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Valve Confirms Mac Versions of Steam, Valve Games
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Gamasutra:
"Valve will release a version of its Steam digital distribution service for Mac next month, along with Mac-native versions of its own games, the company confirmed today after days of hints — and owners of Valve games will have access to both platform versions. The Source engine, which Valve uses to develop all its internal titles and also licenses to third-party developers, will incorporate OpenGL in addition to DirectX, to allow Mac support for all Source developers. ... 'We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform, so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360,' said Cook. 'Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates.'"
I'm all for games being available to as many people as possible. This is awesome news for Apple fans...I hope it signals a shift towards more games being available on the OSX platform. Have fun :-)
Living With a Nerd
Part of the announcement was that, yes, you will be able to play online with PC users.
Countdown to the start of blaming the Mac porting effort for the delay of HL2Ep3 starts in 3..2..1..
I read the internet for the articles.
3 cheers for *native* Mac development, instead of just Cider builds!
I'm sure someone will rush in to point out how a PC is still superior as a gaming rig but, as a Mac owner, I still say NICE!!
It's nice to see other game publishers figure out what Blizzard has known for a very long time.
Linux support is coming when porting it to linux becomes profitable, stop asking.
Would be nice if they decided to release it for Linux as well, even though it might be a "tier-2" platform to them.
From the article:
"Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step," said Portal 2 lead developer Josh Weier. "We're always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac."
The article also mentions that Portal2 will be a day 1 release for the Mac alongside the PC.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
If the source engine is going to be running with OpenGL too now I suspect that these games will suddenly be much easier to get working in Wine.
This sig wasn't worth reading, was it.
Yes, it's native, and they are optimizing for OpenCL and other Mac-specific stuff. No cider or other such crap. Now, if only they can release something other than third-person shooters which I both dislike and suck at. :)
A big win for gaming on macs. Valve has a cannon of some of the best FPSs the PC has to offer. I've been exclusively buying and playing my titles through Steam for about 2 years now (the sales are spectacular). Hopefully with native Steam support, more developers will take time and expense to make their new offerings dual-platform.
And what does this mean for us Linux users? OSX and Linux are both Unix variants, a little difference in FreeBSD/Linux kernels, but not nearly the jump to port that it is for Windows. Discuss.
It might automate code generation but it doesn't automate debugging or QA testing which in my experience take significantly more effort then running the build system....
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
My PC-owning buddies hated me nailing them in Q3A, on my Mac, especially if I said "ok guys, I'll use the one button mouse, just to be fair".
I don't own a Mac, but today seems like a good day if you do.
One of the things I don't like about Mac (and there are a few) is that many games are not released for Mac or if they are, they are released way after they are released for everything else.
This seems to be a nice step in the right direction, and I got to say so far as a fit goes, Valve and Steam seem to me a great fit for Macs. Makes me think of the App store on their iPhones.
As much as I like to bash Macs, this is a very astute move for Apple and for Valve. More competition the better I say, Windows has had much the world bent over a bench for long time now and pretty much a monopoly over the gaming market outside of consoles (and a big chunk of that also with the Xboxen). Next step, price Macs more competitively?
Although getting Source on Mac is fine, Steam is the much bigger deal. Although I don't expect PC game developers to shift their production away from PC as their "first target platform", it does make it easier if one is also interested in distributing games on Mac. It doesn't matter the size of game developer, the Mac platform is a tough nut to crack due to scales of market shifted so far to the PC where an online one can help equalize. For instance, [i]World of Goo[/i] is an excellent game that works great on Mac but it must be hell to sell to just Mac owners. Your best bet in this situation for many publishers is to "combine distribute" the PC and Mac version on one disk which isn't totally efficient and desirable.
With Steam this gets a lot simpler. You now have a marketplace that goes directly to Mac owners and they get a bunch of the bonus support of Steamworks like version updates and achievement systems. Source on Mac for some games but I really see Steam as the big deal here. Steam opens up a lot to game developers.
