By John Walker on March 8th, 2010 at 6:18 pm.
Valve have confirmed that Steam and Source are to be released for Mac. After last week’s cunning campaign, they’re not only releasing their back catalogue of games for the shiny plastic blobs, but also intend to simultaneously release Portal 2 on both PC and Mac this Christmas. The other headlines are that Mac and PC gamers will be able to play multiplayer together, and that Mac is now considered a “tier-1″ platform by Valve, alongside PC and 360. Although I’m not sure how FPS games will be playable on single button mice. (Tee hee hee.) Details below.
Go on, have a whole press release:
March 8, 2010 – Valve announced today it will bring Steam, Valve’s gaming service, and Source, Valve’s gaming engine, to the Mac.
Steam and Valve’s library of games including Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series will be available in April.
“As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients,” said Gabe Newell, President of Valve. “The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services.”
“Our Steam partners, who are delivering over a thousand games to 25 million Steam clients, are very excited about adding support for the Mac,” said Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development at Valve. “Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs, and we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge. For example, Steam Play, in combination with the Steam Cloud, allows a gamer playing on their work PC to go home and pick up playing the same game at the same point on their home Mac. We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play.”
“We looked at a variety of methods to get our games onto the Mac and in the end decided to go with native versions rather than emulation,” said John Cook, Director of Steam Development. “The inclusion of WebKit into Steam, and of OpenGL into Source gives us a lot of flexibility in how we move these technologies forward. We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360. Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates. Furthermore, Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies, and so forth. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients. The first Mac Steam client will be the new generation currently in beta testing on Windows.”
Portal 2 will be Valve’s first simultaneous release for Mac and Windows. “Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step,” said Josh Weier, Portal 2 Project Lead. “We’re always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac.”
Well, hurray for that! Not gonna affect me one bit (I think), but still pleasing to hear!
I wonder what the Steam client will look like for Macs…
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The new Steam beta interface uses Webkit to display web pages and not IE, so theorectically it could be brought across to the Mac. It would make sense, developing a new UI and seeing what people think of it around the same time as bringing Steam to a new platform that couldn’t use the old UI.
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Single-button mice. Oh that’s so last decade.
The Half-Life series on Macs… this is a day I never thought I’d see.
Shame my iMac is even more dilapidated than my PC.
600MHz G4, oh yeah.
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Whilst the ‘one button mouse’ is a joke that should have died 6-7 years ago, did they ever fix the problem with the Mighty Mouse where you couldn’t actually press both buttons together?
Also, how will it work with the more popular MacBook platform? There’s a platform with a good number of users that refuses to use a mouse because they’re so au fait with multi-touch.
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Pfft, give me enough buttons on an ergonomic mouse and I won’t need multi-touch.
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I would prefer explicit buttons to the wibbly multitouch anyway. I need that microswitch *click* feedback to believe I’ve actually taken an action.
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Personally, I’m hoping this announcement may prompt Logitech to reconsider their complete lack of OS X support for their gaming mice. Not holding my breath though.
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@ Opti
The new mouse with a magic pad seems to happily allow you to have two seperate button presses registered, but if anyone is really worried just do what Mac WoW players have been doing for years.
Plug an ordinary mouse in.
Dunno about Macbooks, though.
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I totally love multitouch on my MacBook Pro– 2-finger scrolling is great, and the pad is big and responsive, and yes, I love it so much that I hug and kiss it all the time and it would be covered with terrible fluids if it weren’t so delightfully smooth (that’s why Macs have been all plasticy or aluminum or whatever– easy to wipe clean!), but man. I wouldn’t try to play an FPS with a touchpad. Even that touchpad. Yeesh.
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@Optimaximal
Thank you! I posted something about the “one button at a time” issue on the last Mac thread, and people responded as if I was crazy. I knew I couldn’t have been the only one to notice it.
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This glorious day brings tears to my eyes. This might not only signal a new era of computer awareness, but a shining bright future as well.
And I don’t even own a Mac.
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Porting the Source engine to OpenGL was the only sensible way of doing things, nice job Valve. I’m hesitant about the new GUI, but it’s still in beta. The only question I have now is whether Mac-only games will be allowed on the store.
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Oh, the ignorance of the PC world. Mac mice can have two buttons. The one I’m holding right now does (admittedly, it’s a MS Intellimouse, but it works).
I wonder if the inclusion of OpenGL in Source will make it into PC releases too. It would be nice to have a choice other than DX, even if it ultimately makes little difference.
I like that Valve appear to be ranking the Mac above the PS3 — that makes me chuckle like a bad 360 fanboy.
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It was a joke!
Although I wonder if the Mac version of Steam can only be rebooted by sticking a paperclip into a really tiny hole.
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Yes, I know how a tee-hee works, but there are folk who believe it.
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I don’t know anyone with a desktop Mac that still uses a 1-button mouse. I have a laptop, and although those are still only 1-button trackpads, what idiot would play an FPS on a trackpad or with a clit mouse?
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re: clit mouse
Aw, there was an xkcd about that term? Time to drop it from the lexicon — its humour value is no more.
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No, nothing like a 360 fanboy. You can’t fit 3,782 ethnic and homophobic slurs into the space of five seconds, and then somehow link it to a PS3 insult.
Sorry!
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I think you are missing a 2 after Portal.
Edit: Corrected now, good good.
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Clearly, Portal 2 is just Portal 1 with a bigger number.
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Ahh, excellent, I also appear to have discovered a work around for the over zealous spam eating monster that hides behind the edit button. If you edit through the forum, instead of the blog then his hungry eyes don’t spot you and you’ll be fine. (Look on it as an enforced stealth section.)
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More choice is always better for consumers. This will be good for gaming. Hurrah!
That said, I’m still never buying a mac.
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Yep, same here. Competition is good, macs are not. (hehe)
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Sorry, but Mac’s are fucking great. The OS owns any of these MS pieces of shit, and running Windows in Bootcamp is painless. You install, you chuck in the OSX disk, it installs all the drivers you need, which is of course simple when you have the same hardware across the board, and voila.
Least painful Windows install ever. Best laptop I’ve ever used, and it’s great for gaming. And this is the lowest end Macbook from the middle of last year!
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>Pay $2000 for something I could put together myself for half the price
Yeah, no thanks.
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(insert boilerplate ‘if you compare similar-quality parts etc’ rebuttal here.)
The most tedious thing about this will be the inevitable PC wanker backlash. It’ll even be more annoying than the inevitable Mac user smugness, which will probably wind down after a couple of months. The Windows-user defensiveness and abuse gets really old after a while, especially when with a minimal amount of research (like looking at “www.apple.com/store” for longer than 30 seconds) can pretty clearly disprove most of the standard arguments.
The thing to remember with Apple is that while you can get all levels of quality of PC, Apple doesn’t do low-end. Even their supposedly low-end systems are high-end. Thus, they’re priced that way. Build a really comparable PC (a nice case, a good monitor, and so on) and you get pretty close to the same price point.
Eesh. I need to stop posting this over and over. I’ve been doing this since 1985, and it’s just tedious. (In exchange, you Windows users need to give it a rest too.)
Anyway, YAY STEAM.
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Hooray!
This means that i can stop being a dirty mac lurker and actually join in!
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Feel free! The more the merrier, I say.
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I salute cross platform play, but I DEMAND Valve to make so that all MAC users are identified online by a tag so that I know which players I should kill over and over again.
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I can see it now – medics who won’t heal mac users. :P
/I might be one of them
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:<
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Lol, why does that sound like a good idea?
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Mac users are too smug to be credit to team, so they don’t healz.
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I eagerly anticipate Windows gamers getting pwned by Mac clans.
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Won’t be for awhile, chap, us PC gamers are like the Fremen, bitter and trained by unending constant war to the graceful spire-ease of your mac life.
That said. Poor Wulf. I will heal you if I see you. :< *Hug*
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Fantastic! Time to wave goodbye to the windows partition on my macbook…
Any mention of when the client will be available and the existing games released?
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April. Its in the press release.
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Mac users can’t read.
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Or they assume others understand Valve Time better than they do.
