MacOS Client Development

LaucianNailor

On the basis that a number of questions and issues regarding the MacOS client have gone unanswered for some time; it appears as if Chris Dillman left Zenimax in March.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_GinaBruno can you confirm who is or if in fact you have a Mac developer onboard and whether they intend to connect with the (Mac) community to discuss the ongoing improvement of the client i.e. Identified issues/bugs, graphics issues (textures specific), memory management, etc.

Many thanks

SirAndy

So they had 1 (one!) Mac developer and he left in March?

Auricle

I too would really like to know this. It makes me worry when so many MacOS questions go unanswered. :<

KhajitFurTrader

Chris has left? Is this conjecture on your part, @LaucianNailor, or do you have anything substantial to support your hypothesis? Absence of evidence (both ways) isn't evidence of absence...

Anyhow, I sincerely doubt that Chris is the only Mac coder on the team. Given the update cycle of the game, and the fact that employees do have vacation/sick leave time at least sometimes, project management would go haywire if development of one part of the code base would depend on a single person.

As far as I've come to know the industry over the past decade, developers, especially coders, are not necessarily encouraged to publicly participate in forums, and it's by no means made mandatory by policy in most companies. It's the explicit job of community managers to communicate with the crowd and to both be a conduit and a needed filter between customers and the different development teams. There are good and proven reasons for things being handled this way.

Sure, it's nice to have someone (among others) on the team who is responsible for a certain aspect of the game, who "dares" venture into the forums and makes time to talk shop (often enough in his/her free time, as this activity usually isn't viewed to be a regular part of their work schedule) and maybe giving deeper insight into the development process while being at it. But that is -- more often than not -- plain luck on our (the customer's) part, which cannot (and shouldn't) be taken for granted.

How many patches and DLCs had been released since March (or any other arbitrarily chosen point in time)? Did any new stuff or improvements also get released for the Mac client? I think the obvious answer to that is yes. I see absolutely no reason to doubt that this will continue in the future.

LaucianNailor

@KhajitFurTrader I don't have time for speculation, so instead looked up Chris' Linked-In profile to try to understand why all appeared to have 'gone quiet' that's where my March date appeared verified/evidenced btw.

Edit: should have added that there are some issues that have prompted good questions in this forum and you know from your own experience that Chris would drop in (I believe he/someone also occasionally dropped in the MacRumours gaming form), so the complete lack of anything from him started to 'itch my concerned spot' to the point I wanted to find out a little more.

Alucardo

Hopefully it's because they are putting development into porting the client to Linux. Hey, one can dream

KhajitFurTrader

LaucianNailor wrote: »

@KhajitFurTrader I don't have time for speculation, so instead looked up Chris' Linked-In profile to try to understand why all appeared to have 'gone quiet'

And what's the picture there? I don't have time for social networks and all this newfangled stuff.

I've noticed that Chris had gone quiet on the Mac forum, as did PM conversations I had with him. If he's moved on, I wish him all the best.

Edit: I just saw he did. Went "back to his roots", good for him! But I'm not in the least concerned about the continued development of the ESO Mac client. Chris has brought great stuff on the way, set it up for the future with 64-bit code and OpenGL 4.1. I shall miss his informed conversations.

LaucianNailor

KhajitFurTrader wrote: »

Chris has brought great stuff on the way, set it up for the future with 64-bit code and OpenGL 4.1. I shall miss his informed conversations.

Have to agree here and would like to see this continue, hence really the point of my starting this thread. There is an uncomfortable truth to these forums in simply being quiet and ignoring issues in the hope they won't be noticed by the players or will be forgotten over time. That's never been the reality of the commercial environment I worked in for nearly forty years and is a recipe for mistrust at best and disaster at worst.

As you say, Chris created a good foundation, we need confirmation someone is now building on this.

JJBoomer

makes me wonder if what happened with STO will happen here and mac development/support will cease in the near future.

KhajitFurTrader

JJBoomer wrote: »

makes me wonder if what happened with STO will happen here and mac development/support will cease in the near future.

After they've went through the recent trouble of developing an OpenGL 4.1 rendering engine and bringing the code up to 64-bit?