Slashdot Mirror

You might be interested in iPartition. It's not free, but it's more flexible than /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility. There are others, but this is the only one that quickly comes to mind. Don't bother asking Powerquest/Symantic to make a Mac version of Partiton Magic, ports of existing Windows utilities generally suck on other platforms.
http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iPartition.php

As for other Mac Applications, there are several websites you can check out for various Mac apps. I have never found a shortage of Mac (or Linux) applications, once I avoided the pitfall of finding a "port" or "perfect replacement" for my favorite Windows applications. Things are a little different in the Mac and Linux world, so you might need to find similar, but significantly different applications to meet your needs.

Check out:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/
http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/
http://www.macorchard.com/
http://www.macupdate.com/
And if you want games:
http://aspyr.com/product/product_listing
http://www.destineerstudios.com/macsoftgames/mac_l isting.html
http://www.feral.co.uk/
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/all.html
http://www.pangeasoft.net/index2.html
http://www.freeverse.com/
http://www.apple.com/games/
http://www.macgamefiles.com/

Uh, no. iTunes will refuse to convert anything that was purchased from iTMS to MP3. You will get an error message. The only way to do this is to either burn a CD and then rip the tracks back as MP3, or do what I do, which is use a little program called WireTap that writes all audio output of the computer to an AIFF file, and then use iTunes to rip that file to MP3.

It's a bit time consuming, but well worth the removal of the DRM.

Eat seaweed, fish breath!

Hmm, like this one for sure. Heck, these days 85% of my software was either bundled, freeware, or shareware. The rest is stuff like Photoshop and some games from Blizzard or Aspyr.

Try EV Nova. It's basically one-player EVE Online.

True. I have recently bought a game, more or less the first time in well over a year. It's an independent title, or at least the publisher isn't a soulless megacorporation. I found the game (the Mac version of Escape Velocity Nova) when my IBM Compatible's system drive went the way of the eight-figure disgnostic code (PowerMax users might know what I'm talking about) and I was stuck with just my iBook for a couple days. Since reinstalling Gentoo Linux involves long periods of waiting I decided to hunt for Mac games to play while waiting for the next unstable package's compilation to unexpectedly fail. The EV Nova demo hooked me with a great plot string (of which there are six and I happened to stumble across the most involving one right away) - I bought the game just to finish that one string. Okay, and for the other ones and for the plugin support, but the Vell-os string alone was worth the thirty US bucks to me.

I don't care much about big titles anymore. Firstly, most are Win-only and booting into Windows isn't really worth the hassle (plus, the Windows Setup CD seems to dislike my hardware)* and secondly, independent games tend to be more interesting - either due to more innovation or just because they don't rush their product out the door to meet that pre-christmas deadline.
Between StepMania (OSS for the win!), EV Nova and the Jets'n'Guns demo (soon to be bought) my iBook has become the gaming machine. The only thing that contests Apple's utter domination of my gaming life is the fact that ePSXe and Dosbox run better on the IBM.


* Yes, I know about Cedega. But still, for some games there isn't much you can do besides booting into Windows.

But it is true that most mainstream games are either really shallow or have a plot you just don't care about. However, a game that tells a captivating story is one that you might want to replay later just to experience the story again.

For example, I'm going to buy Escape Velocity Nova, not because I'm such a big fan of Elite clones but because in the demo I played halfway through the Vell-os storyline and I want to get that mind-control device out of my pilot's spine and then get back at the Federation. I'm not thinking in terms of "by getting rid of the device I can advance in the game", I'm thinking in terms of "just wait until I can free myself (and hopefully the Vell-os) and Fucking Kill(TM) you assholes". I want to get back at them. I am pissed about how they used me to hurt their enemies (getting those enemies to hate me in the process). That kind of passion is pretty rare with games; I usually reserve it for good books or movies.
Without the storylines (and modability; I love modding) EV Nova would definitely not be worth thirty US bucks to me. But I am willing to spend the money on a game that does such a good job at storytelling. The fact that I want to Summer Bloom the shit out of Commander Krane also plays into that.


