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Port DirectX Games to the Mac
tassii writes "MacCentral reports that Coderus' MacDX provides PC game developers with a way of moving that DirectX code to the Mac without having to rewrite it from scratch. Coderus claims that most code which uses DirectX can simply be recompiled and linked to the MacDX libraries. Maybe I can finally play the full Command and Conquer series."
News release after news release I creep slowly, cautiously over to Mac. One day I will pounce... one day...
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
nah.
-- My hovercraft is full of eels.
The DirectX api is cumbersome and very proprietary. This just gives more developers reason to stick with DirectX. I would much rather see work put into expanding the featureset of OpenGL to include some of the more advanced features that have to be implemented as hacks. Even though the OpenGL featureset is a bit behind directx, it is a pleasure to work with, and so I hate to see anything that undermines the reasons for adopting it.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
This will undermine the potential for games on linux. If the Mac market can be addressed using DirectX, there's less reason to develop opengl apps, which are portable to linux.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
I hate going to the software store and seeing a Mac game for 49.95, then seeing the same title in PC format in the 9.99 sale bin.
I went to college for this?...
... if they don't include support for DirectPlay. There are already a lot of good games for the Mac, but most of them lack network support for mixed win/mac network games.
The latest example: The PTW addon for Civ3. It's not yet decided if there will be a port for the mac, because the main problem is the DirectPlay based network of the windows version.
And since network gaming seems to be the place, the gaming industry is heading, imho there is a need for an free network-api, which is designed for gaming, like directplay.
There's OpenGL, OpenML, now who will create OpenNL for OpenNetwerkLibrary ?
since i didnt see anyone else replied/posted with this mandatory link i did, whoring an' all. the recent starcon2 port uses sdl as well, and thus wa s quickly available on very many platforms instantly.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Perhaps this is a necessary Evil, perhaps it's a poison pill. The jury is still out on Wine and its various ilk, but for OS/2 it was clearly a poison pill.
What's needed is a way to walk the knife-edge down the middle. Perhaps a *good* WINE is just what we don't want. Perhaps a WINE that can be tweaked to do just a few critical things really is living on that knife edge.
Maybe WinOS2 was just too good at running Win3.1 apps, or at least the perception was too good.
As long as WINE isn't perceived as good enough, it will be viewed as only a crutch. WinOS2 was perceived as 'good enough' to neglect a native version, even if enough market was anticipated.
It also remains to be seen how MacDX will be perceived. Hopefully only as a crutch, and a reason to then consider OpenGL and SDL as better solutions.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
This is pure genius folks... it's like using Microsoft's own stuff against them.
I know at least ten Mac users who have said that they keep a Winblows box around to "play games."
VirtualPC is handy, but it just plain sucks when it comes to doing high-end graphics (or, better said, just plain doesn't do high-end graphics).
Everyone is saying its endorsing a Microsoft "standard," but if you think about it it could take people off the Windows desktop, which is really our goal anyway.
So Microsoft gets to license a high-speed graphics library. So it sorta endorses the XBox. Who cares... they don't have monopolies in these areas.
All opinions presented here aren't mine.
If DirecX becomes the only modern graphics library available, we have lost much from our freedom. If all popular computer entertainment would use DirectX, think about the power Microsoft would have.
As long as people keep making good OpenGL games - such as the recent uDevGames contest winner - were safe.
*lbtr
while this seems like it has the potential to slow adoption of opengl, i doubt that all the big-name mac porting companies will suddenly go out of business. there are often multiple versions of games, and it is quite conceivable that these repackaged 'deluxe' editions will be full opengl ports as opposed to just recompiling directx code. this just means we'll see more simultaneous releases, and also that many directx developers will get a taste of opengl... they'll have to keep a mac around to test it on you know ;)
i think it will work more for opengls benefit. it in effect extends mac-pc compatibility in a very striking way.
Directx is Satan spawn. I would hate for this to be the primary graphic base for games on my mac
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
If windows developers were using something more portable than directx, you'd be getting your games anyways...and they'd be on linux...and the programmers would have a more elegant, and less restricted API. Some choices are easy and beneficial in the short run, but damaging in the long run. Do we really want to give Microsoft control over the API's that all game developers use?
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
OK, here we go:
1) Buy a freaking USB mouse with as many buttons and wheels as you like, it'll work fine with no extra software in OS X.
2) See point 1. Buy a tower mac and you can put in any mac graphics card you want, including ones based on all recent 3d chips available, pretty much.
3) You just gotta look in different places. Try Hotline, or better yet Carracho (www.carracho.com) and KDX (www.haxial.com). Even gnutella can be pretty good.