And as a side though: Did Apple dropped a ball here where they could have used their gigantic online store to sell MacOS games? iTunes works great for updating games on iPhone and iPod...would it be so difficult to do the same for desktop games?
The biggest objections to Apple's computers over the last few years have been a) The cost and b) no games available.
The cost issue has become pretty meaningless to anyone who is willing to compare oranges to oranges: the cost of a Mac laptop or desktop with X features is pretty comparable to a Windows laptop or desktop with the same feature set, its just that usually the PC side has lower features by default and you can buy the components to raise the level of functionality, whereas Apple doesn't operate in the low end of the computer spectrum and even their base systems have great features and very high quality.
With this change by Valve it will hopefully signify changes in the attitude of the rest of the games industry and Mac support will grow to the point that its treated as well as Microsoft's products with regards to gaming. I am perfectly content with my iMac 20" desktop for the gaming I am doing, and I would love to play more games under OS/X rather than dualbooting to XP.
Lastly, if the Mac gains in acceptance, perhaps Linux will follow down the road. Having implemented all of this stuff for OS/X it can't be as far a stretch to include Linux as it was to make the original jump from Windows to OS/X (being a kind of unix after all)?
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
and owners of Valve games will have access to both platform versions.
In an age where publishers are doing everything in their power to tie your hands when it comes to their software, this simply amazes me.
We've got publishers who user DRM that renders a game useless after a half-dozen installs... And valve is going to let you run your games on two entirely different platforms?! Not two different computers... But wholly different platforms. Amazing.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
OS X is UNIX, Linux is Unix "like".
And "A Little Difference" is huge, probably as large of a difference between them and the NT kernel. Not only that, OS X doesn't even use the FreeBSD kernel, they use the Darwin one.
Awesome. There will be an entire new population of n00bs for me to pwn. And these aren't just any noobs--they've never even been exposed to a real FPS experience of any sort. Hell, they don't even have a secondary-fire button!
Mwuhahahaha... Dominating!
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
And what does this mean for us Linux users? OSX and Linux are both Unix variants
Mac OS X native apps use a different toolkit from the vast majority of apps for Linux and the free BSDs. This toolkit is called Cocoa (formerly OpenStep). GNUstep is a Free clone of parts of Cocoa, intended for source compatibility, not binary compatibility like Wine.
Unlike Ubisoft's system, Steam has an offline mode. Steam requires access to the DRM server when you install the game, not every time you play.
They're just too small to concentrate on two consoles, and it's a lot easier to target Win+360 than Win+PS3. They outsourced the Orange Box port to EA and it ended up sucking, big time. Rather than own up to the cheap port, Gabe Newell made some nasty comments about the how the PS3 sucks as a development platform.
Until Valve gets a lot bigger, I doubt we'll see any of their games on PS3.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
I've never had any trouble getting any Source games to run under linux, usually faster than then did under native windows.
*DrugCheese rants*
True, but in this case the relatively small subset of hardware supported by OSX makes things easier. Once they have it running at all it will only need to be tested against two or three OS revisions (10.5 Leopard, 10.6 Snow Leopard and possibly 10.4 Tiger) and a half dozen video cards. In many ways I suspect that the testing will be far easier than what is needed for a console. A few more hardware versions to deal with but at the same time there is so much higher margin in terms of RAM and processor power that there is a lot more room to play with.
Erm... Cocoa is for the UI layer, like toolbars, buttons etc., when did you ever see a standard toolbar in a game? Almost every game uses custom UI, so if steam games are using OpenGL(which is the only accelerated graphics API on the Mac), it should be easy to port it to Linux/BSD.
This space for rent.
I doubt it. OSX is (relatively) easy to support because it has a very small subset of software to target (two/three revisions depending on if you support back to 10.4 or just 10.5/6) and a small selection of hardware. There is a massive difference between doing Q/A for a half dozen video cards on a stable platform versus trying to support the massive set of moving targets that get lumped together under Linux along with all the possible hardware that might get plugged in. Valve already has to do that with Windows. Do you think there is enough cash involved to make Linux worth the same effort?
