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The Evolution of Mac Gaming
Next Generation has a piece up exploring where gaming is going on Max OS X. From the article: "Almost since the introduction of the Mac, Apple users have lamented the lack of game support provided to the platform as compared to its Wintel brethren. Sometimes that lack of support was due to hardware and input devices that weren't competitive with the PC, but the adoption of PC standards like AGP for graphics cards and USB support for 'proper' multi-button mice did away with those obstacles. But the largest reason usually has had to do with the size of the Mac market."
I was about to say the same thing. Macs were widely regarded as the superior game platform until Doom came along as a PC-only app.
The Doom deathmatch took nearly all gaming enthusiasts away from the Mac platform, and "PC gaming" has pretty much meant "Windows PC gaming" ever since.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I used to crank out my old Mac for that very same reason, but now you can play on Windows boxes: http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/evn/ . It's EV Nova, but its pretty much the same as the original, even a little better.
Windows 95 had USB support in OSR2.1, which was released in 1996. It sucked in terms of reliability, but Windows 98's USB support was pretty solid. PCs had USB ports way before Macs (I think the Gateway PC I used at work in late '96 had USB ports - if not, then it was early 97).
:-)
The Microsoft Natural Keyboard (Elite) was released in early 1998, and had a USB connector.
But yeah, Apple were light years ahead of PCs with USB. I think I'm nearly fed up of correcting Mac fans on this now
The Home of the Underdogs site has a *massive* list of games (810 at time of writing the article) for older systems and Classic. It's an abandonware site - you won't find Escape Velocity, since Ambrosia still parent that (fetch that from the Ambrosia website instead) but you'll find a heck of a lot of other cool stuff. And you'll get some startling revelations such as, for example, a game like Populous 2 - granted not hugely complicated, but there's a heck of a lot of stuff in there - takes a mere 2.6MB of space, which compresses to 1.6MB. Most items are bigger than that these days. The save file is a whopping 238 bytes. Wow.
Anyway, a good list of games that bring back memories. Enjoy!
Browsing with +2 to insightful posts and a higher threshold makes the average post seen seem a lot more ingenious
The old versions are available as mods for Nova, which work on the PC as well.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
However, Microsoft has definitely been discouraging use of OpenGL on Windows for quite a while, and while I don't believe Microsoft is actually artificially degrading OpenGL performance in any way on their current operating systems, this effort probably has led to the hardware vendors devoting less time and energy to developing OpenGL drivers.
John Carmack has always acted as a force keeping OpenGL alive on the PC by coding his games (and thus also the games that use his engine) for OpenGL instead of Direct3D; however, the current reports are that id is now doing dual Xbox360/PC development of their next-generation engine. Unless Microsoft is releasing an OpenGL library for Xbox360 (highly unlikely), this probably means that he is switching over to D3D.
Since Apple tends to ship their consumer machines with non-upgradeable, lower-end 3D cards, any 3D game on the Mac is likely to be GPU-limited anyways, so using an OpenGL-to-DirectX conversion library may not be that much of a performance hit.
Problem is that MicroSoft is doing everything it can to move developers off OpenGL and into DirectX. In Vista, OpenGL is actually impaired and emulated from DirectX.
So performance-inclined developers will be tempted to develop for DirectX wich isn't available (or wanted) on Mac OS X.
It's just another MS move in attempt to lock-out gaming from Mac OS X.
I bet they're nerver about mactel too.
To those interested in developing games for Mac, you should stop by the iDevGames forum sometime ;)
Another similar site (which many of the iDevGames members also visit) is CreateMacGames.org.
The bits on the bus go on and off... on and off... on and off...
I had many fond memories of playing Oregon Trail on Apple //e computers in elementary school and Maelstrom in college.
//e emulators are available today and the makers of Maelstrom have a free OS X version of Maelstrom as a free download from their site.
Thankfully, Apple
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Am I the only one that thinks gaming is going nowhere on the Mac platform?
The intersection between hardcore gamers and Mac users is very small.. If gaming is important to you, you probably wouldn't choose a Mac as your platform.
With the console game platforms becoming even more powerful, I think more people in general will use them for all their gaming needs, and not use PC's (which may be a good thing for Apple, it makes PC gaming less relevant).
Of course, there will always be a handful of games for the Mac. But, I see no reason why that will change in the near future, regardless of PowerPC vs x86, OpenGL vs DirectX, etc.
A note on the HL2 part:
D =351
Not really anyone's fault for trying... but, Valve's asking for both arms, legs, and a few organs for the rights for it, pretty much takes up the entire development budget.
And, then, on top of that, Havok's asking for several *MORE* organs for the rights to *use* the OS X version of Havok. (According to a article over at IMG, they want six figures.) It exists... but, no one wants to pay it. See above about development budget.
Article: http://www.insidemacgames.com/features/view.php?I
when gaming became an industry. Microsoft, and this pains me to say this, were REALLY on the ball when they started to develop DirectX. OK, the first few versions were baaaad, but it proved to developers that windows wanted to concidered a serious contender when it came to games.
I know 3D graphics don't automagically make games better, but it does mean that people are prepared to pay more money because they are buying an experience, not a game. I bought a Voodoo 2 in 1997. Everyone thought I was mad, even I didn't fully understand what it would do for the game, all I thought it did was give me more FPS (this was important as I was only getting 16 FPS in Quake 2). It was like see the difference between a paint by numbers Mona Lisa and the real thing - I was hooked. Now thats not a great example, as Quake 2 used glide, but if I hadn't bought that card for Quake, I would never have bought Half-life, Deus-Ex or probably my X-Box.
The real point was that all of a sudden my PC became my console. Even though I used my PC for coursework etc, that was just something it did, what I needed it for was games. It was the other way around with Macs, and still is.
I gave up on PCs two years ago - mainly because I got bored of FPS not progressing, and the 6 monthly upgrade cycle was killing my pocket - and getting me into trouble. All I really needed was a computer to work on, and a console to play on.
Clearly there will always be a market for PC games, but I would expect it to shrink. If your spending $1500 on a new computer, then your spending $1100 on a games machine, and $400 on a work computer. That wasn't the case 5 years ago, it was far more like $1500 for a new computer, and you need every ounce of power just to get Office working properly. This means the even if windows continues to dominate, the percentage of high-end PC games is going start to shrink very quickly - and the PC games market with it. For that reason I don't think Macs will ever be a serious game platform.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!