The Evolution of Mac Gaming 141
Next Generation has a piece up exploring where gaming is going on Max OS X. From the article: "Almost since the introduction of the Mac, Apple users have lamented the lack of game support provided to the platform as compared to its Wintel brethren. Sometimes that lack of support was due to hardware and input devices that weren't competitive with the PC, but the adoption of PC standards like AGP for graphics cards and USB support for 'proper' multi-button mice did away with those obstacles. But the largest reason usually has had to do with the size of the Mac market."
Escape Velocity? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, Mac gaming pickings have always been a bit thin, but it felt like a tighter-knit community, and they still always had the quality, just not necessarily the quantity.
Re:Escape Velocity? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Escape Velocity? (Score:2)
Re:Escape Velocity? (Score:3, Informative)
NOOOOOOOO!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
I can't recall the number of hours that I wasted playing that. I could have stopped whenever, but I just had to keep playing to afford the Kestrel.
I had almost gotten over my addiction, and I had even completely forgotten about the game, UNTIL YOU JUST MENTIONED IT!
BASTARD!
Re:Escape Velocity? (Score:2)
mcb <--- yeah, the EV guy
Re:Escape Velocity? (Score:2)
Your user profile just got another fan entry.
EV drove me to learn how to do graphics programming in high-school, I was working on a multiplayer version of EV called "Air Locked" that actually made it kindof far before I lost all of my source in a hard-drive incident. Through that experience I learned a ton about programming, and that has proven invaluable to me through the years.
So in short, thanks for the inspiration!
Wait, check your credits (Score:2)
Emulation (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Emulation (Score:1)
I find it's always a struggle to sift through the not-quite-working ones and finding the real gems.
Emulators for Macintosh Site (Score:2)
Re:Emulation (Score:2)
Something about that strikes me as funny.
And why do we care... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And why do we care... (Score:2, Informative)
Not really anyone's fault for trying... but, Valve's asking for both arms, legs, and a few organs for the rights for it, pretty much takes up the entire development budget.
And, then, on top of that, Havok's asking for several *MORE* organs for the rights to *use* the OS X version of Havok. (According to a article over at IMG, they want six figures.) It exists... but, no one wants to pay it. See above about development budget.
Article: http://www.insidemacgames.com/features/view.php?ID [insidemacgames.com]
How about video cards, smart guy? (Score:5, Insightful)
What about the fact that most of the computers Apple ships come with a GeForce 5200 (iMac), Radeon 9200 (Mac Mini), or have crappy ATi laptop cards (iBook/PB) and are NOT UPGRADABLE? Not to mention the low RAM that comes standard.
Sure, they ship the G5s with good cards.. sometimes.. but I dropped $3 grand to get my DP 2.5 with a 6800 Ultra in it.
So blame the market all you want, I'm sure that's a good portion of it. However, if those MacIntels use stanard PC gaming cards, I'm willing to wager an upswing in Mac gaming.
Re:How about video cards, smart guy? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How about video cards, smart guy? (Score:2)
Re:How about video cards, smart guy? (Score:1)
Re:How about video cards, smart guy? (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, duh.
Anybody who's likely to buy a $400 video card is probably going to buy a high-end tower to put it into. G5 towers ain't cheap, but they are really sweet rigs for the tiny assortment of games which actually run on Macs.
For those buying a mini or an iMac, the cards they come with do about as well as any $50 card you would put in a cheap game PC. I play WoW on my mini all the time, and the graphics are good enough on my sickeningly-huge p
Re:How about video cards, smart guy? (Score:2)
You mean anybody who is buying a Mac, because they don't have a choice.
A "Gamer" PC System can be quite low-spec and cheap, except for the video card. You can do quite well for $500 plus the card. For the most part, gamers don't purchase dual-proc systems, for example, but with Apple that's the only route.
Re:How about video cards, smart guy? (Score:2)
A "Gamer" PC System can be quite low-spec and cheap, except for the video card. You can do quite well for $500 plus the card. For the most part, gamers don't purchase dual-proc systems, for example, but with Apple that's the only route.
Only if you insist on new.