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Gah! My begging letter to Valve after the stuff in the beta seemed to earn me a copy of the press release, but I wasn’t quite quick enough to beat you: http://www.sphericalbowl.co.uk//2010/03/valve-sent-me-press-release.shtml
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Mac compatible before PS3? Valve just slapped Sony in the face!
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Come on *nix next.
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Eh, if only…
I’ve gotta say I find it rather amusing how before valve made their announcement, everywhere I seemed to go (web wise) I kept seeing comments like “valve champions of PC” etc. I think everyone was expecting some epic announcement like dinosaurs with portal guns and jet packs…But instead we got ‘support for Macs’ lol..
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B-bu-but… Mac is a PC, just a prefabricated one, made from top-end parts, in a really fancy case, it’s a rich-person’s PC, yes, but a PC. It no longer uses PPC architecture, it’s completely compatible with Windows (for those that want to use it), and there’s really no distinction any more. It’s PC hardware, just PC hardware running Linux, Windows, or Mac software.
So by saying Valve are the champions of personal computers implies all of the above, and I really hope that means they’ll be champions of Linux soon, too. But I’m very glad that they’re now champions of the Mac OS, too, that makes me smile.
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@Wulf
Indeed. In light of that I’ve never been entirely clear on why Apple hasn’t released OSX as an OS for PC systems. Is their own internally used hardware such a narrow range that it would be a huge hassle to get it to support a wider, more open platform?
I know, for my part, that I have a lot more respect/use for OSX than I do for Mac aesthetics and their prefab mentality regarding hardware.
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This is a separate announcement to time-travelling, jetpac-dinosaurs with portal guns.
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@Wulf
I know, still made me laugh though.
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@Taillefer
Now that’s an announcement! :D
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Yeah, the majority of advantages you get from Windows gaming you also have for Mac gaming — mods, mouse + keyboard support, open development and release platforms, dedicated servers, higher resolutions, etc.
Maybe there is less freedom in hardware upgrades, but I always thought that that was an overhyped and often irritating part of PC gaming anyway.
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I dunno Jad. I’ve saved myself quite a bit of cash by building my own and upgrading by the part rather than the system.
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@Vinraith: Apple wants to stay in control of the hardware and it is very important aspect of their business plan. If you could just buy OSX and install it in a PC you built yourself, then you could sell Mac-clone for much, much less than the official Macs. Then people start buying these clones and some of them do not work as well and this makes Apple look bad, and the competition drives the prices down.
See Psystar if you are not already familiar with the case.
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@Vinraith, Clovis
See also Hackintosh
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@Clovis
Yeah, I’m aware of Apple’s “proprietary everything” routine, but it seems like a terribly short sighted way to do business to me. PC’s thrive best as open systems, Apple’s attempts to popularize a closed hardware platform in their place is both unnerving and unproductive from my perspective.
Then again, I’ve never understood the “form before function” mentality that drives Mac sales, so what do I know?
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It depends on the part of the system you consider “open.”
Supporting all kinds of hardware is very very difficult– take a look at Windows as a good example of how to do it (yeah, I’m admitting Microsoft does this well!) and at all the problems that STILL crop up with hardware incompatibilities. Have you read about Windows plugfests, where hardware vendors get together and plug their expansion cards into each others’ motherboards and see what works and what doesn’t? And even after that, you run into things like some motherboards that don’t work right with some video cards, or some sound cards, and so on and so forth. It’s a free-for-all, and while sure, you can always return or sell a card if it doesn’t work in your system, it’s a pain. (And it’s a lot better than it used to be, but it’s still a pain.)
So, sure– the platform is wide open, and users save money at the start, but that savings gets absorbed by the time spent getting things working when something goes wrong.
Meanwhile, Apple locks down the hardware pretty tightly, and as a result the OS is very stable, very efficient, and very reliable. They then open up the OS, give away the development tools and libraries, and even the source of part of the OS so developers can do all sorts of things. The OS is, arguably, MORE open than Windows.
And of course, when Microsoft wanted to create a single, stable gaming platform, they came up with the Xbox, a platform MUCH more closed than the Mac, and the Xbox360, which is even more of a closed platform than the original Xbox.
I think gamers on the Mac will have a better experience with Valve games than Windows users– not necessarily in big ways, but in the little things, like not having to edit config files if for whatever reason Half-Life 2 decides to set the screen to a resolution and refresh rate that the LCD monitor doesn’t support, or having to download and install DirectX every time they download a game from Steam because developers can’t assume it’s already on the PC…
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@Vinraith
Apple are in the business of principally selling closed system hardware. Albeit they do sell some software, it’s not really their main revenue stream. They are effectively Dell with their own OS and a good sales pitch. They promote themselves as rivals to M$ but they aren’t really competing in the same marketplace or space, that’s just Steve Jobs pandering to the mac faithfuls idea of ‘be different’. As someone who uses macs for work and PCs for pleasure in all honesty I can say hand on heart that there really isn’t anything super inspiring about OSX Vs W7. They are both robust operating systems at the end of the day.
As a gamer personally I wouldn’t buy a mac simply because they are hardware locked in terms of processors, and I’m confident enough technically to build my own PCs by hand, but as an all in one off the shelf solution I can see the appeal of an Imac for some people.
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Mac IS *nix.
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Heh, one button Mac, very funny. No one I know uses one of those silly mice. We use problems ones. I use a track ball even for FPSs. Can’t understand how anyone can use a mouse anymore… they are so… unresponsive.
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Heh, I use a trackball too, they’re great for aiming.
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This is great news. Opengl games mean we’re closer to more stuff working on linux, and it helps wrestle away control from dx/xbox development as being the only (defacto) way to produce games on PC. Opengl could get a real kick start if other companies start to follow suit.
I’m not a mac owner but this is a huge thing for PC gaming in general. Maybe it’ll be it’s own platform again instead of a tickbox on microsofts xbox 360 dev kit. The best antidote to the shenanigans of Ubisoft we could realistically hope for :D
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Aww, that takes me back. I used to have both a mouse and a trackball hooked up, and would switch between them depending on the game.
It was at the time I was using the MS Strategic Commander. And the Game Voice! Worked a treat with X-Wing.
“Attack my target!”
“Attacking your target, sir!”
“Excellent.”
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So we’ve got the Whipped Cream (Portal 2), the Cherry (Steam arriving on Macs) and now we just need the lucious ice cream base that is the Episode 3 announcement and my Valve Sundae will be complete.
The Steam Play thing pleases me to no end though, even though I don’t (and won’t anytime soon) own a Mac.
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Oh, a Sundae, thank god, I thought that was going somewhere completely different.
Also, (despite not having a mac) Yey!
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Like a ca-
*is shot*
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I wuv Valve
That is all.
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Well done, Valve, well done.
I don’t own a Mac, I don’t even know if the market share is there, but this makes me smile. I have friends who use just about every form of computer; Mac, Linux, what have you.
If this is followed by news of an official Linux release of Source then I’m going to be smiling all the more.
But yes, I like this. More of this, Valve. If you achieve Linux compatibility, I shall slow clap for you, passionately so.
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Does this mean Source is now ported to OpenGL? Can we get a Linux client, then?
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Pardon me, I can’t RTFA. Yes, it’s now OpenGL.
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NIfty.
I’m one of those whose immediate reaction is “won’t effect me”.
But actually, it will. More opponents in TF2. More people to be part of mod communities. Etc. Also, huurah for them not charging twice. Yes. it’s only fair, but corporate policy is depressingly often not fair.
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It also effects you in another way!
The beta UI now uses webkit for their embedded browser, as opposed to IE.
My reaction to this? YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!
It means I can now actually use the store from inside of Steam itself, I can use the overlay browser when in fullscreen, I no longer have to fear IE embeds! Woohoo!
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I approve very much, although I like to believe that was just Valve doing the right thing when they actually made a proper Steam – remembering that up until now we’ve just been using variants on the prototype Valve cooked up long ago.
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@Wulf
Huh…. that change has been in effect for quite some time actually.
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@Drexer
…eh? Their old UI still uses an IE embed for the browser. MSHTML from my investigations. o.O It only seems to have switched to WebKit with the beta.
