Haha, wish we could all be l33t as you folks. Of course without achievements to back them up a person can say anything.
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BioShock for Mac announced
- Thread starter harveypooka
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Haha, wish we could all be l33t as you folks. Of course without achievements to back them up a person can say anything.
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Higher score doesn't mean you have a bigger penis or that anyone cares. How it should be. Your achievements are nothing to do with anyone else and you don't need the game to tell you if it is an achievement or not. When you run though Doom 2 without dyeing once you don't get an achievement ding at the bottom of your screen but boy was it hard and fun to do.
I for one am excited for Bioshock on Mac. I don't game on my macbook.. but for those that only have a mac and no game system or anything else, having a few AAA games like the dude up there was saying, would be cool. I'd like to see alot more companies do like Blizzard does and release multiplatform. So I pretty much agree with everyone : ) If you want to game, get a 360 (my personal choice so no PS3 is better replies : ) ), or install XP/Windows whatever on your macbook. But if your at home.. and want to game, just do it on the TV with a system.
Hear Yea, Hear Yea, I have news from the Feral Web Store.
The stock has just arrived in the office (right now we are unpacking the boxes) and after we check that it has been well made and is shiny enough for you we will be shipping out all pre-orders. Please note that parts of the Royal Mail (UK postal service) have decided to have a national strike on Thursday / Friday but we will do our best to make sure all the pre-orders get posted.
All people who order from the store should be getting their cards charged and shipping emails soon.
Get ready for Rapture people!
Edwin
Feral Interactive
I was just going to post guess whats shipping! Be careful with that one going to Yahooville South Carolina would you?
Bioshock is also now available in the Apple store if anyone is interested...
http://store.apple.com/us/product/TX514LL/A?fnode=MjQzNDcwNg&mco=MTMzODIwMDc&s=newest
http://store.apple.com/us/product/TX514LL/A?fnode=MjQzNDcwNg&mco=MTMzODIwMDc&s=newest
If you don't mind me asking, why did it take so long to port? Wouldn't it make more sense to port it near launch, because by now most of the people would have played/finished it, so you won't get as many sales as you deserve. Other than that, good job on releasing a AAA game on the Mac, please tell me it doesn't use Cider.
Haven't really played a Feral game before, but after playing the Mac version of The Movies I was really impressed at the good job they did. I can run it at high at the max resolution, and my iMac isn't a good gaming machine, and it has a perfect frame rate. Hopefully Bioshock is the same.
The demo is coming
But to put you at ease the new 13" MacBookPro will have no trouble playing Bioshock and the default settings for that machine are medium.We have spent time making sure the game plays well, we also will automatically set the games settings to best match your machine for the entire game experience. You can experiment but most of the time the default should give you the best settings both visually and with the frame rate for your specific machine.
If you have any issues contact support (or me on PM) we are always happy to offer suggestions.
Edwin
I will be interested to try the demo, to see how it runs. It seems you are the best company at porting games, you should port more! At least the FPS doesn't suck like some Aspyr and all Cider games do. Actually makes playing the Mac version worthwhile. You could be the start of a new era for Mac gaming .
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I will be interested to try the demo, to see how it runs. It seems you are the best company at porting games, you should port more! At least the FPS doesn't suck like some Aspyr and all Cider games do. Actually makes playing the Mac version worthwhile. You could be the start of a new era for Mac gaming
High praise indeed, Thank you! I hope our next 12 months will keep you happy both with the number of games and the quality of the ports.
Edwin
Feral Interactive
Was never a huge fan of Bioshock, but I know most people are so would be interested in trying it again. It's only $60 AU which I think is a great price. Sure it's probably around $40-$50 on other consoles, but at least it's not $100. Will try out the demo as soon as it's out, then see if I like it. Also, are there any plans to port Company of Heroes? That is one of the best RTS games there is.
My very boring stock comment is being rolled out for this one
"We don't comment on any games and if we will port them or not as any answers will create speculation that may be untrue. However all suggestions for games are logged and taken into account when we look at future projects."
Sorry about the very "Official PR" answer but possible ports is something I avoid talking about as me saying I like a game might backfire and I don't want to get into any trouble. That said if I cannot answer fully due to reasons like this I will always say so.
Edwin
Feral
My very boring stock comment is being rolled out for this one
"We don't comment on any games and if we will port them or not as any answers will create speculation that may be untrue. However all suggestions for games are logged and taken into account when we look at future projects."
Sorry about the very "Official PR" answer but possible ports is something I avoid talking about as me saying I like a game might backfire and I don't want to get into any trouble. That said if I cannot answer fully due to reasons like this I will always say so.
Edwin
Feral
Maybe you could enlighten us with a post on how much work is put into porting a game from picking a title, to talking to the studio, converting the source code and testing. As a up and coming software engineer i find it most fascinating.
Yeah, I would like to know that too. And also how you choose what games to port, how long it takes etc. Would be interesting to know.
The very basic path is something like this:
- See a game (or get shown a demo) which we like and think would do well on the Mac.
- Find out if the original publishers/developers are interested in allowing a Mac port
- Get all the legal stuff sorted
- Get the code and verify all is correct
- Start to port to the Mac
- Start testing the Mac version
- Get a small number of external testers to help test "real life" situations to get a better stability/quality level
- Get approval from the original developer/publisher
- Ship game
This process can take anything from just a few months to a year depending on how big the game is, how complex it is, what other factors occur during the project. For example during Fable TLC development Apple announced Intel machines which meant we had to immediately start developing for two architectures at once and swap to using XCode as our main dev environment (instead of the PPC only Codewarrior) this caused some delays as you might expect, other games like Worms 3D the alpha 1 version was fast and stable and the port was nice and fast.
One of the things that keeps this job interesting is every game is different and had different technical challenges which need to be solved to get the game released on the Mac. I can't really go into how we make a port or the details of contracts etc but that should give you a layman's overview of the stages in a port. Hope that is what you wanted.
Edwin
How many man-hours of coding- how about a range from a simple game to a complex game? Thanks!
Not really something I can answer, hence I used time in months instead. Variables like complexity of the game code, middle-ware and how experienced the programmer is will massively effect these numbers. Not to mention I am skirting a fine line between explaining to you guys and not mentioning things about internal development I should not be.
So to summarise actual hours is not an exact science and also I want to play better safe than sorry position. I like being open as possible with you guys and I have been given a lot of trust by Feral to do so in forums like this. I really appreciate being able to post and answer questions (as before I graduated I was on your side of the fence) so if I think something is getting to close to stuff that should not be discussed in the forum I will just say so.
I don't think development hours is a secret but it is the edge of a cliff I don't want to go near.
Edwin
Feral Interactive
I don't think development hours is a secret but it is the edge of a cliff I don't want to go near.
Ok, so let me read between the lines, 2000 hrs labor for a simple game, 4000+ hrs for a complex game...
Seriously I do know it takes one heck of a long time to get those Mac games ported as in years sometimes. Say 70 hr week x52= 3640 hrs. No confirmation requested.