Slashdot Mirror
Windows Games on Macs Without Windows
Dotnaught writes "TransGaming Inc. is making its 'Cider' portability engine for Apple's Intel-based Macs available to Windows game developers. The software promises to let Windows games run on Intel Macs without Windows or Apple's Boot Camp. 'Cider works by directly loading a Windows program into memory on an Intel-Mac and linking it to an optimized version of the Win32 APIs,' the company claims. Cider is a software for game developers, not end-users. Cider-enhanced games are scheduled to appear as soon as October. If Cider works well, will there be any more Mac-specific game development? And if not, will it matter?"
If this is for real, then we might just see more Mac ports of games, and quicker turnaround than before (since most of the work of "porting" will be handled by the library). I'd worry about DirectX games though... They'd probably have to dynamically translate the DirectX calls to OpenGL which could get hairy.
So it's just Transgaming's derivation of winelib, right?
Unless it's Champaign; then it's Cognac.
I've never really underderstood Transgaming's focus on cross platform gaming. Most Linux and Mac users aren't heavy gamers. Most people tend to use Windows or consoles for gaming. If you're using OS X or Linux it's generally to get something (real work) done.
Not that Linux and Mac aren't technically viable game platforms, but that's not their general use.
As long as these games perform well on Intel macs this can only be a good thing as games are different to other applications.
With games then they're usually full screen and you see none of the usual OS user interface and so a game does not need a Mac look and feel like for example a word processing application.
So for apps an approach like this would be bad, imagine companies stop producing their mac apps because they could easily port over using something like winelib then you'd lose the mac experience, but for games it does not matter as they don't follow platform conventions anyway.
with OpenGL.
This, just a few articles up from the "Vista sucks!" story.
The biggest road blocks I hear of for switching from Windows to a Mac are "price" and "games". I won't fuel the flamewars by making definitive statements about either point, other than to say that it looks like those blocks are starting to come down.
Microsoft has to be worried about this.
'Cider works by directly loading a Windows program into memory on an Intel-Mac and linking it to an optimized version of the Win32 APIs,' the company claims.
This is absoultely the worst idea. Better to write your favorite company and tell them to use some open and standard technologies (e.g., OpenGL, OpenAL, SDL, etc.). What they want to do will only promote the status quo.
the site says "play games without any change to the source code"... and then the summary says "cider enhanced games are scheduled to appear"...aren't those two contradictory? Why won't cider work with games right here, right now?
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
And are the games going to work as "well" as they do with Cedega?
This sounds pretty awesome. I almost wish, though, that they'd just release Cedega itself for OS X. That way we wouldn't have to trust in developers.
The implications of Cedega as a cross-platform product would be really interesting. Like, something I keep wondering is whether, once they've got DX10 support working on Cedega for Linux, Transgaming could release a Windows version that would enable DX10 [Vista] games to run on Windows XP.
YES!!! .....errr.....NO!!!!!.....errr...MAYBE!!!!!!
Stop asking me all these questions. I can't handle the pressure!!!!!!!
just like wine/winex/cedega
So what do we need to do to get TransGaming's technology incorporated into Parallels, so that ANY game will work?
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Hey, at least there will probably still be a few Mac shareware companies...
So basically, your product must be taking in money, presumably from direct sales or subscription-type sales. What about shareware games, where most copies may never be registered/paid for? What about freeware? Sounds like these are left out entirely.
Yes, most likely. Also note that "optimised" is a relative word, which constitutes a meaningless marketing lie, unless actually compared with real numbers. Last I checked, cedega was slow as hell compared to raw windows, not "optimised".
When Boot Camp was released, many speculated that it was only the begining of things to come. I wouldn't be surprised to see even tigter Windows integration in Lepord. Boot Camp being bundled in is given. But will it be taken to the next step even with some sort of solution that doesn't require rebooting? Would something like this be sufficient for gaming?
I guess we'll just have to wait until Monday to find out.
Why do people want Apple to make Mac OS for standard pcs? If apple did that and pulled it off, they'd be the new Microsoft. We'd be in the same boat. None of the advantages of the apple platform would be maintained since they'd have to deal with random shitty hardware.
I'd rather have native games, but I guess win32 emulation is better than nothing. Of course this only helps people with new Macs. I can't imagine there are that many people yet with intel macs. Is it cost effective to do this? How much effort for game companies? What about support costs?
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
I mean, this is great and all, but when are we going to get the ability to play Mac games on Windows?
Go with UBUNTU and do it now !!!
Cedega is the most unstable, buggy, and alltogether awful gaming product on Linux. It has done more to hold back Linux gaming than anything I can imagine. Why should a developer waste any resources when "Cedega allows you to run Windows games in Linux!" Newsflash: The games don't FUCKING WORK.