If you really do want to do the old "weak CPU, strong video card" philosophy popular among gamers, you could easilly pick up a used single-CPU G5 tower from eBay. It still won't
Re:How about video cards, smart guy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How about video cards, smart guy? (Score:2)
There is more to gaming than 3D.
True, but less and less so as time goes on and 3D cards continue to approach ubiquity. A number of previously 2D games have made the move to 3D with their latest installments: The Sims, Roller Coaster Tycoon, the Civilization series will make the move to 3D with it's forthcoming installment, hell, even SimCity requires at least a modest 3D card with it's latest sequel.
3D gaming has moved beyond the realm of the FPS, and soon it'll likely be difficult to find any game ou
Re:How about video cards, smart guy? (Score:2)
Re:How about video cards, smart guy? (Score:1)
Re:How about video cards, smart guy? (Score:2)
It Wasn't Until Win3.1 (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm, no. Mac gaming was alive and well throughout the 80's and in to the 90's. It wasn't until the utter PC/Wintel domination around the time that Win3.1(1993) came out that Mac gaming started to become noticably weaker. This is by no means a market that has always been weak.
Re:It Wasn't Until Win3.1 (Score:3, Informative)
The Doom deathmatch took nearly all gaming enthusiasts away from the Mac platform, and "PC gaming" has pretty much meant "Windows PC gaming" ever since.
Re:It Wasn't Until Win3.1 (Score:2)
Mac was no game machine even then. Amiga, Atari, c64 and even spectrum had better and more exiting games than Mac.
Re:It Wasn't Until Win3.1 (Score:5, Interesting)
Networked PvP combat long before Doom.
I deeply envied my Mac-owning friends back then.
Re:It Wasn't Until Win3.1 (Score:2)
Even if that were true, the PC was even less of a game machine.
Re:It Wasn't Until Win3.1 (Score:1)
I'm not sure what you mean.
Doom was never a Windows program. In those days, we all ran DOS games. Windows was just around to suck resources in those days. As far as I can remember it NEVER was advantageous to run it under Windows.
Re:It Wasn't Until Win3.1 (Score:5, Interesting)
In the late-80s/early-90s, the common knock against the Mac by PC users was that it was "cartoony". Apple wanted to promote a professional image, and actually discouraged Mac Game Development and made sure that the default Mac desktop was gray and boring.
By the peak era of DOS gaming in 93-94, the Mac platform was already totally secondary, despite the fact it's marketshare was higher than ever. Windows gaming didn't really take off until 1996 or 97.
Re:It Wasn't Until Win3.1 (Score:3, Informative)
Thankfully, Apple
excuse me? (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple adopted AGP around the same time as Intel did (which was a moot point nonetheless, as A) Most 3D cards at the time were geared for D3D and not OpenGL, and B) The cards weren't compatible between platforms anyway)
USB on the other hand, was adopted AND EMBRACED lightyears earlier by apple.
And stop acting like there's always been this huge dispraity between PC and Mac games. Sure, the blockbuster games were mostly for the PC, but Apple's definitely had its share of awesome games (Escape Velocity immediately jumps to mind) -- the big distinction between the platforms was that 3d games took a long time to get off the ground for mac users.
Also remember that Mac users up until a year or two ago, typically ran MUCH OLDER hardware than their intel counterparts. Where PC users typically upgrade every 2-3 years, apple users typically don't see a need to upgrade for twice that period of time. A G4 running OS9 was laughable overkill.
OSX changed everything, making it infinitely easier for developers to support mac due to the unix core, friendly APIs, and (tada!) proper memory managment.
Even today, apple's getting some great open source games, and it would seem that the trend now is for the cool indie/OSS games to be written on OSX and then ported over to Unix/Win32. Lux comes to mind here...
Re:excuse me? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:excuse me? (Score:1)
"Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING."
Yes. Yes it is... that was the point, stupid lameness filter... ruin my delivery.
Re:excuse me? (Score:1)
1999 G4
http://www.thescreamonline.com/technology/applehi
I think by 2000 most PCs had at least one USB port. Though Windows 95 didn't offer much support for USB, Windows 98 & Windows 2000 had support with an update.
Re:excuse me? (Score:3, Informative)
The Microsoft Natural Keyboard (Elite) was released in early 1998, and had a USB connector.