When I think about truly good games with high replay value I usually think about games with a good story (off the top of my head: Fallout 1/2, X-Com 1 to 3, Final Fantasy Tactics (NOT Advance), most LucasArts games before Monkey Island 4, the Marathon series...); games that are great without a decent story usually are so because of great modability (Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 Arena). The few games that have neither invariably have outstanding gameplay (Gunbound, the 2D Metroid games (Fusion even has a half-decently told story)).

A brilliant story might not be the best way to drive sales, but it is an excellent way of increasing replay value. If graphics really would become self-upgrading and more developers would focus on things like immersion that goes beyond the visual/acoustic level we'd probably see more memorable games.


Let's see... Presenting the name of the game, check. Linking to the game's website, check. Telling the price, check. Praising the game while giving away teaser-sized parts of the plot, check.
Getting paid for what amounts to a Slashvertisement... un-check. Damn.

Here's the full list: http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/all.html

IMO two of the best indie games ever: Harry the Handsome Executive and the EV series. Sadly both are Mac OS 9.x or less (though "EV Nova" is Mac OS X/WIN compatible).

IMO two of the best indie games ever: Harry the Handsome Executive and the EV series. Sadly both are Mac OS 9.x or less (though "EV Nova" is Mac OS X/WIN compatible).

I'm an anomaly, but I learned a great deal about how to write well through online discussion boards.

Through daily participation the boards at http://www.ambrosiasw.com/ I probably wrote in excess of 200 pages and read in excess of 2000 pages in one summer.

Another thing that I considered very useful in my english classes was conferencing every paper. First the teachers would mark everything they found wrong in a paper, and then have a 15 minute conference with me for us to work out the differences and for me to understand my mistakes (or to defend my original decision sucessfully).

Furthermore, in 5th grade I had a spelling textbook. My homework involved copying about 80 words a week with the correct spelling. Over the entire year, that is over 3000 words spelled correctly, with some repetition. Some people will remember this sort of training, and some will forget it promptly. I tend to be of the remembering type. My elementary school also did a thing called "Daily Oral Language (DOL)" to flesh out grammar rules. I didn't forget too much of it.

One might also wonder why the description of this "new" virus sounds just like the 2+ months old Oompa-Loompa.

Anonymous Coward: The advisory is from 9 days ago.

It's a reheat of something from early February, as shown on this forum. I thought the 'experts' complained that Apple should have had it patched in that time. If you give an admin password to look at pictures, you don't deserve admin priveleges.

Serious threats to OS X users still pending, more at eleven...

was elite even available on the BBC Micro? The one I'm thinking of was actually a 2D game, more similar to Escape Velocity (http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/evn/ is the sequel) (which I also thought was a great game, and I guess could be better than the one I'm thinking of through my rose-tinted spectacles).

EV still exists and is still a lot of fun. The latest version runs on Windows as well as OS 9 and OS X.

The only way we're going to advance space travel is for private competition to take over. How far ahead could we have been if the government hadn't been monopolizing space travel? The future is probably going to look more than Escape Velocity than Star Trek...

It would, if Admin users didn't still need to enter their password and authorize the iChat trojan.

It seems like of the games listed, the majority are straight clones of existing games, and three are heavily genre pieces.

Indie games have to be bastions of originality! We need you guys to incubate the weird and wonderful ideas, like Facade, Dada, stagnation in blue, and most everything this guy does. Heck, subspace is still an original indie game, even though it spawned a ton of clones and fell into obscurity. Puzzle Pirates was a risky original take, and it rakes in the dough.

'come on, guys! If you think it is hard now, try creating original ideas and gameplay with a 100 toothbrush salesmen and bankers breathing down your neck. This is your time to shine. This is your proving grounds. Sure, Ambrosia has seen success through polish over originality, but where is the soul in that?*

*Note: I actually really like Ambrosia. I still think Chiral is one of the best puzzle games ever made.

The malware in question does infect applications, changing several parameters and attempting to cause itself to be loaded when they are run (although a bug prevents this from working).

