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Apple Businesses Entertainment Games

Freecraft Out For The Mac 41

Posted by Hemos from the come-and-get-it dept.
bsharitt writes "Mark Pazolli has ported Freecraft to Mac OS X, making this popular open source RTS game avalble on the three major platforms (it's been on Linux/*nix and Windows for a while). The complete download is here."
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Freecraft Out For The Mac More

Freecraft Out For The Mac

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  • Let the flames begin? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Paul Burney ( 560340 ) on Sunday July 14, 2002 @07:50PM (#3883369) Homepage

    It's cool that he's ported the project to OS X.

    I wonder how soon the flames will start up again? For reference, see when the game/engine was a focus on developer's slashdot:

    http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/0 5/27/0347226&mode=flat&tid=127 [slashdot.org]

    I just got my copy of Warcraft III so it'll be a while before I can test this out. FWIW, I appreciate Blizzard shipping the Mac version at the same time as the PC.

    Uh oh.... Here come the bnetd flames...

    • Re:Let the flames begin? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by iomud ( 241310 )
      Did you notice that wc3 was a little more expensive than other games on the shelf? I wonder if the expense in time and resources for porting to mac were responsible for the slight price increase. If so I wouldnt mind paying the extra cost for the ability to play future/other games on all my machines. Especially on my mac though.
      • My guess would be that Warcraft III was so expensive because of the name, and they knew it would still sell just as good. I don't really care though, I still bought it the day after release.
      • Since every Blizzard game to date has made it to the Mac, sooner or later, I don't think that's the cause. I think it's a combination of pent up demand(some people would pay anything for it), and to help pay for ever increasing server loads on Battle.net.

      • Re:Let the flames begin? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Triv ( 181010 )
        hype, my friend. It's all 'bout hype. When a new game's touted as being the greatest game ever, they can get away with charging an arm and a leg for it. Personally, I just picked up a copy of Q3:a for ten bucks at Software Etc (and broodwar for a buck - my copy's a bit damaged). I'll wait till the publicity machine dies down a bit before I pick that one up. I'd rather spend 5 bucks on a used genesis/NES cart than spend 60 on a game that'll seriously stress my computer's specs.

        Q3:A is a beautiful sight on my iMac DV - WC3 would run like all the characters have Palsy. :)

        Triv
        • What kind of processor speed does your DV have? I have a 400MHz G3 and my bro has been bugging me to get in on Q3A.
          • yep. iMac DV400 here too. Q3A runs beautifully provided you boot into OS9 - I haven't tried it in classic. There's also an OSX version in the works (it's in beta...there's info here [apple.com]). I'd say pick it up - it's certainly cheap enough. Just make sure you've got RAM to spare - I've got 640MB loaded into my system. :)

            Triv

      • Re:Let the flames begin? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by BitGeek ( 19506 ) on Monday July 15, 2002 @08:57AM (#3885474) Homepage

        I worked on two games that shipped simultaneously on the Mac and Windows platforms in the late 90s.

        The development of parallel versions did not add significantly to the development time nor expense.

        Because we had good mac developers (I was one) we simply had our development team spread acrosss platforms -- rather than porting. So, for instance the "scound guy" was a mac programmer, and his code was written to run under windows and Mac with a small hardware specific sound API that was common.

        BTW FWIW, its much cheaper and faster to develop a game for the mac-- and this was under the classic os-- than for windows. The APIs are much better and more consistent.

        The only reason there are less games on teh mac is because of stupid marketing dipshits. Mac games are actually 20-200 percent more profitable -- meaning the mac version may make that much more money even though the prices are the same because support for windows products is so expensive. And while the mac marketshare is only %20 of the market or so (not %5 - that's new machines sold and they don';t count any sold at the apple store or at apple retail locations, its a bogus number) -- that %20 of the market has far less competition than the windows market, and so your sales may well be split 50/50 depending on the games appeal.

        But most companys, and game companies, make such decisions without actually doing the math, and so perception causes there to be fewer games out for the mac.