Where did you get that info from?
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Now people with more money than sense can play awesome games too. Whoopee, I guess! :P
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Well thats great. I don’t have a mac myself, but I have a few friends who do, so I’ll try tempting them into left 4 dead or something. Shooting zombies in the face will unite us all.
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No linux? Shoo.
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Well, it does come out in April… and you know what else comes out in April…
PS: Yeah, I’m getting my hopes up for nothing. Probably…
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@Drexer You mean April Fool’s Day or the next Ubuntu?
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That was my first thought too, but actually I think it’s almost as well. I wouldn’t really expect Valve to officially support steam on Linux since there’s so many distributions and it would be a lot of tech-support overhead. The important thing is that they’re porting steam and source to run natively on a POSIX OS. Linux folks are pretty tech savvy anyways so it won’t take long before they figure out how to get the Mac version running on their own machines.
I suspect that there won’t be much/any adaptation layer required (ala wine), so the Mac version could work just as well on Linux as on Mac, and certainly better than the Windows version.
I’m sure they’ve at least looked into the possibility of a Linux port, so perhaps they’ll throw us a bone and release some unsupported Linux binaries. (fingers crossed)
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@Devan:
At worst, Valve would have to provide official packages for perhaps the top 3 or so desktop Linux distributions (Ubuntu & Friends, Fedora, openSUSE) and then also providing a generic package tarball to be used by all other distros. Those top 3 or 4 distros could be “officially” supported, while the rest could be community-supported (most Linux users wouldn’t be caught dead making a phone call if there’s an active community forum available, anyway… heh).
In fact, simply providing a package tarball would be enough… I know it’d at least be good enough for us ArchLinux users, provided Valve supplies us 64-bit binaries. ;)
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I look forward to the increased performance that comes from being able to play Valve games on my MacBook natively without having to go through a whole emulation layer and all the hassles that come with it. And all without having to rebuy the games I already own for a new platform? Fuck yes. Pay attention to that one everybody else.
Though I’m going to assume that all the Valve love in the world isn’t going to change the RPS slogan from “PC Gaming Since 1873″ to “PC Gaming AND Mac Gaming Since 2010″
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Hooray for Valve – now maybe finally I can convince some of my Mac-only friends to at least try playing a computer game.
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“Mac, PC and 360″?
Grrr. A Mac is a PC brand dammit! There is no “Mac vs PC”, just like there is no “Thinkpad vs PC”.
Valve is not releasing Steam for Apple PCs, they release Steam for OSX.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer
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Haha, I made the same point above!
Great minds and all that, I suppose. It’s true, though. I just hope that Valve will champion all computer operating systems at some point in the future.
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I love OSX, but whoever dreamt up those Mac vs PC adverts is a tool. A marketing-savvy tool, but a tool nonetheless.
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Don’t be pedantic. “PC” has been synonymous with “Windows” since LONG before the “I’m a PC” ads came out.
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Sorry, but that is not true. Everybody will identify a Dell box running Ubuntu as a PC, and the Apple 2 is known as one of the first successful mainstream PCs in history. Most PCs in the 80ties were running DOS, not Windows, and people call a Macbook “Mac” even if it is running Windows. Apple PR used the term Mac when their computers where not IBM PC compatible, but they are since early 2006.
A PC is a general purpose computer that is designed as an open system. My android phone qualifies as a PC as well, because there is no gatekeeper regulating the software on the device.
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Linux can’t be far behind. If Valve adds Source OpenGL support that would allow them to port their games to Mac and Linux. Windows, Mac, and Linux cross-platform gaming would be a very powerful thing, for Valve and the PC gaming community as a whole.
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I can’t agree enough with this. If Valve embrace Linux too then we’ll be talking about golden era stuff.
PC gaming isn’t dying, it’s just witnessing a rebirth into something even more beautiful.
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Yes, surely, this is the year of the Linux desktop…. Just like last year, and 5 years ago was.
I’m missing the logic here. Valve decides to support Macs because the Mac market is actually worth going after. It’s reasonably big, it’s growing, and it’s a nice, stable platform where you can be fairly sure of what hardware you’re running on, and which OS version you’re working with. In many ways, it’s a nicer platform to develop on than Windows. (With the exception of Direct3D)
So because Valve has decided to expand out into a new *worthwhile* market, it logically follows that they’d also be interested in going after the Linux market, which offers fewer rewards (it’s smaller, and is *not* growing at the same rate), but which promises a whole new world of pain for developers trying to achieve some kind of compatibility and support for their games.
Yeah… That makes sense…
As others have said, Linux is really a big messy clusterfuck when it comes to games, graphics and sound under any kind of performance/latency constraints. They still haven’t managed to come up with a decent, stable, supported low-latency audio API.
There’s a lot Linux is good at, but I’m having a hard time seeing why Valve would throw resources at Linux support currently.
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Ahh, the amount of wishful thinking in this thread is almost equal to that of retard Mac-bashers. A shame even RPS isn’t immune to such idiocy.
At the least, if OpenGL appears in Windows versions of HL2 et al, it might make them easier to run under WINE. But “official” Linux support? Not yet. (Though I’d love to be proven wrong there.)
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@jalf
I’m sensing a lot of unrelated bitterness, here.
“Yes, surely, this is the year of the Linux desktop…. Just like last year, and 5 years ago was.”
This, for example. Since no one here is really saying that.
“I’m missing the logic here. Valve decides to support Macs because the Mac market is actually worth going after. It’s reasonably big, it’s growing, and it’s a nice, stable platform where you can be fairly sure of what hardware you’re running on, and which OS version you’re working with. In many ways, it’s a nicer platform to develop on than Windows. (With the exception of Direct3D)”
The logic is that a Linux port would mean greater sales, and the hardest part of a Linux port is the move from Direct3D to OpenGL, but they’ve already done that.
“So because Valve has decided to expand out into a new *worthwhile* market, it logically follows that they’d also be interested in going after the Linux market, which offers fewer rewards (it’s smaller, and is *not* growing at the same rate), but which promises a whole new world of pain for developers trying to achieve some kind of compatibility and support for their games.”
FUDalicious. Id and Epic have proved this is not the case, as I mentioned elsewhere.
“As others have said, Linux is really a big messy clusterfuck when it comes to games, graphics and sound under any kind of performance/latency constraints. They still haven’t managed to come up with a decent, stable, supported low-latency audio API.”
As I have said, that’s bullshit. If Id and Epic can do it, so can Valve.
“There’s a lot Linux is good at, but I’m having a hard time seeing why Valve would throw resources at Linux support currently.”
Because the required resources aren’t as great as you’re making out.
Geez… I know it’s a fallacy to make an appeal to motivation, but I personally have to wonder here. Why would someone want to be a roving, screaming FUD machine? Either Valve will choose to do this, or they won’t, and personally I don’t care either way. I think all anyone is saying — and I know all that I’m saying — is that a Linux port would be nice.
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@Cass
“Ahh, the amount of wishful thinking in this thread is almost equal to that of retard Mac-bashers.”
What Mac bashing? I’ve seen a few well-meant jokes, jokes that even Mac-users themselves use (I’m aware of #onebutan), but aside from potentially just two posts, I can’t see any Mac bashing.
Paranoid delusions, much?
“A shame even RPS isn’t immune to such idiocy.”
I think it is, I think like a certain someone else you’re just being bitter about a scenario that doesn’t even exist, here. :/
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@ Wulf,
Thanks for making that post so I don’t have to. I don’t know how anyone can be so bitter over people wanting to game on Linux.
As a person who personally wishes gaming in general would switch over to OpenGL instead of DirectX I just see this as a step in the right direction. Not only does OpenGL mean cross-platform gaming, but its an underrated API that’s become endangered from a gaming perspective due to Microsoft pushing DirectX so heavily.
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I think it would be cool if there were more games for Linux, but I don’t see that happening any time soon…
Then again, I didn’t think we’d see Steam and Source on the Mac, so who knows? 8)
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The problem has always been that Linux as a platform is so diverse that it’s very hard to effectively target – e.g. you don’t have many guarantees on what kind of libraries will be available (SDL?) or, more hilariously, what kind of sound device will be in use (with sound on Linux being a total cluster fuck – ALSA, JACK, OSS, ALSA emulating OSS, that other one I can’t remember).
