TransGaming Launches Mac Game Portal

Gamasutra is reporting that TransGaming, maker of Cedega, has announced the launch of the new Mac video game distribution portal, "GameTree." "GameTree Online hopes to replicate digital distribution offerings for Windows-based PC, enabling consumers to purchase and download Mac games, read gaming news, participate in promotional opportunities, and write game reviews. TransGaming plans to continually add new titles from a mix of genres to its online portal."

Comments

Cake?

[Cy Sperling]

Will there be cake? (oops, wrong Portal)

Yet another "Fuck You" to PPC

[Night Goat]

And of course, it's actually just Intel-based Macs. So my two-year-old G5 is completely overlooked yet again. If I had an Intel Mac, I'd just put Windows on a partition. Kind of pointless, if you ask me. Not every Mac user buys a new computer every time Apple comes out with a new product line.

Re:Yet another "Fuck You" to PPC

[moderatorrater]

Very few two-year-old computers get any gaming love at all.

Re:Yet another "Fuck You" to PPC

[machxor]

I'm sure it doesn't say anything about the capability/compatibility of your PPC chip. In reality it's a trivial task to modify code written for one architecture to another. The reason they don't do it is because they hate you and your PPC.

Re:Yet another "Fuck You" to PPC

[anti-human 1]

Don't get me wrong, I can out-old-Mac you (450 mhz G3![overclocked]), but you can't expect anyone to support a dead desktop processor architecture. With a PPC Mac, you're just as stuck not being able to play windows games as you ever were. Luckily, there have been great games for the Mac, (Escape Velocity and Marathon, to name a few). I'm going to guess you already know this.

Re:Yet another "Fuck You" to PPC

[vux984]

And of course, it's actually just Intel-based Macs

What? are you serious?

Transgaming/Cedega is basically an enhancement/fork/product based on the WINE project that lets you run Windows apps on the *nix OSes. As I'm sure you know, WINE is one one of those recursive acronyms... Wine is not an emulator. Meaning that it lets you run Windows software by implementing the Windows API, and then running the code against.

Given that Wine is not an emulator, and the software running on it was compiled for x86 by its respective makers, why exactly would you expect it to run on a G5?

If I had an Intel Mac, I'd just put Windows on a partition.

The point of transgaming/cedega WINE is to run software -without- buying a copy of windows. It doesn't let you run windows software without x86 machines, it lets you run windows software without windows.

Kind of pointless, if you ask me.

If saving you having to buy and install windows to run a game on your Mac is pointless. Then yes, it is pointless. Most people however think there is a clear and obvious point.

Not every Mac user buys a new computer every time Apple comes out with a new product line.

If you wanted/expected to ever run Windows games on that computer, you would never have selected a G5 in the first place.

Re:Yet another "Fuck You" to PPC

[maniac/dev/null]

Not every Mac user buys a new computer every time Apple comes out with a new product line. Actually, that behavior was depreciated in iUser 10.3

Re:Yet another "Fuck You" to PPC

[MBCook]

If I had an Intel Mac, I'd just put Windows on a partition.

I know you think that. We all think that. It's not reality.

Gaming was one of the things I wanted to do when I got my MacBook Pro. I tried doing some gaming through Parallels. Even with it's 3D support, it can't do much. I'm not sure how well it would run Half-Life (not 2... the first). If you want to play Bejeweled, Chuzzle, NetHack, or other relativly simple games you're fine. If you want to run some special Windows only program you're golden. If you want to play Mass Effect you're dead.

So I have a Windows partition. I have used it for three things at this point. Half-Life 2, Sam & Max, and Team Fortress 2.

I play TF2 quite a bit. That said, I'd play it at least twice as often if I didn't have to reboot to Windows. I ran into the same problem (but stronger) with HL2 and Sam & Max.

So I have to quit any open applications, save my progress in all of them, no matter how small, close all windows, whatever. Then I have to reboot. Then I have to hold down Option, then select Windows. Then I wait for Windows to boot. Then I wait for Windows to finish loading. Then I wait for the game to load. Then I wait to get into a server.

The whole process (complicated a tiny bit by the fact I use an external drive because my Windows partition is small) means it takes a good 10-15 minutes of my time to get into and out of Windows.

That's bad enough. What if I want to stop what I'm doing, play a game for a while, then go back to what I'm doing? I have to go through all that. I have to re-open everything. It takes a ton of time.

If I want to quit the game, check my email, and go back I have to use webmail because it would take so long to get over to OS X and back to Windows. I have to basically plan when I want to play a game that needs Windows. I have to really want to play. It just takes enough time that I can't drop what I'm doing for a half-hour session, because I'll lose a large chunk of that to rebooting and such.

It's a testament to how much I wanted to play HL2, Sam & Max, and how much I continue to want to play TF2 that I continue to bother. Those people who say "Boot Camp will kill Mac gaming" obviously aren't trying to use Boot Camp for gaming much. I like it much much better than nothing (I wouldn't try HL2/TF2 on a console), but it's no substitute for native gaming.

While not as good as native, being able to use something like Cinega is a huge plus for me. I would gladly use it if I thought I could get good performance out of the game I want to play (and I didn't think I might get kicked for cheating due to Valve Anti-Cheat).

I would gladly purchase all of Orange Box again just to get TF2 native for Mac if they offered it.