        This same set of perceptions is going to be hurting Linux gaming for the next 5-10 years as well.

        This even though I suspect its very cost effective to develop games under linux, as comapred to the windows API set.

        • The only reason there are less games on teh mac is because of stupid marketing dipshits. Mac games are actually 20-200 percent more profitable

          The reason there's so many more PC games is because there are so many more PC's out there. 20-200 percent more profit? WTF

          And while the mac marketshare is only %20 of the market or so

          Excuse me? Macintosh has 20% market share?

          But most companys, and game companies, make such decisions without actually doing the math, and so perception causes there to be fewer games out for the mac.

          Companies that don't do math? Enron and Worldcom?

          This same set of perceptions is going to be hurting Linux gaming for the next 5-10 years as well.

          Who are you, the Gartner Group?

          This even though I suspect its very cost effective to develop games under linux, as comapred to the windows API set.

          There's at least 5 major Linux distros, a ton of packaging formats, driver hell....what are you smoking?!
        • This even though I suspect its very cost effective to develop games under linux, as comapred to the windows API set.

          There is practically no Linux game market, most Linux gamers dual boot or emulate so they are getting along quite well with the Win32 games. Mac users can not dual boot or effectively emulate (speed) so they need a native version, unlike Linux users.

          The real Linux game market is only those individuals who refuse to dual boot or emulate. Replacing a Win32 sale with a Linux sale is not incentive to do a game, only new sales matter.
      • Hm, here in Germany, WC3 was on sale for 37-39 Euros in several retail stores, from the day it came out. That is very cheap for a new commercial game, as other (PC-only) games average at 45-50 Euros when they come out, a difference of almost 20%. How much is it elsewhere?

        In addition, having a Mac and a Wintel-PC, I can now play it on either, without paying more. So I am effectively getting 2 games for the price of one. This is the first time I can remember getting a major game for two platforms for one price. All the others I know/own I had to pay twice (or the game wasn't available for a second platform at all).

        IMHO, this is a very good deal and it has yet to be beat. I can understand Wintel-only owners complaining though, if they have the feeling they have to pay for the Mac development too.
        But honestly I would think that this happens either way, the main game development costs get paid by the Wintel market, after all the graphics etc. are the same on the Mac. And a game like WC3 is so popular it would be worth developing for the Mac alone.

        I don't think it takes longer either, if their project managers know their job they coordinate 2 teams working at the same time.

  • Developers wanted (Score:5, Informative)

    by bsharitt ( 580506 ) <bridget AT sharitt DOT com> on Sunday July 14, 2002 @08:57PM (#3883520) Journal
    The main reason I posted this news was to get more Mac developers interested since they are a minority on Freecraft. Work still needs to be done on gettign the MacOSX port up to par with Linux and Window, specifically with sound. There is also room for a Mac classic OS port and a Darwin/X11 port(that way the front page is more truthful).

  • Three major platforms? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lindsayt ( 210755 ) on Sunday July 14, 2002 @10:01PM (#3883733)
    I know I'll get modded down, but then my karma is "excellent" so what've I got to lose?

    The article states that Freecraft is now available on "the three major platforms" meaning of course MacOS, Windoze, and... linux, what else? This is slashdot, all right. I love linux - I'm a linux/solaris systems admin - but I'm sorry, when we're talking about games, it's *extremely* presumptious to casually refer to Linux along with Windoze and MacOS as one of "the three major platforms" - so far as I know, less than one percent of all commercial video games are launched on linux.

    Just a small, perhaps pendantic complaint. Of course, I'm excited to see it now available on both of the major desktop systems, as well as one of the many server operating systems... go linux.
    • it's *extremely* presumptious to casually refer to Linux along with Windoze and MacOS as one of "the three major platforms"

      There are millions of Linux users, probably more in absolute numbers than MacOSX, if not Macintosh as a whole. An Linux is very widely used among unversity students, who play lots of games and like getting them free, too.

      - so far as I know, less than one percent of all commercial video games are launched on linux.