As one example, which of the current half-baked Linux audio architectures do you recommend they use?
Actually there's a much bigger jump.
Windows and OSX are fairly well-regulated monocultures: you have a consistent idea about how installation is supposed to work, you know where to put your config files, you know what permissions you need and how to get them. You rarely need to worry about broken dependencies: they happen, but the platform vendors usually provide an updater you can distribute with your application.
On the other hand, Linux is an undifferentiated mass. An application developer literally cannot make any useful predictions about the end user's configuration, which means it's almost impossible to provide support. The state of Linux is fine - it's even very strong - when you're only talking about FOSS. When you start asking for money, you need to make sure that your software is Suitable for a Particular Purpose. Installation needs to be easy and it needs to work everywhere.
I'm offering 10:1 I get modded flamebait for not drinking the Linux Kool-Aid.
I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS. It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.
Shiny. Let's be bad guys...
two or three OS revisions (10.5 Leopard, 10.6 Snow Leopard and possibly 10.4 Tiger)
Someone mentioned below that they are planning to support OpenCL (assuming they didn't mean simply OpenGL). If that is the case, I wonder if they will only support Snow Leopard. This provides several benefits:
If that is true, they will probably disappoint quite a few Mac users, who haven't upgraded for one reason or another.
Of course, Apple will be happy about it... ;-)
PPC's died 6 years ago, welcome to the 21st century!
Just so you know, the 21st century began more than six years ago.
Mac users are very willing to open up their wallets and pay for nearly anything.
Linux users tend to rarely want to pay for anything. Even if install base may be similar (this ignore that most macs come equipped with above average graphic chips, while most Linux machines are cheap netbooks,) actual money market share is so insignificant for Linux that it's unlikely (albeit not impossible) anyone would spend much time porting commercial applications to the platform, specially software that must sell massive amount of copies at very low prices to actually make a profit. That's not to mention having to support software for so many different versions of Linux out there can be as taxing as porting for a whole new platform. A Linux steam would be forced to pick one Linux version to support and not spend resources on any other, limiting their market drastically.
The reason there are not mainstream games being developed for Linux is not the difficulty of the port, it's the non-existing profitability of the market.
Erm... Cocoa is for the UI layer, like toolbars, buttons etc., when did you ever see a standard toolbar in a game? Almost every game uses custom UI, so if steam games are using OpenGL(which is the only accelerated graphics API on the Mac), it should be easy to port it to Linux/BSD.
It should be easier to port to Linux (et al.) than it was before they made a Mac version, but not easy exactly.
As noted before, basically every user-facing program on OS X uses a ton of Cocoa calls. Cocoa is used for more than just the UI layer: it provides a generous standard library of data types, os calls, and other useful things. Think of cocoa as an Objective C / OS X friendly libc. Objective C itself does not easily translate from the Mac to other systems, as well. Last I checked, GNUstep didn't have a working Objective C 2.0 runtime yet.
Eh, but userland is more or less the same. There are differences for IO drivers, and you can use Quartz Compositor instead of X, but the two are very similar.
Reread what you just wrote. X is primitive whereas Quartz is a compositor. You need to add a compositor on top of X to match functionality but games generally use OpenGL which is abstracted from the underlying drawing framework.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
If MS paid them, why are they now porting to Macs?
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
Apple hasn't sold a powerpc computer in roughly 4 years (2006). A decent number of programs no longer support powerpc at all (and this has been a growing problem for several years--I think it was the 2008 olympics that required Silverlight to stream, which didn't officially run on PowerPC). I think it's 100% safe to say there will be no powerpc support for Steam.
World of Warcraft ...
Most of those games came out years after their PC equivalent. Even in the case of Dragon Age (which was delayed by months), it is just the PC game wrapped in an emulator. And it does not support DLC.
