Forums | MacLife

Zetetic Apparatchik wrote:

I was just going to link to your article on the matter. It's a shame, but I must admit, I don't see how the porting industry can't suffer badly from this.

Hasn't the porting industry been decreasing in size? I haven't really checked any numbers but it seems like it has.

Anyway, I pretty much figured it would be "easy" to do this eventually. I was just kind of thinking Apple wouldn't do this mostly because of their weird kind of "whatever" responses when they first announced the switch.

Now I will be able to play the windows games that I bought, but won't run on my windows box.  Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and Elderscrolls III: Morrowind.  And what about Daiblo?  It only runs on PPC, but I bet it will run under XP.  This is exciting news for me because I own a few games that I would never be able to play on the Mac that I will buy for college in the next few months, but now I can.

If this causes the Mac porting business to slip, and there's no guarantee of that since having to reboot into Windows to play games kinda sucks (ask any Linux user), then hopefully companies like Aspyr can focus more on creating new games (like Stubbs).  We also still have outfits like Ambrosia and Pangea creating original Mac games.

It will be interesting to see how well Doom 3, Quake 4, WoW and other dual-platform games run under each OS on the same hardware.

As for virtualization, I would imagine that Apple is leaving that territory for MS (new version of VPC) and VMWare, et al.  It would be difficult to get decent game performance under virtualization.  But for non-gaming use, virtualization works nicely.

I've read elsewhere people wondering about Linux support, but with X11 and Fink/DarwinPorts, why?

Hopefully Apple will be able to make performance enhancements to Leopard Server.  That, and if you're really a Linux g33k, you won't even install a GUI on a server box.  I wonder if there will be an intel version of the Xserve, or if it will be killed off.  That, and I wonder if when you go to reboot to install Windows, if Boot Camp looks for a Windows disk, or if you could slip in a Linux (or Solaris or FreeBSD, or...) instead.

id has ported Doom 3 and Quake 4 to Linux (no SMP support yet however) and UT2K4 is also available for Linux.  Unfortunately, Windows runs them better.  Mostly due to having better, more mature drivers.  Same story with the Mac really, the Mac drivers aren't as good as the ones for Windows.  It's a simple numbers game, it makes more sense for ATi and NVidia to focus their development efforts on the most-utlitized platform.  Not to mention the lack of DirectX and having to rewrite everything for OpenGL and dismal support for gaming input devices on the Mac.

Linux has a separate problem in that many Linux users are either loathe to pay for software and/or are FOSS zealots who won't run proprietary software (or use proprietary hardware drivers).  OS X is the ideal sweet spot, being able to run commercial apps alongside FOSS apps (via X11 and Fink/DarwinPorts).  Mac users aren't as anti-commercial software and are willing to pay for applications.  Even still, RedHat plans to support the intel Macs.

Last edited by robco (2006-04-05 8:05 pm)

Brad Oliver wrote:

NightCougar_37 wrote:

Unless theres gonna be some nice benefit to playing on OSX over Windows then a lot of ppl are gonna have to change jobs coming up .

I disagree.

There aren't that many Mac game porters, so only a few of us will be looking to change jobs. ;-)

This made me smile.

And as far as native OS X games go - I think Andrew Welch of Ambrosia said it best:

I'd say the same thing that I said before re: this issue, which is that Apple is clearly doing this because they believe it will help sell more computers. Whenever Apple sells more computers, it is good for us -- people will get sick of dual-booting, and would prefer to run native games, just like Linux users prefer native games

I've already read about a dozen PC users who bought MacBooks today.  In a little while, we'll have Intel iBooks, plus the prospect of dual-booting for the fence sitters.  There's gonna be a whole lot of units shipped this year.  And that means more Mac users who will want to play MAC GAMES.

Yeah, I think this is going to be a nice "training wheels" approach to selling hardware. Once they got the hardware people will inevitably start using OS X since it is more secure and stuff.

And about the original games comment: we already do have a lot of original games. Those games also tend to be of pretty high quality (the Escape Velocity series, for instance, as well as all the Pangea games).