With Mac OS X, you get a guaranteed set of libraries that will be present and that you can code to.
Linux’s diversity is actually a weakness when it comes to this kind of thing. And I say that as an avid Linux user.
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Despite all that, it hasn’t stopped Epic and Id from making incredibly good Linux ports, ports which have had no problems at all.
That’s really all I need to say.
If Epic can do it, and Id can do it, then there’s no reason why Valve couldn’t do it. Just take reference notes from the methods that Epic and Id used. If there wasn’t an existing precedent then you’d have a point, but such a precedent does exist, so the diversity of Linux doesn’t really matter. When Epic were PC guys, they proved it wasn’t relevant, and Id will continue to prove that lack of relevance with every upcoming release, I’m sure.
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errr… So because two developers managed to pull it off once, any difficulties associated with developing on the platform are irrelevant? It doesn’t matter how many resources they threw at it, how easy/hard their respective engines were to port or anything else?
That’s a bit simplistic, isn’t it?
Yes, it is possible to develop games on Linux, as id and Epic have proven. But that wasn’t really the issue. The issue is whether it is easy enough to make it worthwhile to target such a small niche market. (And let’s not forget, a market where most gamers already have Windows installed, so they’re able to buy their games there)
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I don’t think that supporting Linux makes any sense for Valve currently, nor I can see that changing in the foreseeable future. But what are you going on about wrt Linux sound? OSS is obsolete and has been for a *very* long time, so there’s zero need to support it. It’s only emulated by ALSA for legacy compatibility purposes. A modern application only needs to support either ALSA *or* JACK, depending on its latency requirements. JACK runs on top of ALSA, it doesn’t replace it. ALSA and JACK are Linux’s “guaranteed set of libraries that will be present and that you can code to”.
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The thing to note here is Opengl games ! People will be able to get source games working with linux now, you can guarantee it. I wouldn’t expect native linux support, but removing dx is removing one of the biggest barriers to getting these working properly. The whole point of Opengl is its non-platform specific.
This won’t happen immediately, but i’d be very surprised if we didn’t start to see current projects like cedega/crossover working towards getting the mac source ports working on the leading distros.
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@jalf
*sigh.*
“errr… So because two developers managed to pull it off once, any difficulties associated with developing on the platform are irrelevant? It doesn’t matter how many resources they threw at it, how easy/hard their respective engines were to port or anything else?”
In response to the questions, in order: I didn’t say that. I didn’t say that.
Moreover, I didn’t imply that.
Nice strawman, though.
“That’s a bit simplistic, isn’t it?”
Your strawman is, yes.
“Yes, it is possible to develop games on Linux, as id and Epic have proven.”
This is all that I was saying.
“But that wasn’t really the issue. The issue is whether it is easy enough to make it worthwhile to target such a small niche market. (And let’s not forget, a market where most gamers already have Windows installed, so they’re able to buy their games there)”
Is it a niche market? There are companies devoted to Linux ports, and I imagine if they weren’t making profits then they wouldn’t exist, simple as.
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Being surrounded on my day to day academic life with students who are avid Linux users and experimentators as well as gamers, I can honestly say that there really is no question on the distribution. Ubuntu. Even though many Linux users might prefer X or Y instead, everyone usually comes pretty much together when it comes to chose a general representative and admits that currently Ubuntu is the best option for the general public.
It is true though, that the sound issue is one of those stupid curtains that waves a lot, but I find it quite possible that if interest is vested in a definite solution, Canonical would pretty much resolute something rather quickly. The Linux ‘scene’ ain’t that much fragmented as most people usually think from the start.
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ALSA and JACK are not guaranteed in any sense of the word to be available. Nor is hardware mixing. It depends entirely on the kernel configuration and the userland setup. PulseAudio was the one I couldn’t remember, and god knows that’s a whole world of problems in itself.
Whereas with Cocoa, you are guaranteed to have the Quicktime APIs available to you, and to have them work in a predictable, low-latency way. In Windows you have DirectX; always available (if not it can be redistributed in your installer), low-latency, predictable.
Monocultures have the advantage in gaming, because they cut down your testing/QA time. With Mac OS X, you have very limited hardware, very limited number of OS versions (I’d imagine Steam will only support Snow Leopard, since that removes the need to deal with PPC users), which makes it dead easy to test. Small extra effort, and Valve gets tons of kudos from folks like us for supporting/revolutionising Mac gaming.
Whoever said Ubuntu, you make a good point. They could definitely target Ubuntu as a supported platform, knowing that *most* Ubuntu installs will be reasonably similar. I’d imagine Canonical would be happy to work with Valve, given that it could significantly increase their mindshare.
I imagine Valve will eventually get there, but it’s just not worth the huge initial effort yet. Mac OS X is the low hanging fruit.
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Show me one popular distribution that doesnt provide sufficient SDL and OpenGL packages to play any of id software’s games.
ALSA is pretty solid these days. Most “alternatives” (JACK and PulseAudio) are actually just high-level sound servers that utilize the ALSA (or OSS, or whatever) backend.
The one true drawback you forgot to mention was the (occasionally) lackluster drivers provided by GPU vendors.
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I hope “most developers” means Popcap will be patching in Steam Play support. If I can leave my zen garden going in the background while I work I might actually stand a chance of getting the achievement for the 100 foot tree.
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Brilliant!
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What is wrong with this webpage? May I only reply to the latest comments? My comment is never registered as the reply it was intended to be.
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This is a great move on Valve’s part! I was hoping they’d make the PC/Mac versions interchangeable, and they’ve surprised me by actually doing it.
I don’t own a Mac, I have no plans to ever get a mac, but I think this can only help the PC platform regain some of its lost ground.
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That’s a good point. With a larger market to cater for the shift in focus may come back to the PC platform again. How large that market is I do not know, it will be interesting too see the steam stats after the mac stuff has been integrated.
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I’d love to find out whether the games I already have in my Steam catalogue (for PC) will be usable on my Mac. Any idea if this is on the agenda?
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Well, don’t know if it’s coincidence, but Telltale have just released MAC version for their games, and they also,if you already bought a PC version of a game they let you play the MAc version at no extra cost.
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That’s only true of Valve games. Sadly, they can’t give away free copies of other company’s games. :P
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when are they porting it to bsd?
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Net, Open, or Free?
Personally, I want it on NetBSD for my DECstation 2100.
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Well this is clearly brilliant for mac users and a very nice move on Valve’s part.
Not sure I’m entirely happy about having to mix with mac users in my leisure time, but at least it’ll only be to shoot them.
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What? So now Valve is requiring me to buy a Mac and a PC just to play their stupid DRM laden videogames on their stupid DRM laden service? YOU HAVE GONE TOO FAR, GABE NEWELL! I swear to all that is holy in this world that if you don’t fix this, I will totally get on bittorrent and pirate a Mac.
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Cross platform multiplayer – sweeeeeet.
Now if only we get the 360 involved all would be well.
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@Tom
360 controller users vs. keyboard/mouse users creates a rather serious balance problem.
The hilarious solution for my money would be to take away the 360 user’s auto aim and let them see just how imprecise their input device of choice really is, but I suspect that wouldn’t go over well. :)
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Um, keyboard & mouse VS Game pad
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The bigger problem is getting it past MS I would wager.
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As I understand it the only way it’s possible is to go through GFWL.
Anyway, good news for everyone here, I don’t own a Mac but having more people to play with online is a good thing.
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Valve is awesome and I love them, etc, etc, etc… BUT!
Now that they’ve given everyone their L4D and L4D2, their constant Team Fortress updates, their Portal 2, and their complete portation of all of the above and the Half-Life series to OSX, can we please, PLEASE have Episode 3 now?
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Splendid news for those who haven’t yet made the leap to Amiga-based computing :-)
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Good news for Mac users I guess.
I really wanted to write something harsh about Mac users but I will hold back this time.