OS X is UNIX, Linux is Unix "like".
I love how people say this and presume they've just said something significant. Mac OS X's UNIX certification is not worth much more than the advertising bullet-point they us it for. Both Linux and Mac OS X are UNIX in every way that actually matters today, namely POSIX-compliance. It's not like UNIX certification grants Mac OS X special compatibility traits; it's still not binary compatible with any other UNIX, neither is it source compatible if you move beyond what's specified by POSIX and other common standards. So what do you think is the significance of your factually-based and pointless assertion?
Off the top of my head, reading/writing files including savings settings/game saves
What's wrong with fopen & friends, and POSIX memory-mapped files? What would be gained by using Cocoa APIs here?
USB device management
Why would a game need to manage USB devices? If you mean input devices, then it shouldn't care if they're USB or not at all - that's for OS to deal with
Though you do have a point that the only cross-platform input API right now is SDL, and, IIRC, it is fairly primitive with respect to functions it supports (force feedback and the likes).
thread management
POSIX.
Core Audio?
Most game engines today just license some existing cross-platform audio framework that already wraps and abstracts away OS differences. So, presumably, such framework would only have to be ported once.
Since we're speaking of Source games specifically, HL2 uses Miles Sound System, which is in fact available on Linux (or, really, any system where OpenAL is).
It's not that they think no one wants them. It's that they know that not enough people want them for it to be profitable. You and your wife and the (relative) handful of other people who consist of the audience for Linux games aren't a significant market.
Hell, the PS3 and the Wii don't even make the cut in Valve's book.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
That's why they should develop exclusively for Debian. All its children will inherit compatibility (or else), and you have a standard Linux OS to develop for.
Yeah, but how much effort did they expend to get their build process to that point, and how much of that could have been spent on HL2 Ep3 instead? My guess is "a hell of a lot of work", and "not much since Ep3 is mostly new content not new software".
(i.e.: 64-bit support is required for Snow Leopard.)
I realize I'm nitpicking, but 64-bit support is not required for Snow Leopard. It runs just fine on my 2006-era 32-bit Core Duo MacBook.
I believe they explicitly mentioned that was an absolute pain to program for at some point. Valve are already rolling in money because of Steam and they're a small company, so it's not a high priority.
(And people say PC gaming is dying. Hahaha)
I could be wrong (i.e. I haven't checked too closely), but I am pretty sure there is Intel-only software that runs on 10.4. I will have to dig a bit and see if I can find an example, but I'm fairly sure many of the recent game releases (such as WoW and Plants vs. Zombies) can run on 10.4, but still require an intel Mac. My Mini came with an Intel proc, but is currently running 10.4...
{checks PopCap.com for PvZ info}
Yup. 10.4.11 and Intel proc combo required. It could be done. No PowerPC support required.
Mess not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
So they are supporting Windows, XBox and MacOSX, and they'll use Mac-only libraries and languages instead of using cross-platform ones? That doesn't make any sense.
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Since the iPad is also marketed as a gaming device I wouldn't be surprised if this is the first step towards releasing games on the ipad.
Hell, they don't even have a secondary-fire button!
Sure we do, we just have to drop to DOS and edit config.sys to load rghtclck.tsr and off we go!
Go easy on him, man. It's the 90s! Anything goes!
I've always disliked the idea of steam, online login to validate, locking your games to an account so you can't resell, etc. But valve just keeps throwing in so many perks it's hard to fight all the great advantages Steam offers. It really is DRM done about as right as it can get.
Kudos to Valve!
Well ok, not crap necessarily, but extremely different. The Cell processor is very unlike what you find in computers or the 360, so it takes a different set of skills to make good use of it.
The 360 and the PC are essentially an identical development environment, despite the different CPUs. You do everything in Visual Studio and MS makes it extremely easy to go cross platform. So, makes sense there. The Mac is a different platform with different tools, but fundamentally it is the same hardware as a PC and things work in the same way. There are also tools, like OpenGL, that work on both. So while it might be more effort to add support for it than to add 360 support (for a Windows developer), shouldn't be too terribly bad.
