Slashdot Mirror

Actually the entire problem with Macintosh Steam is ASPYR Media. Those asshats want to run their own shitty web based store and aren't allowing Steam to publish any of their native ports. Since Most companies port to Mac through ASPYR they have the Mac market by the Balls.

Aspyr's catalogue is pretty small. I seriously doubt that these ~30 games make or break gaming on Mac.

My wife's Mac just recently broke her only game (Sims 2) because of an Apple update. She updated Quicktime (we think) and that completely broke Aspyr's version of the Sims 2. http://support.aspyr.com/ "We are aware of the issues arising with the latest QuickTime update in 10.4.11 and are working with Apple to get it resolved. Please bear with us as we work with Apple to find the source of and fix for this problem." Yeah, nice work there Apple. What's next?

I don't think a game porting company is a viable business model. I don't actually do game development, but let me start with what I know...

Until you have to start thinking about consoles. Don't the PS3 and the Wii both have some sort of GL implementation available, even if it's not their best API?

...but there are a couple of open alternatives -- some "open" as in "BSD license", so they can be included in commercial games.

Is that across all windowed 3D, or only windowed GL? Because windowed GL would have to run with some OpenGL wrapper around Direct3D, if I understand it right -- you can't actually run both at once, and Aero itself is Direct3D

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/

The place to look for Mac ports of EA games (such as Battlefield 1942, for example) is aspyr , not EA.

Mod parent down. EA may not port it's games to mac by itself, but Aspyr sure does. You'll notice Will Wright's previous big project at EA, The Sims 2, on the front page. It's even a universal binary, for those with intel processors.

As soon as Spore hits the Mac, I'll get it.

Mod parent down. EA may not port it's games to mac by itself, but Aspyr sure does. You'll notice Will Wright's previous big project at EA, The Sims 2, on the front page. It's even a universal binary, for those with intel processors.

As soon as Spore hits the Mac, I'll get it.

I personally have well 50 different CD/DVD based games for Mac OS X sitting on my shelf...

http://guide.apple.com/uscategories/games_us.lasso
http://www.apple.com/games/articles/

http://www.aspyr.com/games.php/mac/complete/
http://www.macsoftgames.com/navpages/games/MacSoft -Game-Page.html
http://www.feralinteractive.com/?section=support&l anguage=english

If you want to be able to play the latest and most popular games guess which OS you better be running?

Guess the percentage of Windows apps can be found for a Mac? If you guess 50 you are being way too optomistic

What's really sad is that this new Mac can't even handle Civilization IV.

Here ya go BodhiCat.

http://www.aspyr.com/games.php/mac/complete/

http://www.aspyr.com/games.php/mac/ccg/

Frustrated in Florida I'm mac-less on the space-coast. Also Frustrated less. Coincedence?

Here ya go BodhiCat.

http://www.aspyr.com/games.php/mac/complete/

http://www.aspyr.com/games.php/mac/ccg/

Frustrated in Florida I'm mac-less on the space-coast. Also Frustrated less. Coincedence?

Just a couple of handy links with regard to Mac gaming:

    - http://www.apple.com/games/
    - http://www.insidemacgames.com/
    - http://www.aspyr.com/
    - http:///

The Mac port of Civ IV comes out this month, but it's system requirements are pretty crazy!

If you meant Battlefield 1942, then there is a solution to avoid the need to use Boot Camp: Battlefield 1942 for Mac. Aspyr has ported plenty of good games to the Mac. If you have a Mac and play games, then I would recommend supporting these guys, since the do a good job porting the games.

Contrast Microsoft's utility with the Aspyr Game Agent, which does approximately the same thing but is a self-contained application that doesn't require a specific browser to work. And it's gone through numerous revisions for new games.

Granted, it only works on certain uncool systems, and only compares the system against the requirements for the one manufacturer/developer house, but it still seems like they have a more elegant solution.

How? (serious question).
Do you keep a blog somewhere?

It doesn't look like Aspyr's status page tracks ongoing progress.

"b) There will be less programming challenges in porting games."

Why should this be? The underlying structure of Mac OS X is vastly different to Windows and this will not change with Apple using x86 hardware. Also, as it is likely that few games are written in assembly (which could cause a few headaches in porting from x86 to ppc) it will be no easier to port much of the non-graphics code. Admittedly, vectorized functions (Using MMX, SSE etc) will be easier to port, but there is still the matter of the Mac OS X windowing system and Quartz as well as replacing DirectX library functions with ones from OpenGL (or perhaps CoreImage in some cases) .

