bsharitt writes "Mark Pazolli has ported Freecraft to Mac OS X, making this popular open source RTS game avalble on the three major platforms (it's been on Linux/*nix and Windows for a while). The complete download is here."
I just got my copy of Warcraft III so it'll be a while before I can test this out. FWIW, I appreciate Blizzard shipping the Mac version at the same time as the PC.
Uh oh.... Here come the bnetd flames...
-- <?php while ($self != "asleep") { $sheep_count++; } ?>
Re:Let the flames begin?
by
iomud
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Did you notice that wc3 was a little more expensive than other games on the shelf? I wonder if the expense in time and resources for porting to mac were responsible for the slight price increase. If so I wouldnt mind paying the extra cost for the ability to play future/other games on all my machines. Especially on my mac though.
Re:Let the flames begin?
by
Triv
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· Score: 3, Insightful
hype, my friend. It's all 'bout hype. When a new game's touted as being the greatest game ever, they can get away with charging an arm and a leg for it. Personally, I just picked up a copy of Q3:a for ten bucks at Software Etc (and broodwar for a buck - my copy's a bit damaged). I'll wait till the publicity machine dies down a bit before I pick that one up. I'd rather spend 5 bucks on a used genesis/NES cart than spend 60 on a game that'll seriously stress my computer's specs.
Q3:A is a beautiful sight on my iMac DV - WC3 would run like all the characters have Palsy.:)
Triv
Re:Let the flames begin?
by
BitGeek
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I worked on two games that shipped simultaneously on the Mac and Windows platforms in the late 90s.
The development of parallel versions did not add significantly to the development time nor expense.
Because we had good mac developers (I was one) we simply had our development team spread acrosss platforms -- rather than porting. So, for instance the "scound guy" was a mac programmer, and his code was written to run under windows and Mac with a small hardware specific sound API that was common.
BTW FWIW, its much cheaper and faster to develop a game for the mac-- and this was under the classic os-- than for windows. The APIs are much better and more consistent.
The only reason there are less games on teh mac is because of stupid marketing dipshits. Mac games are actually 20-200 percent more profitable -- meaning the mac version may make that much more money even though the prices are the same because support for windows products is so expensive. And while the mac marketshare is only %20 of the market or so (not %5 - that's new machines sold and they don';t count any sold at the apple store or at apple retail locations, its a bogus number) -- that %20 of the market has far less competition than the windows market, and so your sales may well be split 50/50 depending on the games appeal.
But most companys, and game companies, make such decisions without actually doing the math, and so perception causes there to be fewer games out for the mac.
This same set of perceptions is going to be hurting Linux gaming for the next 5-10 years as well.
This even though I suspect its very cost effective to develop games under linux, as comapred to the windows API set.
-- Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/ 1816257
Developers wanted
by
bsharitt
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· Score: 5, Informative
The main reason I posted this news was to get more Mac developers interested since they are a minority on Freecraft. Work still needs to be done on gettign the MacOSX port up to par with Linux and Window, specifically with sound. There is also room for a Mac classic OS port and a Darwin/X11 port(that way the front page is more truthful).
Three major platforms?
by
lindsayt
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I know I'll get modded down, but then my karma is "excellent" so what've I got to lose?
The article states that Freecraft is now available on "the three major platforms" meaning of course MacOS, Windoze, and... linux, what else? This is slashdot, all right. I love linux - I'm a linux/solaris systems admin - but I'm sorry, when we're talking about games, it's *extremely* presumptious to casually refer to Linux along with Windoze and MacOS as one of "the three major platforms" - so far as I know, less than one percent of all commercial video games are launched on linux.
Just a small, perhaps pendantic complaint. Of course, I'm excited to see it now available on both of the major desktop systems, as well as one of the many server operating systems... go linux.
-- I did not design this game/I did not name the stakes/I just happen to like apples/And I am not afraid of snakes-AniD
New Download Link and Various Notes
by
cedars
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· Score: 5, Informative
Hi.
I (Mark Pazolli) just wanted to add a few things.
Firstly, this release was very much a development release. It was not really intended to be played, just to demonstrate the status of FreeCraft's support for Mac OS X. If you do play it, you will probably quickly discover some bugs. However with a bit of luck, we'll have a much improved version out soon.
If you're to interested in helping to develop this version please visit the FreeCraft home page. Also a Mac OS X icon for FreeCraft would be very much appreciated, e-mail me (quirinus AT mac DOT com) if you have one to offer or can design one. General questions on helping out are also welcome to that address too.
Next, as was pointed out, Mac.com homepages really aren't really suitable for wide-scale distribution (this version was actually intended to be an insiders-only release). So I'd suggest trying to download FreeCraft from here instead. It is quite a hefty download though (around 8 MB).
Slashdot Mirror
It's cool that he's ported the project to OS X.
I wonder how soon the flames will start up again? For reference, see when the game/engine was a focus on developer's slashdot:
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/0 5/27/0347226&mode=flat&tid=127
I just got my copy of Warcraft III so it'll be a while before I can test this out. FWIW, I appreciate Blizzard shipping the Mac version at the same time as the PC.
Uh oh.... Here come the bnetd flames...
<?php while ($self != "asleep") { $sheep_count++; } ?>
The main reason I posted this news was to get more Mac developers interested since they are a minority on Freecraft. Work still needs to be done on gettign the MacOSX port up to par with Linux and Window, specifically with sound. There is also room for a Mac classic OS port and a Darwin/X11 port(that way the front page is more truthful).
I know I'll get modded down, but then my karma is "excellent" so what've I got to lose?
The article states that Freecraft is now available on "the three major platforms" meaning of course MacOS, Windoze, and... linux, what else? This is slashdot, all right. I love linux - I'm a linux/solaris systems admin - but I'm sorry, when we're talking about games, it's *extremely* presumptious to casually refer to Linux along with Windoze and MacOS as one of "the three major platforms" - so far as I know, less than one percent of all commercial video games are launched on linux.
Just a small, perhaps pendantic complaint. Of course, I'm excited to see it now available on both of the major desktop systems, as well as one of the many server operating systems... go linux.
I did not design this game/I did not name the stakes/I just happen to like apples/And I am not afraid of snakes-AniD
I (Mark Pazolli) just wanted to add a few things.
Firstly, this release was very much a development release. It was not really intended to be played, just to demonstrate the status of FreeCraft's support for Mac OS X. If you do play it, you will probably quickly discover some bugs. However with a bit of luck, we'll have a much improved version out soon.
If you're to interested in helping to develop this version please visit the FreeCraft home page. Also a Mac OS X icon for FreeCraft would be very much appreciated, e-mail me (quirinus AT mac DOT com) if you have one to offer or can design one. General questions on helping out are also welcome to that address too.
Next, as was pointed out, Mac.com homepages really aren't really suitable for wide-scale distribution (this version was actually intended to be an insiders-only release). So I'd suggest trying to download FreeCraft from here instead. It is quite a hefty download though (around 8 MB).
Cheers. :-)