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“… we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge. For example, Steam Play, in combination with the Steam Cloud, allows a gamer playing on their work PC to go home and pick up playing the same game at the same point on their home Mac.”
Not just Mac support, not just native versions, but you can play all the games you’ve already bought on either computer and share savegames?
Valve, you are my heroes. <3
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I didn’t get “all the games you’ve bought” from that, I got “games you’ve bought which are compatible with both platforms”.
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@Oddtwang: You’re right, I meant to qualify that statement a little better.
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Heh, Valve approves of playing games at work …
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Oh wow that’s really great this might change the nature of PC gaming as we WHERE THE HELL IS EPISODE THREE?
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As a Mac user who’s sick of rebooting so he can play games… I nevertheless agree with this, wholeheartedly.
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Funny thing is, the Mac version’s probably based on the latest (2007) build of HL2 and not the 2004 original. That’s right, HL2 on a graphically anemic Mac will look better than on your high-end PC, and have achievements, to boot.
So this is why they’re too busy to make PC Half-Life 2 equivalent to the 360 version. Valve has time for risky forays into Mac gaming but not time for giving their PC fans the same content as the consoles…
In case you’re wondering what the hell I’m rambling about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBeoGfvySJE Valve’s repeatedly promised this content for the PC, and yet it’s been 2 years and 5 months and they still “can’t find the time”.
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I’m shaking my pitchfork right now. Grr
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If it happens for the Mac and not for the PC, then I’ll be annoyed.
I imagine that should OS X see improvements, they’ll be fair and roll out the Windows improvements at the same time.
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If they ported the 2007 engine into OpenGL they’ve probably backported it into Windows as well.
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I kind of figured “I’m sure they’ll get around to it soon” too, and yet unfortunately here we are with still no update. The odd thing is, back around when the Orange Box came out, Valve was boasting about how easy/quick it was to simultaneously make game changes between the PC and X360 versions. Considering this, and that all of this content already exists on the 360, how hard could it be? Then again I’m hardly qualified to make that analysis.
I’m worried that now they’ve shelved it altogether because a mod that “sort of” does the update was released back in January. Except it’s buggy, contains non-Valve changes, breaks facial animation, and doesn’t bring over all the effects (particularly the better textures). If the modder killed Valve’s desire to do the thing properly, I really wish he hadn’t bothered.
I realize I care WAY more about this than most Half-Life fans do, but it just doesn’t seem right to me that running HL2 on a decidedly weaker console will give you decidedly better graphics. Half-Life was born+raised on the PC so you’d think that if the versions were unequal the PC’d be the definitive one.
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I do own a Mac and I loooove this announcement! (Goodbye, productivity…)
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Actually, yeah, shit. I already have to be connected to the internet to work, so that’s bad enough. If I can flip open Portal when I’m running some code in the background, I’m fucked.
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@jsutcliffe: They still came with a one-button mouse as recently as two years ago, so I’d say it’s still fair game (in addition to Rule of Funny). I used it, too; they chose to ship their System of the Future with one button, presumably it must have some advantage and their genious futore desgin majic means they’re shipping their customers a usable system!
SPOILER: No and no.
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I will love If OpenGL gets steam (pun no intended), probably just now is not competitive, but It need *this*, attention from progessional dev’s and AAA games to compete again with Direct-X. I will be a long path, since probably most current hardware is optimized for Direct-X, and most current software has poor OpenGL implementations, but is a nice star. Since OpenGL is a standard (and Direct-X is nothing), I can see as Source running in mobile devices and such. Imagine playing Portal in the iPhone and stuff like that. Nice things to have.
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Bullshit. That pun was intended.
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Yeah
I hate it when people do obvious puns and then say ‘no pun intended’ like they don’t understand what it means or something.
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Um. YES! Looks like Valve may have won me over at last.
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They win most people over, eventually. It’s because they put a great deal of effort into doing so. They make offers of dignity, friendship, and fairness to their customers, and that’s why they’ve won my respect. Providing they never change, they’ll always have my respect.
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Haha, good one…
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No, Mac. You are the gamer. Then Mac was a PC.
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Sidestepping the Mac vs. PC pissing match, this is great news for me. I’ve been playing on a Bootcamped XP and while it’s worked fine, it would be more convenient to run it on my Mac-side obviously. Wonder how far this will go re: games development from other companies.
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(misreply)
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Random amusing thought:
Play Portal on Mac in work. Check it into Steam via work PC, leave work.
Drive home.
Use LiveAnywhere to transfer game progress to XBox 360.
…
Ahh, Apple and Microsoft, finally working together. Thanks Valve.
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Vinraith: You mean like how the industry is currently thriving now? The profitability of hardware is sky diving just now. Netbooks aren’t helping the PC gaming market, they’re not really appropriate for running modern games on yet this is, by volume, all that a majority of people are buying (check Amazon’s best selling laptops to see that in action). At least the more expensive computers that Apple insist you buy to run OS X on all have graphic cards.
Users absolutely do want, prefer and benefit from open systems but the business of actually getting an open system to you doesn’t even bear trying. On the other side of the fence Apple are making billions doing it the very closed way.
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As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service
Not sure about anyone else, but this is setting alarm bells ringing in my tiny little head.
I don’t want a service, I want a product. Service is a euphemism for monthly payment.
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@FunkyBadger
What do you think Steam’s for?
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Steam is, at best, a semi-necessary evil.
Really no need to encourage it.
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Valve’s been talking about gaming as a service for quite a while now. This really isn’t anything new from them.
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@FunkyBadger
I agree entirely, I’m just saying that this is nothing new. One purpose of Steam is to make gaming a service rather than a product, which is part of the reason I go out of my way to support digital distributors that don’t look at the industry in that way (ie those without client programs).
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Fair enough. I don’t particularly use/like Steam so tend to ignore it most of the time. Should be more cautious, it seems…
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I want a service though… Just not a “shop”… I want rentals.
Monthly payment to “rent” X number of games from the entire steam catalogue at any one time?
Sign me up.
I’d wet my pants with joy if steam offered some kind of netflix/lovefilm deal.
£15 a month for 4 rental slots seems fair to me (freeing up a slot would be as easy as deleting local content and downloading a new game).
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In general, I agree – but the big reason that “service” raises so many hackles, mine included, is that it generally equates to “charge a monthly fee without providing any additional features or functionality”. Valve hasn’t taken that route. Titles like TF2 are a “service” in a strictly good way, enjoying ongoing support and improvement. Likewise, the whole Steamworks stuff has focused on how to provide additional “service” and “services” to game consumers. I’m still not entirely trusting, I’ll admit, but Valve clearly means something different (and better) by “service” than does, say, Microsoft.
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@bonedwarf
Gotta disagree there. I run windows through bootcamp on my MacBookPro and it overheats like mad because bootcamp can’t access it’s own fans or some nonsense? I have to boot mac first, run smcFanControl to get just one of the fans running, and then reboot into windows. Still heats up, but won’t crash. I looked into other fan control/remapping programs too but they’re not compatible with newer MBPs.
To its credit, my MBP can run TF2 at a significantly higher frame rate than my modest tower PC which makes scouting much more viable for me. [:
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Oh, is that what’s going on there? I wondered why my MBP got super-hot every time I booted into Windows to play old BioWare games.
Is your MBP new enough that you get audio drivers that turn the optical out on by default, so you get a little laser shooting out the headphone jack? I had to install somebody’s haxored drivers to shut that off…
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The optical audio light issue was fixed in Boot Camp a patch or two ago. The only issue I’ve ever had was having to download some hacked ATI drivers to get Dragon Age running, but that would have been the case on a laptop from any manufacturer.
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They said “the Half-Life series”
I wonder if that includes the GoldSrc games. They did port them back in the day.
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Unfortunately, I doubt it. Those ports were to PPC and MacOS 9, which was a whole different pile of issues, involving everything from endian incompatibility to the differences in how OS 9 multitasked.
I suspect that when they say “series” they mean “Half-Life: Source” covering for the first game, and the expansion packs (Blue Shift and Opposing Force) basically left behind. Those at least aren’t as CPU or GPU-intensive and should run decently in emulation for people who really want to play with the fishy gun…
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I loved that fishy gun. Especially the idle animation.