But yeah, Apple were light years ahead of PCs with USB. I think I'm nearly fed up of correcting Mac fans on this now
Re:excuse me? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:excuse me? (Score:2)
No kidding. That's why it bugs me when people tell me how great a platform is on the basis of half-truths. I prefer the truth.
Re:excuse me? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:excuse me? (Score:1)
Re:excuse me? (Score:1)
Re:excuse me? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:excuse me? (Score:2)
Re:excuse me? (Score:2)
Both AGP and USB are Intel-developed standards that are licenced royalty free to anyone who wants them. Obviously, Intel had PC-compatibles in mind when they were designing these standards.
Release gap (Score:5, Insightful)
I can understand not wanting to gamble on the Macintosh version before it is known if a new game will be a hit, but give me a break! Games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic were hits looooong before they were ported to the Mac.
In my opinion, the best we Mac users can hope for with mainstream games in the near future is shorter porting time with the switch to Intel processors looming.
Re:Release gap (Score:2)
I don't want to make anyone sound stupid... but the switch to intel wont affect port times directly. The OS is what takes time to deal with, not the instruction set.
Re:Release gap (Score:2)
Re:Release gap (Score:2)
Re:Release gap (Score:2)
Re:Release gap (Score:2)
Re:Release gap (Score:2)
Re:Release gap (Score:2)
As for the Mac dates, I relied on these IMG stories:
and (from the firs
If you want KOTOR (Score:2)
Re:If you want KOTOR (Score:2)
Bolo (Score:3)
Re:Bolo (Score:2)
I also remember reading the original book by Keith Laumer.
"The Dinochrome Brigade Salutes You!"
Re:Bolo (Score:1)
Re:Bolo (Score:2)
Air Warrior was a world war II air combat simulator that ran on Macs, EGA/VGA PCs, Atari STs, and Commodore Amigas starting around 1988. At the time it ran on the GEnie network and all of the platforms played together in one virtual world.
Air Warrior ran in various incarnations, slowly losing support for STs, then EGA PCs, then Amigas, then DOS machines, and finally Macs. The last version (W
Re:Bolo (Score:1)
since the inception? I think not. (Score:5, Insightful)
wtf are they talking about?!?! I remember way back when... before win95. Before the pentiums. Mac gaming was where it was at. When I had my 486, I used to envy the macs and commodors and amigas.
Prince of persia is a prime example of the lack of sound and graphics support the PC world had at the time. The only decent games of taht time period were doom and wolfenstein3d.
Macs had digital sound built in. no need for that soundblaster add-in card for real sound and music over the bleeps and clicks of the PC speaker. Macs also, generally, had more VRAM, too, so they generally had much more complex graphics.
hmph.
Re:since the inception? I think not. (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember back then too. So...What about all the original Space Quest and Kings Quest games, the Ultima series, Might and Magic, Sam and Max, Elite, Diablo, Wing Commander series, and about a billion others that I can't even remember off the top of my head? There were a shitload of good games over the years for DOS alone, way before Win95.
The SINGLE, solitary mac only game I can think of that anybody gave a crap about was Marathon. Mac ports of ANYTHING were few and far between.
I wasn't a macintosh owner back then, but seriously, I never heard anybody anywhere say they had to get a macintosh to get the best games. The games I saw on macintosh generally were stinky shareware puzzle games or (the excellent) sim city.
Re:since the inception? I think not. (Score:2)
shit... ok. my memory is skewed or something.
but I have these distinct memories of being in the back of the bookstore in the mall in the computer section looking at comodore (sp?) and amiga and apple games wishing I could play them.
btw, diablo came out at the same time for mac and PC, or at least very close proximity. I was playing it during hte same time that all my PC friends were heavy into it, so
More great mac games (Score:1)
Who uses Macs? (Score:3, Interesting)
So Mac gamers are people who use their Macs for other reasons (all those reasons we endlessly hear about) and happen to want to play some games. This audience will never support more than derivative games and a few struggling indie publishers -- which is exactly the situation now.
Having said that, Apple desperately needs to fix its OpenGL problems to make game writing/porting easier.
ObligatoryNostalgiaAside: I remember playing endless games of NetTrek on my middle school's Mac Pluses. Networked gaming in 1987! And I still fire up mini vMac (yes, I have a Plus case in the basement) to play Dungeon of Doom once in a while.