Transgaming brags about all these great results on their website but the sheer number of workarounds and hacks to get a game to play are unbearable. And what's worse is that the games, once installed, randomly crash, screw up graphics, display incorrect fonts, lose mouse control, can't position correctly on the screen, takes an inordinate amount of Microsoft software to even function... BLAH.
I bought (and still pay) for Cedega because of their promises of Civilization IV stability. Nope. Will their tech support help you? Nnnnope. Will Fixraxis ever consider putting out a Linux binary? Why should they? Transgaming's site just brags and brags about how well Civ IV works under Cedega. Now take a look at Transgaming's forums and see just how successful their product is at running Civ IV: it isn't.
Add Transgaming's SHIT license and restrictions (We steal from Wine. We Do not GIVE to Wine. And don't even think about adding Cedega to your distribution.) and you have a complete turd of a product.
Cedega's major improvements to their software in the last two months has been: Interface improvements and a patch for Guild Wars. That's it. The end. I'm not just asking for Civ IV support either. There's scores of games that are supported by edega that just don't work. Just check their forums.
If this is the future of gaming on the Mac, there is NO future of gaming on the Mac.
A winner is you!
Also, developing with Win32 is free, while Qt costs money for development licenses.
A full Qt seat costs $3,000. This is NOTHING. Please! This is not even an argument that anyone would make in real life. The only time I have ever gotten any push back on stuff like this would be things that require royalty based licenses (which Qt does NOT require.)
A good example would be FMOD. FMOD is a cross platform sound API that runs on lots of computers and also the game consoles. You have to contact the company that makes it and negotiate a license. THis is a pain in the ass - I don't know what they charge. Qt, with a flat 3K, is a no brainer.
That said, Qt is not that common for games. Also, Qt is not a magic bullet with open gl. I'm working with Qt right now - I've used it for years at various companies. The biggest obstacle is usually convincing people that there is value in creating cross platform applications, not a business case for the minimal cost of Qt.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Come on, this should be obvious. How many times have we heard, "Windows sucks, but I'm not willing to switch to Linux or OSX because I won't be able to play my games."
The reason people use Windows so commonly for gaming is because it's the OS most games are available for. Few game producers make games for Mac and Linux because the relative populations of those OS's is small and they're afraid of the risk of trying to open up the market single-handedly. It's not because Linux and Mac users are all no-nonsense get'r done type people. Heck, the stereotype most commonly applied to Linux users is hopeless geeks who waste all their time toying with things, and for Mac users it's "ooh look, shiny white thing." (not that I'm saying that's true (but it's fun to get the minority worked up)).
Also, to the best of my knowledge, a very large majority of business PC's run Windows, whether because of compatibility requirements or because it's been effectively grandfathered in by the userbase.
So, that's why we haven't had a real update to Cedega's engine in many months. I guess I missed the month everyone voted for the Mac version to be worked on. Glad I'm paying for Mac users to be able to run Windows games.
Not in the long run. As apple moves farther in to the 'PC market' and keeps pushing windows as an alternative for OSX its a matter of time before they exit the comptuer market totally and focus on the 'media' market ( ipods, etc ).
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Heck, since you can now have a Mac computer without being ball-gagged into the Apple monopoly, why even bother? Just exercise your consumer choice, and use Windows exclusively.
As noted, pirce is still a major concern. We will see what happens with the new towers, but there's real doubt that Apple wishes to make a cheap machine. Minis don't cut it for games (sorry, a GMA 950 just isn't enough). The iMac is feasable to some extent, a X1600 is no slouch, but being non-upgradable means you've got to toss the system once every couple years, or deal with very dated graphics and the inability to play new games. Video cards move rather quickm they don't have the 4+ year life that normal system components do when it comes to 3D gaming. So that leaves the towers, which are not cheap.
However the bigger issue is that this isn't a layer you install on a Mac, this is something that devs have to use. So the only games you get are the ones that choose to port. Unless it is literally 0 effort, there will still be plenty that don't. Also you are talking about what will unfortunately be an inferior port. Taking a game written for Windows-only libraries and wrapping it won't work nearly as well as writing a game for cross platform things like OpenGL in the first place.
For example you run in to things like shader support. Currently Transgaming's technology only does SM 1.4. That means that all the newest games have their cool effects excluded. In some cases they just won't run, in most they just look worse. So all that new graphics hardware goes to waste. Now they are, of course, working on SM 2.0 support BUT we are already on SM 3, and DX10 and new capabilities loom on the horizion. You are always playing catchup because graphics companies are always rolling out new technologies and the APIs ahve to be updated to support them.