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I’d love them to port TFC. I don’t play it much now, but it’s fun to hop back in to from time to time.
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I wonder if Black Mesa will work with the Mac Source engine- it should just be data that any proper implementation of the Source engine could read, right?
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Have we seen any commentary from the Apple side yet, or are the big-wigs at Cupertino doing what they always do with gaming on the Mac platform and ignoring it?
Oh, also, I started out as a Mac user, then switched to PC.
While Mac OS is nice, Windows is just as nice. Both operating systems are simply tools to get a job done, and there’s no point arguing over which is better.
Except that horse-shit about higher quality components in Macs is complete bollocks. Look at the graphics cards available to Mac users; the top-of-the-range Mac cards are the equivalent of second-tier PC cards at best.
The Mac Pro case, while elegant on the outside, is a complete failure of design on the inside; compare it to the HP xw series of workstations, and you can see that as clear as day.
And recently our wiring guys have been taken every which way by Apple’s proprietary DVI implementation. It’s just shit when compared to the tech on PCs.
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You sound like a bitter ex-lover.
Come on back, baby. OS X still loves you.
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What they MIGHT do, though, is support Google Chrome OS when it releases. If they do, well… goodnight mister Microsoft.
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The hardware platforms Chrome OS is designed for barely play modern Flash games, let alone modern 3D games… a generic Linux port would make more sense.
I’d love to see Source/Steam get ported to Linux, but I would have also loved to see District 9 win an Oscar.
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Actually most Valve games work just fine in Linux if you use Wine. Only caveat is that at present an NVIDIA gfx card is recommended as ATI closed drivers are flaky and the open drivers aren’t there yet (give it about 6-12 months they’ll be ready for prime-time). As for intel.. yeah like that’s a gaming graphics card.
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@namuol: Initially it’s designed for netbooks and so on, but you really think Google plans to stop there? Have you MET them?
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“I’m not sure how FPS games will be playable on single button mice. (Tee hee hee.)” – oh mr walker, you are such an unbelievable tease!
This is seriously stupendous news. Thank you valve. x
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mouseclick to aim, control+mouseclick to look down the sights…. lolmac
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Good to see they’re going native with OpenGL. And that Steam Play function sounds awesome for people with multiple machines.
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One more voice here saying “Hooray!” A double-hooray for OpenGL; I, too, am pretty certain that this will make playing Valve’s games on my Ubuntu PC *that* much easier/faster, which in turn takes me *that* much closer to being able to throw Microsoft’s garbage out my window once and for all. Let’s hope this encourages other large industry players to follow suit, and Linux developers to continue to work together to create more stable, reliable, unified platforms (for example, finally deciding what the hell to do about audio stacks) to help the process from the other side.
Also, Valve: I LOVE YOU.
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Wow, I guess all of these Steam zealots want to turn the PC into a console. Let’s have more Steamworks titles that force us to run Steam, even if we order the game on Amazon or pick it up at a store. Yes, Valve is the best company ever, they love all of us, and they will lead us to our salvation.
I guess I will have to pick up the next generation XBOX or Playstation if Valve and its fans want to rid the PC of all that makes it unique. After all, why pay more money for the same experience?
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You pay more money for the same experience, how? I buy PC games around a year after they’re released for around £10 to £15. A console game of the same age will still be around £25 to £30. Games for OSX, if you can get them, are normally priced at a premium too. At least they always used to be.
OK, my next computer will likely be a new PC, which won’t be for a while, so this won’t effect me for some time. But, a few years from now I’m going to get a nice new Mac, since I’m really a Mac fan who doesn’t have enough money to support his love of them. Valve have said all the games I’ve bought from them (only the ones made by them though) for the PC will also be available to me on the Mac for no extra charge. OK, I really must be a Valve zealot, ‘cos that sounds pretty good.
Steam itself can be a pain in the arse, sure. Maybe you’re a Left4Dead fan, which would explain your anger. I’ve never been interested in L4D, so I’ve never been hurt by Valve. All of the games they’ve made that I love have been treated to the kind of after sales support that you could only dream of on consoles (or at least the previous gen of consoles).
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Steamworks is Valve’s PC gaming prison.
User X buys a game from Target, and is pleased to arrive back home and install it. User X dislikes Steam, which is why he shops at Target. He is shocked to discover that this non-Valve game requires him to install and run Steam in order to play.
Awesome system, Steamworks is. Bundleware in the form of “community features and achievements.”
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>I guess I will have to pick up the next generation XBOX or Playstation if Valve and its fans want to rid the PC of all that makes it unique. After all, why pay more money for the same experience?
So, I heard Valve is against mods, user created whatnots, innovative games made by complete unknowns.
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Horray! I can buy the cheapo Windows version then play it on my Mac, wahoo!
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Don’t do it. Think of the HDMI! Think of the GTX 295s!
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Please let there be an option to disable Mac text and voice chat. Based on this thread alone I don’t think I could take playing TF2 and listening to smug Mac gamers winding up PC gamers with how “superior” their Macs are and how that somehow makes them the next step in evolution.
When it comes down to it I don’t know which I’d rather play with Xbox gamers or Mac gamers. Eugh.
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The only thing worse than smug Mac lovers is smug Mac haters.
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Smugness in general is a trait of fools and hypocrites. Like console gamers, PC gamers, mac users, writers, politicians, and people who breathe air.
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Thank you, Thants.
Thathants.
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Y’know, I doubt I’ll ever own a Mac, but I’m still looking forward to Mac users showing up on TF2 just so I can kill the shit out of mouthy Mac bashers. I don’t think I’ve ever actually had a Mac user cop a serious attitude at me, but I’ve seen an awful lot of big talk and bullshit from Mac haters.
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There are scions of jerkiness and pure ethics on either side, and no human is immune to acting like a witless zealot regardless of what software resides on their computers. People should be judged on their words and actions, but certainly not their OS choice, not one way or the other.
Therefore: I will shoot whomever is a jerkwad just for being a jerkwad, regardless of their OS.
‘Nuff said?
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“I’m not sure how FPS games will be playable on single button mice. (Tee hee hee.)”
Best line of the article…
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Macs are hipster bullshit but it’s never a bad thing having more people to play with online.
And more money for valve means more stuff from valve so bring it on I say.
I’m probably biased however, as I’m a big fan of steam.
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http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Why-you-should-use-OpenGL-and-not-DirectX
word.
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To the average game developer, OpenGL is garbage. Here’s why:
1) Market coverage: DirectX allows developers to easily port game engines between the XBOX 360 and Windows. OpenGL, while supported on the PS3, is terribly inefficient, and therefore is only useful for PCs (Windows, Mac, Linux). The number of potential Direct3D-ready gamers is far greater than the number of potential OpenGL-gamers (not every PC owner is a gamer, but every XBOX owner certainly is).
2) Development tools: OpenGL is far from simple. DirectX offers a complete package to developers: graphics, sound, and input. OpenGL only offers rendering. Furthermore, DirectX has better development tools available to both large developers (Visual Studio) and small, indie developers (XNA).
3) Support: OpenGL is not directly supported by any agency. Microsoft is constantly revising and providing fixes for DirectX. OpenGL represents a greater risk to developers.
OpenGL had its chance, and failed. Unless it completely reinvents itself, it has no place alongside the likes of DirectX 11.
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It’s interesting to see Windows users, who often like to claim that PCs running Windows are an open platform and thus superior to Apple hardware running MacOS, often perceived as a closed platform, espousing DirectX as a superior alternative to OpenGL because it’s, um, a closed platform. Right.
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Yes, paint me with labels. I claimed nothing of the sort about X or Y being an open or closed platform.
DirectX is better than OpenGL because it is more efficient, covers a larger market of frequent gamers, and offers better tools for developers.
Calm yourself.
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DirectX is more efficient? I agree! And Bush was the saviour of America!
*giggles.*
You weren’t being serious, right? Of course you weren’t. DirectX is widely used because it’s friendlier to develop for, but it sure as hell isn’t more efficient. Side by side, we both know that OpenGL could rings around DirectX, with similar games on similar computers, because OpenGL’s the more efficient and optimised one.
