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Valve's Portal 2 Confirmed for Mac
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I've missed any Valve hate here before.. I've seen it a lot due to their treatment of the PS3 in other places but not their treatment of the Mac, here..
I wonder how many of us have been dual booting to *mostly* play Valve's titles? Interesting thought.
I hope this means that the Source Engine itself has been fully and natively ported to Mac. What I mean is that hopefully the Source Engine can natively compile it's code to target OS X just like it can to PC or XBox 360. Which is in contrast to how the PS3 is supported, which seems to be a traditional game by game porting process, since the Source Engine can't directly output code for the PS3. Of course, this means hopefully no Cider.
It wouldn't surprise me if buying the game gave you license to download and play it on both mac and PC... that would be very cool.
It's weird, they are supporting Mac over PS3, I wonder which would sell more? A successful PS3 game might sell 500k to 1 million, more if it is really popular, I wonder how much the Mac version would sell?
And I wonder if you will get games you own for free, maybe pay a $5 fee for the Mac version, or have to buy it again...
And I wonder if you will get games you own for free, maybe pay a $5 fee for the Mac version, or have to buy it again...
I really liked it being short... it was small and perfectly formed.
In contrast I'm playing Assassins Creed 2 at the moment, and although it's very good it is dragging on a bit. I'm looking forward to finishing it.
Actually, it will probably be able to run it just fine at lower resolutions. The Source engine isn't really a resource hog.
Sounds like it's going to be a full game with a full price tag. Fine by me. If there's on game developer I don't mind giving my money to it's Valve. Co-op sounds amazing!
I think it's quite possible Valve investing in OpenGL could actually be a PC focused plan with Mac support being an additional benefit.
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
Valve's games and the Source Engine are very scalable and looking at their user base on the Steam Hardware Survey reflects this. I don't doubt Valve will want to maintain as broad a user base as possible as they make improvements to the Source Engine. Most notably, the Source Engine doesn't have a DX10 codepath and use DX10 features yet. The most interesting statistic though is that even though 49% of Steam gamers have DX10 capable GPU with a DX10 capable OS (Vista or Windows 7), a further 27% of gamers have a DX10 capable GPU but are using Windows XP. In other words, if Valve were to write a DX10 code path, 1 third of users who have DX10 hardware would not take advantage of it. In contrast, if Valve used OpenGL 3.x to take full advantage of DX10 and newer GPUs, 100% of DX10 GPU owners regardless whether they are using Vista, Windows 7, XP or OS X can see the new effects in the Source Engine. Adding OpenGL support seems like the best way for Valve to efficiently target new features to more of their users.
Conveniently, OS X seems to finally be gaining OpenGL 3.0 support in 10.6.3. Valve would probably need to add an OpenGL 2.x codepath to support Leopard, which is still the most popular version of OS X, and older DX9 GPUs in Snow Leopard, and an OpenGL 3.x codepath for DX10 GPUs in Snow Leopard.
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
Valve's games and the Source Engine are very scalable and looking at their user base on the Steam Hardware Survey reflects this. I don't doubt Valve will want to maintain as broad a user base as possible as they make improvements to the Source Engine. Most notably, the Source Engine doesn't have a DX10 codepath and use DX10 features yet. The most interesting statistic though is that even though 49% of Steam gamers have DX10 capable GPU with a DX10 capable OS (Vista or Windows 7), a further 27% of gamers have a DX10 capable GPU but are using Windows XP. In other words, if Valve were to write a DX10 code path, 1 third of users who have DX10 hardware would not take advantage of it. In contrast, if Valve used OpenGL 3.x to take full advantage of DX10 and newer GPUs, 100% of DX10 GPU owners regardless whether they are using Vista, Windows 7, XP or OS X can see the new effects in the Source Engine. Adding OpenGL support seems like the best way for Valve to efficiently target new features to more of their users.
Conveniently, OS X seems to finally be gaining OpenGL 3.0 support in 10.6.3. Valve would probably need to add an OpenGL 2.x codepath to support Leopard, which is still the most popular version of OS X, and older DX9 GPUs in Snow Leopard, and an OpenGL 3.x codepath for DX10 GPUs in Snow Leopard.
As I said in my earlier post, that isn't necessarily true. Half Life 2 and others are available on the PS3, but the Source Engine itself can't output code to the PS3 unlike the PC and XBox 360 according to Valve's Source Engine marketing materials. The PS3 games were ported separately by EA and not by Valve. We have to hope the Source Engine has been ported natively to output code for OS X rather than them selecting a few games to port.
UGH.. "Face in the Palm". That's the whole point, should we live with Windows the rest of our lives if we have choices? Also what's the point of loading up the hard drive with an extra OS just play a damn game? This is great news. There are many "serious" gamers here that would prefer to run their games in OS X.
If it's a GMA950 i can vouch for it not running at all playably.. if it's the newer GMA it might be worth it but TF2 and L4D definitely aren't.
UT3 only runs in a postage stamp sized blocky mess too, haha.
I wonder if Hammer et al will get an osX version.. We can only dream. I doubt it, but it would certainly be nice to be able to mod and make content on the Mac too. In a pinch I suspect those tools run ok(?) in Parallels so could be used to export the stuff without rebooting at all. That would be nice!
In a pinch I suspect those tools run ok(?) in Parallels so could be used to export the stuff without rebooting at all. That would be nice!
YES it does indeed matter.
It is *incredibly* annoying to have to disrupt everything I'm doing in OS X to reboot in order to play a quick game. Boot Camp is a wonderful thing and adds a lot of capability to a Mac, but it is extremely inconvenient. Plus you need to buy a Windows license, and the Windows side of your Mac is vulnerable to all the same malware that afflicts the rest of the Windows world.
Boot Camp is the lazy way out. We NEED native support for games in Mac OS X, and need to *refuse* to simply be content with Boot Camp. Use it begrudgingly, sure, but don't be happy with it. Things can be a lot better and it looks like they are headed that way.
This is one of my worries; I hope they do port TF2 and Half Life as well. I'll be happy to take whatever I can get, of course, and will definitely play Portal 2 on the Mac when it comes out, but Valve will have a LOT of happy customers if they bring all the Source games to OS X.
Let's hope they plan on that. The presence of the TF2 level 1 sentry and the Half Life characters in the teaser images suggest they will!
There will always be losers with nothing else better to do than "try" to be cool by going against the grain yet fail and end up being pathetic.
This is a HUGE win for Apple and Macs. One less excuse for the PC fanboys to use against macs.
I, for one, welcome our new cake overlords.
I, for one, welcome our new cake overlords.
The hardware options are still very lacking. Valve on OS X still leaves out every other Windows application you've ever encountered.
I personally refuse to play games under OS X.
Do you have to be serious about gaming to want to play a few Valve games without dealing with Bootcamp? I play mostly only consoles, and have recently been thinking about getting back into PC gaming, but my experiences with Bootcamp have been pretty negative. For example, Apple doesn't support 64-bit Windows 7 on the first-gen Mac Pro I own. I figured out a way to install the drivers despite this, but sound only comes through internal speakers and not my external speakers. And it takes an unreasonably time to boot up as well. 32-bit XP SP3 wouldn't even install (granted, I should have spent more time figuring out what the problem was, but I tried Win7 instead).
I've been wanting to get The Orange Box for PC, mainly for Team Fortress 2 (heard its not great on consoles). But with this news, I'm just going wait to see if there is going to be a Mac version. Not having to reboot and to have to deal with Bootcamp (and Windows for that matter) is pretty nice to me. Valve will at least be getting my money for making Mac versions of their games.