Future of Game Development on Mac OS X

appleater · Nov 16, 2010

Looks like indie game development just got a hell of a lot more difficult for the mac crowd ever since zenimax bought idtech software. This means no more licensing of idtech great game engine to indie game developers.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...ngine_No_Longer_Up_For_External_Licensing.php

With the idtech 5 keeping the engine sdk to themselves at Bethesda that leaves indie developers with the infamous torque engine sdk. Will this leave mac users little choice but to switch to the darkside of direct x and udk??

Winni · Nov 16, 2010

Get over it. The future of game development lies in game consoles and has been for several years already. The Mac never was a gaming platform and even PC gaming has been dying a slow death for quite a while now.

Microsoft haters might not like to hear this, but the Xbox 360 is a great target platform even for Indies and you don't have to sell your sell to get the development tools or to sell your software through their market place.

Heck, you even get to use a widely spread programming language like C# and don't have to use a niche language that's only championed by ONE company.

Slux · Nov 16, 2010

Winni said:
Heck, you even get to use a widely spread programming language like C# and don't have to use a niche language that's only championed by ONE company.

Not disagreeing with the majority of your post, but just pointing out that C# is also championed by ONE company, unfortunately that company is Microsoft, which used its market dominance to get it widely adpoted.

Personally I'm not a fan of C#, but the debate over that language is seriously off-topic.

0098386 · Nov 16, 2010

I'm sorry but no.

Id Tech engines have not been the choice of engine for a very long time now. The hay day (I never wrote that so it could be "hey") was the Quake 2 era but that was almost a decade ago. Most independent developers now use Source, UE3, Unity, XNA or if its small enough they build their own.

Besides this is a good thing. Very few games used the previous id Tech engine (compared to the others I mentioned), however what did suck were the games id built. It's entirely possible this new system with id will let them focus more on the gameplay and developing better titles, rather than unused engines.

How did it get a "hell of a lot more difficult" exactly?

appleater · Nov 16, 2010

Winni said:
Get over it. The future of game development lies in game consoles and has been for several years already. The Mac never was a gaming platform and even PC gaming has been dying a slow death for quite a while now.

Microsoft haters might not like to hear this, but the Xbox 360 is a great target platform even for Indies and you don't have to sell your sell to get the development tools or to sell your software through their market place.
company.

First off, I am referring to game development on mac osx to be used on cross platform consoles, which has become very difficult because most sdks are available for direct x only, which is only available on windows. If you want to develop a game on mac its gotta be open gl which has very little support and engine sdks for indies thanks to MS.

Second:500,000 people surveyed, and 42% of 360s had to be replaced. 55% of those people had to have it replaced more than once.

http://****xbox.com/

still think xbox 360 is a great platform?

Dagless said:
I'm sorry but no.

Id Tech engines have not been the choice of engine for a very long time now. The hay day (I never wrote that so it could be "hey") was the Quake 2 era but that was almost a decade ago. Most independent developers now use Source, UE3, Unity, XNA or if its small enough they build their own.

Besides this is a good thing. Very few games used the previous id Tech engine (compared to the others I mentioned), however what did suck were the games id built. It's entirely possible this new system with id will let them focus more on the gameplay and developing better titles, rather than unused engines.

How did it get a "hell of a lot more difficult" exactly?

idtech is a great engine, just look at their latest version idtech 5 they are using for Rage.

chrono1081 · Nov 16, 2010

Winni said:
Get over it. The future of game development lies in game consoles and has been for several years already. The Mac never was a gaming platform and even PC gaming has been dying a slow death for quite a while now.

+1 Winni hit the nail on the head. As much as PC gamers hate to hear it, its a dying platform. The only real thing keeping it alive is that consoles do not have mice and keyboards, so FPS's and RTS's tend to stay alive on the PC.

appleater · Nov 16, 2010

chrono1081 said:
+1 Winni hit the nail on the head. As much as PC gamers hate to hear it, its a dying platform. The only real thing keeping it alive is that consoles do not have mice and keyboards, so FPS's and RTS's tend to stay alive on the PC.

PC is a dying gaming platform, but with steam around I doubt it will completely die. Still the thread is about game development on mac osx.

masterofbuckets · Nov 16, 2010

Winni said:
The future of game development lies in game consoles and has been for several years already. The Mac never was a gaming platform and even PC gaming has been dying a slow death for quite a while now.

chrono1081 said:
+1 Winni hit the nail on the head. As much as PC gamers hate to hear it, its a dying platform. The only real thing keeping it alive is that consoles do not have mice and keyboards, so FPS's and RTS's tend to stay alive on the PC.