Interestingly enough, you're right. From Ambrosia: It then copies the application executable to its own resource fork, and replaces the application executable with the OSX/Oomp-A trojan

That doesn't work eventually, but it actually does try to infect other applications.

Is it true that if you're running under the admin account, you won't get the admin password prompt? Some in the thread you linked to say so.

Most private (not lab) Macs I've dealt with are running under the admin account most of the time, and getting someone to double-click on what they think is a picture would be a pretty easy - especially since Mac users are fairly confident about the safety of their machines, and consider images 'safe.'

It's not a virus, but if it's true that the admin account won't get a password prompt, I think this could trick quite a few people easily.

Right-click -> 'Open with Preview' from now on?

There's this thing called reading the article... oh, right.

It's a "JPEG" because the author was clever enough to paste the icon of a JPEG onto the executable.
If the user is root, or possibly admin, the script writes files in /Library/InputManagers. If you aren't it does the same in the user Library.
No kit, just a prompt.

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/forums/index.php?showtop ic=102379 as linked from MacRumors has a really good writeup on what is going on.

Note the following from http://www.ambrosiasw.com/forums/index.php?showtop ic=102379 :

You cannot be infected by this unless you do all of the following:

1) Are somehow sent (via email, iChat, etc.) or download the "latestpics.tgz" file

2) Double-click on the file to decompress it

3) Double-click on the resulting file to "open" it ...and then for most users, you must also enter your Admin password.

You cannot simply "catch" the virus. Even if someone does send you the "latestpics.tgz" file, you cannot be infected unless you unarchive the file, and then open it.

Why not, for example, a space exploration game -- concentrating on the science, economics, and logistics involved, instead of the usual shoot-the-evil-green-aliens theme?

Give Escape Velocity Nova a try, if you haven't already. It's available for Windows and MacOS and it's quite entertaining. It may not have the depth you're looking for, but it's extremely freeform for a modern game - you can be a trader, a raider, a transporter, a diplomat... sure there's combat involved, but it's more along the lines of Asteroids than Doom. I find the game highly enjoyable - it's the first piece of shareware I actually payed money for!

word up to that, i've always wanted a sequel to harry the handsome executive!
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/harry/

Well except that Unity can be used to develop actual games. I don't know about Blender RT, but I haven't seen any finished games done using it.

Btw Blender is mainly a 3D modeller, Unity is a 3D game development environment... you can use blender to create the 3D assets and import them into Unity. There is a tiny overlap between the two but the main focus of each product is vastly different.

1. In my experience? City of Heroes. There's no rat-killing, and you begin with super powers. 2. I only know of a well-done singleplayer game, but it's soooo fucking good. Escape Velocity: Nova

That's exactly the problem with Dashboard though ... it's too tempting to approach it as "let's load it up with all types of crazy widgets!". By doing that, you make it less functional. (Takes longer to switch to them when you've got a whole screen full of them, etc.)

Certain Dashboard widgets *can* change the way you work, but only when you select the right ones, and eliminate the rest!

For example, Ambrosia Software makes a free widget for easily printing addresses on envelopes (http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/easyenvelopes /). That's something I occasionally need to do, and it's something you don't really want to load up a whole word processing package for.

I find the weather widget handy too. It lets me get the forecast on a whim, while not constantly running and eating resources when I don't need it. Sure, you can visit a web site to get the same info - but a widget is faster and always saves your preferences. (Web sites usually rely on cookies that you might clear out of your browser cache.)

Perhaps the "analog hole" applies to video as well.

If you're on a Mac, buy yourself the full version--as in the video-capture version--of Snapz Pro X. Open Quicktime and watch the show, while Snapz captures the video to MPEG. You'll be left with a very large file, but at least it should be DRM-less.

I have not tried this yet, so I'm not certain it will work, but it's worth a shot. Does anyone else who has a similar utility (Mac or Windows) want to try this and report as to its success/failure?

Why would high production budgets be the anthesis of gaming? By their very nature of being basically fixed development, free reproduction, hudge budgets are to be expected. Besides, a year's worth of Star Trek TNG cost in the 8 figures, why would a year's worth of game development be any different?