So I don't think this will lead to a major coup in Mac gaming. I think it may lead to some more ports, which will probably be inferior to their PC versions, but nothing special. To really get in on the action, you need a cross platform toolkit that's so slick that people use it to make games for Windows anyhow. You add your API to Windows (you can do it no problem, as the cards now add accelerated GL and as 3dfx used to add glide) and make it, and it's associated tools so awesome that people stop using the MS tools, even when doing Windows development. Then, since it's fully cross platform, people are more likley to port.
All in all I don't think this will be bad for Mac gaming, but I don't think it will change much. I suppose it actually could be harmful if people who were previously doing full, proper ports start using it and giving reduced ports, but I'm betting it'll lead to a few more games available and no real change overall.
If they can manage to get 90% or more of Windows games running at within 15% of their original speed, I would see this as the first truly viable Windows alternative, not only for myself, but for millions of other people who are chained to Windows because of the games.
I desperately would like to be able to buy a mac and just use that for everything, but since about half of my PC usage is videogames, it's just not feasible for me.
I think Jobs and Co should be providing all the help and support they can to these guys. Sadly, Apple is not as much a fan of videogames as the rest of the world.
Ok, so Cider loads the Windows program, presumabely a game, into Memory (ie RAM), how much RAM do you actually need then? I mean Windows doens't load the entire game into RAM, just the content you are using at the time. It would be nice to see this though. I like PowerBooks more than Windows laptops.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
Ok, first yea, being able to play Windows based games on Mac... so what? My biggest and foremost problem, and with many PC users, in not being able to play games on them, but its functionality. Like, if I can't build it myself, I don't want it. Just because you can play games on it, doesn't mean you will get most of the PC world to switch.
Companies have always jumped at opportunities to target a specific customer-base at ten times their current penetration, and selling a 5 year old product at wholesale for half price isn't unreasonable. Unless they have too much pride to not receive "top billing" on a product bundle
It still doesn't run EVE right, so what's the point?
A Mac without Win32 is like a chocolate cake without ketchup and mustard. Thanks, TransGaming, for remembering to bring the condiments.
Personally, I've also found myself to be many times more efficient on OSX than Windows when doing just about anything.
Mac people say this all the time, and it's such a damn lie (and I say "damn lie", as in, you know it's not true, but you say it anyway). Tell me EXACTLY what you do under OSX that can't do under Windows that makes you "many times more efficient" (which, I assumes means Windows takes you 2-3 times as long). Well? Let's hear it. And don't say "deleting applications", because 1) It's easy under Windows, and 2) people hardly ever do that. Tell me about EVERYDAY tasks.
Oh, yeah. People use applications, not operating systems, and it doesn't make a damn bit of difference.
This is one of the main reasons I'll NEVER EVER buy a Mac. I don't want to be associated with the people who use Macs. I don't want to be a member of the "tribe".
Waiving aside (temporarily) the problems inherent in all OS' and Software, Mac's are way more reliable than an XP Pro system. There aren't as many virus' or spyware's available on the mac, or they're a lot harder to come by for the time being.
If I could do what I needed to do on a mac I'd switch in a heart beat. Here's my list :P *Wish List*
Everything else is available on a mac through a costly sum: Graphics, Websurfing, Email (I hate the mail system in Mac OSX 10.4 Tiger but whatever). I mean... YA Come on!!!
I should get into Mac Programming and do some coding... I haven't the slightest on how to do it, but if I could do it... o m f g... If I could DJ on it, i'd gladly have a Windows PC purely for Gaming with no need of anything other than DX??.? and whatever else... man... *cries a little inside*
If I want to run windows apps or games, I build a very high quality Intel or AMD box (can do better than Apple) ,install latest Windows, insert CD/DVD, click couple of "continue" buttons and start playing.
WINE people say it is not emulator, OK, I won't pay for playing windows games with some sort of fake API emulating directx calls to OpenGL.
If people are in such love with Windows only games and apps, they should buy/build a PC and install XP home edition on it. Or Vista when it ships. It will never be the "real" thing with such hacks.
I tell same thing to my PC using friends when they ask about hacked Mactel OS X to install on x86 box. I just say "well if you accomplish something with hacking, you must keep hacking non stop".
Often, what keeps people from switching to full blown Linux / OSX is that they cant game, hence your statement is partially true, in that there may not be many current gamers in Linux / OSX.
Personally, all I run Windows for anymore are Dx9 games that I cant get to run via Wine. Would be nice to finally be able to pull the plug on Windows and make the full switch to 100% Linux system.
Getting more gaming development on these platforms (or a layer that allows full compatability without Windows / Dx9-10) would serve to loosen Microsoft's grip, and get more people onto Linux / OSX.