I think the best we can hope for this is that porting moves to in house again as the marketshare increases.

akb825 wrote:

Gaming performance seems to be rather good. I'm not sure, but is Far Cry OpenGL? They might have good OpenGL drivers, but bad DirectX drivers at the moment.

It has both, but DX works better under Windows.

This looks to be pretty much the death (over time) of AAA, hardware-intense, hardcore gamers' games for the Mac. It's good for Apple, good for Mac gamers that aren't allergic to Windows, but bad for the major porting houses... iMacs won't compete with powerful PCs for performance, but games like Rome: Total War and the like are quite playable according to early Bootcamp adopters. (Pending seeing just how this plays out over time, I do retract my optimism for a Mac Halo 2, as playing the Vista version under Vista on a Tower should be possible, and it would be no easy, quick port job).

(And reef, you know it's a bit of an exaggeration to say every Win game... but yes, most will install and run under XP. Some lose a bit of functionality and/or require use of XP's compatibility modes, but I got an old copy of Marathon 2 for '95 [DirectX 2!] running on XP years ago. Most should be possible with a little Windows knowledge).

Casual Mac gaming, actually the bulk of sales Mac game sales, should go on as before- but I think the days of a CoD2 or Quake 4 being ported are drawing to a close as the Intel install base grows. Too many hardcore gamers will want to run Half-Life 2 and all the other games that never did or would have come over. The conceit that 'all the good games get to Mac anyway' just isn't, has never really, been true, and now Mac gamers will actually look in the aisles at Best Buy etc. and find out. (Hmm... $10 for Painkiller in a JC Ed.? Worth a shot).

Because he should have posted it here:

ukimalefu wrote:

http://www.insidemacgames.com/news/story.php?ID=13177

Half-Life 2 on an Intel iMac. (Scroll to the bottom.)

And of course I was exaggerating, Bat. I couldn't claim "every" anything without alarming at least one pedant.

Bat wrote:

...altho it remains to be seen how far Apple will go in the way of specialized gaming hardware like videocards- an X1900XTX can draw up to 120w on its own and needs a 6-pin aux power connector. And I doubt you'll get, say, a Creative X-Fi card in a Mac.

I agree.  Hardcore gamers will never switch.  But for folks who want iLife, Final Cut Studio, etc. and don't want to have a separate gaming machine, the option to get decent performance from games is nice.  I'm sure the Quadro FX 4500 in the G5 draws plenty of power.  If Apple wants to get serious about making workstations, they're going to have to make allowances for high end cards.  It would be nice if ATi and NVidia could release cards that work with both platforms, but with only the towers having expansion capabilities, it doesn't make much sense right now.  If Apple released a reasonably priced "prosumer" machine with a PCIe slot, that might help.

Bat wrote:

Stubbs was basically Wideload's baby, with input and feedback from Aspyr (not to minimize their contribution). (Stubbs' OpenAL implementation on Windows was optimized for X-Fi, according to Glenda, with Creative's cooperation).

That's true with most developers.  LucasArts doesn't develop their own titles in-house either.  Nor does MS, Sierra, etc.  Most games are collaborative efforts.

Bat wrote:

Btw, MS is working on that sort of thing too.

Microsoft To Support Virtualized Linux

Yes, they are.    Mostly it's for servers however.

The delay and money issue doesn't help either.  Take Quake 4 for example.  It's just now shipping for the Mac.  It will be around $50.  I can already purchase the Windows version for $20.  Even those who really want to support games on the Mac will find it hard to pay 2.5x for a Mac version.

reefdog wrote:

All I'm waiting for is the next announcement, that the Leopard version will allow VirtualPC-like simultaneous running, and I'll by crying like a baby again.

Well, it's not built-in to Leopard, but I'm crying nonetheless. This is a great day for web devs.

Oh, and gamers, too.

Last edited by reefdog (2006-04-06 10:11 am)

/me Calls FBI, drops Books' name, waits for reward.