Re:Who uses Macs? (Score:3, Interesting)
Most people are happy working on a mac without ever really getting into its guts. That's a far cry from the "rebuild a PC every year" crowd who pushes for hardware advancements, sometimes simply because they feel like upgrading. I should know; I was in the sa
Intel switch maybe good for OpenGL? (Score:3, Interesting)
Either that, or the automatic porting tools for translating DirectX calls to OpenGL will get so good that even porting DirectX games to the Mac will be easy and sacrifice little in performance. Either way, this means more games for Mac, and this will be good for Linux on x86, because a game for OSX86 will probably not be too hard to run on Linux with Transgaming translation or some Mac/Linux equivalent.
Re:Intel switch maybe good for OpenGL? (Score:5, Informative)
So performance-inclined developers will be tempted to develop for DirectX wich isn't available (or wanted) on Mac OS X.
It's just another MS move in attempt to lock-out gaming from Mac OS X.
I bet they're nerver about mactel too.
Re:Intel switch maybe good for OpenGL? (Score:2)
(sigh)
Re:Intel switch maybe good for OpenGL? (Score:2)
Re:Intel switch maybe good for OpenGL? (Score:2)
But now, MS might be seeing Open GL as a double-edged sword. Like any standard it doesn't control, MS now want to lock their incredible user/developer base to their own system by forcing a migration to things they do control.
OpenGL/DirectX isn't the only example of that. Java/C# and the PDF -like thing they're doing (forgot the name) come to mind.
Now that OpenGL is good on Mac OS X, it's time for MS to move away
Re:Intel switch maybe good for OpenGL? (Score:2)
The problem is that it's a lot easier
Re:Intel switch maybe good for OpenGL? (Score:2)
Obviously, this easy porting hasn't panned out for x86 Linux.. Even though it runs on the same architecture, very few games are ported to Linux.
Highlight Windows poor OpenGL performance (Score:2, Interesting)
Could motivate M$ to improve their OpenGL support, which would be good for Apple.
That was for a future version of Windows... (Score:5, Informative)
However, Microsoft has definitely been discouraging use of OpenGL on Windows for quite a while, and while I don't believe Microsoft is actually artificially degrading OpenGL performance in any way on their current operating systems, this effort probably has led to the hardware vendors devoting less time and energy to developing OpenGL drivers.
John Carmack has always acted as a force keeping OpenGL alive on the PC by coding his games (and thus also the games that use his engine) for OpenGL instead of Direct3D; however, the current reports are that id is now doing dual Xbox360/PC development of their next-generation engine. Unless Microsoft is releasing an OpenGL library for Xbox360 (highly unlikely), this probably means that he is switching over to D3D.
Since Apple tends to ship their consumer machines with non-upgradeable, lower-end 3D cards, any 3D game on the Mac is likely to be GPU-limited anyways, so using an OpenGL-to-DirectX conversion library may not be that much of a performance hit.
Re:That was for a future version of Windows... (Score:2)
Re:Highlight Windows poor OpenGL performance (Score:2)
Trolltastic. Go read the rationales for why Doom3 runs so slowly on Macs. A big reason is Apple's poor OpenGL performance.
If OSX is ported to Intel as-is, it will be completely slaughtered by ATI and NVidia's highly optimized Windows drivers. Hopefully Apple can convince them to them to port their game-specific optimizations to OS X.
For those whom the above threads bring back memori (Score:4, Informative)
Anyway, a good list of games that bring back memories. Enjoy!
great... but (Score:2, Interesting)
Former Mac Game Developer (Score:4, Interesting)
It generally paid very poorly, and support from Apple was iffy.
If I was to do a financial break down of units sold vs what the average Mac development company got paid for a port, it was probably along the lines of about $1 per unit sold. 50,000 units sold was a big hit (not often achieved; 20,000 was more realistic), and it was not unusual for a game to take an engineer 6 to 12 months to complete.
One of the more prominent commercial Mac game publishers tried to drive down the cost of development by using the bids of wanna-be developers with no experience to drive down the bids of the experienced companies.
I've since moved on to console work at a major publisher/developer, and for once enjoy job security, great working conditions, and good pay (steady pay, at that).
