MacSoft To Publish Neverwinter Nights In Fall 2002

Oddbod writes "Hot on the heels of yesterday's gold news, Bioware has announced that IG arm MacSoft will publish the Mac version of Neverwinter Nights. They hint at porting the toolset over to Mac, which originally wasn't expected, but no promises so far."

Comments

Argh...Why not OmniGroup

[blakespot]

They should've gotten OmniGroup to lay down the conversion, Cocoa style, while magically enhancing the original PC code (and game performance) beyond all expectation, as they did with the rather hardware-itensive Giants, Citizen Kabuto ...

From OmniGroup:

• "This is the only version of Giants that can use multiple processors. We actually added multi-processing support while we were doing the port, as well as doing various optimizations on the graphics routines (and changing the graphics library from Direct3D to OpenGL). The end result is we're getting the same framerates on our Macintosh dual 500 MHz G4s with a GeForce 2 on an AGP 2x bus as we do on a brand-new, top of the line Wintel AMD 1.3 GHz Ahtlon with a GeForce 3 on an AGP 4x bus and DDR RAM."

blakespot

Re:Port to macs?

[SandSpider]

This was originally meant to be Mac, Linux, and Windows versions all on one disc with concurrent development cycles (more or less). My guess is that they had too many platform-specific engine issues, and it would have delayed their windows release to work on those. Once the product's finished, the original team members are probably going to be reassigned to various other projects according to their studio schedule. Thus, rather than tying up the team members on bug fixes, they probably decided to farm it out to MacPlay.

The reason they decided to finish Windows first rather than the mac has nothing to do with ease of development. The reason would be because they will have more sales on the windows platform than the Mac or Linux combined, so that's what they chose to finish.

I have no insider knowledge about Bioware or this particular situation. I do know quite a bit about game development, and I have released a product on Windows and Mac on a single hybrid disc, so I have made some pretty good guesses.

=Brian

Gotta update the FAQ...

[ChrisDolan]

The FAQ still says that they're doing a simultaneous release for WIn/Lin/Mac. It looks like the Marketing is not in sync with reality yet.

Here's the deal:

[DoenerMord]

It became apparent to anyone following the situation that Bioware's recent utter silence regarding the non-Windows clients means they had fallen behind. The company has been in a huge push to get the game out (as well as changing publishers), and so of course the first things to fall off the radar are going to be the Mac and Linux clients when in a crunch.

The NWN Gold press release yesterday mentioned the Linux client would be out *after* the Windows version, confirming the statement above. So there goes any hybrid Mac/PC/Linux idea.

If the Mac client is some indetermined length of time older than the Windows, someone's going to have to go back and get it up-to-date.

Therefore, if the hybrid box idea is shot, it makes *much* more sense for MacSoft (another Inforgrames label) to do the Mac-specific marketing, QA, and even try and port the toolset (a beast in itself) so Mac users don't pay the same price for half the game. This is a *much* better idea than Bioware (who has never published a Mac game themselves) to try and do all this themselves.

And for those wanting Omni to do it, MacSoft has stated to Insidemacgames.com that the porting house has not been decided yet. It could be them, Westlake, or some other programmers they often use for their work.

Free download or not?

[PaxTech]

The real question is "Are they going to release the Mac binaries as a free download for those who bought the Windows version and want to run it on their Mac?"

I believe it was mentioned the Linux binaries would be downloadable, they better do this for the mac version as well..

Bioware has been lying

[frankie]

This is bad news by any reasonable definition. Note that the official FAQ still says "we are planning a simultaneous PC/Macintosh/Linux release for Neverwinter Nights, with all three versions to be included in a single box."

Also note that Macsoft expects it will take them two months to finish the Mac version, not including the toolset. No clue how long the toolset would take if they decide to port it at all. Third, note that Bioware has never released a single Mac (or Linux) demo appliction, or even a screenshot of a partial prototype.

For comparison, other porting houses like OmniGroup and Westlake can plow through an entire port, starting from raw Windows-only DirectX-based source code, and turn out a complete Mac game in the same amount of time.

The obvious conclusion is that Bioware has spent the past three years working solely on the Windows version, and their claims about parallel simultaneous development were a crock.

Grraah! Rant time!

[Valdrax]

It's not portable at all. The bastards wrote it in MFC and DirectX. Not that I'm bitter. It's only that the most innovative thing to happen to PC RPGs -- being able to DM like in real life -- is the one feature they left out of the Mac/Linux versions. Oh, here. We're giving you every bit of the game on your platforms except the part everyone's excited about. Let's just dangle it under your nose instead.

Now, there's a second middle finger for Mac users by holding off the publishing. I'd honestly rather them have not ported the game at all than to release a late, crippled version. It's just like that time I bought HoMM3 only to find out they didn't port the damned campaign editor.