First, I don't disagree about "PC gaming has been dying a slow death" statement....to an extent. There is no denying that the money is there in consoles first, then PC in most big studios/companies eyes.

But, I want to know when you guys think PC gaming will actually be dead. And by dead I mean as in there won't be any PC games released ( AAA, casual, whatever ) ever.

Usually, this conversation would go slightly off-topic towards discussing piracy, digital distribution, DRM, companies not making PC ports of their AAA games or not bothering with a PC version at all, etc. So lets just put that aside for a different thread someday in the future.

Personally, if a company doesn't want to make their precious AAA title a PC version ( be it a port or not ), I couldn't care less about that game. There are more than enough alternatives for me to enjoy. I have a truckload of backlog games I want to play which are piling up every month.

I do play occasionally on consoles but I would take the keyboard/mouse any day. Hate playing with a gamepad except on certain sports games.

EDIT: OP, Sorry to jump in here but I couldn't resist.

Dr.Pants · Nov 16, 2010

I thought nowdays OSX was considered a small part of the larger PC Gaming market?

I would say that we'll probably see more mainstream games available for OSX with a directx wrapper - its by far the most cost-effective solution. Unfortunately, no DX10 wrappers yet (AFAIK), so titles like Civ V need to spend extra time in development.

JordanNZ · Nov 16, 2010

Dr.Pants said:
I thought nowdays OSX was considered a small part of the larger PC Gaming market?

I would say that we'll probably see more mainstream games available for OSX with a directx wrapper - its by far the most cost-effective solution. Unfortunately, no DX10 wrappers yet (AFAIK), so titles like Civ V need to spend extra time in development.

I hope more game developers take the ID route, and build engines that don't rely on a certain graphics API at their core level. So you can put in whatever backend you want (OpenGL, Direct3d etc).

0098386 · Nov 17, 2010

appleater said:
idtech is a great engine, just look at their latest version idtech 5 they are using for Rage.

Yes it's a nice looking engine, and given there are no loading times barring the initial boot it does sound very well optimised and well crafted. However the engines of choice now are UE3, Source and Unity. They're all cross platform, all very advanced and serve their crowd well. Whilst id Tech 5 does look impressive - I'm sure once it is available we'll have another major update to UE3 or even its successor.

Winni said:
Get over it. The future of game development lies in game consoles and has been for several years already. The Mac never was a gaming platform and even PC gaming has been dying a slow death for quite a while now.

Sorry I missed this crazy comment because the first post was crazier.

It is absolutely not dying. I do have to laugh when I read these comments. Naysayers have been saying that "PC gaming is dying" for near on 15 years now. I have a console magazine from 1995 with that claim too.
Year on year Steam, which effectively is the PC gaming market now, gets a few million more customers, sales figures jump up etc. If PC gaming was dying we'd see the opposite. We'd see a decline year on year of people connected to Steam.

What is dying is retail. Since digital distribution kicked off here GAME and Gamestation have allocated less and less shelf space to PC. Just like when the Wii kicked off they added more shelf space to Nintendo (after dropping them during the GC and GBA years

).
Every single PC gamer I know around my way has Steam. Every LAN party, every gaming gathering I've attended - they're all Steam users.

What is happening is gaming is getting more popular. There are more people buying home consoles, there are more people playing PC games, there are new systems running iOS, there are more people playing browser games. Not one market is dying.

Dying... my arse.

appleater · Nov 17, 2010

JordanNZ said:
I hope more game developers take the ID route, and build engines that don't rely on a certain graphics API at their core level. So you can put in whatever backend you want (OpenGL, Direct3d etc).

Agreed, its a shame they idtech is keeping it to themselves though, they could have come up with a better marketing strategy than that.

apolloa · Nov 22, 2010

The Mac doesn't have a future in games, it's as simple as that really. The ONLY people interested in it really are Valve, so we may get those games, but does no one remember Jon Carmack showing of an early tech demo of the engine from Rage on stage at a Mac event after Steve Jobs introduced him? Now to recently when he was asked about the Mac and Rage and he said they were evaluating there position on the Mac

.
So No I would guess. Apple isn't and never has really been interested in gaming, Valve have pretty much pushed Apple into letting them do what they have.
Consoles are the future, alway's have been, it's developed a massive market, also the enthusiast PC market will alway's be around.
No, next year it's all going to be about mobile, iPhone 5, iPad 2, 3DS, PSP Phone and the PSP 2. Personally I'm waiting for the PSP2, got a PS3 but the thought of even 80% of the PS3's power in my hands is ooooooooohhhhhhhhhh!!

