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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?
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.
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.
I mean, this is great and all, but when are we going to get the ability to play Mac games on Windows?
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!
I think you mean: "It's not truthy until Steve Colbert says it's truthy."
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
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.
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
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.
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.