It matters, and a whole lot.
I'm the proud owner of a MBP since about a week. Aside from the psychological pain of inflicting something as ugly as windos on something as slick as the MBP, there are a lot of practical concerns.
The two most important ones are the constant rebooting - on a machine I would otherwise pretty much never switch off, but only send to hibernate by closing the lid - and, probably worse, partitioning.
On a notebook, you get 100 GB or so. Games take a _lot_ of space. If you do anything else that takes space, music or digital photography or anything, then partitioning a 100 GB drive in such a way that you feel even remotely confident that it'll be enough for both systems for the forseable future is anything but easy.
Add the fears that some crazy windos virus does something bad to the harddisk that's bad enough to wipe out the OSX partition.
No, Sir. It matters a whole lot whether or not there will be Mac games in the future. And quite frankly, Linux gaming is as dead as it gets, and I'm not sure if transmeta and WineX/Cedega don't have a part in that.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I think at this point, it's probably safe to give up on OS X being a viable platform for most game development, for economic reasons (too small marketshare). Hopefully technology like this will at least allow me to play somewhat new games on my intel mac - if it does that, I'll be happy. That's probably it for most native games, except shareware, though.
There are a lot of smart posts, quite a few stupid ones, and some basic "what's going on?" posts. Yours, takes the cake. Let's look at your post, point by point.
"Good thing if it catches on, developers encouraged to test on [two platforms]." You're right, that's good.
"Writing Apple specific executables (DRM...) would no longer be important." That is one of the stupidest things I've ever read on Slashdot. Let's start with Apple does nothing to require DRM. Then we'll move into Microsoft is going full steam at enabling HDCP. And let's not forget that writing Apple specific executables will ALWAYS be important, especially for performance sensitive applications (hint: games).
"This would create some direct Win32 OS competition for MS." More idiocy. This would not do that, at all. First, it's just a tiny subset of the Win32 API. Second, you have to link it in and pay for it (as opposed to WINE). And then there is fact that Microsoft changes the Win32 API constant. Oh, by the way, MS has been trying to replace Win32 with MFC for years. Also, they are now trying to replace that with the .Net framework and such.
"And of course the portable WIN32 apps are more likely to run fine in WINE or ReactOS." There is NO SUCH THING as a portable Win32 app, by definition. If you want portable apps, you use a portable API. You don't write to a non-portable API and then try to shoehorn portability in there by writing a clone of the API in a library on another platform.
And hopefully, Apple would buy Cider, and once and for all sell OS X for any PC, competing directly with Microsoft, and give up on the hardware tie in stuff." Your idiocy astounds me. Apple wouldn't buy Cider. They are Apple. They can make it themselves. They may announce the exact same kind of thing on Monday at WWDC. They won't sell OS X for PCs, they are a hardware company. They won't give up the tie-in stuff, they are a hardware company. Apple already competes directly with Microsoft. Also, one of the great things about the Mac is the hardware its self. Also, considering their Laptop market share doubled in the last 6 months, why would they want to give up their lucrative hardware business that subsidizes the OS that you seem to covet so much.
Just buy the Mac like the rest of us OS X lovers did.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
It's not about what you do on a Mac that makes you more productive. It's what you don't do. I switched because I was tired of endless reboots, hardware and software glitches, and the constant hand-holding that Windows needs.
Unless we're talking about Spotlight, Expose, Dashboard, and Finder's "Smart Folders". OS X is pretty helpful there.
Maybe GNUstep and its ilk would get more development attention if OSX were king (along the lines of the attention wine gets today).
In any event, Apple's got a business model they achieve relative success with and know how to manage it. They don't know how transitioning to be of a software company would pay off or if they would be able to deal with the transition easier. The software is largely subsidized by their hardware sales today, with the standalone purchase revenue of OSX probably being little more than token cash flow.
OSX is, business-wise, largely a hype generator for the Mac hardware. If it weren't exclusive, that would go away. More likely than them making OSX a wider product would be ditching OSX as everyone knows it today and instead doing a Windows based platform, but adding the 'hype-worthy' features of OSX. Also not likely I at least hope, but I would say more likely than Apple trying to become more of a software vendor.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
From personal experience:
Installing visual studio in windows:
1.Go to the webpage where microsoft gives it away for free to school students.
2.Download installer for installer.
3.Instal installer.
4.Run installer.
5.After 3 hours, watch installer break for no reason.
