Call of Duty: Black Ops Coming to Mac This Fall, Half-Price Sale on Older CoD Titles

[Exotic-Car Man]

I wonder if the latest games are true ports or Cider wrappers?

As far as I'm aware, Aspyr always does true ports.

What is a cider wrapper? I'm not familiar with that term. Also, what's the difference between a cider wrapper and a "true port"?

Well I have seen people here who have experiences using the trackpad to play shooting games and they find it enjoyable. Not my own preferred input method, but it may be worth checking out. You could always grab a free demo at Steam, like Portal and give it a try. But if your using something like a track ball however, I wouldn't bother

Personally, this is my preferred gaming mouse.

 

[Freyqq]

too bad mac missed call of duty modern warfare 2. It was the best so far, I think.

 

[UrgArg]

"Aspyr Media, Inc., the leader in Mac game publishing"

Bah. Like to blow thier own trumpet much?! Even says on thier home page "The greatest mac publisher on earth, ever"

I've yet to buy any of thier games that make me think those are anywhere near true. Never quite seem to pull it off.

Still, good to see this game coming to the Mac... I enjoyed it and think those mac users who've not played it yet will too! (As longs it works and doesn't miss out multiplayer like they did with Company of Heroes )

 

[Eorlas]

Please for the love of PC gaming DO NOT purchase this if you can help it. Its release was absurdly bugged when it came out on Steam. I don't even mean it had a few problems here and there, I mean the forums were stuffed with complaint posts about how poorly made it was, how it was in desperate need of optimizations, and how long we were waiting for fixes.

The game was just a mess and patch after patch they failed to deliver.

 

[joe-h2o]

What is a cider wrapper? I'm not familiar with that term. Also, what's the difference between a cider wrapper and a "true port"?

Personally, this is my preferred gaming mouse.

Cider is a type of executable "wrapper" that allows minimal code rewriting to be done on a Windows game so it can be played on the Mac.

Essentially it acts as an emulation/interpretation layer between OS X and the game. The game might make Direct X calls, for example, which is an API that is not present on the Mac, and the wrapper translates these in real time into the appropriate OpenGL calls.

In the past this sort of on the fly translation has led to poor performance of the games in question, and instability in some cases (the EvE Online cider-wrapped client was a nightmare).

A native port (a true port) is rewritten to act as a native app on the platform it is running on. Depending on how it was written in the first place this might be a lot of work - for example, if the game engine doesn't have a Mac native version, or the game relies extensively on Windows-exclusive APIs.

Native ports are faster, better, less resource intensive, tend to be less buggy and give an all-around better experience. They are harder work for the developers than simply wrapping up the windows executable and clicking "ship game and charge $60" though.

 

[Exotic-Car Man]

Cider is a type of executable "wrapper" that allows minimal code rewriting to be done on a Windows game so it can be played on the Mac.

Essentially it acts as an emulation/interpretation layer between OS X and the game. The game might make Direct X calls, for example, which is an API that is not present on the Mac, and the wrapper translates these in real time into the appropriate OpenGL calls.

In the past this sort of on the fly translation has led to poor performance of the games in question, and instability in some cases (the EvE Online cider-wrapped client was a nightmare).

A native port (a true port) is rewritten to act as a native app on the platform it is running on. Depending on how it was written in the first place this might be a lot of work - for example, if the game engine doesn't have a Mac native version, or the game relies extensively on Windows-exclusive APIs.

Native ports are faster, better, less resource intensive, tend to be less buggy and give an all-around better experience. They are harder work for the developers than simply wrapping up the windows executable and clicking "ship game and charge $60" though.

Okay, thank you very much for your reply. All that makes sense. It sounds like in the most basic sense (and I do appreciate your elaboration), wrappers do the porting at run time whereas with true ports, the porting implementation is more baked into the code.

 

[irDigital0l]

Way too late...

 

[Sylon]

The whole reason why I got COD4 on my Macbook is so I could have a halfway decent FPS while I'm deployed. I really wanted Black Ops because of its boot camp mode or whatever its called, basically playing "multiplayer" offline, because where I'm at the internet sucks. BO arriving this fall is too late for me. I'll be back home and back on console.


