should be forced to either give up on new OS or switch to Windows (yeah, I still remember support suggesting that as a workaround - very unprofessional).

Support suggesting that - wow - if our support people did that they would probably be fired.

aldriq

Not too worried about the launcher, to be honest... worst-case scenario they drop it and force us into Steam, which might bring us a different set of headaches, but given how cranky Bethesda's launcher has been, I don't think we'll miss it much.

FierceSam

I don’t think anyone will miss the bug infested abortion that is the ESO Mac launcher

I would assume that now there is a released beta of the new Mac OS ZOS are testing their new 64-bit launcher prior to releasing it when the Mac OS goes live.

Otherwise they should have used some of the space at their B3 wankfest to announce that they are canning the Mac as a platform..

alterfenixeb17_ESO

FierceSam wrote: »

I don’t think anyone will miss the bug infested abortion that is the ESO Mac launcher

I would assume that now there is a released beta of the new Mac OS ZOS are testing their new 64-bit launcher prior to releasing it when the Mac OS goes live.

Yes, like they have done testing of their new renderer using MoltenVK. Seriously though they had YEARS to do such rather small change and did nothing.

Callah

aldriq wrote: »

Not too worried about the launcher, to be honest... worst-case scenario they drop it and force us into Steam, which might bring us a different set of headaches, but given how cranky Bethesda's launcher has been, I don't think we'll miss it much.

Attention Please: ZOS @ZOS_SarahHecker , @ZOS_AlexTardif and @ZOS_GinaBruno

Unfortunately this would't solve the problem of updating our client since Steam uses a modified version of the ESO Launcher not their own.
Launching the game can be done with a direct link to the ESO app but once the first update drops then there would be no way of playing the game outside of using Mojave or Windows to run the update in the 32bit Launcher.
This is definitely an issue that needs to be addressed - hopefully they are on it and just testing prior to launch - but I don't think I'd bet on it :-\

alterfenixeb17_ESO

Callah wrote: »

aldriq wrote: »

Not too worried about the launcher, to be honest... worst-case scenario they drop it and force us into Steam, which might bring us a different set of headaches, but given how cranky Bethesda's launcher has been, I don't think we'll miss it much.

Attention Please: ZOS @ZOS_SarahHecker , @ZOS_AlexTardif and @ZOS_GinaBruno

Unfortunately this would't solve the problem of updating our client since Steam uses a modified version of the ESO Launcher not their own.
Launching the game can be done with a direct link to the ESO app but once the first update drops then there would be no way of playing the game outside of using Mojave or Windows to run the update in the 32bit Launcher.
This is definitely an issue that needs to be addressed - hopefully they are on it and just testing prior to launch - but I don't think I'd bet on it :-\

Needless to say that once new macOS is installed and the only way to play game is by running directly eso.app then ZOS will have to distribute new launcher.app separately this one time. Otherwise the only way to update it and play the game without any hacking will be to remove it and install one more time.

alterfenixeb17_ESO

jeroenhmg wrote: »

alterfenixeb17_ESO wrote: »

Announcement that Apple is abandoning 32 bit apps was done A FEW YEARS AGO. Info that Mojave is to be the last system supporting 32 bit apps was made A YEAR ago. This is really more than enough time to get prepared for this move.

Yep, there is no excuse really. We use the beta period for new iOS/macOs to make sure our product works with the new OS.

alterfenixeb17_ESO wrote: »

And nobody should be forced to either give up on new OS or switch to Windows (yeah, I still remember support suggesting that as a workaround - very unprofessional).

Support suggesting that - wow - if our support people did that they would probably be fired.

Yeah, they have done it during Murkmire crisis.

demerdecanswrath

Let's hope for the best on macOS Catalina.

No reason to fret over it, especially since it's unreleased software. I hope there's enough time for the team to get the Mac client updated and running smoothly before early October.

alterfenixeb17_ESO

demerdecanswrath wrote: »

Let's hope for the best on macOS Catalina.

No reason to fret over it, especially since it's unreleased software. I hope there's enough time for the team to get the Mac client updated and running smoothly before early October.

There is a reason and it's called MoltenVK (how it was handled by ZOS), bugged mouse cursors (not working as intended for almost 2 years), stability issues since December - those are still there, reduced but still there.

I can completely agree on "let's hope for the best" however reality and experience of last year especially is that ZOS had issues back in a day after game launch when they actually had to rework half of the game if you compare it's state (both client quality as well as content or game mechanics) at launch with what was just after Orsinium. They had serious issues back then giving actual reasons for people to leave. And one year ago on much smaller scale but still history did repeat itself - they had pushed completely broken product to clients that basically did not work since like September til February (almost half of the year).