6.E-Mail school because it says I have to to try again (DRM liscensing stuff)
7. After response, run installer again.
8. Run second installer.
9. Wait forever
10. Download iso burner because microsoft installs them as iso files
11. install iso burner
12. burn isos onto cds
13. instal visual studio from cds
14. wait forever
15. done
Installing xCode on Mac:
1. put in the developer CD that comes with computer for free
2. run installer
3. everything works automatically and quickly
4. done
What PC people don't understand (likely because they haven't bothered using a mac) is that EVERYTHING JUST WORKS on a mac. You plug something into your computer and it automatically starts working. You don't need to mess with your computer or even know anything about your computer, everything just works without any effort.
Now, I know this might be hard to understand on slashdot because I'm sure most people here are like "everything works on a pc too because I have 1337 geeky skills to make everything work really easy" but most people don't have those 1337 geeky skills and some people are just lazy.
I own a mac and a pc and I'm tired of people who have only used pcs and never used macs whining that things are just as easy on a pc, when frankly they aren't.
Native Linux UT2003 ran awesome. Where are the rest?
It's the game developers fault why OSX and Linux are not mainstream.
Also anyone wonder whose going to support these games? The orginal publisher? I find this hard to believe...are they going to jump to support a platform they have no experience in and know nothing about? Surely supporting OS X is a very different situation to providing help to Windows users?
Despite the OS X eyecandy, Macs tend to come with graphics that are too weak to impress any serious gamer. A 256 MB X1600 isn't going to cut it when gamers are talking about quad SLI 2 GB setups.
Installing xCode on Mac:
.. put on black turtleneck
..get in Honda Element and drive to Starbucks
..order double mochalatte
..Drive to Apple(tm) store
..puchase new ivory headphones for ipod (since ivory is different from white and needs to match Honda Element)
..return home, not forgetting to activate the car alarm
1. put in the developer CD that comes with computer for free
2. run installer
3. everything works automatically and quickly
4. done
This is the most reliable trajectory to ensure increased dependence on Windows and Windows products, most of all through the technology lock-in that is DirectX. Anyone touting this as the boat that will carry them from the foul shores of Microsoft are clearly out of their dangling minds.
This is bad for OpenGL/SDL/Qt and bad for any platform which relies on these tools for both game and non-game applications; as long as people can author games on the Windows platform and run it in a WINE-like wrapper, they won't consider native releases. OpenGL will get less attention as the market consolidates on DirectX and the quality and feature-set of the code falls behind as a result. It really can, and in fact does, work like that.
DirectX has risen from near nothing in a few short years. MS invested alot of money strategically situating the platform dependent DirectX in opposition to the platform neutral OpenGL on the Windows platform through tools and API development, and to a large degree it has worked. Games are faster made for the Windows platform using these high-level Windows-only API's, and so now many developers consider DirectX on Windows as the only sane context for game development altogether. As a result, DX will continue to rise at the great expense of platform portable tools like OpenGL if it is blindly, yet directly, supported by idiocy like this. Let's not invite a day we have 'DirectX only' on the back of some graphic cards.
I'll say it again. Projects such as Cedega and 'Cider' ensure long-term codepedency with MS, as a technology provider, at the expense of high performing, native games. This simply takes Apple and Linux build targets 'off the map' from the perspective of game development and lets them get on with making great games for Windows - ensuring MS is always that arsehole you call when you're high, dry and have got the shakes.
Dumping Windows for Linux or OSX is only the first step to being free of MS products, the dirty blood runs deeper than that.
If this is for real, then we might just see more Mac ports of games ...
No, this will not mean more Mac ports. If anything it may mean fewer. Developers considering Mac may be able to blow off native Mac ports using the same reasons that they blow off native Linux ports: (1) Dual boot. (2) Emulation of the Win32 gaming APIs. Under PowerPC dual booting was not an option and emulation would mean emulating a CPU not just a gaming API. Since running the Win32 version of a game on Mac hardware was not realistic, a native port was justified. If Ciders allows Win32 games to run "well enough" then there is no economic reason to do a native Mac port.
The market for a game is *not* the number of Mac/Linux purchasers. Yeah, that sounds odd but hang on a minute. The market is really only those who refuse to dual boot or emulate and won't buy unless they have a native port. Those who are willing to dual boot or emulate and run the Win32 version don't count because they do not add any revenue. They are already customers buying the Win32 version. A native Mac/Linux version would generate no additional revenue from these people, it would only move a sale from the Win32 column to the Mac or Linux column. So there is no new revenue, but there are the expenses from development and support, and these expenses have to be paid for by those who would never buy the Win32. Under Linux there are too few of these people.
