So, gaming on Apple machines. Clearly Paganism of the most heinous order, but as it’s nearly Halloween let’s deign to acknowledge it. Anyone do it? Happy stories/horror stories? Despite owning a (hilariously battered) Mac myself, it’s not something I’ve ever especially considered. I was fairly surprised to walk into a computing store in Canada last year and see ranks and ranks of slightly old or slightly silly Mac games there, so I know there is stuff available, but personally I’d stuck to oldies – I’ve got Mac copies of the first two Fallouts – and, er, casualies. Woo Peggle, etc. That, I’d surmised, was pretty much the outer limit of it, at least unless I had one of those hilariously costly high-end Mac desktops that people with tiny beards and expensive spectacles buy. Two Macish stories which suggested the more mainstream Apple systems are rather game-blessed of late caught my passive eye today, though.
The first is that best-game-of-the-year-that-isn’t-King’s-Bounty World of Goo is getting a Mac release later this week. Endearingly, anyone who bought the Winders version will be able to also freely grab that’un, and the eventual Linux port. Strikes me it could do really, really well on Macs, as the hardware requirements are so low (I’ve even managed to get it running just dandy-like on my first-gen Asus EEE, which is below the minimum spec) and it’s got enough slickness and artistry that the complicated-haircutted Apple fan-crowd might think it one of their own.
City of Heroes perhaps less so. But that’s also about to hit OSX, a mere ten thousand years after its release, in parallel with the forthcoming Issue 13 update. It does seem an weird move to make after all these years (even if it is a fairly tokenistic one, being essentially emulated rather than truly ported), but hell, I’m in favour. While my attention always wanes after a few days of power-jumping, troll-thumping and throwing the Crab Most Muscular, COH is the MMO I’ve always gotten the most out of. I know Champions Online puts it in some danger, but I kinda hope a move to the Mac wins it a new audience. Now to see if it runs on my shitbag first-gen Macbook or not…
What else could/should be played on one of the electronic Macintosh machines, readers? Or does their mere mention here fill you with hatred and fear?
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Gap Gen, I’m pretty sure you can upgrade the processor, memory and hard drive. But yeah, true, being able to upgrade isn’t why people buy laptops anyway. Just for me, the price difference fair boggles the mind. I mean, imagine the PC laptop you could get for 2.5 grand. {Withnail voice} Imagine the size of his balls. Imagine getting into a fight with the fucker!{/Withnail voice}
A co-worker is starting a Masters in a design course, and she _has_ to buy a Mac laptop for the course; they won’t accept her using a PC laptop even though the exact same software is available. Of course, when she tried to buy one off the Apple store in the US, they saw through her ruse; you can only buy one from there if you ship it to a US address.
Jamie; I’m sorry, I don’t mean to slag off Macs. But, really, I can’t help it.
P.
@Paul Maloney
Frankly, if I was told that for a Masters Degree, and their going to be like that, I’d tell them they aren’t getting any money for my attendence – Because I wouldn’t be attending. What a waste of money.
@Jamie
Sorry, we just can’t help it. I think its the ‘us’ vs ‘them’ thing working on a subconcious level.
I was bemused by Ross Atherton’s devil’s advocate article in the latest PC Gamer suggesting that the Mac would save gaming. After all, already people complain about the high cost of PC gaming….
P.
Ah, I didn’t realise you can upgrade laptop processors now. Good stuff.
Jamie: Paul does have a point, in that Macs are overpriced. I get your point about personal preference in terms of looks (even if I don’t see it myself, but then I wouldn’t buy a BMW) but the price differential is huge, given that the extra perks you get with the hardware are limited.
You can buy stuff from the US using a service that gives you a US postcode, but I’m not sure if it’s worth it, given import duty, etc.
Personally, I use both Mac and PCs. I much prefer the design of Mac OS to Windows, having used it for about a year now, but the price differential and the inability to build your own Mac is a big hang-up for me (although the concept of a hackintosh looks appealing…)
You can’t upgrade the Macbook processors, as they’re soldered to the boards. Annoying, as I have a spare, beefier C2D I’d wanted to pop into mine.
@Jamie
Because:
1. Apple pick fights with us in those mac / pc ads by basically saying we’re all buttoned down suits who suck at everything.