We'd just like to not see anything like that happening this year while history of the company sadly shows that such scenario of launcher being broken in Catalina is actually a likely one. There is nothing bad in expressing such concerns.

demerdecanswrath

alterfenixeb17_ESO wrote: »

...such scenario of launcher being broken in Catalina is actually a likely one. There is nothing bad in expressing such concerns.

Absolutely agree and we should. History also shows though, that ZeniMax Online Studios rarely finds 1 minute of drafting a small forum post to manage a portion of their users' expectations a worthy investment.

The original implementation of the Mac client spanned about 10 million lines of code and took 3 years to finish (excluding all updates and improvements down the line). [source: Chris Dillman who made the original Mac client back in his ZoS days.]

I can't wait myself. For that distraction-and-bug-free rock stable client (without that cursor hell!).
It really feels like a distant hope.

It's best we wait and express the precise problem whenever and wherever we can with this client. If it feels like a long time has passed, then we have to wait a little more. And then some. Aaand then some.

Patience is our only hope. Not even ZoS themselves at this point.

alterfenixeb17_ESO

demerdecanswrath wrote: »

alterfenixeb17_ESO wrote: »

...such scenario of launcher being broken in Catalina is actually a likely one. There is nothing bad in expressing such concerns.

Absolutely agree and we should. History also shows though, that ZeniMax Online Studios rarely finds 1 minute of drafting a small forum post to manage a portion of their users' expectations a worthy investment.

The original implementation of the Mac client spanned about 10 million lines of code and took 3 years to finish (excluding all updates and improvements down the line). [source: Chris Dillman who made the original Mac client back in his ZoS days.]

I can't wait myself. For that distraction-and-bug-free rock stable client (without that cursor hell!).
It really feels like a distant hope.

It's best we wait and express the precise problem whenever and wherever we can with this client. If it feels like a long time has passed, then we have to wait a little more. And then some. Aaand then some.

Patience is our only hope. Not even ZoS themselves at this point.

Tbh yes, I have heard those numbers but they do not seem to be really legit. As a software developer myself with years of working experience in both writing software as well as managing development processes too I can tall this:

- 100 lines of quality code (thought through, tested, fixed, reviewed) per day, per developer on average is a very good result really
- with that being said one developer could produce 10 milion lines of code in about... 400 years with no holiday
- even multiplying 100 by 10 (so 1 000 lines per day) this would take 40 years. Btw bigger complexity of already established code base harder it is to add new lines without sacrificing quality
- development in 3 years would mean development in 150 weeks approximately which means about 13000 lines of code per day
- That means that realistically speaking it would take about 13 developers writing 1 000 lines of code per day to do so. Considering reviews, fixes after reviews, failing regression tests and so on this is basically next to impossible.

So basically this looks like 10 milion lines may be in fact real but including code of all shared libraries used by client and not just code introduced specifically for Mac.

Well there is one bright side about launcher. Client itself is already 64 bit for a few years. It was introduced even before 64 bit client for Windows. We are not talking here about compatibility of whole client, just the launcher:-)

morwynne

Yeah, so the client still works on Mojave, so I updated my game in Mojave, then I installed the Catalina beta on an external hard drive and migrated my Mojave account over to it. The launcher won't run on it. However I can go into the Zenimax folder, Elder Scrolls folder, game_mac folder, puplayerclient folder and run the game eso.app and it runs just fine. The fact that it will break again next time they update the game because the have no way for us Mac users to install a game update in Catalina is completely stupid.

ZOS_GinaBruno

Hi everyone, just letting you know we are working on making sure the 64-bit launcher is functional for when Catalina officially launches.

FierceSam

Please pin this

WyndStryke

The launcher (at least on PC) is not actually written by ZOS. It is a third-party launcher (written by SolidStateNetworks https://www.solidstatenetworks.com/digital-downloads/ ) which they reskin. They don't have source-code access as far as I know, so have to wait for the third party to build the 64-bit version.

ethernut60

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hi everyone, just letting you know we are working on making sure the 64-bit launcher is functional for when Catalina officially launches.

So why didn't you jump the gun a year early like you did when you destroyed the game for Mac users last year with the unusable Metal client?

BblDE3HAP

ethernut60 wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hi everyone, just letting you know we are working on making sure the 64-bit launcher is functional for when Catalina officially launches.

So why didn't you jump the gun a year early like you did when you destroyed the game for Mac users last year with the unusable Metal client?

And miss all the fun?! No! They will wait for the last day or day after, then release installer with executable without executable bit, which will use java to unpack zip in resources of self installer without any changing. You may be thinking that it is too complicated, but it is current state of things. We are downloading twice and half more data for just unzip data. Another pleasure is installer himself without execution bit. It can't be run. Deal with it.