Today Mac has the advantage over Linux that Mac gamers have a proven track record of spending money. If developers can get Mac gamers to to accept Cider in large enough numbers then native Mac ports will no longer occur.
yes but for the people like me that don't want a work computer and a gaming rig on the same desk at home.. i am forced to pic the OS that works with both..
t hreshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=15842981# 15843808
You don't need two machines. You can dual boot Linux and Windows on PC hardware or Mac OS X and Windows on Apple hardware. Only one machine on your desk.
Now, you may not want to dual boot for this reason: http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=193063&
Mac people say this all the time, and it's such a damn lie (and I say "damn lie", as in, you know it's not true, but you say it anyway).
Oh, no! He's found out our grand plan for world domination! You see, years ago the mac users all got together and decided to tell everyone else we were really efficient using the system, but of course it was a lie. Not just a lie, a DAMN lie, because of course Macs don't even run software, they are simply a box filled with rocks that we try to convince everyone is a computer!
Our plan might have worked if it wasn't for those meddling slashdot kids!
As for an actual answer to your troll, Macs don't have a registry or DLLs spread all over the place. That alone eliminates about 90% of the maintenance bullshit required by Windows and Windows applications. Of course, the difference between us and most trolls is that we've actually used and maintained Windows systems over the years, while you've already admitted you don't have the slightest idea how the Mac OS works, much less how it works better.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
The real problem is that Cider greatly reduces the potential revenue from native Mac ports. Getting a Mac user to run a Win32 version is the real "winning" strategy for developers. More here: http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=193063&c id=15843808
I completely agree, and right now -- when Apple is actually advertising Macs directly against Windows, and Microsoft is weakened by the Vista delay -- is the perfect time for this to come together.
Oh, by the way: IIRC, WINE and React already do keep their code in sync. It's just the two commercial forks that are, uh, forked.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Also, why do all slashdot stories have to end with a flame-inducing question now?
Obviously you were not the target audience of the post, and for the most part, missed the points of it.
If the comment was bs, replying with 16x the bs is not very useful. I guess I did trigger an unintentional troll-bait reaction.
> Just buy the Mac like the rest of us OS X lovers did.
I did, but I run Fedora on it. Sorry, both OSX and Windows seem quite limited.
Yes, with that, my post makes no sense at all. So what?
Well, we could have general multi-platform gaming toolkits. So, game programmers would program against that toolkit, that would look the same for everyplatform. Just another layer of indirection to solve the problem.
Your ad could be here!
See also: Darwine, which has been working on integrating Wine with QEMU, for running on PPC, for some time now. There doesn't seem to any word on it's future in light of OpenDarwin closing, but I suspect they'll continue their work.
I think a major roadblock to this is... when somebody wants to play a game, they do it to let off steam, have some fun, no more dealing with problems, etc. The last thing a person wants to do is hack their machine to get it to work, spending 3 hours trying to fix whatever is wrong before playing a game doesn't sound like a nice trade off. If I click a shortcut and am ready to play then errors start flying I will get all kinds of pissed off... thats not worth the $100 dollars for just buying Xp home. We already have to spend a 1/2 hour downloading WOW's latest patch or deal with a realm being down or laggy... I don't need trouble just trying to execute the friggin game. Especially the fact that Mac users pride stuff "just working", they use this as an advantage over windows problems, which windows users use as an advantage over Linux users. Now now, you linux guys don't flame me for saying Linux doesn't work as easily as windows does. We're not all elite and can fix minor problems at a moments notice. For the average gamer any kind of error can be an insurmountable problem. BTW I quite playing wow.
Thing is, Intel Macs as a gaming platform isn't really feasable just yet. I bought a dual core G5 Powermac 8 months ago, got 2gb of RAM and the highest quality video card the Apple Store would put in it. These kinds of Macs are still being sold, and the buyers are amongst Apple's most serious customers. They also represent what are supposed to be Apple's most powerful machines.
Yet it seems like a Mac like this is less of a gaming platform than an equivalent mac was 5 years ago? Until Civilization 4 was released, the newest mac game available for an entire year was World of Warcraft, a game in which I dabbled, but ultimately dismissed. It certainly isn't the game that you use to show off a computer's capabilities.
Why is it that games that are unanimously celebrated and huge sellers on the PC side, virtually guarenteed to make a profit on any platform, such as Half Life 2 and Oblivion, never make their way to the Mac? Well from my initial looks around, a lot of the problems come from the Havok physics engine, which is a bundled element of the Windows-only 3DS Max modelling and animation program. Havok is the engine that drives the physics reactions in both games mentioned, and has been ported to Windows, the Playstation 2, the Xbox, and every one of the next generation console systems. Yet any game using it that companies have tried to port to the Mac have been scrapped because the developers of Havok won't fix the problems it causes on the Mac.
