DirectX Support Arrives for the Mac

Gron-gron writes "MacWorld UK reports that Coderus has developed a DirectX compatible API to aid developers in porting their DirectX games to the Mac. MacOS 9 and X support is included!"

Comments

Good, and could be better

[medcalf]

This is good, because it will make it much easier to port 3D-accellerated games from PC to Mac. It will be better when it supports PB (listed as "coming soon"). Perhaps the porting lags and general lack of porting will become less of an issue over time with this available.

Re:Good, and could be better

[dthable]

Yeah...that's what OpenGL is all about. This is just one more thing that MS wants to control in life.

But what of small shareware houses?

[Godeke]

This is great news for the big game houses, but could spell a problem for the smaller game houses that specialize in Mac games. There are quite a few wonderful games that are unavailable on PC in the shareware space, and these programmers have found an audiance due to the lower number of commercial games available. If this turns a six month project into a one month project, I think a lot more commercial games will be available, which might shrink the market for the independents that have slaved away to support the Mac.

Re:But what of small shareware houses?

[Rick the Red]

Ah, but what if it works the other way, too? What if those smaller game houses port their stuff to DirectX and make their wares available to the Windows market? It could be a two-way street.

Re:But what of small shareware houses?

[Dark Paladin]

At the risk of sounding mean, there aren't that many "great" Apple only games (yes, there are some - don't flame me yet), but compared to the PC, it's a much higher ratio of great PC stuff.

Most Apple only games that do well do so because there isn't the same level of compitition that there is in the PC world. Again, cruel, but true.

Re:But what of small shareware houses?

[Surlyboi]

Cruel? Yes. True? Hardly. I claim Shenanigans on you, sir!

Compared to the PC, it's a higher ratio? Really?
Have you seen the volume of crappy PC games to
crappy Mac ones? Ratios work both ways.

I'll take a Marathon or an EV
over Mortyr pretty much any day
of the week.

That's not to say all PC games are bad, Hell I
just finished Jedi Knight II and it rocked.

Re:But what of small shareware houses?

[FatRatBastard]

This is great news for the big game houses, but could spell a problem for the smaller game houses that specialize in Mac games. There are quite a few wonderful games that are unavailable on PC in the shareware space, and these programmers have found an audiance due to the lower number of commercial games available.

Boy, there's some faulty logic. Since when has the quantity of games available ever effected purchasing decisions? If a game is good and available then it will sell on its own merits, plain and simple. Or do you assume that the population in general are a bunch of lobotomized drooling idiots that can't make a decision for themselves and simply buy the first "shiny" thing they come across?

I want to be able to have as large of a pool of games for the Mac to choose from. This looks like it will help in that regard.

Re:But what of small shareware houses?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Or do you assume that the population in general are a bunch of lobotomized drooling idiots that can't make a decision for themselves and simply buy the first "shiny" thing they come across?"

Yes.

Re:But what of small shareware houses?

[marktwain]

Good comment. This could give someone like Ambrosia good PC access. Availability, or the lack of it, will make a big difference in the marketplace.

The small, Mac only (or mostly) independents exist largely because of no competition. A small independent *can't* compete with the big houses in quality, but they can still find their niche in the $20. bracket instead of the $50. bracket. Two way street. Mac $20. stuff moves to Windows and the visa versa on the low end.....more lowend games from the PC side for the Mac.

Like anything else, those who know business and do quality will thrive and prosper.

This should also wean some of the Linux and other *nix games to OS X and away from Windows, which they don't like anyway (they ain't dumb) to the Mac.

Re:But what of small shareware houses?

[Rick the Red]

A small independent *can't* compete with the big houses in quality

I disagree. Maybe they can't compete in quantity, but they can and often do excel in quality -- if only because they cater to a niche market that they understand better than the big guys. Most of the small guys started out filling a need they had which the big guys overlooked because the market was too small. They're experts in that field, and turn out better stuff than anyone else (maybe only because they are the only ones :-)

Look at Myst -- there was nothing like it and it defined a new niche. There's still little enough like it, in the sense of a first-person game suitable for the whole family. Quality: high; quantity: low (just the one; all the sequils were done by a "big guy").

I'll fucking drink to this!

[Profane Motherfucker]

Now, there's no fucking way Windows programmers will ever want to use ANYTHING but DirectX! This is fanfuckingtastic. Rather than create OpenGL based shit, which provides a portable environment and support for fucking Linux sludge, we can get wasted with glee over the fact that a non-portable system exists, and has only taken four fucking years to migrate over to the second most popular operating system in the world! If that's not a rining fucking endorsement, I don't know what is.

Re:laugh-or-cry dept??

[Rick the Red]

Yeah, I know what you mean. The good news is that Microsoft has decided to continue to extend their monopoly onto the Mac, thus breathing life into their sole "legitimate" competitor; the bad news -- well, you know.