BTW, with very specific exceptions when you put your game out to the worldwide development community you get crap. Even Art and music resources will need to be edited the heck out to get them to fit with your game in a way that a local artist would just know. Sure, you might find a cohesive, great group in the middle of nowhere ready to create an awesome interactive experience, but then you haven't moved to the Bazaar, you're just moved the Cathedral. Aesthetic experiences are difficult to create and require high team cohesion, great forward planning, and lots of focused revisions. Generally, outsourced software does not provide a great aesthetic experience.

And freed from the shackles of megabuck production costs and the time-to-market issues that they create, I have no doubt that novelty in games will start to flourish again.

There is nothing stopping what you describe now, and in fact shareware developers have been doing just that for years. Many people do independent game development, and some of them hit it big. Some of them do it overseas. Some of them make a living from it, or facilitating others. It hasn't torn down the cathedral, because some people really just want to play a football game with super realism. Or the year's most massive RPG. And yet the little guys have been surviving for years in this market.

I don't think time-to-market is as big a deal as people make it out to be. The world, and the market, won't be that different in two years. It certainly wasn't that different two years ago.

Nice imagery in your post though.

I struggle to see the effectiveness of DRM of this kind - if I can listen to the track on my hi-fi I can connect my sound card to line out consequently rip the track and place it on p2p. There may a little additional noise on the track, but if you're willing to listen to an mp3, you probably wont mind :). If I can listen to the track on my mac, I can use wiretap to capture the audio and convert it to the format of my choice. The time consuming nature of these procedures may stop many casual users from uploading p2p files, but for a popular track (the sort that the record labels are trying to protect) we can expect at least one person to be suitably determined rip the track in these ways, place it on p2p and then wide spread swapping will begin...

please correct me if I have misunderstood the nature of this problem

Now that's news!

A solid innovative product that people actually want to buy helps a company turn a profit!

Now if only the rest of the gaming industry (I'm talking to you, EA!) would catch up, we might be able to escape the FPS monotony we've fallen into.

It seems that the popularity of a game is solely determined by the level of hype surrounding it. Halo specifically comes to mind. I'll concede that it's a solid FPS, but the level of hype surrounding the launch of Halo 2 was obscene.

I'm sorry, but there are just so many things about the gaming industry that irritate me. The companies. Overinflated prices. Overinflated gamer egos. Lack of innovation. Hype. Obscene system requirements.....

Here's what I've been playing in the past year:
-More SNES/N64 games than you can shake a stick at. I'll probably buy a gamecube because Nintendo's games seem to have the greatest degree of innovation/replayability right now (and yet they're the least popular, go figure)
-Liero (hailing all the way from 1993)
-All of these downright bizarre arcade-style shooters that are strangely addictive
-Wulfram. One of the first good online games back from 2000. It's finally being actively developed once again...
-Darwinia. Another great non-photorealistic game. (Could be better to tell the truth, but a solid game nonetheless)
-Escape Velocity Series -- they've been around forever for the mac. A few have been ported to Windows. Go see what the PC world has been missing out on for over a decade!
-Freespace 2 -- One of the best space shooters ever made. Period. Made by a major studio, but enjoyed little commercial success. I can't even begin to fathom why....

Mac OS X distributor is Ambrosia software.

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/darwinia/

Diehard community with interesting chat and they also made EV and Barrck, two favorite time wasters of lore.

To summarise the distribution methods which will be available once the Steam version is up and running:

Windows: you can purchase a boxed version which will be sent to you by post at the Introversion online store; alternatively you will be able to buy a download-only version over Steam.

Linux (x86): you can purchase the boxed version (which includes an HTTP download version), again at the Introversion online store. No change here.

Mac: you can download a limited version and purchase a license key at Ambrosia Software's online store. It's effectively the shareware distribution model here - there's no separate demo as far as I'm aware. No change here either.

AmigaOS, CP/M, Sinclair Spectrum: it would appear these luddites will have to get stuffed. Sorry. No change here!