As a gamer and an animator, I like Havok and I think it adds volumes to creating a realistic and vibrant 3D environment that moves as it should. As an Irish college student, I like it because it was made in Trinity College Dublin. As a Mac user, I resent the fact that they are putting zero effort into making the program work on the platform that most of the creative professionals who generate the game content use...
Yup...
Now, where have I heard this before? Oh yeah:
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
How are Mac-users going to play RTS games without rightclick, or does logitech start to sell mac-gamecontrollers: its a mouse with two buttons!
Or the developers could use the open/cross platform APIs (such as OpenGL, OpenAL, etc) that let them do everything they need already, and get them 95% of the way towards running on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It's their own fault if they chose proprietary APIs that lock their software into a single platform, and didn't abstract that API away enough that it makes porting difficult.
But Cedega used to be a big pile of problematic software. The problem is that some games run really well (mostly a handful of the top 10) but most of them just run, with occasional hangs lots of graphical glitches etc... I dont think the mac version will be better, because the problems are not Cedegas but the system itself is broken by design. In the long run it probably it is better just to dual boot, or wait for parallels to add a decent 3d passthrough layer to their VM, thank to wait for Cedega to be able to run your favorite game.
Whether Apple likes it or not Games Drive the PC Market. Microsoft knows this, which is why they developed Direct X so long ago after Windows 95 was released. Game developers had serious problems with the performance of their games on 95 amd Microsoft had no choice but to answer their call or risk it all. No operating system or computer platform has survived for very long without games. There are notable excepts to this, i.e. Linux, but if you look back at all of the alternative operating systems that failed (i.e. OS/2, BeOS) and non-PC computer platforms that failed you will see one thing they all have in common. And that is ... a lack of a game library. Linux is still around because its good for doing things Windows isn't like running large scale, mission critical business applications (i.e. massive databases, web servers, email servers, network servers ... uh just about everything actually). There is Wine which does a decent enough job running Windows games. For Apple to really break into the PC arena and start grabbing huge chunks of marketshare real estate they need to focus on getting more game developers to port their titles to the Intel-Macs. A 2.0 GHz MacBook Pro and a 2.0 GHz Intel-based iMac using BootCamp to run Windows XP can run The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion "better" than the XBox 360 can! So don't tell me it doesn't have the power to run good games, because right now Oblivion is one of those next-gen PC games which pushes the hardware to its limits and the Intel Macs can handle it without breaking a sweat.
There is NO EXCUSE why more developers don't make games for the Apple Mac platform. They cannot give a good enough why they don't port their games to that platform. There is nothing they can say which will make the reasons for this sound rational. I'm sorry, but it is done gone past time for develoopers to start supporting Apple. THERE IS NO EXCUSE ANYMORE!
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch@gmail.com
http://thezorch.googlepages.com/home
Actually, even on PowerPC, there already were games ported using TransGaming technologies, like SpyHunter. This was reported on their site few days ago, but seems gone now. The game crashed very very often, so i don't really like the idea of them doing it again ;)
That's considerably more than Visual Studio and it does considerably less.
Every developer needs a licence. Developers need time to learn.
It's quicker and easier to use OpenGL for 3D graphics, and port the platform specific parts to native APIs.
I would like to think that Ciders would be ported to Linux (x86/x86-64 of course) for Linux gamers. This might be enough to get more people to try out Linux... I have Ubuntu 6.06 on my 15" Powerbook and my wife has no problems using it (she's not a techie at all).
When we were selling our athlon64 and going down to a dual P2 450 (needed the $$), I went through some non-sense with winxp pro's activation stuff on the dual P2 box. My wife then asked me why we didn't just use Linux instead (I was shocked, but glad)... If I had had time to mess w/ setting up Wine I might have been able to skip Windows altogether. But for now the machine is still a dual boot box, only for the games!
Long story short: windows / online flash games are the only real thing holding us to Windows. Otherwise she, and much of the upcoming generations (we're in our late 20's), could handle the switch. And agree or not, Vista + its DRM stuff + its delays, is just stupid enough to push a few more people towards Linux (every bit counts).
Funny thing is I used to feel that Windows was "good enough" (especially 2000/XP) to give it the benefit of the doubt. But for the last six months or so, Windows and Microsoft has just really annoyed me to no end... Now I'm really pushing for Linux to take a sizeable chunk of the desktop OS market, so that the world can have stuff that works, is stable, fairly secure out of the box, with all the most needed tools for productivity and entertainment, and FREE (in both senses)!
I think the advantage that this approach has over Cedega is that the effort to get the game running will (in theory, at least) be done by the game developer rather than the end-user. They will, after making their Windows game, try to compile it against this new library. No doubt some odd things will happen, but they can patch those up a lot more quickly than they could do a complete port. The end user just gets a normal (if slightly bloated) Mac binary that works out of the box.