2. Mac users annoy us by going on and on about their macs, talking in that smarmy mac owner way, trying to make out like a mac is not a personal computer but some entirely better invention
3. iPod people (see 2, but substitute ‘ipod’ for ‘mac’, and ‘mp3 player’ for ‘personal computer’)
4. As you pointed out, the mac owners often fall into the same category as people who can afford to go out and buy BMWs, and then look down their noses at the rest of us.
5. Steve Jobs is a big fat jerk.
As a mac user, I’m faintly amused yet slightly annoyed by the condescending remarks from the windows crowd. I do feel macs are better.. but hey, that’s why I use them. That’s simply preference.
If only more game companies would not appear to feel the same and be a bit more like Blizzard and the old Bungie in this respect.
iMac 2001 vintage here. Yeah. Screen is almost darkened out by now, but I just cannot let go of old machines. That’s a bad habit.
Hmm. Gaming. On Macs. Unfortunately Windows/Microsoft beat Apple on this. I’d love to switch to Macs if it weren’t for games. Well, and the price thingy. For example: A mac mini is still too expensive judging by the value of its components.
So what did I got for my trusty iMac? It’s running 10.3.9 PowerPC by the way, and System 9 is also still there.
I got me here: Diablo II of course! And Diablo also. While D2 is carbonized, D1 still needs Classic to run.
Then there is Starcraft. Plus Brood War.
Aaaand.. I have Total Annihilation! With CC & BT.
By the way, I’m playing these RTSes only single player. If at all.
Then, oh yes, almost forgot: Myst III Exile. With some lovely performances by Brad Dourif.
Several games for PC I own are also working on my Mac: Like Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness/Beyond the Dark Portal. Also, Warcraft III. Although that one is unplayable on this underpowered machine. Sounds like I’m a Blizzard fanboy, eh?
I wish I could play WoW on my Mac. I installed it once, but it would be torture to play it. For both: my iMac and me.
Well, The Last Express and Riven: Sequel to Myst should be working too, but I dare not install them, because the optical drive is acting up lately.
Oh well.
I used to play the occasional PC game but have switched to 360 / Mac. I still get Valve’s stuff, albeit late, and my Mac is shockingly good for all the non-gaming stuff I use it for. I am strongly tempted to buy Spore, and maybe a copy of XP to dualboot so I can run Max Payne and AudioSURF, but other than that I’m happy.
I might want to add: Steve Jobs is a genius! I admire him greatly. Hope he pulls some more tricks out of his sleeve in the time to come.
“As a mac user, I’m faintly amused yet slightly annoyed by the condescending remarks from the windows crowd.”
I didn’t intend to be condecending, as I know some very smart techy people who prefer Macs, so know they’re not just for the technologically-illiterate with money to burn. As I said, I honestly don’t understand the love. As for condescension, I would have thought even Mac lovers would admit that this is more likely to come from their side than the PC side; see the aforementioned Apple adverts. For me, the PC is the Spectrum of our times; a little bit geeky and crap, but more lovable because of it. I like the fact I built my PC, know it from the inside out, and occasionally have to open the side and blow some dust out when it starts to wheeze. (Just like the way I had a Spectrum which wouldn’t work until – seriously – I had to give it a sharp knock in a certain spot.)
P.
The thing about Mac gaming is, we most likely wouldn’t have Halo or Syndicate if it wasn’t for them. I know for a fact that Halo came about after the chaps released Marathon and Durandal on Mac, not to mention the iffy Damage Inc, but I’m fairly sure Syndicate came out on Mac slightly before PC.
I’m not normally one to ram my opinion down peoples throats, but Syndicate really was far better on Mac than any other version. It was smoother, had far crisper, shinier graphics, and played like a game would now as opposed to the variations on PC at the time.
All of that aside, I wouldn’t use a Mac for gaming now unless all my gaming pals used them.
(I forget exactly how I usually spell this nick *ahem*)
Paul: True enough, there’s zealots on both sides, but maybe understandably, the underdog side may have relatively more.
It’s saddening though, knowing that more games could be played on macs but aren’t because few people think of macs as gaming-worthy computers and therefore people tend to go for a pc to play games on.
It’s a vicious, vicious cycle, I say. ;o)
Addendum: the cycle should obviously end by more people playing games on windows machines, less people playing games on macs and consequently the game industry having a look at the numbers and focusing on the pc. Which means less games for the mac, more for the pc.
