EA Games coming!

Somehow I am more interested in Gametap on the Mac than EA.

Besides EA really isn't porting their games to the mac, they are running their games via the Cider emulation libs. It is sad, not because the library won't do the job(Though I have heard rumors about poor performance) but because this is EXACTLY what the developers of things like Wine etc did not want to have happen, people are ditching porting games in favor of running via emulation, thus native development is going down the crapper.

Seablade

PS On the flip side, performance might very well be better than it is under Windows Vista native

http://www.transgaming.com/news/?id=50 It uses the Cider libraries, which translate between DirectX and OpenGL supposedly, along with a few other translations in there as well. So really they are developing only for windows, Transgaming is then getting them to compile it with Cider to run on the Mac via a translation layer pretty much. Think WINE or Crossover Office, it is very similar, though instead of dynamically translating the calls of a precompiled binary, it provides translation layers into the API and gets compiled like that. Seablade

if the code is translated into something os x can read natively, then where is the performance loss? like you said, the calls arnt being converted dynamically; what causes slowdowns with precompiled binaries ? i don't know much about programing so don't mistake my comments as being rhetorical

The thing with this is that there's not—if I understand the technology correctly—technically, supposed to be a performance loss. It's actually taking relevant parts of the Windows API that the games use and placing them into OS X. Which means that it shouldn't be converting Direct X to OGL it should actually be running a form of Direct X tailored specifically for the game.

Remember: WINE Is Not an Emulator

Of course, if I don't understand the technology behind it as well as I think I'm just talking out my ass so feel free to disregard what I say

Dang it I miss firefox already, reformating my HD with a slightly more customized install since my system was taking up 30-40 gigs on my old install, and as a result I am currently using Safari, and hate it, especially when it loses my posts because my internet disconnected and had to relogin to NBF as a result. Set a cookie now so hopefully that won't happen.

The is not native programming. There is an inheirt performance hit when you are loading extra libraries to do translations like this. How much of a hit that is varies though. Supposedly I have heard of some games that play better under WINE than on Windows. That could also be just because of the amount of crap WINE DOESN"T load on linux But most however have a slight performance hit.

Whether or not there is that performance hit though, I much prefer native programming, I woudl rather someone wrote the game for the platform I am on, instead of writing it for someone elses, and then depending on a third party to take it to my platform where things may not work well due to the differences in platforms.

This is much more akin to going to your next door neighbor's house, but running all the way around the block to get there, because that is the way everyone takes.

Seablade

By the way, one of my major pet peeves with this, is not that it is happening, but that it is quickly becoming the standard for game development on the Mac. Most recent game announcements I have seen involve Cider unfortuantly. I applaud Transgaming for their efforts, don't get me wrong, but I in NO WAY, think this is where development should be going.

Plus it has been a LONG time since EA has impressed me with anything they put out of their, "crank out as much crud as we can as fast as we can, and hope some of it is good" factory.

Seablade

I've also heard that games perform better under Cedega/WINE on Linux. Most likely because Linux doesn't have all the overhead that Windows has sometimes.

Anyway, while it would be better to have native Mac Games, the fact that the biggest game company in the world has deigned to at least include Mac support with Cider can only be a good thing. Now the idea that you can't game on a Mac will be a false one, even if the games aren't made specifically for the Mac. As long as the user experience is still the same that's all that counts.

And, this could be just a step...maybe EA will see such a demand for the games that they decide to start writing them for Mac and PC.

well, and with john carmack joining in the fray it lends even more credence to rumors that the OpenGL infrastructure may be getting a bit tweaked in Leopard to be better for games. imo there's a reason why someone like him codes in OGL, and it isn't because it sucks. if both id and apple can work both ends to the middle we could be in for some really cool stuff that flies on a native OGL OS.

Well I will say, I agree with Kakaze, as I mentioned before I suspect the reason some games perform better under WINE and Cedega has as much to do with the overhead that is NOT there from not running windows as anything.

Unfortunatly my concern is that people like EA(Ok if only they did it I wouldn't really care will see this and think, oh well we ONLY have to write for windows now as then those other platofrms can just run it under emulation, why should we waste resources on this?

Oh well, at least with Vista here, Mac OS does start to look better for gaming from all the crap you are not competing with for system resources, even if the Mac is a bit worse than most linux setups even for that...

Speaking of which remind me to post a screenshot of my mac when I am done, on my workstation at the moment, but e17+shapeshifter amkes my mac at least look beautiful and run my software well and still maintain total hardware support.

I love the BSD subsystem in Mac if nothing else I will drag it kicking and screaming out from under Apple's shadow and twist the Mac into something I enjoy looking at

Seablade