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The Significance of Steam and Valve's Games for Mac

myca said:
That's why I maintain that the 3DO simply ownz all :)

Edit:

And the Amiga
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Now we're talking! I've never loved gaming as much as I did on my Amigas! Lol. Never got a 3DO, though I did find a cheap Jaguar recently. :D

Lately I've been enjoying iPhone gaming as much as anything.. Power isn't the most important factor at all. Steam on osX - yay!!
 
myca said:
With the iMac I personally don't like the glossy only screen, but that's just a preference thing, plus I'm not a fan of all in one systems.

But as for your question on OSX/Windows/Linux, it's as easy as pie, just install Fusion and you can have all three running at the same time :)

Bootcamp will also do windows perfectly, but for booting into Linux without VmWare it's a little tricker, but doable (I just can't remember how).

As for apps, all the platforms have what most people need I guess, some are more suited for certain things, and some platforms have gaps in what decent software is available, as much as I prefer the mac OS I have to maintain a certain amount of OS agnosticism to do my job, and game :eek:
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I know what you mean about all-in-one setups, not being able to upgrade easily is a bit of a turn off in itself. I must have upgraded pretty much every major component in my old Dell desktop PC before accepting it was outdated. Being able to use the monitor from one computer to the next saved me a hell of a lot of money.

Anyways, thanks for that info on multi-booting, and apologies for derailing the thread so far.

Back on topic:
It will be interesting to see if Steam has a significant effect on the amount of developers actually taking the time to program for Macs; Valve can only really modify their source engine to be Mac friendly. It'll be up to each development studio to make their own games work. Here's to hoping you guys do see some more quality games coming your way. EDIT: Maybe Linux gaming will see some love if they use OpenGL for their engines?
 
mixel said:
Now we're talking! I've never loved gaming as much as I did on my Amigas! Lol. Never got a 3DO, though I did find a cheap Jaguar recently. :D

Lately I've been enjoying iPhone gaming as much as anything.. Power isn't the most important factor at all. Steam on osX - yay!!
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I was joking with the 3DO, it was terrible, but yeah the Amiga, and before her my beloved C64 :)

PyroFreak301 said:
It will be interesting to see if Steam has a significant effect on the amount of developers actually taking the time to program for Macs; Valve can only really modify their source engine to be Mac friendly. It'll be up to each development studio to make their own games work. Here's to hoping you guys do see some more quality games coming your way. EDIT: Maybe Linux gaming will see some love if they use OpenGL for their engines?
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I'll be interested to see how the big publishers and developers deal with this too, but I wouldn't be surprised if Valve have seen the app store and the influx of casual gaming on that and thought "we've got a store and tons of casual gaming, let's make some money". As I imagine all the PopCap type games, and indie games will get ported quicker than some of those AAA titles.
 
myca said:
I'll be interested to see how the big publishers and developers deal with this too, but I wouldn't be surprised if Valve have seen the app store and the influx of casual gaming on that and thought "we've got a store and tons of casual gaming, let's make some money". As I imagine all the PopCap type games, and indie games will get ported quicker than some of those AAA titles.
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The indie game developers will probably have most to gain from this then with their smaller games. Whether the existing AAA titles will be ported at all is yet to be seen, I'm guessing that a port like that is no small or quick job, one that they might find isn't worth it considering the overall small usage share of OSX, not to mention that many Mac users state themselves they never bought a Mac for gaming. Either way it look like progress may be slow getting many of the big titles to OSX.

I can't help but wonder if Apple had any hand in Valve making the decision to start porting over to Macs. It seems to be Macs biggest percieved weakness is the lack of gaming ability... taking steps to dispel that idea wouldn't be a bad move by Apple.
 
More fuel to the fire

Steam on OSX? Great news! My windows partition just broke and I had been wanting to play TF2!

The only problem I can see: Half Life 2 is now about 5 years old, along with the technology that created it.

I know that Mac users get ports of Windows games between 1-2 years after PC launch, but this is ridiculous!

Also, think of the time it will take to port everything over to the Mac, it won't be a smooth and quick transition, however much we like it!
 
Southern said:
I know that Mac users get ports of Windows games between 1-2 years after PC launch, but this is ridiculous!
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L4D2.

---

In some ways transgaming wouldn't be a bad thing, as if it was somehow wrapped up in the Steam client itself and all the devs had to do was provide the settings to make their games run nicely we'd be getting a lot more than just the Source based games. I'd prefer full native Source tho obviously.
 
SPUY767 said:
Source, if written and optimized as well as Blizz did with the WoW engine, will likely outperform its counterparts on the PC. WoW runs at almost double the frame rate under Mac OS as it does under Windows on my machine. And the minimum frame rate that I see under Mac OS is much higher, typically 4x what I see under windows. My machine is a Mac Pro 2006 3.0 Dual Dual with 16 Gigs of ram and a 4870. Windows is a positively fresh install of Win 7 with nothing but Drivers and system updates installed. Mac OS is the latest update of SL, it's just my production machine, so it's filled with crap not related to the game itself. I guess that brings up an interesting point that a Mac will trounce a PC as far as slowdown based on installed components is concerned.