      So what? The fact that people don't buy a lot of games (or software) for Linux doesn't make it a "minor platform", it only makes it a "minor platform" for commercial game developers. In fact, many commercial games are based on ideas from old, free games built at universities on top of UNIX.

      • You know, regarding the "moderation", I own several Macs myself and I like them. But the zealotry of Mac users is really annoying at times. Come on, guys, face the facts. Linux is a major desktop platform, with user numbers comparable to those of MacOS. And much of that wonderful software that makes MacOSX such a nice platform comes from that community.
  • I'm glad FreeCraft has been ported, but I don't have the time or the reflexes to play RTS games. I'm more interested in TBS and RPG.

    One of the most active projects on SourceForge is Arianne RPG [sourceforge.net]. There was a Mac version a while ago, but the last binary release was over a year ago, and it's recently been dropped from the download list.

    I doubt that Arianne compares favorably to Neverwinter, but OTOH it would probably run on a PowerBook (like mine) with Rage 128 graphics...
  • I genuinely appreciate the enthusiasm of the many people who port *NIX code to work in Darwin/OS X. And, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

    However, FreeCraft has got to be one of the ugliest games I've seen to date (and I've seen a lot of them in arcades, on consoles, and on computers over the past 30 years).

    I'm sure the reason is due in part to how X Window is used for the graphics. Another part of the problem may be the game's general design. I've never played the thing (my knee-jerk analysis is based on the screenshots from the SourceForge site noted in the topic) so I can't comment on its playability.

    Given that this is a game that was developed for free use, and that it is made to work on more than two operating systems (such as Windows or Mac OS), this is an impressive feat. However, I hope somebody is working on making it less hideous. Part of a game's magic is its appearance, but then, I know that I'm pretty spoiled now in the age of hyperrealistic first-person shooters and precision graphics.

    Was this game created as an OSS alternative to WarCraft, or was it on the scene prior?
    • I'm sure the reason is due in part to how X Window is used for the graphics.

      Actually Freecraft runs as a native Aqua application. Initially some of the early tries were aimed at Darwin/X11, but since the game uses SDL, it was easier to make it utilize aqua.
      • Informative. You deserve a mod point for that--if I had one to give. :)

        Using Aqua should give the game a somewhat better appearance on OS X, but the game interface itself still seems a little scary. Oh, well--it's something I'll try out later, in any case.
        • Using Aqua should give the game a somewhat better appearance on OS X

          Why would you think that? The underlying problem here is that the game art is ugly; using a different API to copy the bitmaps into video RAM is not going to help with that.
  • *$&^@*! .Mac bandwidth restrictions.

  • New Download Link and Various Notes (Score:5, Informative)

    by cedars ( 566854 ) on Monday July 15, 2002 @11:06AM (#3886383)
    Hi.

    I (Mark Pazolli) just wanted to add a few things.

    Firstly, this release was very much a development release. It was not really intended to be played, just to demonstrate the status of FreeCraft's support for Mac OS X. If you do play it, you will probably quickly discover some bugs. However with a bit of luck, we'll have a much improved version out soon.

    If you're to interested in helping to develop this version please visit the FreeCraft home page [freecraft.org]. Also a Mac OS X icon for FreeCraft would be very much appreciated, e-mail me (quirinus AT mac DOT com) if you have one to offer or can design one. General questions on helping out are also welcome to that address too.

    Next, as was pointed out, Mac.com homepages really aren't really suitable for wide-scale distribution (this version was actually intended to be an insiders-only release). So I'd suggest trying to download FreeCraft from here [sourceforge.net] instead. It is quite a hefty download though (around 8 MB).

    Cheers. :-)

    • I dl'd the file but the game only plays for about 15-30 minutes. Is this some kind of beta? Should I simply be patient and wait for the updates. I can't save any of my games either. Questions from a newbie to OS X and Freecraft. Thx.
      • No, it's a development version and has a number of bugs. Crashing after 15-30 minutes is my experience too. The latest version (OS X binaries not available) crashes less, but still crashes. Hopefully we can get it working better in the future, but that will take time and work.

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