This is not trivial, and poses one of the largest challenges in porting a game.

But it can be done, and a profit made, take a look at Aspyr et al.

IMHO, the change in architecture will not have dramatic effects on gaming (although we should see faster graphics cards, and better optimization) apart an increased market share, which should result in more games being ported.

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

• MacGameFiles
  
• Apple: Games

Umm....

No?

BZZT! Bad troll, no cookie!

There's plenty of games in OSX, even newer ones like WoW. There's just no great GPUs because Apple is retarded when it comes to GPUs.

Why can't computer games just run from a disc?

Why can't computer games just run from a disc?

It may be cheap and sexy, but it's hard to find apps for. Best Buy, for example, carries no Mac software.

Actually, my local Best Buy does carry some Mac software titles. Heck, even the Best Buy (Canada) website has a Macintosh software section (a quick search of the US webstore likewise brings up some Apple software titles).

No Games. Sorry.

No need to appologise for your ignorance. Now if you had said that the Mac has fewer games, I'd have to grant you that. But to say there are no games? How about Halo? Or how about Rise of Nations? Or what about Unreal Tournement 2004? Age of Empires II? Age of Mythology? Civilization III? Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic? And let's not forget Doom 3 (currently available for pre-order). And a whole lot more.

If there are two things that characterize gaming on Mac OS X, it's that typically the games come out later on OSX than on Windows, and that there isn't the sheer mass of games available as there is on Windows. Still, that is a long way from "no" games -- typically all the best games from the Windows world make their way to the Mac OS X world in short order.

Yaz.

It may be cheap and sexy, but it's hard to find apps for. Best Buy, for example, carries no Mac software.

Actually, my local Best Buy does carry some Mac software titles. Heck, even the Best Buy (Canada) website has a Macintosh software section (a quick search of the US webstore likewise brings up some Apple software titles).

No Games. Sorry.

No need to appologise for your ignorance. Now if you had said that the Mac has fewer games, I'd have to grant you that. But to say there are no games? How about Halo? Or how about Rise of Nations? Or what about Unreal Tournement 2004? Age of Empires II? Age of Mythology? Civilization III? Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic? And let's not forget Doom 3 (currently available for pre-order). And a whole lot more.

If there are two things that characterize gaming on Mac OS X, it's that typically the games come out later on OSX than on Windows, and that there isn't the sheer mass of games available as there is on Windows. Still, that is a long way from "no" games -- typically all the best games from the Windows world make their way to the Mac OS X world in short order.

Yaz.

Granted, the CPU is less likely to be a concern, but the video RAM is a definite problem. Doom 3 is likely to crawl on the Mini because of it.

Why can't someone port the Direct3D API to Linux? This would save a lot of hassle of porting the games to OpenGL.

I don't think so. It's been almost 2 years since DirectX is available for MacOS, developed by British company Coderus. So far, no major breakthrough was achieved this way - main Macintosh game ports are done "the hard way" by companies like Aspyr Media, that's why it takes so long. Only a handful of Mac ports actually use MacDX. It's probably because when you move a game from Windows to Unix-ish environment, you still have to change so many things (Unix privileges etc.) that the 3D API is only a fraction of it.

I suspect it is the same reason iD hasn't released Doom III for the Mac, simply put the current OpenGL code cannot push that much data

iD hasn't released Doom III for the Mac yet because Aspyr is. Why iD isn't doing there own port though, is beyond me.

file sharing

game, specifically the only one your girlfriend/mother/mother in law probably cares about.
more games
games

Of course, this is kind of silly, because if you're worried about saving money you're not playing games on a PC or a Mac. "Let's see, I can buy a whole Playstation 2 with a couple of nice games for $200, or I can buy a new video card for for $200 so I can play Doom 3". PC's are excellent gaming platforms, but they are nowhere near as cost effective as any of the console systems. The games, especially when new, cost about the same (if the PC version isn't a little more expensive). It's almost cheaper to have one each of the "big three" consoles than try to keep PC hardware up to spec for playing the newest video games over any given 5 year span. PC's are also nice, open systems, so for online gaming you get access to the wide world of cheaters, where console games at least have some semblance of sofware control. PC games will look nicer, and probably be a little more of a rich experience, but as far as cost-effective, a PC is really far down.