4) See point 3. Those are usually available along w/ the w4r3z.
Once you get the hang of it, the Mac Way(TM) is pretty fun and friendly.
1) I use a 5 button mouse on my mac.
2) True but it is a work machine.
3) Bah.
4) I need serialz.
Friendly pirates eh?
I've read posts from some major Mac game programmers/porters on this topic. This won't have a major effect on their work, as Westlake and Contraband and other Mac porting houses have their own methods of converting from DirectX already. What this will do is help some PC-centric game developers make a Mac version in-house. Whether or not they'll do a good job isn't a given, of course. Personally, I doubt this will have a major effect on Mac game publishing.
"Common Sense Ain't" -Unknown
Most game porting shops have similar tools developed in-house, or so I've heard from people who work at game porting shops (who said that, therefore, this isn't that big a deal). Assuming they weren't lying, this doesn't change much of anything.
When it came time to pick an API to develop our new game my project team picked SDL + OpenGL hands-down. We never even considered DirectX. Now that there's a company offering a DirectX-compatible library our answer is the same: No thanks, DirectX! We like SDL. We love OpenGL. We like sharing our work.
But for existing games that were written to the DirectX APIs this should be a great boon. I'd definitely like to see Mac OS X versions of all those games that would otherwise never appear on the Mac.
Incidentally, there's an SDL version of Abuse out there. Has anyone been able to get it to compile and run on Mac OS X yet??
-- thinkyhead software and media
This was news back in April when it was first announced.
I have actually been emailing game companies during that time, asking them to give MacDX a try, to see if its a viable solution for them. I've emailed Epic, Sierra, EA, etc. and not a single reply. Of course I don't expect a reply, just hoping they might actually read the email and give the product a chance.
I guess making zero code changes to a game engine and only minor changes to system dialog and error codes that could probably be done in a week, is not satisfactory to an industry where good ports have historically been very hard to accomplish.
Or then again, perhaps its the fact that Coderus only lists MacDX as being fully DirectX 7 compliant, with information for 8 and 9 still forthcoming.
Then there's the speed issue (no, porting playstation games with the libraries and having them run fast is not an overall indicator of speed...lol) and whether it is relevent, as well as if MS is going to put pressure on this company, which had not updated its website since the news originally broke in April.
--"It's Bradford Company, slash your last name, dot your first name"
Mac game developers/porters already have similar code. With the exception of DirectPlay, "emulating" DirectX with GameSprockets and OpenGL has been a quite successful strategy for years now. Developers who target Mac along side PC, and porting houses who are hired by developers who just farm it out, already have their Win32/DirectX compatibility libraries, or a neutral library that maps to DirectX and GameSprockets/OpenGL.
The market for this product is pretty much new developers who are not going to farm out the port.
Mac game developers/porters already have similar code. With the exception of DirectPlay, "emulating" DirectX with GameSprockets and OpenGL has been a quite successful strategy for years now. Developers who target Mac along side PC, and porting houses who are hired by developers who just farm it out, already have their Win32/DirectX compatibility libraries, or a neutral library that maps to DirectX and GameSprockets/OpenGL.
The market for this product is pretty much new developers who are not going to farm out the port.
[Apologies for the accidental AC post]
Err, I don't know what crack you're on, but you can buy a 55 button mouse in any shop and connect it to a Mac. The really expensive ones come with tissues so you can clean up after yourself when you're done wanking over them.
All the hardware inside our machines is identical to a PC, except the quality stuff - motherboard and CPU.
You walk into a PC shop, buy a Radeon 9000, stick it in a G4 and be playing in moments.
Sucker.
If you're already a multiplatform title, or if your title has a decent abstraction layer, putting in a decent OpenGL/OS-X kernel shouldn't take much more than a few weeks anyways. I know nothing about how sound works on OS-X, but it seems to be "in flux". A while ago I tried porting my company's code to run on my powerbook in my spare time, and I got pretty far in only a few evenings despite the fact that I know nothing about Macs (able to view shaded 3d models using the game's engine, still need texturing and sound, need some endian-conversions)--the main problem is not having the control key by the "A" for emacs--is there a good OS-X equivalent of caps2ctrl? I would bet if I tried again now, now that we've done GameCube (big-endian CPU, OpenGL-like API), it would be even easier. But then again, going from a hobby project to a shippable project is a pretty big task (compatibility testing, installers, all the usual bullshit). For example, when I upgraded from 10.1 to 10.1.5, it broke my code (aglChoosePixel Format stopped accepting AGL_FULLSCREEN as an argument for some reason). I suppose making an OS-X downloadable "experimental/as-is" executable that uses the data from the PC retail box is one middle ground.