The PS3 though? Completely different dev tools AND a different architecture. Your programmers would have to learn a rather different way of doing things. Makes port costs higher. Couple that with the fact that the PS3 is the minority console and you can see why they might give it a miss.
One thing people have to remember is that Valve does their own game engine. Many other companies license an engine, and that engine already supports multiple platforms. Unreal Engine 3, which is extremely popular, runs on the PC, 360 and PS3. Gamebryo, another popular one, runs on all those and the Wii too. Well this means less time for the game developers in terms of porting since some of the heavy lifting has already been done.
Not so for Valve, Source is their own thing (well, it does have a bit of legacy form Quake 1 but not much). They have to do all the work in porting it. So, that means that all the problems with dealing with a PS3 fall on their shoulders.
This might be worth it, if they made a lot of money on engine sales. That's why Epic ported UE3 to the consoles. They make their money on all the licenses of their engine. However Valve doesn't. When you look UE3 has around 150 games out or in development using it, all of 3 of those are from Epic (UT3, GoW 1 and 2). Looking at Source, you see that there's maybe 30 games, and around half are Valve's own. They do license their engine out, but it doesn't happen all that much. As a practical matter, Epic has superior tools and that makes Source a hard sell to 3rd party developers.
Which Distro?
Ubuntu. And which version of Windows?
XP? Then you don't have DirectX 10. Vista/7 Only? Then XP people hate you. And professional, business, personal, what?
What sound system?
OpenAL, which will run on anything, including Windows and OS X. That's about as retarded as asking what graphics library you should use.
Lack of easy to install 3d drivers for nVidia and ATI. Actually the drivers for nVidia and ATI are pretty easy to install but probably beyond what some people will want to do.
Same exact thing, word for word, applies to Windows. The only difference is whether or not the OS was preloaded -- so buy a Dell with Ubuntu, problem solved.
I would love to see it but Linux and OSX are not that alike.
They're both Unix. They both use OpenGL.
on OSX you just target quicktime for audio and video playback.
According to another poster, quicktime for audio is deprecated in favor of a few APIs, including OpenAL -- in other words, if they've done this right, it is exactly the same on Linux and OS X. What else you got?
No need to worry what "legal" codecs are available.
Two big duh moments here.
First, you're a game developer. You can include codecs with your game, and you can encode your audio however the fuck you want. There is nothing stopping you from using Vorbis and Theora, as other developers have in the past.
If you really need the superior quality-per-bit, and you don't want to rely on your customers having a certain codec installed -- might fly for OS X, certainly won't for Windows -- you license. And that same exact license will cover your use of that codec on any OS.
Is Valve going to start targeting OpenGL?
No, their OS X port runs on magical pixie dust. Of course they're targeting OpenGL!
So basically every technical argument of yours is pure, unadulturated FUD and BS. Why are you still at +5 insightful?
But the real issue is lack of customers. I just don't see that many Linux users that don't dual boot into Windows for gaming.
And Mac users don't? Given the demographic, I'd expect Mac users to be able to afford the extra Windows license, even Parallels so they don't have to reboot.
If you don't get new customers it doesn't pay off.
Bullshit.
OSX offers a bigger pay off
See above. Also, it seems to me that more Mac people would be willing to dual-boot and/or run Parallels, and would have the funds to do so.
and fewer development issues.
Nope, pretty much every development issue you raised is completely moot, especially if they already have an OS X port.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I think it is encouraging how successful Blizzard and Steam's DRM are being perceived. Yeah, you are going to have die hards that will flip out against any DRM...but when they offer the amazing convenience and functionality, people will get on board.
My friend was telling me how steam even can do file integrity checks on any Steam game file. If it detects corruptions, it will just update those files with the non-corrupt file and you are back on your way.
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