Reminds me of the auto industry of the 1970's, when GM, Ford, and Chrysler would sell parts to AMC below cost to keep them alive, for fear they'd be blamed if AMC ever failed. We used to go to the AMC showrooms and try to identify the parts ("there's a GM power steering pump, a Ford alternator, a Dodge air conditioner...")

To get it out of the way...

[avalys]

Oh boy, now they can port it to Linux even easier!!!

Yes, I know that's not correct at all.

Re:To get it out of the way...

[56ker]

Yes to be grammatically correct it would be:
Oh boy, now they can port it to Linux even more easily!!!

Porting vs. Emulation

[rubinson]

For the Mac-heads in the audience, I'm curious: Does the Mac community have the same debate about porting vs emulation as the Linux community? Any idea of where people tend to lean? Why or why not?

Re:Porting vs. Emulation

[tps12]

I think it's a little too cut and dried in the Mac realm for there to be any debate. Emulation (via Virtual PC, e.g.) is real emulation on the Mac, that is, translating x86 instructions into PPC in software. Something like Wine just isn't possible (note that Wine only runs on Linux i386). My perception is that emulating PCs to play games is hardly widespread, and limited mostly to pirates anyway. Companies that make games for Windows are definitely not counting on emulation to preclude any need to port.

Re:Porting vs. Emulation

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac users love ports of software, so long as the port respects the Mac interface conventions. Many a lame port has been lambasted, perhaps wrongly sometimes, if it looks too much like Windows. The classic example is MS Office 4.2.

Re:Porting vs. Emulation

[goon america]

Problem with emulation on the mac is, you don't just emulate the OS, you have to emulate the entire 486 chipset such that every single processing instruction has to be translated to PPC on the fly. In other words, it's really, really slow.

Isn't that what SDL is?

[corezion]

I thought Loki made the Simple Direct-Media Layer to port DirectX games to Linux and other OSes. And it's been out quite a while now.

Oh yes! BRING IT ON!

[thedbp]

I would imagine this would severly inhibit the ability of PC users to deride the Mac for their lack of games. If this truly can allow programmers to port games in a matter of days, I don't think it will be too long before we start seeing more and more simultaneous releases for big-name games on both platforms.

Now if we could only get the bus speed up on our mobo's, we might be able to shut up the naysayers long enough to get in a game of UT.

And the other cool part is that the company that made this software will reap amazing benefits as they are the only vendor of such a product :)

Good luck! I'm looking forward to better gaming!

well there goes the neighborhood

[Hadlock]

i think this is the last nail in the coffin for my friend - he refuses to budge from XP and buy a tibook for college next year due to lack of direct X support. granted, this allows for easier porting of code, i don't think it'll allow macs to displace PC's in the game-developing world when it comes to Direct X. it's getting close, though...

Re:laugh-or-cry dept??

[tps12]

We used to go to the AMC showrooms and try to identify the parts ("there's a GM power steering pump, a Ford alternator, a Dodge air conditioner...")

I've often wondered what people did before porn was easily and freely available.

This is good and bad for the *nix community...

[Daniel Wood]

Good: DirectX Games on a Unix OS (OSX)
Bad: No support for any other Unices.
Bad: DirectX will further replace OpenGL as the graphics standard(Although with the percentage of DirectX development in the high nineties this doesn't see to be much of an issue anymore.).

Mabye I will get to play Tribes2 on the Mac after all...

Re:This is good and bad for the *nix community...

[Graymalkin]

Bad: No support for any other Unices.

Ok come on dude, how many other Unicies do people regular have on desktop computers? How many of that small percentage have computers that can even run modern games? Then of THAT percentage how many are willing to pay for a port of a game they probably already have the Windows copy of? Think about it, a handful of Linux users with Athlon XP systems does not a viable customer base make. Also OpenGL has never been much of a standard in the gaming industry, it is portable but by no means standard. In 3Dfx's hayday Glide was the API of choice because everybody had a Voodoo accelerator. OpenGl has never really dominated in terms of a 3D graphics API.

Danger, Will Robinson!

[The Mainframe]

The question is: Will this juts make it easier for PC game developers to port their software to the Mac while ignoring users user interface desires? I'm cautious... a little voice in my head thinks this could mean cheap ports of good PC games.

Re:laugh-or-cry dept??

[jlower]

OMG - funniest ... comment ... all day!

This old fart knows it's funny because it's true.

Missing the most important part

[frankie]

Mac port programmers are some brilliant folk. They've done amazing reverse-engineering. But there's one piece of DirectX they still haven't solved, and it's not in Coderus MacDX.

DirectPlay.

If you can't multiplay with 95% of the crowd, you're not getting the complete game experience.

Already in use...

[Erik K. Veland]

According to the article, the technology has already been used to port Wipeout 2097 to the mac.

That didn't help them including the original soundtrack though. What happened to Chemical Brothers, FSOL and Prodigy??