The Mac Thread

[aeronov91 0]

Hello all My Biggest question for monte christo is this, will this be a soul windows game or would you be kind and make a crossover to mac and linux systems

[Kevin 101]

Allow me to quote Philippe:

I don't think Monte Cristo has ever done any port on Mac of one of its games and I would need to get back to you about it when I'll get back to the office and have a chance to talk with the developers about it. quote>

[PhantomOwl 3]

This is something that I'm particularly concerned about. I recently made "the switch," and I haven't bothered to set up bootcamp yet. In all honesty, if my expectations of Cities Unlimited are realized when more information about the game is released in October, I will probably install XP just for this game. (and also because I don't want to have to wait for the mac port of Spore). I really do hope that Monte Cristo will do a mac port of Cities Unlimited. In my opinion, Apple is really beginning to gain a significant market share, especially among college students.

Alas, one can hope...

[rodent1989 9]

If monte cristo neglected to make a mac port of Cities it would be a pretty big mistake.  As PhantomOwl pointed out the market share is significant.  Also think about th specific market share.  Who will be buying this game?  Your local corporation with thousands of windows machines or a family with a teenage kid and a nerdy dad who have a mac?  Even with bootcamp, it would be better to have a game that runs natively and takes full advantage of the power that macs so rarely get to utilize.

[Romaq 18]

Would having CU 'behave' using WINE be a good start? (http://wiki.winehq.org/MacOSX) I don't run Linux on the desktop, I have a Windows machine for that. But if CU is 'Wine Friendly' then they can focus on ONE OS and let Linux/ Mac sort out the details.

[rctshack 182]

Well Romaq... Mac and Linux would probly not put the game Cities Unlimited on top of their ToDo list... they have no stake in this game. EA contracts through Aspyr to recode the games for them to mac, and they do pretty well. Aspyr and EA just announced that many more games will be coming to Mac because of the higher sales of mac computers, and yes the sales may not be wildly much of the market share, but they are pretty much all home computers, whereas 50% or more of windows computers are in Offices. Two of my cousins switched over this year and their only concern is games.

For a game like CU, the mindset of a person who would play it would likely also have a mac, at least I think that. I think people who want to solve issues and have a simpler more visual feel tend to switch to mac. Also people who are willing to take chances also buy a mac and are willing to give up their wondows computer they have used their whole lives to do so.

It would have to be Monte Cristos decision and they would have to most likely contract through another company to do so. I truely hope they do, but since none of their other games have gone to mac, they isn't a high chance of this happening. LUCKILY the new max os coming out this coming month has boot camp built in, and you can now get a cheeper windows XP since vista came out and you can play it that way if you have to... as a last resort.

My biggest concern with releasing mac versions has always been the custom content. Mac uses different file types than windows and because of this a lot of files aren't the same when users create them. For SC4 building files were the same, but a lot of them were saved under the .exe name and a mac user could never use them. Many programs that were created to help out with the game also wouldn't work.

[Romaq 18]

Ah yes, the custom content package scheme. Shipping custom content as a .exe is bizzare in my mind anyway. I end up having my 'uninstall' list filled with stuff and folders in my start bar. That's crazy. And with a .exe file, I have to TRUST that I'm not going to get screwed by the person making the content. I don't like to have to trust people's content. And if I want to look things over and tinker with it, I have to dither with the install to get at all the parts.

I really like Java's 'WAR/ JAR' file format. It is simply an archive using PKZip. Rename the extension from 'war' to 'zip' and you can manipulate the contents like any other zip file. There are quite a few advantages to moving custom content to something 'like' that. But discussing that issue would be a different thread. Let's just say having custom content NOT be OS specific would be a boon on many levels.

I don't have a Mac because things I like to do are not written for Mac. I don't care to pay 1/3 more the price for the same CPU power for something that doesn't run the software I use. The Mac that a friend bought doesn't have a shutoff button for when it hangs. You have to unplug it. And hang it did, for him. When he went to the Mac site to get updates, the Mac site caused his computer to reboot and then not be able to boot. It was likely just him. He causes hardware to fail just by standing next to it. But all the problems that Macs are NOT supposed to have and PCs do, *HE* has on the Mac, same as he does with PCs. Funny thing is, he's a software engineer that causes hardware to go up in flames by his mere presence. Mac was to be an exception. It wasn't.

I wasn't impressed with the Mac. Or Linux. Or Windows either. They all pretty much suck in their very own special unique way. Except Windows. Windows OS sucks and blows at the same time. Again, I use it on my desktop because what I want to use runs on the OS. Or I could get a Mac and *hope* that CU will run on it. And that if I should find a game I want to play actually runs on a Mac, I would have to hope the places I shop for games would actually carry the Mac version, and they don't. In the end, I would be a Mac owner of the mindset to play a game like CU, and STILL not be able to with a Mac machine, at least natively. Today is not Mac's day. Tomorrow doesn't look so good either.

[BarbulaM1 38]

If Cities Unlimited is a major hit it might be ported to a mac, the general players of games tend to be PC players and not casual. Also by the looks of the graphics it seems as though Monte Cristo is taking advantage of the DirectX 10 API which no game using DX10 has yet to have been reported to have a mac port simply because there isn't an equal API in the mac world. Where as DX9 had similar connections to the OpenGL, DX10 breaks them and it would be far too expensive to convert without knowing the over all sucess of the game. I can picture SCS being ported, SU seems more niche and for the not so casual sim gamer who tend to be more PC users and the players that demand more detail that are 3d modelers will deffiantly go PC.