See the above. Most ports are shoddily done at best. WoW is the exception, not the rule.
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Something is seriously wrong with your Windows install. There is no way you should be getting twice the FPS in WoW. You may argue that OSX uses resources more efficiently than Windows, but not in any way that would produce such a huge difference. The Windows drivers and code would have to be incredibly sloppily written to deviate so much on the same hardware. In my experience, WoW on my hardware runs slightly better (about 5FPS) under Windows.

Your point about OSX trouncing Windows on the same hardware is fanboy fantasy, no matter the activity.
 
this is good

steam is a great because it gives long-term value to games that would normally have a short shelf life at a brick and mortar. valve is a great company and is very very good to its customers and is in a position to become the defacto source for mac games. i welcome steam to the mac platform and expect great things to come from this.
 
Played Portal again last night, top to bottom... It was glorious. What a fantastic game. I couldn't be more excited about a Portal 2...

BTW, the graphics and frame-rates were fair, running on my GeForce 9400m enabled PC laptop in a somewhat smaller-than-native resolution (1440x900?). I know that description is vague, but let's just say that I'm not a very picky gfx person and I could easily tell there was room for improvement.

-Clive
 
I know PowerPC is getting older by the minute, but could they at least make it universal so I can play Half-Life 1 and Counter-Strike on my G5, and some universal mac games. I'm 14 and I can't afford an Intel Mac and I just bought a iMac G5, best investment I've ever made. :apple:
 
jimmyjoemccrow said:
Something is seriously wrong with your Windows install. There is no way you should be getting twice the FPS in WoW. You may argue that OSX uses resources more efficiently than Windows, but not in any way that would produce such a huge difference. The Windows drivers and code would have to be incredibly sloppily written to deviate so much on the same hardware. In my experience, WoW on my hardware runs slightly better (about 5FPS) under Windows.

Your point about OSX trouncing Windows on the same hardware is fanboy fantasy, no matter the activity.
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Be happy to do a couple of screen shots for you. Windows runs everything just fine, but it gets creamed in WoW. I always assumed it was because the Mac OS version was so much better optimized for multi-core and large amounts of ram, and I even re-installed a fresh copy of Win 7 Ultimate to make sure that there wasn't an issue. I remember Blizz announcing that they had made the app multi-core aware, and noticing a hug performance jump.
 
SPUY767 said:
Be happy to do a couple of screen shots for you. Windows runs everything just fine, but it gets creamed in WoW. I always assumed it was because the Mac OS version was so much better optimized for multi-core and large amounts of ram. I remember Blizz announcing that they had made the app multi-core aware, and noticing a hug performance jump.
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Have you downloaded the latest video drivers from the card
manufacturer's website?

Windows hasn't supplied 3D-optimized video drivers on the
Windows kit itself.
 
AidenShaw said:
Have you downloaded the latest video drivers from the card
manufacturer's website?

Windows hasn't supplied 3D-optimized video drivers on the
Windows kit itself.
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All the drivers are up to date. I'm not a newb, I've been a computer programmer for nearly ten years.
 
As far as I remember WoW was optimised for multi core but didn't use any more than 2. And as for RAM, I haven't seen WoW ever use more than 2GB. Usually less.
 
jimmyjoemccrow said:
As far as I remember WoW was optimised for multi core but didn't use any more than 2. And as for RAM, I haven't seen WoW ever use more than 2GB. Usually less.
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I remember in the early days of WoW, Ironforge lagged horribly until I loaded whatever computer I was playing it on up with ram.
 
THis would complete the Mac, I mean the only thing that has really kept this platform down was the horrible gaming support, lack of games etc. Steam on Mac would open up the platform and make having a Microstink pc almost mute. HL2 on Mac would be terrific along wih all the other titles. Like has been said Apple needs to have a top tier gaming maker distributor in their pocket and I cant think of a better one. Great news but the question remains.....When?
 
SPUY767 said:
I remember in the early days of WoW, Ironforge lagged horribly until I loaded whatever computer I was playing it on up with ram.
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I didn't notice any performance difference when I went from 2GB to 4GB. Apart from the fact that I could now run two copies at a time.
 
mixel said:
Now we're talking! I've never loved gaming as much as I did on my Amigas! Lol. Never got a 3DO, though I did find a cheap Jaguar recently.
happy.gif


Lately I've been enjoying iPhone gaming as much as anything.. Power isn't the most important factor at all. Steam on osX - yay!!
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Haha, I see you are a happy user of Steam games. I'm of a mixed opinion myself.
 
I posted this on another thread, but I think it applies here too:

It seems like the question that comes up a lot is what non-casual games are on the Mac. Beyond the ports of AAA games that came to the Mac much later than their Windows counterparts, there have been some companies who do support Mac and PC right out of the box natively, Blizzard being one of the more notable.

Utilizing the power of the Unity game engine, you can quite easily port a game to both platforms without much “tweaking” at all. With Unity gaining popularity (http://unity3d.com/gallery/game-list/) you’re likely to see more cross platform titles being developed. For example, we are and indie developer, but we are making what we consider to be a AAA quality game that will be for Mac and PC right out of the box. You can check it out at www.ascensionwar.com or look us up on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/ascensionwar
 
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