That's usually the case, Publisher politics or lack of interest. It's a shame really, I'd buy it right away if it was on OSX. New monitor can wait.
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OS X Wolfenstein: The New Order
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That's usually the case, Publisher politics or lack of interest. It's a shame really, I'd buy it right away if it was on OSX. New monitor can wait.
Q3 Arena ring any bells?
That was Mac first (at least Q3 Test was) even. It does stink that Carmack's gone. I think he did xplat as much b/c it was the Right Thing to Do as any other reason. Why not make xplat code, if you could? For him, it seemed as much coding challenge as business, which is largely why I bought the games.
(Obviously they were also very good, but I didn't find any after Q3 as compelling as 1 and 2.)
Q3 Arena ring any bells?
It does stink that Carmack's gone. I think he did xplat as much b/c it was the Right Thing to Do as any other reason. Why not make xplat code, if you could? For him, it seemed as much coding challenge as business, which is largely why I bought the games.
(Obviously they were also very good, but I didn't find any after Q3 as compelling as 1 and 2.)
Not only those reasons but he loves OpenGL, because he can do what he wants, and if it didn't exist he could then create it. Along with the fact that it's truly multi-platform. It's shame he's left them, but then again the parent company never did much in pushing Id tech 5 for use in other games.
Wolfenstein: The New Order
Because Unreal Engine 3 had already long established itself as the engine of choice. At best, RAGE looked comparable to any other UE title while suffering from major performance problems on certain platforms. Kind of like what we're seeing right now with Wolfenstein. A day one patch of 7-20 GB hardly inspires confidence.
A beta of one game from 15 years ago. My point still stands.
but then again the parent company never did much in pushing Id tech 5 for use in other games.
Because Unreal Engine 3 had already long established itself as the engine of choice. At best, RAGE looked comparable to any other UE title while suffering from major performance problems on certain platforms. Kind of like what we're seeing right now with Wolfenstein. A day one patch of 7-20 GB hardly inspires confidence.
Q3 Arena ring any bells?
A beta of one game from 15 years ago. My point still stands.
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Yup, and now that UE4 has native OSX compatibility I don't see Id catching up soon.
Plus it's not that runs poorly, it run amazingly well, the issue lies with AMD's horrible OpenGL drivers. They were subpar when Rage launched, and they're still rubbish. Infact the OpenGL drivers in OSX and Linux are faster than in Windows, and they're still lacking Khronos group compliance with the latest OGL specifications and standards.
Plus the massive download and patch is similar to Titanfall I've heard. Where it's mostly uncompressed assets, music and textures.
There is also the engine's inability to support SLI and Crossfire. Not an issue on the Mac per se but a big one for serious PC gamers.
Oh bugga, I forgot about that! Hmm, when it's out on Mac I'll test it on both OS's to see what it performs like.
You quoted me, and yet totally misunderstood what I said. Read my earlier post again. I was strictly stating my (mild) disappointment with the TWO most talented Mac porting companies, Feral and Aspyr, because they keep doing the same line of games again and again (CoD, CoD, more CoD, and yet another CoD game).
Those indie games you mentioned above . they have nothing to do with Feral or Aspyr, do they? And therefore have nothing to do with my criticism/sentiment.
I'm not bashing Feral or Aspyr much. I even started by calling them "our two most talented Mac porting houses", which is a clear compliment. But I agreed with the other poster that they should broaden the scope of games more, rather than keep focusing (their porting efforts) on the same line of AAA games over and over.
And I agree with you . they ought to do more of the indie games and porting them to OSX.
Well, even in the AAA space there's tons of stuff that they haven't done. For example, the Mac has yet to receive a single AAA fighting game yet Windows has been receiving more of those lately. The only way I've been getting my fighting game fix is via Wine or emulation.
Feral and Aspyr mostly seem to just play it safe with a few notable exceptions (guitar hero). But yeah, they mostly just do traditionally PC franchises: RTSes, their favorite FPS of the year and occasionally an action game (third person) or RPG.... and in Feral's case.. racing games. Oh, and LEGO games are always on the fast track to the Mac.
Feral and Aspyr mostly seem to just play it safe with a few notable exceptions (guitar hero). But yeah, they mostly just do traditionally PC franchises: RTSes, their favorite FPS of the year and occasionally an action game (third person) or RPG.... and in Feral's case.. racing games. Oh, and LEGO games are always on the fast track to the Mac.
Well, even in the AAA space there's tons of stuff that they haven't done. For example, the Mac has yet to receive a single AAA fighting game yet Windows has been receiving more of those lately. The only way I've been getting my fighting game fix is via Wine or emulation.
Feral and Aspyr mostly seem to just play it safe with a few notable exceptions (guitar hero). But yeah, they mostly just do traditionally PC franchises: RTSes, their favorite FPS of the year and occasionally an action game (third person) or RPG.... and in Feral's case.. racing games. Oh, and LEGO games are always on the fast track to the Mac.
Great point. Keep in mind that these are businesses. The decision to do a port or other activity has to pass the "will we make money from this" test. The less popular a title, the less likely it will be profitable enough to justify porting it.
It's not what many people want to hear, but it's reality. Even popular titles may not be profitable since Macs are traditionally not a gaming platform. The people who are the target market may already have the title on console or PC, which means no one may purchase what you ported, despite it's popularity.
The answer is to either just wait, or come out with Mac exclusive of a popular series. Figure the odds of the latter.
On the IMG forums, Aspyr mentioned they are porting some "non traditional" RPG that we'd never guess in a million years. I am cautiously optimistic. Aside from Firaxis titles not much Aspyr/Feral has ported recently has held interest for me.
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Apple needs to resurrect a position for Mac game evangelist… one that goes out to the PC game developers and prods them to port AAA games to OSX, and offer direct tech help from Apple, even giving incentives, giving freebies to the devs, etc. This was the case back in the OS8/9 era.
At the very least, the Apple Game Evangelist should encourage PC game companies to allow Feral/Aspyr to port their games to OSX. At the very least.
Here is an old video interview of Apple's 1995 Mac Games Evangelist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgKPPCCKNVc
Interesting, I didn't know this. (And I would have never have guessed, having gamed mostly since the Dark Days of the early 2000s.) How long did they have one? I know they had an iOS evangelist up until 2010, but I don't know if they replaced the guy who left with anyone.
They had a Mac Game Evangelist position for a few short years back in the 90s. It was around the same era that Guy Kawasaki was Apple's official "Mac Evangelist" (Guy was an Apple brand evangelist, not a game evangelist).
All those evangelist positions were dumped as soon as Dear Leader Steve Jobs returned to Apple and he extinguished "unnecessary projects" in order to make Apple profitable again. Roughly about the same time Dear Leader also exterminated the MacOS clones.
I just saw games were on sale at Steam for a summer sale and and found myself wishing Wolfenstein were available for OSX (played Return to Castle Wolfenstein not long ago on my 2008 MBP where it still works and it's amazing how much fun it was still after all these years of graphics improvements, etc.) Still, the game I most want to see ported and ported well is Dragon Age Inquisition. I've been thinking of getting a console (which I normally despise) just to play it since I really don't find it cost effective to buy an entirely new computer (let alone a gaming Windows machine) just to play one game right now.