The Windows PC can't do this, at least without buying expensive software. GarageBand comes with a new Mac, and this is also bundled into a new Mac. The ability to painlessly sync my phone and my computer's contact list is pretty valuable. And I can run most other software too, because I've got X11.

Now, admittedly there are lots of things you can't get to work on a Mac. this isn't available, neither is this, or this, or this. As a side effect, neither this nor this is available on the Mac. So, ya know, you're right, there's a lot of stuff that is much harder to do on my Mac than on my Windows PC, like being a Spambot and reporting my personal information to advertisers.

While I recognize the humor of the original post... tt's not the lack of good games:

Railroad Tycoon 3
Civ 3
Simcity 4
The Sims
Medal of Honor
Jedi Academy
Ghost Recon
Rainbow Six: Athena Sword
Splinter Cell
Halo
Neverwinter Nights

It's the speed at which they are released.

While I recognize the humor of the original post... tt's not the lack of good games:

Railroad Tycoon 3
Civ 3
Simcity 4
The Sims
Medal of Honor
Jedi Academy
Ghost Recon
Rainbow Six: Athena Sword
Splinter Cell
Halo
Neverwinter Nights

It's the speed at which they are released.

While I recognize the humor of the original post... tt's not the lack of good games:

Railroad Tycoon 3
Civ 3
Simcity 4
The Sims
Medal of Honor
Jedi Academy
Ghost Recon
Rainbow Six: Athena Sword
Splinter Cell
Halo
Neverwinter Nights

It's the speed at which they are released.

While I recognize the humor of the original post... tt's not the lack of good games:

Railroad Tycoon 3
Civ 3
Simcity 4
The Sims
Medal of Honor
Jedi Academy
Ghost Recon
Rainbow Six: Athena Sword
Splinter Cell
Halo
Neverwinter Nights

It's the speed at which they are released.

While I recognize the humor of the original post... tt's not the lack of good games:

Railroad Tycoon 3
Civ 3
Simcity 4
The Sims
Medal of Honor
Jedi Academy
Ghost Recon
Rainbow Six: Athena Sword
Splinter Cell
Halo
Neverwinter Nights

It's the speed at which they are released.

While I recognize the humor of the original post... tt's not the lack of good games:

Railroad Tycoon 3
Civ 3
Simcity 4
The Sims
Medal of Honor
Jedi Academy
Ghost Recon
Rainbow Six: Athena Sword
Splinter Cell
Halo
Neverwinter Nights

It's the speed at which they are released.

While I recognize the humor of the original post... tt's not the lack of good games:

Railroad Tycoon 3
Civ 3
Simcity 4
The Sims
Medal of Honor
Jedi Academy
Ghost Recon
Rainbow Six: Athena Sword
Splinter Cell
Halo
Neverwinter Nights

It's the speed at which they are released.

I am of course only speaking for myself, but if a suitable game (such as Rome: Total War or Star Wars Battleground) would be released for the Mac, I'd buy it in an instant.

Honestly - someone should take something like SDL and start building a suite of commercial games for all the major platforms.

If anyone could do it, I'm sure Aspyr could, if the market were large enough.. If the linux desktop market approaches OS X's, we should hope to start getting games ported only a year or so behind schedule..

In the meantime, I'm good with UT2004...

Apple has an extensive list of freeware/shareware games on their website. Macsoft Games and Aspyr both offer a fairly wide selection of ported games.

I downloaded the Ureal Tournament 2003 demo just to see if my 12" iBook (G3 900/384 mb/ATI Moblity Radeon 7500 32mb) would choke...and I was shocked to find it runs quite nicely and looks great.

(not affliated with any of the above companies, just like to game on iBook)

Diablo II, Starcraft, Warcraft
Unreal Tournament 2004, Neverwinter Night, Dungeon Siege, Civ III
Myst, Riven, Exile
Medal of Honor and expansions, Battlefield 1942, Ghost Recon
Ghost Master
Quake III, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein
Escape Velocity Series, among others

There are plenty of other games for the Mac platform as well, check the Apple website for a larger list.

so nobody produces games for the Mac? That's a real surprise to me.

Please quit posting crap like that. It's just not true.

FYI. Alice is available for Mac OS X here from top-notch game publisher Aspyr. Though I'm not sure it would fly in the poster's "very conservative community"

Be sure and check out Enigmo, at Pangea
It's a puzzle game, and highly addictive.

