10-03-2007, 03:07 AM

MacRumors posted an interesting quote earlier from one of the co-founders of Valve (the developer of Half Life) about why Mac gaming support lags behind PCs. What's your opinion of his opinion?

Quote located here:
http://www.macrumors.com/2007/10/01/...-os-x-support/

10-03-2007, 11:15 AM

Maybe there's some issues Apple isn't willing to deal with that is holding gaming back, but it's hard to understand when other game makers are doing it.

So, do the EA games run natively or do they run on wine or something similar? I heard they don't run natively and Steve conveniently left that part out of the announcement.

10-03-2007, 12:07 PM

The EA games run with some kind of what I've seen referred to as 'translation'. I don't know if that's supposed to mean they use some proprietary EA software package that operates similarly to Crossover, or if that means that the code has been recompiled but not optimized for OSX. I do know that people claim that whatever this translation is, it has a detrimental impact on performance.

10-03-2007, 01:28 PM

The makers of wine have an emulation software that the EA games run on. Steve did leave that out of the presentation. Of course running on emulation as opposed to natively will result in lower performance vs exactly equal hardware on a system that the game is intended to run on.

This can also have a negative impact of putting companies out of business that actually port the code over to run natively, but may allow for many more games on OS X, despite always being put one step behind because of emulation. Also, it could probably lead to bugs, something EA is known for.

10-03-2007, 10:24 PM

EA games use TransGaming's (?) "Cider" technology (a reference to "Wine").

It's not ideal; but it's relatively quick and cheap to do, so we'll see more games.

10-03-2007, 10:31 PM

I read Gabe's comments via Ars Technica (they had a link), but to be honest I find it hard to respect him Part of it is the nonsense he spouted about the current generation of consoles and part of it is that he lives up to the stereo-type of a slobbering, ignorant codie who seems to have an opinion on everything. If course, its hard to ignore Half Life, one of the best video games ever.

I'd like to know exactly what it is Apple is not supposed to be providing. Macs are more than capable of playing games, and the relatively restricted hardware variety could actually make it less problematic that developing for the PC. The only real issue is creating two optimised binaries (PPC and Intel), but I think if games are ever really going to make it on the Mac, they'd have to be Intel based.

10-05-2007, 02:37 AM

What nonsense did he spout about consoles? I missed that.

I'd like to know what he thinks Apple ought to be doing that they're not as well. This is pure speculation on my part, but if I had to guess, I'd say that one of the things on his list is more powerful graphics offerings. The X1900 that is the fastest thing that Apple offers currently is a decent card but it's no longer capable of running the latest and greatest games at high resolutions with the image quality turned up to 11.

10-05-2007, 03:25 AM

I do hope more games make it on the Mac. I also believe that a Mac is more then capable in handling a game. As mentioned by Zoolook if they do make games for the Mac they would need to be Intel based. i think it would be a good compromise to make for making games available on the Mac

10-05-2007, 02:11 PM

I think one of the problems Valve has is, they want too much control. They want to use steam, and they are tight in the pants about their games. I personally hate steam. I hated it when I used a PC for gaming. Valve is at as much fault as anyone else.

There really shouldn't be any reason why games can't come out for the mac. Why do they even have to negotiate with Apple at all? There are so many applications and even games, that don't have anything to do with Apple. It's just Valve thinks they should be getting special privileges because they are Valve.

Saying the current run macs can't run new games is just moronic. Prey plays fantastic, other games like bioshock play perfect under win slows. I think it's really dumb that people say the macs can't game at all. I hope to see more new games.

I just think the developers need to quit crying and TRY to make a game for the mac. What's the point of moaning about it when you don't do jack in the first place. It makes no sense. Develop or re-compile your code to fit os x and then try it out and go from there, that's all they have to do, experiment.

10-05-2007, 02:25 PM

This is Macworld contributor Peter Cohen's take on this.

10-05-2007, 06:31 PM

Command and Conquer 3 on my MBP with the x1600 128mb card, runs almost flawlessly with graphic settings turned to high.
Sure it lags when I drop a nuke on some fools, but for a graphics intensive game running on a weak and outdated card, I am very impressed.
As mentioned earlier, what is to stop Valve from making software for the Mac OS X? Why do they need to speak to Apple about it?
Programs and games are created all the time without 'negotiations' with Apple.

*EDIT* Pressed the button too soon before I could finish.

10-06-2007, 02:23 AM

I don't like valve games anyway. I do like EA and ID games though, funny how they can find their way to mac. And of course I love WOW. Now if we can just get The Elder Scrolls series on mac.

10-06-2007, 01:18 PM

At the time that most games drop, they require the latest and greatest tech to run on high settings at super huge resolutions.

The problem with Apple is they rarely have to latest and greasest GPUs, which is almost the most important part of gaming.

FPS's in particular usually require a ton of graphic processing power. 6 months later though, most the latest and greatest become common.

It wouldn't be in a company's best interest to release a game that will only run on mediocre settings on a computer system without lagging otherwise. Especially when the system doesn't have an option to upgrade the GPU at the time.

The only computer that Apple makes that you can change the video card in is the Mac Pro and you can buy a PC with a better video card for half the price, since having a quad core processor is not important to gaming.

They could release their next game, but if certain users couldn't run it even with the newest iMac, they'd be upset about it and it wouldn't sell well. I guess they could put reccomended specs on there that don't include any Apple Computers.

Apple has gotten better in the video card department. The only thing that I find extremely annoying is that they flip flop brands every generation it seems.

The MBP had an ATI and now has an Nvidia card and the iMac has done the same swap from Nvidia to ATI. They should pick a manufacture and stick with it IMO.