But good joke! Great joke!
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@Wulf:
Hurr durr, here you go:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/opengl-directx,2019.html
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That the best you can do, Dissy? Because I see nothing in that article about optimisation or efficiency.
Hurr durr indeed.
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I’d actually be very surprised is OpenGL was as efficient 11 for three reasons:
- The number of state changes in OpenGL is a hinderance to the way modern GPUs work. This all should have been fixed in GL 3.0 but Kronos botched it.
- OpenGL isn’t designed for games, DirectX is. DirectX is designed from the bottom up to be about batched non-immediate mode rendering.
- Graphics drivers are optimised for DirectX because, well, everyone uses it. The OpenGL optimisation I would guess would be aimed at the CAD usage rather than gaming. Why would Ati and nVidia waste effort optimising for games that don’t exist?
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Choosing between OpenGL and DirectX is not a decision you have to make. If you read the comments on the posted article you’ll see developers from several major engine vendors chiming in to point out that DirectX is just as fast in 90% of real world cases, has far better tool support (principally PIX which is ridiculously useful for graphics develpment) and has better vendor driver stability on PC. Contrary to the initial article DirectX-likes generally reach a larger gaming market than OpenGL-likes as well (PS3′s libGCM is the standard and is more directX like than OpenGL like + the X-box API basically is directX).
OpenGL is great for Macs and Linux and perhaps as an option on PC but it is not going to be the standard API to rule them all in the games industry and not because of ‘Microsoft lies’ as that author appears to think. There are real practical development benefits to using directX that OpenGL can’t match.
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The biggest problem with DirectX is that it is a captive of Microsoft. Have you been annoyed that you can’t run games in DX10 in Windows XP? I have. OpenGL is, as the name implies, open.
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@Babs
I’ve seen a number of comparisons between Windows and Linux, when a game is released on both, and usually with exactly the same hardware the Linux computer will outperform, even if only by a few FPS. Whether this is due to the efficiency of Linux, or of OpenGL, I cannot say.
@Dan
Which is almost what I said. DirectX is top because it’s easier to develop for, but not because it has more features, not because it innovates, and not because of more efficiency and/or optimisation. In every other area other than friendliness, OpenGL wins, and wins completely. Every time (every single time) I’ve seen DirectX brought up, people talk friendliness and tools.
That’s perfectly understandable though really, isn’t it? Of course the vast majority are going to go for the one that’s easiest to use, I can grok that. Not everyone is going to program a game engine in C++ or assembly when they can do it in C#, either. I won’t begrudge anyone their choices. But the thing is, DirectX is to C# what OpenGL is to C++. The truth of things is that efficiency versus ease of use has to be weighed out, and the world chose ease of use. I have no problem with that.
I also agree that OpenGL has massive issues in the ease of use and tools department. What I really want to see is them working on this, because with better tools and a friendlier development environment we could see a real paradigm shift when it comes to graphical APIs. OpenGL is shooting itself in the foot by being unapproachable, and that’s a shame, because in every possible comparison except that it’s a winner.
It really is a crying shame. But again, it’s the C++ versus C# scenario. What OpenGL needs to do is make itself friendly, and if it doesn’t then it can’t expect success.
I’ve no problems with people pointing out that OpenGL is a horse’s arse to use, but it does bug me that there are people operating under the ridiculous delusion that DirectX is the superior API overall. Microsoft has never been superior anything, this is well known to the technology world if to no one else, but what they do manage to do is make things friendly, so even if you have to sacrifice features, you’ll do that because something made by Microsoft isn’t as much of a pain in the arse to work with.
But DirectX is limited by comparison, just as C# is limited in comparison to C++. And that’s the trade-off.
@solipsistnation
I couldn’t agree more with all of that. I’m a huge fan of open standards, and look how much Microsoft screwed themselves over with web standards. That’s why this is funny, because there’s evidence of what I’ve written above.
For a time, IE was popular, it was popular because it was the only friendly browser out there, despite the fact that it didn’t give a shit about standards. It was an incredibly limited browser, it featured about 20% of what the Internet could actually do at the time, and it was next to worthless. But hey, it was friendly! That’s IE 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 for you. But then there was that little upstart called Phoenix, Phoenix became Firefox, and that was joined by Chrome, Opera evolved into a friendlier state too (but the uptake wasn’t as large because it wasn’t completely free). Firefox, Chrome, and Opera now take up a massive piece of Microsoft’s market share.
And this is the truth of Microsoft, they know how to make friendly, no doubt about it. They have no clue about standards, or efficiency, or security, or anything that really matters, but they can make something that’s so incredibly friendly that people just want to use it. OpenGL is open, yes, it’s also more packed with features than DirectX is, it’s better overall in almost every way, but because it’s such a pain to develop for it can’t beat the IE of the coding world.
And that is a shame. OpenGL should be the top dog, and it could be if it worked a little harder at it.
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“And that is a shame. OpenGL should be the top dog, and it could be if it worked a little harder at it.”
Entitlement complexes are so juvenile.
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I can’t help but cringe when I read mention of “PC” and “Mac” in this article. Macs are PCs. It would be more correct to say Windows and Mac OS instead. The average guy might not understand that, but I expect RPS to use the correct lingo.
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OpenGL is the Ron Paul of APIs. It’s popular with a few people simply because it isn’t popular with anyone else.
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That or, you know, it’s actually capable of more incredible things than DirectX, it’s just slightly more difficult to implement.
The thing is, almost everything that was NEW! (in that shiny, sparkly kind of new that isn’t really new at all) in DirectX 11 was actually old news for OpenGL. The truth, ‘truther’, is that it’s a case of a wider range of features (OpenGL) versus being easier to use/develop for (DirectX).
When considering technology alone, as a pure thing, OpenGL will always be leagues ahead, but DirectX will be more commonly used, because it’s easier to use. If OpenGL ever gained the friendliness of DirectX it would soundly wipe the floor with that API.
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Posting the link here as well to combat Wulf’s misinformation:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/opengl-directx,2019.html
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Spamming one biased link everywhere does not disprove anything I’ve said, it’s just spam.
And if we’re OMGSPAMWARRING…
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Why-you-should-use-OpenGL-and-not-DirectX
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Tom’s Hardware… biased? Versus… a random OpenGL evangelist’s blog?
Oh my, sir. I hope that’s not your blog.
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“Tom’s Hardware… biased?”
How can you say it’s not?
“Versus… a random OpenGL evangelist’s blog?”
Wolfire are a known indie developer, who are you to say that X is more or less valid than Y?
“Oh my, sir. I hope that’s not your blog.”
Nope, I have nothing to do with Wolfire, I just like ‘em.
Conclusion: Asinine ass-covering for linkspamming is asinine.
– Edited to note… –
Who are you anyway if you’ve never heard of Wolfire? Everyone around here should’ve heard of Wolfire, if only for John’s pink beard antics alone.
Please go away, back to the dark corner of the Internet from whence you came.
Wolfire have a hell of a lot more credibility than you ever could.
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X thing is X? Get that internet cancer out of here.
Also, Wolfire uses OpenGL because it produces weird cross-platform games for furries. Lugaru et al hardly represent achievements in graphics, so of course the developers are going to prefer OpenGL in order to reach all of the anti-MS furries who use Mac and Linux.
Sheesh.
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“X thing is X? Get that internet cancer out of here.”
You’re not even trying to make sense any more, are you? I’ve sobered up to that. Internet cancer? That’s a new one. You’re funny, I’ll give you that, in a drunken-old-bloke-on-the-underground sort of way, but what you lack is sanity and clarity.
“Also, Wolfire uses OpenGL because it produces weird cross-platform games for furries.”
How amazingly narrow-minded and misinformed of you, because of course, anything that includes animal characters was naturally made for furries. This includes things like American Werewolf in London and every Disney film, they were all made with furries in mind, too.
