EVEmac: Design for API App

I play EVE on a Mac. While I am extremely appreciative of CCP taking efforts to make the game playable on OS X, there’s still a long list of reasons why Mac capsuleers are at a disadvantage to their Windows counterparts, aside from the awkwardness inherent in a ported game. A majority of the disadvantage I see actually exists outside of the game itself, and has to do with those staple third-party programs most pod pilots take for granted: the EVEmons and EVEHQs of the ‘verse that just don’t have Mac development.

Now, I realize that it is only a very small portion of the EVE community that plays on a Mac, and I’m not putting fault on any party here. The fact is, because there isn’t a wide base of Mac players, there isn’t a wide community of programmers available to tackle native API driven software. That’s just how it goes.

But a man can dream. And ever since I started playing EVE I have dreamed of a truly native Mac API program that doesn’t rely on Wine or any other strange hackery. I’ve wished for an app that takes the beauty of the OS X aesthetic and runs with it. The iTunes of EVE apps, if you will (say it, “yes, yes I will”).

Then I stumbled upon this post in the EVE mac forums. A kind fellow named Flammard has taken it upon himself to build such a program, and as far as I can tell he’s gotten farther than any attempt I can find before it. So, being the “sure I’ll do it for free” designer I’ve been lately, I contacted him a few months ago and offered to help him from the design side.

He admitted that design may not be a priority for a while, since he’s still working to build the functionality, and rightly so. But I couldn’t help myself, so I spent a few days mocking up my dream OS X EVE API app (mmm…acronym soup), if nothing else than to give him a little aesthetic and user-experience guidance, which he was really appreciative of.

So it has been under wraps for a while, but I figured I may as well share the mockups with the community and get some reactions. I’m holding myself to standards set by Capsuleer, of course, in which Roc has done an immaculate job merging the right dose of EVE with the simplicity of Mac design.

Without further adieu, I present vaporware in its fullest, EVEmac:

I’ve only rolled out a small sampling of a few screens, but hinting at what other future functionality could possibly be. I have also shared these designs with the Capsuleer crew, and it kicked off a good discussion on how this might influence future Capsuleer releases! We’ll have to see what the future holds, but I’ve made it clear to PyjamaSam and Roc that these designs are practically theirs already, since I was so directly influenced by their program.

While Flammard has expressed that he wants to take his API program to this direction eventually, I’m not holden to any one developer. If anyone is secretly a kick-ass Mac programmer and is so inspired to run with my design, please do contact me.

Otherwise, I hope this is a little eye-candy for Mac users out there. We can dream, together.