(Of course, in a better world it would be more games for both.)
I have a Mac (eight years and some old, increasingly creaky) and a PC. Except for the crippling and essentially irremediable age of the hardware, I much prefer my Mac for day to day use. OS X is without a doubt the best OS I’ve used, and that includes nearly every variety of Windows (running Vista ATM) and a few stripes of Linux as well. Admittedly, I started out on Mac, with highlights like Marathon and Escape Velocity among my early experiences, like many people have mentioned, and when I started using PCs I had to deal with DOS and Windows 3.1, not exactly comparable user experiences. Still it seems like every time Microsoft releases a new Windows they delight in finding new ways to break established power-user habits and add new layers of obfuscation to the user experience, while OS X has become increasingly robust, powerful, functional, and above all user-friendly. Or, to coin a phrase “user-helpful” instead of constantly getting in my way like Windows does. And while Windows’ stability is improving considerably, OS X just *is* stable – I’ve had maybe one full system crash in the last seven years. My PC seemed to go down every other week until Vista came along, and practically commit suicide anytime I do anything with hardware. It’s still a little creaky – I regularly have Windows Explorer “stop working”, which is alarming if apparently now harmless, that sort of thing. Any time my PC goes down for a significant period of time, my Mac is my savior computer, plugging right along and granting me sweet sweet internet access for troubleshooting and my lifeline to the world.
However. I don’t have the financial wherewithal to buy a new Mac, I can’t wholesale upgrade it the way I can my PC, and it never did run enough games to feed my gaming habit. (I gather that one common approach is to have a Mac as computer and a 360 for gaming. I can’t settle just for console games, I’m afraid.) So I maintain my Windows box, and my Mac is fading into obsolescence. It’s sad, really. One of these days I hope to be able to snag a cheap Intel iMac or somesuch, just to keep something viable for modern utility usage, but I haven’t gamed on Mac since I picked up a PC, and I doubt I ever will again.
By the way, there are still developers that primarily target Mac. Spiderweb Software, for example. Sure, they have Windows versions of most (possibly all, currently) of their games, but they develop for Mac first and then several months later release a Windows port.
Butler` said:
I’m talking about the people who think it’s cool to be anti-MS (M$!1one) and make a point out of using an inferior OS for the task at hand.
OS inferiority is a point of view.
I play True Combat: Elite, a tactical fps playable on Windows, Linux, et Macs.
Hell, Mac OS is just a very good Unix build. If games ran on Mac OS with reliability, I’d be very tempted to hack Mac OS onto a PC as my next machine (somewhere in the next 2-3 years, mind, given that the PC I have at the moment is pretty good for now).
the new Macbook Pro is a total joke, it’s not that far off from the standard Macbook specs-wise.
Either way, without a 9800GTXm gfx chiop these laptops ar euseless for next-gen gaming, you’re better off with the entry level Macbook if you want something pretty.
I think the fact that you have to restart just to play the latest game on a super expensive Mac Pro has convinced most Mac gamers to get a nice console and a big screen tv.
Mac. PC. Windows. OSX.
These terms get thrown around with little understanding most of the time.
What it comes down to is this: Right now, there is little different hardware-wise between PCs and Macs, especially since the switch Apple made to Intel x86 IA (even after making fun of the platform for the longest time). While the PC is more customizable (use any brand or type of parts you want) you can to a degree customize your Mac’s gear.
OS is another matter. John Carmack in recent comments has made it clear that Apple (moreso Steve Jobs) does not have real interest in gaming. Boot Camp has effectively removed any chance that this will improve. Those that want to do serious gaming on a Mac will install Windows.
Microsoft has done alot to support gaming efforts on the Windows platform. DirectX gives devs the best mix of tools to build their software. For devs that want cross-platform capability, OpenGL is still there, too.
Gaming on the Mac might not be dead, but it is on life support. Porting makes little sense for most software devs because of Boot Camp + Windows, and PC gamers generally have Windows already, making Windows development the way to go.