Re:Yet another "Fuck You" to PPC

[mrbluze]

And of course, it's actually just Intel-based Macs. So my two-year-old G5 is completely overlooked yet again. I hear ya. I got a macbook last year and only started to follow the mac forums then. The sting in Apple's tail is noticeable and, though they offer a better product overall than Microsoft, they make an even worse mother-in-law than M$.

Re:Yet another "Fuck You" to PPC

[nawcom]

Team Fortress 2 is Gold rated and Half-Life 2 is Platinum rated (higher than gold) So running them on OS X shouldn't be a challenge. I might test them out on cider one of these days. The only issue is that (at least for cedega) transgaming uses an older wine build for cedega; i have no clue what build they use for cider.

Re:Yet another "Fuck You" to PPC

[vux984]

Actually, if a game is recompiled against winelib, it can run on any CPU architecture winelib will run on. That includes PPC. It'd become a Mac-native game that has an internal implementation of Win32 and DirectX.

That's a pretty BIG if.

However, unlike Wine itself, TransGaming's fork doesn't support PPC.

PPC hasn't been used in a mainstream desktop, not even an Apple one, for a couple years now. What would be the point of supporting a platform that is too slow to run the games coming down the pipe, even if they were running natively? Transgaming is a business, not a labour of love.

Transgaming's Business Model

[_Sprocket_]

Great! An entirely new market for them to begin ignoring!

transgaming?

[maniac/dev/null]

I didn't realize cross-dressing mac gamers were such a large demographic.

Re:To bad that macs don't have good hardware for g

[Phrogman]

Oh, I'm sorry, I guess I should stop playing PC games on my Imac dual-booted to XP using Bootcamp then.

Its not the best platform for playing games, but its let me play Starwars Galaxies, City of Heroes, Age of Conan and Pirates of the Burning Sea effectively enough, some of them even run quite well.

Now I would prefer to have native OS/X versions of these games of course, but the Imac seems to run XP just fine in the meantime. The only downside is that Apple is very slow to update their drivers for XP under bootcamp so some games suffer when the publisher moves to the latest driver and Apple hasn't played catch up yet.

Re:To bad that macs don't have good hardware for g

[Kamokazi]

I'd be the first to bash a Mac, especially in the realm of gaming, (I actually came here to post something along the lines of "ROFL it's gonna flop!") but you're completely wrong in your statement (with the exception of the Mini + Air). Out of the box, Macs have:

iMac: ATI HD2400, 26000, or nV 8800GS
Mac Pro: ATI HD2600XT
MacBook: Ok, crap integrated on this one
MB Pro: nV 8600GT

Not too bad, especially considering most off-the-shelf Windows PCs have crappy integrated graphics....nV 7150, ATI x1150, Intel X3100, etc...garbage. Even nicer $800+ desktops or so don't usually come with video horsepower (nV 8300 is still shit) unless you buy a gaming PC. Laptops are even worse. There are a plethora of large (15"+) $1500k+ laptops out there that could have good GPUs that don't.

Now if you get into stuff on places like Newegg, yes, you will find a better ratio. But Newegg is not the bulk of the Windows PC industry. (D)Hell, Worst Buy, and Circuit Shity are.

Link to the actual portal

[amaupin]

Here's the link to the actual portal. (Annoyingly not included in the summary OR the Gamasutra hosted press release.)

Looks like yet another portal attempting to bank in with the same games already hosted on existing portals like Big Fish Games and Game Socks...

The more the merrier, I guess.

Finally!

[sgant]

COOL! Maybe I can FINALLY play World of Warcraft on my Mac!

Re:To bad that macs don't have good hardware for g

[Jorophose]

iMac: ATI HD2400, 26000, or nV 8800GS
Except for the 8800GS, these are definately not "gaming" video cards.

HD3650 would be good if they had them, and even then it'd play like crap on the iMac's resolutions. Especially considering they insist to put them with such big monitors.

And aren't these mobile cards?

Mac Pro: ATI HD2600XT
Definately not a good card, wasn't this squished in between the 8600GT and HD3650 in terms of age with the performance of a X1650 on a smaller die?

And you're paying a pretty premium for that mac pro, what is it now, 4,000$?

MacBook: Ok, crap integrated on this one
And sadly IIRC macbook is the better selling 'book.

MB Pro: nV 8600GT
Isn't this the 8600GT-M? There is a small but fair difference between them... And the 8600GT has always been an underwhelmer; it's only worth the 80$ they're starting to sell them that... With the amount of money they charge for a MBP, this feels very underwhelming, but yeah it's better than nothing.

It's incredibly sad that the latest and greatest Apple can muster will cost you in the thousands and will come with a crippled processor & RAM.

Re:To bad that macs don't have good hardware for g

[snuf23]

The bigger down side is no upgradeable video card in an iMac. Also you have buy the top of the line iMac in order to get a decent video card. The Radeon 2600 Pro gets beaten all over the map by a mid range card like an 8800GTS (about $200).
It's an OK chip but Conan will look a lot better on a nicer card.

Re:Wine on PPC architecures

[Lars T.]

Come on, be fair - you can't really run Crysis on almost any x86 either.

With the unbelievable amount of 3 (Three!) Games

[Qbertino]

I am over-f*cking-welmed.

It's got a great list of games

[elrous0]

There's Breakout and...um.....um...Super Breakout.