It won't be long before a) all Macs come with Windows and OSX installed, and b) Windows will no longer be called Windows, it will be called "Game Mode."
I'm kidding, of course, at least partly, but I suspect that if Mac ports decline, it's definitely what Mac users will use Windows for. Hell, I do already, just in a separate machine. Kind of a funny end considering how long Apples have been decried as "toys."
// This is not a sig.
Wine uses the LGPL license, whereas Cider is a fork from when Wine was BSD licensed.
If Cider were to open up their code and use new Wine code, they would essentialy become LGPL too, thus disabling their ability to a strategic advantage. Remember that companies that earn money on open source typically earn money from supporting it, not distribution of it. Seems to me that there wouldn't be a whole lot of money in just supporting Cider code.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
This is one path for companies to get Windows games onto Macs. It's probably a good thing in that more software will be available for Macs. It sounds like Cedega may have a lot of trouble getting to the point where their software works well enough to satisfy Mac user's expectations though.
All that said, native Mac games will still be produced. They'll run faster, work better, and take full advantage of Mac OS facilities.
In my opinion, the best way to go is a cross-platform game framework. There are many available, and you get nice native ports for very little extra effort, probably no more than that required to support 'Cider'.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Umm god no. The better answer is the same one that everryone hates: Java 1.5 using a Java->C translator .(and vice versa) Why encourage comapnies to invest in flakey layers of emulation? Their's plenty of exaples of this being done well Jake (JavaQuake) on my wussy iBook for example averages 40fps. Yes I do realize that the power users out their are going to wine about the all of 40 miliseconds worth of dellay. Get over it. Java isn't perfect-untill the OSS communit can do better, shut up and encourage the use of Java for games.
No, it is not quicker and easier to do what you describe. If Qt saves you time, it pays for itself very quickly. The cost of the license is NOTHING to a real software development organization.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
by crash, I mean crush, apples.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Yeah, I too once thought playing games in an emulated wine environment was the future. However, this doesn't seem to be happening too well (it's buggy and slow to release a new game). So, let's just all focus on making dual-booting MUCH MUCH faster. Remember loadlin.exe? we need some binaries to loadwindows uber quickly so we can play our games, then we can loadlin.exe back quickly also. Even hibernating both OSs would be a step. Then once this is completed, we can make plugins that remove-WGA, defeat MS money schemes etc.
which only requires rightclick to deselect. Sadly, the gaming world seems to, against all logic and reason, prefer Blizzard's interfaces.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Oh wait, I forgot that here the "'copy-right infringement' is stealing" rule is true ONLY when it involves the GPL and Apple.....
Of course, what we really need is Microsoft to stop creating DirectX and start creating open extensions to OpenGL so that developers can code against a single cross-platform API. But that would be altruistic and I can understand them not wanting to do that. I can understand far less game developers not requiring it.
...
Game developers are largely not OS or platform advocates. They follow the customers. The customers are on Win32 and on Win32 DirectX is compelling. DirectX provides a convenient integrated solution to video, audio, and input, etc. I'd pass on it's networking though. If a developer has no interest in native Linux or Mac ports why would they care about OpenGL? I've used OpenGL for scientific work but if I were to start a game I would definitely use DirectX for the Win32 version. Personally I think cross-platform APIs are too often least common denominator approaches and are oversold by OS advocates. I say use whatever tech is native to the platform. Under Win32 Direct3D and DirectSound, under Mac OpenGL and CoreAudio,
There's no evidence that Qt will save any time at all. It would have to save approx 2 working weeks per developer to justify its cost. This is about twice the time it takes a single Windows developer to create a basic Win32 framework for OpenGL or DirectX, and that costs nothing (apart from sunk costs). Most games companies work on very tight margins. $3000 per developer may be affordable, but they'd prefer to not spend that sort of money unless hey have to.
"If Cider works well, will there be any more Mac-specific game development? And if not, will it matter?"
All one has to do is look what happened to major ports of LINUX games after Transgaming started getting it's software to "kinda" work "mostly".
What we got was Loki software dying and Transgaming becomming the only way to get mainstream games running on LINUX (mostly...kinda...and never as fast as windows natively).
What needs to happen for ANY other microcomputer platform to flourish over windows is for SOME game developer to do SOMETHING that takes inherent advantage of the strengths of OS X (or LINUX) over windows and translates that into a game that everybody wants.
This is great news for smaller developers (of which I am one). If we could take our native windows apps and convert them with little hassle to work on a Mac then there will be more games on the mac. Simple! :)
www.atomicpond.com | www.draperview.com | www.realityfakers.com