Wanna game on a Mac, install Windows.

apolloa · Nov 22, 2010

Dagless said:
What is dying is retail. Since digital distribution kicked off here GAME and Gamestation have allocated less and less shelf space to PC. Just like when the Wii kicked off they added more shelf space to Nintendo (after dropping them during the GC and GBA years ).
Every single PC gamer I know around my way has Steam. Every LAN party, every gaming gathering I've attended - they're all Steam users.

And this is the worry IMO, whilst Steam and Apple's app stores have the business model to allow sales when ever the developer wants one, we are yet to see this on the PSN or Xbox Live. I'm all for digital downloads, well in the future when broadband can cope with it anyway, but I also want to be able to buy games at sales prices when the developer wants to put it on sale, not when Sony want to.

PracticalMac · Nov 22, 2010

One would also think the iPhone family (iPod T, iPad) is also taking a LOT of game development attention these days.

It may just push out the DS and PSP from the markets.

Venkman90 · Nov 22, 2010

Dagless said:
Yes it's a nice looking engine, and given there are no loading times barring the initial boot it does sound very well optimised and well crafted. However the engines of choice now are UE3, Source and Unity. They're all cross platform, all very advanced and serve their crowd well. Whilst id Tech 5 does look impressive - I'm sure once it is available we'll have another major update to UE3 or even its successor.

Sorry I missed this crazy comment because the first post was crazier.

It is absolutely not dying. I do have to laugh when I read these comments. Naysayers have been saying that "PC gaming is dying" for near on 15 years now. I have a console magazine from 1995 with that claim too.
Year on year Steam, which effectively is the PC gaming market now, gets a few million more customers, sales figures jump up etc. If PC gaming was dying we'd see the opposite. We'd see a decline year on year of people connected to Steam.

What is dying is retail. Since digital distribution kicked off here GAME and Gamestation have allocated less and less shelf space to PC. Just like when the Wii kicked off they added more shelf space to Nintendo (after dropping them during the GC and GBA years ).
Every single PC gamer I know around my way has Steam. Every LAN party, every gaming gathering I've attended - they're all Steam users.

What is happening is gaming is getting more popular. There are more people buying home consoles, there are more people playing PC games, there are new systems running iOS, there are more people playing browser games. Not one market is dying.

Dying... my arse.

Quoted for truth, justice, win and BBQsauce.

PC gaming will be around when the sun goes nova, the cockroaches will play Elder Scrolls 133 on Steam.

Venkman90 · Nov 22, 2010

PracticalMac said:
One would also think the iPhone family (iPod T, iPad) is also taking a LOT of game development attention these days.

It may just push out the DS and PSP from the markets.

PSP? maybe, DS? no chance!

Sony don't know when they are beaten, they lacked focus on the PSP and now with their PSP phone, PSP2 and rumored iPad knock off it seems they want to take on Apple AND Nintendo at things they do much much better and with much deeper pockets.

The DS (and 3DS) has a huge pre built market share and I doubt we will ever see a game as deep as DQ9 on the iOS (much as I would love it), if the PSP starts to die off you might get MH and series like that on the 3DS and that's Japan in the bag for the consoles life span (it already has DQ10 lined up).

0098386 · Nov 22, 2010

Venkman90 said:
PSP? maybe, DS? no chance!

Sony don't know when they are beaten, they lacked focus on the PSP and now with their PSP phone, PSP2 and rumored iPad knock off it seems they want to take on Apple AND Nintendo at things they do much much better and with much deeper pockets.

The DS (and 3DS) has a huge pre built market share and I doubt we will ever see a game as deep as DQ9 on the iOS (much as I would love it), if the PSP starts to die off you might get MH and series like that on the 3DS and that's Japan in the bag for the consoles life span (it already has DQ10 lined up).

The PSP would be fine too. What supports that now is the Japanese market, recently the PSP has been outselling everything else (DS, Wii, PS3). Its the best device at the moment for JRPGs.

But yea neither system is going anywhere. The DS is way too huge to get rid of.

roadbloc · Nov 22, 2010

chrono1081 said:
+1 Winni hit the nail on the head. As much as PC gamers hate to hear it, its a dying platform. The only real thing keeping it alive is that consoles do not have mice and keyboards, so FPS's and RTS's tend to stay alive on the PC.

I wouldn't say dying, but it will certainly become more and more 'specialist'.

apolloa · Nov 22, 2010

Venkman90 said:
PSP? maybe, DS? no chance!