Also, it's pretty unoffensive, but involves some good strategy play, Spaceword Ho! at DeltaTao Software

pop-pop is a great knockoff of the classic breakout, at Ambrosia Software

And of course, as people have mentioned, there's always Sim City :) Also Zoo Tycoon, published on the Mac by Aspyr is pretty un-offensive I'd think.

All these companies, with the exception of Aspyr (who publishes a lot of the triple-A ports), have pretty much exclusively G->PG-13 titles. But the ones I mentioned pretty much are lacking anything I can think of that could possibly offend.

"Oh, and on your G5 can you play medal of honor"

Yes.

The largest flaw of the article involves the availability of games for Mac OS X. The writer admittedly didn't know of many, so I'll list a few, past, present, and near future. Games that cannot play with their PC or Linux counterparts in a multiplayer mode will be marked with the number sign (#)

-Return to Castle Wolfenstein (original; the Enemy Territory MP expansion is not yet available) (Multiplayer DOTH ROCK.)
- Diablo 2 (including all expansions)
- WarCraft 3 (including all expansions)
- Neverwinter Nights (original; expansions not yet available, but can be hacked to work)
- Baldurs Gate II
- Icewind Dale
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight II
- Star Wars: Jedi Academy
- Lara Croft: Angel of Darkness
- No One Lives Forever 1 and 2
- Halo
- Soldier of Fortune 2
- Dungeon Siege (#) (Legends of Arranna expansion not yet available. This game is made in part by Microsoft and uses proprietary software to make MP work for PCs)
- SimCity 4
- The Sims (including all expansions, excluding Online)
- Splinter Cell (coming soon)
- Command & Conquer: Generals
- Star Wars: Battlegrounds
- Call of Duty (coming soon)
- Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Spearhead expansion (new editions not yet available)
- Unreal
- Unreal Tournament 2003 and 2004
- Quake 3 (duh--its the engine for most of the games listed)

About the only big game that never hit the Macintosh in recent years was Half-Life. I built a PC just to try that baby out, and I wasn't disappointed.

Usually, you have to wait 2-6 months for a successful PC game to be ported by companies such as Aspyr, but the wait is usually worth it because the game has been patched and runs much smoother than when it was first introduced on the PC.

I jokingly consider PC players as my beta testers, since a PC game that sucks ("Bloodrayne" notwithstanding--that turd got through the quality control somehow) is never ported to Mac OS X.

So, if you gotta play everything, the Mac isn't for you. If you want to enjoy the best of the games in a year, it's a sure bet it'll be ported soon.

Some companies, like Blizzard, ship boxes that contain both the Mac and PC versions of the game, such as WarCraft 3.

Funny how this post gets a score of 2, but the response that shows that he's full of crap only gets a 0. The response is correct too; there are hundreds of games available for the Mac. Just go to Aspyr, Macplay, and Macsoft to see three companies that make most, if not all, of their income from selling Mac games. Even Age of Mythology and Dungeon Siege, which are produced by Microsoft, have Mac versions. I can name one company that tried the same approach to Linux. Loki, and they went bankrupt because no-one bought their Linux games.

Maybe we're finally starting to see a rationalisation in the development of gaming products. An understanding that you can't just create entertainment product in isolation from your audience. Another example could be Bioware's encrouagement of NWN modules. Given that computer games operate in "Internet Time" it makes sense that they're the first entertainment industry to adapt.

I read it on Slashdot that no one makes games for Macs, so it must be true. I better let Aspyr, MacPlay, MacSoft, Westlake Interactive, Ambrosia, Freeverse, The Omni Group, Blizzard, GraphSim, and Feral Interactive among many other commercial operations and hundreds of shareware developers that no one at all makes games for the Macintosh and that they should all shut down immediately. Additionally, Inside Mac Games should shut down their operation immediately as they are a waste of server space because they will never have any news to report ever.

I heard it on Slashdot so it must be true.

There's not many apps for Windows that don't have equal, or better Mac versions. For those apps that simply need Windows, there's always VirtualPC. Macs aren't gaming machines, but they're doing alright for me.

Then again, if you're on /. you probably already have more than one computer, including an x86 you can play games on.

How about Medal of Honor: Allied Assault? There isn't a Mac Client for that either...

What is this you say?

Out of all the games to pick from, that exist on the PC and not the Mac, you had to pick this one. I just finished playing a Free-For-All death match with a group of my friends, only I was using my Mac.

How about Medal of Honor: Allied Assault? There isn't a Mac Client for that either...

Get your smack tight. Next time you're going to use an example like that make sure you're correct. Because if you're not it just makes you look bad...