BTW (I forgot to memtion), check out the pricing for Mac games, on the Apple store or otherwise, and tell me that isn’t hostile to gamers =P
@Razor: The pricing on ports of Mac games is, again, an artifact of the porting and publishing process… The publishers pay a lot for the rights to license the source code, and they need to make back that money. It doesn’t matter that the PC version is hitting bargain bins for 19.99– the Mac version is brand new, so it gets priced like new software.
Note that I don’t think this is GOOD, but at least there are reasons besides sheer money-grubbing greed.
Also, it’s likely to be at RRP (since bargain and Apple Store are not two things you often find in the same sentence).
mashakos: This is true – for the price of a ‘gaming’ Mac (or even an expensive PC) you could get an Xbox and a rather nice TV. Of course there’s the issue of the (for the UK) TV license and the relative cost of games.
the whole orange box runs pretty well on an mbp with crossover games for mac.
oddly enough, macs are fantastic to develop on, yet not much is developed for macs :(
Back in the day, it was all about Ambrosia (Maelstrom, Barrack, Chiral, EV series of course), Bungie (Marathon series, Myth series), and Pangea (Nanosaur, Power Pete FTW!). But the Mac still received love from iD, Blizzard, 3DRealms, EPICMEGAGAMES (lol), Parallax etc. And the occasional porting house like Aspyr.
Notable obscurities – Asterax/Maelstrom(really good Asteroid clones), Escape Velocity (especially EV:Nova), Mars/Deimos Rising (vshmups), Wolfiregames’ Black Shades (cool concept), Queasy Games’ Gate88 (another cool concept).
daokaioshin: that said, I don’t like Xcode much, given that it pops up a million windows if, like me, you don’t obsessively prune your open code files. Actually, on that point, I think that Visual Studio is the superior IDE, even though it’s a commercial product and Xcode isn’t.
@daokaioshin/Gap Gen:
You know, I go back and forth. I’m a HUGE fan of Visual Studio 6.0, where you could do everything you wanted without ever touching the mouse. VS 2005/2008 aren’t quite as nice in this regard. They’ve almost been polished to the point where veteran developers are less productive using them.
Xcode I used to hate, but then I developed an iPhone game and kinda learned to love it. Now I’m back working on a Windows game using VS 2005 and I’m missing some of the subtle features in Xcode.
Overall though, VS is better for sure.
@Larington: Lots of research groups have specific software requirements. I was told the other day by somebody requesting software in labs I help run that various groups within bioinformatics will only accept submissions from researchers who use specific statistics packages, and some publications won’t accept research done using other packages, and so on. There are also the problems of having to support various pieces of software on different operating systems– colleges have limited budgets for helpdesk personnel and training, and it’s a lot easier to just say “We only support Macs” than to have to worry about making sure you have a large enough crew to support Macs (which are at least pretty standard) AND whatever random assortments of hardware and software PC users have slapped together. As an example of this, I worked at the Berklee College of Music a few years ago– we supported 2000 Mac users with a staff of 6 and weren’t particularly overworked. The one guy who supported the 8 PCs in Human Resources and a couple of other PCs (less than 15, I think), on the other hand, WAS pretty busy all the time. So, being required to use specific hardware and software isn’t too surprising.
@Daniel Purvis: That little Demon platformer you mention is BILL THE DEMON and you can now play it right in your browser thanks to flash:
http://www.somegames.net/flashgames/BillTheDemon.html
The Mac used to be a paradise of creative and free spirited indie gaming. I spent most of my teenage years with a Mac, and I don’t regret it. Unfortunately, around the time OS X was introduced, it took a dive. Now the PC is the indie paradise, and the Mac is a gaming wasteland. Most of the indie development houses have either retired long ago, or haven’t put out anything exciting for a long time. It still gets the big PC games, but I doubt that will continue with these Intel machines. Why bother?
It’s a shame, it really used to be an excellent gaming machine if you didn’t require CUTTING EDGE GRAPHICS or what not.
I posted old Mac game screens here:
http://www.gamersquarter.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1988&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
And here:
http://www.gamersquarter.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1988&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=50
@Cycle: Oh man, flashbacks. And thanks for the Bill The Demon link! I spent loads of time playing that…
What the heck is that game with the fish and the… swabs? I don’t know if I ever saw that. I also really love how they used monochrome graphics to their advantage– there’s such detail in there– it really looks better than most color games on the PC did back then. Better to have 2 colors you can use really well than 4 useless clashing colors or 16 colors and pixels the size of your fist. Glad you got the Fool’s Errand in there, too. And Suffering. (“Little bastards! ZAP!”) And a few World Builder games…
Did you ever run into Randall Cook’s Tetris?