Props to Aspyr for bringing it over, but too little too late.

 

[smoketetsu]

Cider is a type of executable "wrapper" that allows minimal code rewriting to be done on a Windows game so it can be played on the Mac.

Essentially it acts as an emulation/interpretation layer between OS X and the game. The game might make Direct X calls, for example, which is an API that is not present on the Mac, and the wrapper translates these in real time into the appropriate OpenGL calls.

In the past this sort of on the fly translation has led to poor performance of the games in question, and instability in some cases (the EvE Online cider-wrapped client was a nightmare).

A native port (a true port) is rewritten to act as a native app on the platform it is running on. Depending on how it was written in the first place this might be a lot of work - for example, if the game engine doesn't have a Mac native version, or the game relies extensively on Windows-exclusive APIs.

Native ports are faster, better, less resource intensive, tend to be less buggy and give an all-around better experience. They are harder work for the developers than simply wrapping up the windows executable and clicking "ship game and charge $60" though.

Two things here are not true. First, when someone wraps a game they do literally no code changes to the game itself. They just install it into a wrapper and whatever support files and change some settings. I know, I've wrapped many games myself.

Secondly it's not always true that a port is faster, better, less resource intensive, etc. it highly depends on the job the person doing the port. The quality of native ports varies drastically and some are actually worse in performance without delivering much if any benefits in terms of features compared to a wrapped port. Take a look at this article: http://portingteam.com/frontpage/_/community-articles/reviews/mac-gaming-is-native-always-better-r19

By the way it's true that Aspyr never does cider ports but that's no guarantee that this game will run well. First of all this game had performance problems even on windows so much that people in interviews asked if the sequel is going to be optimized for PC. Secondly... I've actually played this in a wrapper and it doesn't play as well as say.. Crysis does in the same kind of wrapper believe it or not. Unless Aspyr pulls some miracles out of their hat their port wont fare much better.

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"Aspyr Media, Inc., the leader in Mac game publishing"

Bah. Like to blow thier own trumpet much?! Even says on thier home page "The greatest mac publisher on earth, ever"

I've yet to buy any of thier games that make me think those are anywhere near true. Never quite seem to pull it off.

Still, good to see this game coming to the Mac... I enjoyed it and think those mac users who've not played it yet will too! (As longs it works and doesn't miss out multiplayer like they did with Company of Heroes )

It's true. They have delusions of grandeur over there. They've hardly brought any new games to the Mac these past two years .. Feral has been beating them in both number of titles and also the features that those titles have.

Feral games tend to have better controller support and they've even been shipping games with true multichannel surround sound support if one has the capability of setting that up in audio MIDI setup. Neither DNF or RAGE shipped with that kind of support.

Aspyr games have even been only supporting one type of gamepad ONLY (wired 360) with a built in driver that demands you don't have any third party driver installed but Feral games support over 30 different kinds and the number is slowly growing. They even support the wireless 360 pad with third party driver and the Sony PS3 pad with no driver installed.

If anything Feral deserves that title more than they do.

 

[Battlefield Fan]

You know not all people are chasing games and even have time to play them all day.

I’m for example am happy that i will be able to play this great shooter when i feel like it.

Some people also own PCs for gaming because they don't want to wait a year... We all know that's an eternity in the tech world. The new one will be out soon. COD has lost its vision anyways as each one is pretty much the same.

 

[Over The Hill]

Some people also own PCs for gaming because they don't want to wait a year... We all know that's an eternity in the tech world. The new one will be out soon. COD has lost its vision anyways as each one is pretty much the same.

You know it’s funny on so many levels i won’t even bother explaning. I only want to note that it’s just a game and some of you here are talking like it’s the center of your life.

P.S. You don’t have to wait a year, you just live your life.

 

[koolmagicguy]

I haven't played a game in many years, do you typically need a mouse to play these?

Nope. I use my trackpad for every game on my Mac. CoD 4, Rage, CoH, Battlestations, Batman AA, Mafia II, Dirt 2, etc.