Will it work or not we cannot say for now, but what I described is current state of things. Hopefully there will be changes.

alterfenixeb17_ESO

WyndStryke wrote: »

The launcher (at least on PC) is not actually written by ZOS. It is a third-party launcher (written by SolidStateNetworks https://www.solidstatenetworks.com/digital-downloads/ ) which they reskin. They don't have source-code access as far as I know, so have to wait for the third party to build the 64-bit version.

Launcher may be made by 3rd party but still game itself is maintain and distributed by Zenimax which makes them responsible. 3rd party company is responsible for developing it but Zenimax is responsible for making sure that no matter who develops the launcher it works for their target audience (in this case Mac players).

Voiddreams

"Hi everyone, just letting you know we are working on making sure the 64-bit launcher is functional for when Catalina officially launches."

Can we get it a month ahead to see if it breaks anything?

kenjitamura

It also looks like MoltenVK, the project being used by ZOS for the new implementation, is going to start targeting Metal 3.0 which would mean only Catalina and newer would be supported. They just released a Metal 3.0 only update but I can't tell if they plan on releasing new extensions and features for the older versions of MacOS that don't use Metal 3.0.

Coorbin

kenjitamura wrote: »

It also looks like MoltenVK, the project being used by ZOS for the new implementation, is going to start targeting Metal 3.0 which would mean only Catalina and newer would be supported. They just released a Metal 3.0 only update but I can't tell if they plan on releasing new extensions and features for the older versions of MacOS that don't use Metal 3.0.

If there's a performance speedup, I absolutely think they should go ahead with Metal 3.0 MoltenVK. However, we really have no say in whether ZOS does that or not, because they statically link MoltenVK into the ESO binary. So we have no way of "upgrading" (or downgrading) the version of MoltenVK used. If they cared they could dynamically link it so we can replace a .dylib to try out different versions of MoltenVK.

Carmina

Well, I talked to some guys at Solid State Networks, who develop the launcher. It is kinda funny. When you look at the list of apps running on a Mac, there is one single app that is 32 bit. Which of course is the launcher. Catalina will be introduced in pretty much 30 days. Until now, there is no test version, no beta, nothing.

I predict two things.

First of all, at Catalina launch, there will be no 64 bit version of the Launcher. Just because ZOS always fails to deliver. And they will fail this time, too. Prove me wrong, great. But I do not believe it.

Second, the launcher will not work. ZOS had more than a year of advance warning that 32 bit apps will not be supported in Catalina. They panicked with OpenGL, which was total ***. Now, with the real issue, they fell asleep. I wonder what is wrong with you guys.

Anyway, the folks at SSN told me that yes, it is true, ZOS wants to release a 64 bit launcher before Catalina is available.

We will see. Until now, ZOS has failed the Mac community over and over. This is either the start of a new chapter, or the continuation of a chain of failures.

C.

alterfenixeb17_ESO

Carmina wrote: »

Second, the launcher will not work. ZOS had more than a year of advance warning that 32 bit apps will not be supported in Catalina. They panicked with OpenGL, which was total ***. Now, with the real issue, they fell asleep. I wonder what is wrong with you guys.
C.

Not accurate. 5 years ago Macs were already 64 bit. All Macs capable of running the game were 64 bit and able to run 64 bit apps (talking here OS too). I also guess SSN did not deliver their product just recently which means it is likely that ZOS had even more time to adapt.

Or ofc I may be wrong here and SSN did in fact deliver it just recently and that would mean ZOS could not do much about it (well, they could provide their own solution like some other companies do)

Carmina

alterfenixeb17_ESO wrote: »

Carmina wrote: »

Second, the launcher will not work. ZOS had more than a year of advance warning that 32 bit apps will not be supported in Catalina. They panicked with OpenGL, which was total ***. Now, with the real issue, they fell asleep. I wonder what is wrong with you guys.
C.

Not accurate. 5 years ago Macs were already 64 bit. All Macs capable of running the game were 64 bit and able to run 64 bit apps (talking here OS too). I also guess SSN did not deliver their product just recently which means it is likely that ZOS had even more time to adapt.

Or ofc I may be wrong here and SSN did in fact deliver it just recently and that would mean ZOS could not do much about it (well, they could provide their own solution like some other companies do)

I know, Fenix. I was trying to be nice. It was clear all apps went 64 bit for quite some time. Just with Mojave came the popup that the launcher will not be supported in future OS's and should be updated...

From my talk with the guy at SSN I glean that SSN had a 64 bit app for quite some time. Makes sense, if that is their main app, they will upgrade it fast. So, in the end, again, it turns out that the people at ZOS failed this.

C.

alterfenixeb17_ESO

That's a surprise:-)

And also Zenimax is still working on making it 64 bit...:-) Well reinventing wheel can be time consuming:-)