Actually, the specialized skills you mention being needed for a game are available in programmer "collectives" like Ambrosia (see my post to parent).

So if you have a great idea for a game, but need others skills, you can probably find people willing to help in collectives like these. Or make one of your own.

These guys aren't billionaires, but they say they make a very nice life, and have fun at it.

$9.99 for some Tetris ripoff, which originally debuted for $19.99 a year previous.

$29.99 for an innovative game with low production costs, but never goes down in price.

$20.00 for a classic game that's more than 5 years old.

I'm talking Ambrosia, I'm talking PopCap, I'm talking Spiderweb. It is usually cheaper to buy regular "game-industry" games, if you can stand to wait a month for it to fall into the bargain bin.

Yea, some of them will be the wave of the future. And some will always remain outside the mainstream, where they want to be, admired by those w/ (the?) taste.

Long before Manifesto has been Ambrosia. They make lots of fun games, and have a real cult following for Escape Velocity. And this programmer-controlled company has workers who really seem to enjoy doing what they do.

Yea, some of them will be the wave of the future. And some will always remain outside the mainstream, where they want to be, admired by those w/ (the?) taste.

Long before Manifesto has been Ambrosia. They make lots of fun games, and have a real cult following for Escape Velocity. And this programmer-controlled company has workers who really seem to enjoy doing what they do.

Yea, some of them will be the wave of the future. And some will always remain outside the mainstream, where they want to be, admired by those w/ (the?) taste.

Long before Manifesto has been Ambrosia. They make lots of fun games, and have a real cult following for Escape Velocity. And this programmer-controlled company has workers who really seem to enjoy doing what they do.

Since it was made on a mac, my guess is Snapz Pro X.

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/

like Ambrosia. They have Darwinia listed. I think I will snub my nose at the "Big" publishers that lack the stones to give a game like this a shot. So my advice to all of you out there. Go to small shops like Ambrosia and others like them. Buy from them and show your support for creativity.

Maybe they haven't found distribution for their Windows version... but I got the Max OS X version of Darwinia two months ago from Ambrosia Software.

Have you tried Escape Velocity: Nova from Ambrosia Software? It's a pretty worthy successor, and moddable to boot.

Did anyone else notice the Kestrel from Ambrosia Software's Escape Velocity in the background in the trailer? No? Oh, well.

I had many fond memories of playing Oregon Trail on Apple //e computers in elementary school and Maelstrom in college.

Thankfully, Apple //e emulators are available today and the makers of Maelstrom have a free OS X version of Maelstrom as a free download from their site.

The Home of the Underdogs site has a *massive* list of games (810 at time of writing the article) for older systems and Classic. It's an abandonware site - you won't find Escape Velocity, since Ambrosia still parent that (fetch that from the Ambrosia website instead) but you'll find a heck of a lot of other cool stuff. And you'll get some startling revelations such as, for example, a game like Populous 2 - granted not hugely complicated, but there's a heck of a lot of stuff in there - takes a mere 2.6MB of space, which compresses to 1.6MB. Most items are bigger than that these days. The save file is a whopping 238 bytes. Wow.

Anyway, a good list of games that bring back memories. Enjoy!

I used to crank out my old Mac for that very same reason, but now you can play on Windows boxes: http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/evn/ . It's EV Nova, but its pretty much the same as the original, even a little better.

Check out The Coldstone Game Engine. It's an APE for game design. Works on both Mac and Windows.

A caramel mocha frappuchino is not coffee, and it should not be called as such.

Ah, but what about the tobaccocino? Surely it must be real coffee.

• MacSoft
  
• Aspry (Scroll Down to find list)
  
• Feral Interactive
  
• Freeverse
  
• Ambrosia
  
• Pangea
  
• Blizzard
  
• United States Army

• MacGameFiles
  
• Apple: Games

Ambrosia Software has a wonderful series called Escape Velocity. Escape Velocity Nova was the first one ported to Windows. It's wonderful because it saves every time you visit a planet (which is about every 1-2 minutes). It'll run on anything.