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yes but by fall when its suppose to be release it will be a 2year old game. they should be working on MW3 for Mac

Give it time. I'm still playing CoD 4: Modern Warfare and it's 5 years old. Besides, Aspyr doesn't have the ability to release for Mac on day 1. They have to wait for the developer to let them port it.

 

[marzer]

too bad mac missed call of duty modern warfare 2. It was the best so far, I think.

Definitely! Loved the post-nuke play in DC. Still replay those sequences periodically...And the C130 gunship in COD4!

 

[Battlefield Fan]

You know it’s funny on so many levels i won’t even bother explaning. I only want to note that it’s just a game and some of you here are talking like it’s the center of your life.

P.S. You don’t have to wait a year, you just live your life.

lol anyone who is on a computer forum has less of a life. Stop trying to put yourself above everyone else

 

[Over The Hill]

lol anyone who is on a computer forum has less of a life. Stop trying to put yourself above everyone else

Your rebuttal doesn’t make sense, but in case you really believe what you are saying it by any means is a tragedy to „wait years“ for a game version to be released for Mac.

 

[Colpeas]

yes but by fall when its suppose to be release it will be a 2year old game. they should be working on MW3 for Mac

Age is not an issue as the game is not any worse than it was in 2010.
It's more than obvious that majority of big-name games won't make it to the Mac on the day 1 (in the nearest future), but it's nice to see that Activision at least gives a **** about something besides consoles and traditional PCs...

too bad mac missed call of duty modern warfare 2. It was the best so far, I think.

I guess MW2 is next up. I don't believe that World at War will make it to the Mac anytime, though.

 

[8281]

Always great to have more games for the Mac platform. I hope I can play with my HD 3000 graphics, though.

 

[dcanona]

A year late...

By the time they release it, it will be two years.

 

[Heresy]

I'm glad to see this being released for the Mac. I played it on Steam when it first came out and really liked it. I've heard people gripe about a lack of support/updates but I never seemed to notice a problem and logged a lot of hours (more than I like to admit).

I think some people are down on it being "late" simply because of the multiplayer aspect. If you are playing single-player it is never too late. Nor is is too late for zombies or co-op, both mods are great btw! But if you buy a FPS and skip everything to just play multi-player then I think the server population might be down as so many jump to the next newest release for MP. Also, if you jump into MP you probably want a mouse as things move faster against live people.

Overall, this is a great game in the series.

 

[Over The Hill]

By the time they release it, it will be two years.

And that will change what exactly? I find the game, realize that i haven’t played it yet, but the moment i see it’s 2 years old i run away disgusted?

This whole gamer thing is a sad little story every time.

 

[Sackvillenb]

Better later than never... the big question is how will the mac's mediocre graphics handle these games though... (but, more games coming to mac may force apple to put better video cards in future computers)...

 

[iSayuSay]

And that will change what exactly? I find the game, realize that i haven’t played it yet, but the moment i see it’s 2 years old i run away disgusted?

This whole gamer thing is a sad little story every time.

Riight Nothing change with the game, it's the same game. But I don't pay full price for 1 y.o pc games.

By your wisdom, would you buy Pentium 4 PC for $1000 today? Hey it's just as fast as the day it was manufactured. It's the same CPU. Would you pay and use it today? Really?

 

[Over The Hill]

Riight Nothing change with the game, it's the same game. But I don't pay full price for 1 y.o pc games.

By your wisdom, would you buy Pentium 4 PC for $1000 today? Hey it's just as fast as the day it was manufactured. It's the same CPU. Would you pay and use it today? Really?

By my wisdom your example is apples and oranges.

 

[marzer]

There's nothing new about gaming on Macs. I've been playing FPS games on Mac since Ghost Recon. I've played the entire COD series right to the latest MW3. Some natively and when no port is available, some in wrappers. I've always had excellent graphic experiences with wide screen modes in high res and high effects.

I think what most hard core PC gamers fail to realize is that the majority of windows PC sold are mediocre compared to the Macs. The high end PCs are as much a minority as Macs are inthe big picture.

 

[Lindberg]

Better late than never.

These old titles should be sold for no more than a few bucks.