Sony don't know when they are beaten, they lacked focus on the PSP and now with their PSP phone, PSP2 and rumored iPad knock off it seems they want to take on Apple AND Nintendo at things they do much much better and with much deeper pockets.

So I guess you are stating that a single product that has so far sold over 60 million units world wide is a failure then? Because that's how many so far the PSP has sold. The PSP2 will do the exact same in fact it will sell even more. Whilst games on the iPhone and iPod are fine, they cannot run at the same frame rates as a PSP game and they lack physical controls of course, for instance RAGE suffers some lag, Hot pursuit has lag, Modern Warfare 2 has lag and so on and on. PSP never really suffers from lag.
The PSP phone has been rumoured for years and is certainly nothing new, it's just coming close to launch.
As for the PSP 2, well if it has the power it's rumoured to you'll get a far more superior games device then the iPhone, it'll far more likely have a more full RAGE game then they can get on the iPhone. I'm not saying the iPhone etc don't have a market as they do but they need a long long long long long long way to go to kill off the PSP of DS.
And as for the iPad, if you spend that much to just play games then more fool you.

goMac · Nov 22, 2010

appleater said:
With the idtech 5 keeping the engine sdk to themselves at Bethesda that leaves indie developers with the infamous torque engine sdk. Will this leave mac users little choice but to switch to the darkside of direct x and udk??

There's also Source and the Unreal engine, both on Mac.

Stirolak123 · Nov 23, 2010

The ipad could be the future if Apple markets it right and improves it hardware wise every few months or so. Its got the protability, tv out, battery life, and app store layout perfect for any indy dev.

Huntn · Nov 23, 2010

Stirolak123 said:
The ipad could be the future if Apple markets it right and improves it hardware wise every few months or so. Its got the protability, tv out, battery life, and app store layout perfect for any indy dev.

The iPad is hot. It dawned on me when I saw the guy on CNN running around on his show queuing up a big screen behind him with one. I fly a lot and see business people carrying iPads (an alternative to their PCs) as their data source while traveling. At a meeting yesterday with my realtor, he pops one out and uses it for a presentation. Regarding games, I can see casual gamers opting for the iPad. Hardcore gamer's not...

Just curious would a game like Gears of War run on the iPad? How the heck would you control it?

Yaboze · Nov 23, 2010

The Mac was never a huge target as far as a gaming platform, it's just id Software always supported it, just like Blizzard and a few others. Don't be mad at developers, be upset at Apple or Jobs. Microsoft, at least, worked on hard on DirectX for many years. Although the adoption of DX10 and 11 has been slow across the board, they did add new features to it since DX9, which is what every game these days supports on the PC.

id Engines are always in OpenGL, which works out well for OSX because that's the only graphic API it has.

The last public id Engine (id Tech 4) was the Doom 3 engine from 2004 (!). This was used in a few games after that but not much in the last few years. I think the last few big games were Quake 4 ('05) and "Wolfenstein" ('09), not even made by id (Raven) and Quake: Enemy Territory. This engine is going GNU public next year.

The new engine, used in Rage is something I'd like to see in other games. If Bethesda won't allow it to be licensed like id did before, it could hurt Mac and PC gaming, especially the Mac. I consider Mac gaming as a subset of "PC Gaming".

Anyway, if a Mac friendly Rage engine isn't used outside of Bethesda, it will hurt the Mac more, because Bethesda/ZeniMax already puts out other games for the PC that use DX9, such as Fallout and Elder Scrolls. It's doubtful these DX9 titles will ever come to the Mac.

Yaboze · Nov 23, 2010

Huntn said:
The iPad is hot. It dawned on me when I saw the guy on CNN running around on his show queuing up a big screen behind him with one. I fly a lot and see business people carrying iPads (an alternative to their PCs) as their data source while traveling. At a meeting yesterday with my realtor, he pops one out and uses it for a presentation. Regarding games, I can see casual gamers opting for the iPad. Hardcore gamer's not...

Just curious would a game like Gears of War run on the iPad? How the heck would you control it?

Apple's ticket into gaming might just be the iPhone, iPad and iPod touches of the world.

There are games on these that use a on screen touch joystick (see the Epic Citadel demo) or, possibly a controller that connects via Bluetooth.

It is possible Gears could run on the iPad, if you look at the Epic Citadel demo, it looks darn good and uses the same engine. The problem is the 360 is much more powerful graphically and CPU wise than the iPad. Who knows. If Apple beefs up the iPad it could end up being an amazing gaming device (and amazing overall).

I want one bad but I am waiting until next year to see what's up. I'd love a 512MB model.

Future of Game Development on Mac OS X

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