Do you even pay attention to what you type? :/
“Lugaru et al hardly represent achievements in graphics,”
No one ever claimed that Lugaru did, but if you knew anything about Overgrowth then you’d realise it’s actually looking very pretty. The thing is though, you just took one look at Wolfire’s site and you had this angry “OMG, GAMEZ FAW DER FURREEZ!!!11″ knee-jerk reaction, without actually bothering to probe into their current projects, as opposed to their previous game which is already years old.
Good show though, at least you visited the site, I guess.
“[...] so of course the developers are going to prefer OpenGL in order to reach all of the anti-MS furries who use Mac and Linux.”
What? …what? Wot. What? What??
You just… you really aren’t at all there, are you?
I apologise to everyone else for the Tennant moment, but this knocked me for a loop.
I… what? Anti-MS furries? …what? What on Earth (or whatever planet you happen to be on) are you smoking, man? Stop it, it really isn’t good for you. It really, really isn’t.
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well.. Direct3D is the standard of 3D graphics. Is sad that Microsoft created a library that don’t use the standard. Is like If Microsoft created his own HTML incompatible with others HTML.
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Even though this should make me happy or something, being a mac user, I’m not that excited. If one likes gaming it ain’t enough, while running windows on the mac is as simple as having any dual boot pc or, as linux users do with wine, run parallels. Is it bad that I dare run windows or that I think the mac mouse is garbage (I’ve thrown it away for a razer one)?
Concerning an above post about OpenGL vs DirectX, I only have to say: I don’t care, as long as the game is a good one! Also, relative to DirectX making it easier for developers to port XBox games, it’s the reason we’ve seen so many awful cross-platform games; the pc isn’t a platform they care about.
Truth is after the success of the pods and phones, apple products are a current trend, but they’re obviously overpriced. Of course, with a growing customer base among students (mostly in the states), it’s wise for Valve to be a pioneer in the market. If you check the specs of these macbooks though, you’ll see they make awful gaming rigs. You can build an equal gaming pc for less than half their cost.
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macs. boo
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“I’m not sure how FPS games will be playable on single button mice. (Tee hee hee.)”
I’m not entirely sure if this is the norm, but my old man’s iMac came supplied with a 4-button mouse with 4-way scroll wheel.. Not that you’d know to look at it, it’s still just a little white pebble, but the buttons are there.
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For a while the mac sentiment was that more buttons wasn’t better. While i was getting this propaganda from mac fiends i was going home back to a 12 button logitech. I had a button which brought up note pad for a while.
But really, playing battlefield 2 and having a mouse button for every piece of equipment? It genuinely made me more deadly, still a customised interface can improve everything.
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Its just navel gazing but i thought i’d mention that mouse binds are excellent for rts’s. Your keyboard is already over tasked and your mouse is pretty idle, a couple of select next unit or active special power button on your mouse can really help you raise your game.
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Second random amusing thought:
Valve’s last Mac announcement was that they were cancelling the HL1 port to the Mac.
And now you can play HL1 Source via OpenGL?
…so this has just been a really, really, really, really long porting procedure?
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HL1 has been OpenGL since release so if OpenGL is the only real requirement of porting to MacOS then I don’t know why they didn’t do it before.
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It wasn’t the only barrier to releasing HL1 on the Mac. That’s a long story…
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I wish windows had garage band.
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There’s probably a lot of factors going into this decision. Macs now use Intel which makes porting easier, their market share has increased a bit.
I think most importantly Apple is beginning to push into the gaming space with the iPad and iPhone and I bet Valve don’t see why they shouldn’t have some of that sweet pie themselves, since they already have the rep and developer contacts.
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This is a healthy dose of win. I’ve all but abandoned Windows, and until I find my FM2009 CD it is the only reason I boot into XP. Huzzah and Hooray.
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This is incredible. Thanks valve. Less bootcamp is always better.
Hope this really kickstarts things into a more openGL environment, and ends some of the ridiculous mac/pc bickering. I’m mostly excited just to be able to keep in contact with friends on the steam community, since at this point I’ve played the valve games to death.
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Ok, I confess to being a little confused – I understand that Steam can be configured to run on a Mac, but what makes every Steam game – including titles like Empire: Total War – compatible with OSX?
Maybe this is just a throw back to the days when files from a Mac wouldn’t even register on a PC and vice versa, but is it the Intel chipset?
I’m just confused, because even with Blizzard, who has always supported the Mac, you could never use their Warcraft Mac CD to install on your PC, and vice versa.
What’s changed?
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Nothing, it’s just that Valve are actually porting Source with Steam. So, the Half-life series and it’s spin-offs will be available on OSX if you already own them for Windows. Whereas games like Empire: TW would have to have their engines ported to OSX by their owners.
At launch, probably the only games available will be the Source games and maybe a few indie ones. Hopefully that’ll change now that Valve are signalling to developers that they should consider the Mac as a viable market.
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Mad Doc MacRae’s comments are riddled in horrible irony.
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Good to see Steam coming to Apple! Steam is better than retail in my book. Would rather have digital downloads from a trusted company across multiple platforms. Valve is the real deal!!!
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This is great news from Valve, even if the author mistakenly thinks that Macs are “shiny, white blobs.”
“Although I’m not sure how FPS games will be playable on single button mice. (Tee hee hee.)”
This is also completely ignorant. Mac’s haven’t shipped with a one-button mouse in years. Besides, anyone seriously into FPS gaming can use any USB mouse they want. Hello?
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As one Mac fan to another. Chill.
The author was fanboy baiting.
I’m sure there was no malice there.
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I would love to know what John Walker malice is like. I’m not sure it exists.
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Does owning a mac preclude you from having any sense of irony or humour?
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No, but it does instil a persecution complex that typically results in overreactions to gentle ribbing.
I’ve had councilling though.
Also, my CAPTCHA was BURN. Nice.
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Since every Mac user already has Windows on their Mac either via Boot Camp or a Virtualization package (VMWare Fusion, Paralells etc) this isn’t really news is it ;-)
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Yes it is? Aside from the fact this is obviously News, Bootcamp (restarting every time you want to play a game) and virtualisation (slow) are not really real options. And both require an expensive Windows license. And saying every mac user has a Windows license is obvious not the case.
I’ll take it you had your tongue in your cheek.
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I wonder if Source will support binding crouchjump to a 3-finger swipe across the magic mouse.
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I JUST JIZZED.
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if previous platform wars have taught us anything, it’s that the problem isn’t Mac vs. PC, OpenGL vs DirectX, Megadrive vs SNES or any other arbitrary comparison you care to mention, it’s that a huge number of random internet people are contrary fuckers and will snipe at each other as they attempt to argue about anything and everything.
I buy myself PCs for gaming and use Macs at work. I can honestly say the only practical difference using them is the keyboard layout and – occasionally – the software you run. but the software is all much of a muchness these days anyway.
yes – including the right mouse button, which is adequately emulated on the imac’s mouse at by actually having a right mouse button hidden underneath that homogenous little plastic shell. bingo!
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What’s all this single mouse button jokery about?
My iMac’s mouse has 9 buttons :\
Great news from Valve. I know people will be inclined to think i’m biased, which I may be, but think about it from a business perspective.. most pc gamers and midrange developers toss aside the Mac community, saying, more or less, “there’s so many more windows users, catering to mac people is pointless”.
*They* are missing the point. People like Blizzard, and now Valve, will be cashing in on the MILLIONS of additional customers available by having native Mac applications/games.
Now I get to play some of my source engine vices without running crashy ol’ winblows and it makes me happy.
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Uh, no. That is why it’s a standard, and standards are good.
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what?
What does standardization have to to with being tied a a single company? Ever heard of PAL, H.264 or .wav? these are all standards that don’t belong to, or are developed only by, a single company.
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Single button mice? You are so far out of touch, you’re ludicrous. Apple hasn’t been making single button mice for years. I have a two year-old iMac and it CAME with a two button mouse. But then, maybe you’re just another ignorant Windows fanboi that will lie to try to make Macs look bad.
BTW, I play Windows games on my Mac and they run better and faster than they did on my PC gaming system. That’s using any trumped-up version of windows, either. Get with the future, get a Mac. Bill Gates did. That’s why WIndows has been trying to keep up with the Mac OS for 20 years.
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