Special hate is deserved for MacSoft, who have ported many a game in the past.
Buy Unreal Tournament for the “PC”, and you get a license (and disk) that allows you to play it either under Windows or Linux. But the Mac version? That’s special, that is. You have to buy it again if you want that.
This is a common theme with third-party ports, IME, along with generally sub-part support (keeping up with patches, etc.). Why Epic did Linux porting in-house, and outsourced Mac, I don’t know—especially as many of the technologies they used for Linux (e.g. OpenGL; OpenAL; SDL) are cross-platform to Macs.
solipsistnation:
SimCity 4 Deluxe is old software, Windows or otherwise, and it’s selling for almost $75 when the Windows version is in the bargain bin for less than $20. Sure it costs to port but that price differential is ridiculous for an old game.
Boot Camp + Windows > OSX for gaming. Apple’s poor support of gaming development has guaranteed this will remain the case.
Where the F*** is the edit function? I was going to add that I was not implying greed had anything to do with the price differential, but was merely pointing out it was there. There is no added value to the gamer beyond not having to install Windows, but you can easily afford the added cost of second OS after just buying a few Windows games vs OSX versions.
Couldn’t agree more mate.
That iPod thing really pisses me off… Creative are so much better and slightly cheaper.
Don’t even get me started on the iPhoney…
This should make you happy, then, Brendon: because of the iPhone you can call Apple the world’s 3rd biggest cell phone company now.
I know… Stupid Motorola had it coming though.
Three things Apple do have:
1: Lots of very zealous internet men.
2: Lots of completely bull…poo advertising.
3: Lots of magpies for customers (SHINY! MUST HAVE IT!)
Seriously brings back memories. I don’t think I realized anyone else had fond memories of Suffering. Or Factory (Deluxe). Or Ingemaar’s Skiing Game. Or Bill the Demon, for that matter. A lot of the others that I recognized were staples, of course. Scarab of RA (so awesome!), Desert Trek, World Builder games, Escape Velocity, Spectre VR, Dark Castle, Pathways Into Darkness, Marathon, etc. And I never actually got to play Minotaur, but it looked cool. Only time Bungie’s ever taken a stab at RPGs.
I was young and had no money, so I played a lot of freeware and the unregistered parts of shareware games. When I got to play commercial games like Marathon it was because my parents had given them to me for my birthday.
@Cycle Oh. My. God. Thanks so much for that link. I absolutely loved that game when I was younger.
@solipsistnation Now that you mention the old indie games, it’s true. I used to play dozens of new, small and quirky games every month and then, all the fun just seemed to stop when we upgraded to a G4 and I began playing major release titles instead of the cheaper stuff.
Oh, the memories.
I miss PC gaming oh so much since I bought my Macbook.
i have a macbook: i just use bootcamp, easiliy enough hd space for both os (i run xp on the other half).
Had WoW, stalker etc running on it ok.
The intel gma gfx builtin chip is getting a bbit out of date now tho. Fine for al the indie stuff tho.
I have a seething hate for Macs just based on the way they’re pretty much trying to popularize everything in opposition to actual PCs, closed hardware sets, accessibility over customization, et cetera.
If OSX didn’t have the stupid artificial restriction on where it could be installed I wouldn’t have a problem with it but alas. I just hate the way it’s all closed and locked down.
@solipsistnation: The fish/swab game is COSMIC OSMO, one of the Miller’s “explortainment” games released before they hit it big with Myst. It was recently ported to PC via GameTap, complete with beautiful black and white graphics.
I agree they did fantastic things with the black and white display on the Mac, making the most out of the higher resolution that DOS computers lacked. Some games look stunning!
I didn’t ever run into Cook’s Tetris, as far as I know. Should I have?
I got a new aluminum macbook with a nvidia 9400m “motherboard processor” (good integrated graphics chip) and i can play alot of games well if i boot up windows XP pro if that counts. I can play bioshock and tf2 with everything on high. Works for me.
I have a Mac and a PC – best of both worlds. PC for games, Mac for the OS.