Spore, Call of Duty 4 Confirmed for OSX

1up is reporting that, along with the big announcements from yesterday's MacWorld event, the welcome news trickles down that OSX will be getting some more games. The much-delayed Spore has been confirmed for the platform, as has the hit FPS title Call of Duty 4. "In Spore's case, the magic of cross-platform portability is achieved through the use of a special software layer supplied by Toronto-based TransGaming Technologies. This software is capable of interpreting hardware calls to Windows DirectX into Mac-capable instructions. Through use of this technology, Electronic Arts (and others) seem hopeful about bringing even more games to mac in the coming months."

Or...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they could, you know, use some cross-platform APIs like OpenGL and SDL and stop mucking around with half-assed solutions like Transgaming's.

Is that so hard?

Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Years ago, Doom was announced for the Mac. Mac faithful write breathless posts on the Net proclaiming that the tide is turning and game developers were obviously finally 'waking up' and about to start supporting their niche platform.

Years ago, Duke Nukem was announced for the Mac. Mac faithful write breathless posts on the Net proclaiming that the tide is turning and game developers were obviously finally 'waking up' and about to start supporting their niche platform.

And so on, and so on, and so on...

So pathetic.

Disappointing

[r_jensen11]

And here I was, thinking that EA had written these games using OpenGL and OpenAL, thus allowing them to easily port the games over to growing platforms. Then I saw mentions of Transgaming, and all hopes were dashed.

Re:it just might be possible. . .

[jandrese]

Possibly, but I doubt the Mac port is using X11 for the display, so a port to Linux probably wouldn't be as easy as you think.

Re:Boot Camp

[elrous0]

if I wanted to buy a computer and buy a copy of Windows to run on it, I wouldn't have bought a Mac...

If you wanted to play games you wouldn't have bought a Mac.

Re:So that explains it!

[C0rinthian]

The Mac 'version' (and I use the term loosely) of Spore is going to be like the Mac 'version' of Eve online. Crap.

I really don't like what Transgaming has done to hurt non-Windows gaming. Why would a developer make platform independant games when they can keep coding for Windows and use Transgaming to churn out buggy, half-assed ports? Thats all we have to look forward to now, with the rare exception of a Blizzard title.

We need a good mac desktop for gameing to be a big

[Joe The Dragon]

We need a good mac desktop for gameing to be a big thing on mac osx.

a $2300 system with a 2600xt is not cutting it.

you can add a 8800 gt for $200 more but $2500 for a 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon system with 2gb of 800MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM and only a 8800 gt and only a 320GB hd.

looks real bad to next to other gameing system at that price that have a desktop cpu 4gb of ram, raid, XFI sound card, and SLI and there good gameing systems that you can get for $1500 - $2000 with better video cards, faster cpus, more ram, more hdd space, good sounds cards and more.

The mini has a carp video for gameing.

the imacs have a video card is slower at gameing then the older one where.

The rest of the imac hardware is ok it just needs a better video card.

also a $7000 - $1500 desktop with good video card is needed.

Re:Hm

[TheSeer2]

Why do people keep thinking Spore is 'vaporware'? That has absolutely no basis in reality! Oh noes! Spore has never had a release date! IT MUST BE VAPORWARE!

Re:Hopefully not a sign of things to come

[slcdb]

As an employee of TransGaming, I take offense to that generalization

Okay, so calling it things like a "bullshit emulation layer" may come off as a bit harsh. But please understand that this harshness is born out of customer frustration with the lack of quality and performance we experience in OS X, versus the exact same game in Windows. Instead of taking offense, take it for what it is: a sign that people might stop buying games using your product unless you can significantly improve its quality in the near term.

As for everything else you wrote, you pretty much just validated what I said. These games aren't true ports to the OS X platform. True ports would dispense entirely with the Windows APIs and work entirely with the native interfaces provided by OS X. I believe that EA's (and other companies') customers would be happier with the product if it was a true port. I understand that this makes the job much more difficult, which sucks for you, and may even mean that many games would simply never see a MacOS version, which sucks for everyone.

But what really sucks even worse is when you are a customer, and you have the expectation that Battlefield 2142 for the Mac is going to be just as nice as Battlefield 2142 for Windows, but after you pay your money (and forfeit your right to a refund by installing and using the software) you find out that it's not at all the experience you had been expecting.

Re:Hopefully not a sign of things to come

[rat_herder]

While I read your comment nodding my head, I disagree there is nothing developers can do about it. Simply giving up and letting M$ own your development tools & make your lives "easier" will ultimately lead to a monoculture graphics development. IE, developers will be left with even less choice when DirectX finally crushes the life out of OpenGL. M$ doesn't need to invest money after this happens. It has guaranteed revenue from the developer tools themselves, then from licences & Windows itself, because DirectX requires Windows to run.

Then what happens? As has happened so many times before, M$ locks up a market segment and walks away, looking for another market to consume. 2 things seems likely in this scenario. M$ suddenly increases licencing costs to access new versions of DirectX. Giving massive financial advantage to its own game developers. Inovation stops. M$ no longer has any incentive to do anything with DirectX.

Is MS office really the very best package our collective IT industry can come up with? why has no other office appeared to challenge it on features and speed?

M$ have a plan. They are constantly working to put the industry into a corner (again).

Developing for OpenGL as a priority will change this situation.

Re:Hopefully not a sign of things to come

[HuguesT]

A "true port" would not help at all.

The parent wrote that, essentially, if you want to take best advantage of the video card in your Mac, crappy or high-level though that card may be, you need to run DirectX. Apple does not provide drivers, code example and extra software needed for new, serious game developement compared to Windows/DX. Apple's OpenGL drivers are not even up to spec with what Nvidia provides in their driver for Linux.

Hence a port of any game to OS/X is going to be painful and run slowly anyway. It doesn't just suck for games authors, but for users as well. Apple is not seriously interested in games and have shown it over and over again [macobserver.com].

In general Apple is very annoying in the way they control their hardware. They don't even let Nvidia or ATI provide an independent driver for OS/X. It's very obvious that Apple's drivers implement only a subset of the cards capabilities. This also explain why Apple never rushes to the latest and greatest graphic cards even for their PowerMac workstations : their driver is incapable of taking full advantage of them.