Wine For Mac x86 (Score:3, Interesting)
Games actually made me switch TO the mac! (Score:2)
Obv
Re:Games actually made me switch TO the mac! (Score:2)
Re:Games actually made me switch TO the mac! (Score:2)
iDevGames.com (Score:5, Informative)
To those interested in developing games for Mac, you should stop by the iDevGames forum [idevgames.com] sometime ;)
Another similar site (which many of the iDevGames members also visit) is CreateMacGames.org [createmacgames.org].
Re:iDevGames.com (Score:2)
Mod Parent UP!
Mac, not Max (Score:1)
99% of games I play are flash (Score:3, Interesting)
Looking at teagames.com and http://www.rit.edu/~jhb4598/jblog [rit.edu] Java quake 3 map renderer (with rail gun) that runs at ~89fps on my stock dell POShit.
Despite diverging proprietary systems, the dominance of flash and java in web and mobile gaming will ultimately (as technology grows) give us cross platform gaming. If Java can do cross platform quake 3 now, in 3 years will Java do cross platform Doom3 or Offset engine?
Cross platform - its what you want!
Play N today, it is supeerrrr333t, and they are putting out tutorials as their prime objective.
Teagames hasn't tutorials yet, if you want, nag them to put some tutorials out!
Thats all!
Tod the guy playing slashdot and reading flash games... switch that... while getting paid!
Re:99% of games I play are flash (Score:2)
The Light Weight Java Games Library is also a nice thing, especially as it is pla
Re:99% of games I play are flash (Score:2)
Brilliant.
Back to the Mac (Score:1)
Nowhere (Score:3, Informative)
The intersection between hardcore gamers and Mac users is very small.. If gaming is important to you, you probably wouldn't choose a Mac as your platform.
With the console game platforms becoming even more powerful, I think more people in general will use them for all their gaming needs, and not use PC's (which may be a good thing for Apple, it makes PC gaming less relevant).
Of course, there will always be a handful of games for the Mac. But, I see no reason why that will change in the near future, regardless of PowerPC vs x86, OpenGL vs DirectX, etc.
Re:Nowhere (Score:2)
Will that attract people who prefer to play consoles? Will the focus on multiplayer FPS and MMORPGs really draw in new blood?
I think it's going to be a hard sell. If mac gaming would essentially pull from the exact same market, then I think they're in for trouble. If mac gaming will
There's Warcraft, and.....um.....Photoshop (Score:4, Funny)
Bungie Software (Score:2, Insightful)
Macs lost out on gaming (Score:3, Informative)
I know 3D graphics don't automagically make games better, but it does mean that people are prepared to pay more money because they are buying an experience, not a game. I bought a Voodoo 2 in 1997. Everyone thought I was mad, even I didn't fully understand what it would do for the game, all I thought it did was give me more FPS (this was important as I was only getting 16 FPS in Quake 2). It was like see the difference between a paint by numbers Mona Lisa and the real thing - I was hooked. Now thats not a great example, as Quake 2 used glide, but if I hadn't bought that card for Quake, I would never have bought Half-life, Deus-Ex or probably my X-Box.
The real point was that all of a sudden my PC became my console. Even though I used my PC for coursework etc, that was just something it did, what I needed it for was games. It was the other way around with Macs, and still is.
I gave up on PCs two years ago - mainly because I got bored of FPS not progressing, and the 6 monthly upgrade cycle was killing my pocket - and getting me into trouble. All I really needed was a computer to work on, and a console to play on.
Clearly there will always be a market for PC games, but I would expect it to shrink. If your spending $1500 on a new computer, then your spending $1100 on a games machine, and $400 on a work computer. That wasn't the case 5 years ago, it was far more like $1500 for a new computer, and you need every ounce of power just to get Office working properly. This means the even if windows continues to dominate, the percentage of high-end PC games is going start to shrink very quickly - and the PC games market with it. For that reason I don't think Macs will ever be a serious game platform.
Apple snubbed games, now gamers snub Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
Avid and hardcore gamers in the market for a computer will buy Wintel, not Apple because you can't play most games on a Mac. I won't consider buying a Mac until all games are supported.
Re:If a Mac user wants to play games... (Score:2)