Mac gaming - lies?

[Kaido]

Did Apple lie to Mac gamers?

Apparently EA will be using a product called "Cider" from TransGaming, which is kind of like WINE for Linux but oriented towards games. Seems Apple omitted to tell the Mac crowd that the games weren't exactly "native" OS X games...very interesting.

 

[TheStu]

What I wonder though is if they will always use Cider, or if they are using that for now as a stopgap until they can push out Mac versions. I haven't gotten a chance to read too much on Cider, though according to the article it is love it or hate it... interesting.

 

[sourceninja]

I dont take this as a lie. From what I've read they basically write the game with cider in mind. Cider just acts as a library file to allow directX calls on a mac. Seems perfectly sound to me. Cedega on the other hand is an app that you have to run to provide the same functionality, only with games that were not written for it.

This is good for two reasons.

1) Cider apps should work flawlessly because the programs are written to work with them.
2) Cider based apps should work awesome on linux via cedega. Because it is the same tech.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: sourceninja
I dont take this as a lie. From what I've read they basically write the game with cider in mind. Cider just acts as a library file to allow directX calls on a mac. Seems perfectly sound to me. Cedega on the other hand is an app that you have to run to provide the same functionality, only with games that were not written for it.

This is good for two reasons.

1) Cider apps should work flawlessly because the programs are written to work with them.
2) Cider based apps should work awesome on linux via cedega. Because it is the same tech.

So...so...real linux gaming? :Q

 

[TheStu]

No Kaido, no linux gaming for you... come back... NEVER (insert nefarious laugh here)

you guys get back to your spinning desktops that light on fire and snow and what not.... you guys have awesome games anyway... like Breakout, SuperBreakout, The GIMP. And you know they are really great cuz you already played them 5 years ago on Windows.

 

[Nothinman]

I dont take this as a lie. From what I've read they basically write the game with cider in mind. Cider just acts as a library file to allow directX calls on a mac. Seems perfectly sound to me. Cedega on the other hand is an app that you have to run to provide the same functionality, only with games that were not written for it.

Which is the same f'ing thing, the only difference is that the developers might take some of the Cider shortcomings into consideration when developing their app but most ignore WINE right now.

 

[sourceninja]

Cider is a development platform for the mac. If you are developing for it, you are developing for the mac. Would you say the same thing if they started writing all their games in java?

If I write an app explicitly to run on wine, I'm writing a linux app. The thought that this is not a legit cross platform tool is laughable. Obviously they are only going to target their code to be compatible with cider. If they do not, the whole thing will fail and then it will be a lie.

For the life of me I can't see how this is anything but a good thing.

 

[Nothinman]

Cider works by directly loading a Windows program into memory on an Intel-Mac and linking it to an optimized version of the Win32 APIs.

Sounds just like WINE to me.

 

[sourceninja]

Wine for developers, not wine for users. You don't launch it with cider /home/blah/c3.exe. In any case, how is this not developing for a mac? And how is this a bad thing?

 

[Nothinman]

Wine for developers, not wine for users. You don't launch it with cider /home/blah/c3.exe. In any case, how is this not developing for a mac? And how is this a bad thing?

There's winelib for developers, Google used it for Picasa instead of doing a native port to Linux. And it's bad for the Mac just like WINE is bad for Linux, it lowers the chance of native ports being created.

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Wine for developers, not wine for users. You don't launch it with cider /home/blah/c3.exe. In any case, how is this not developing for a mac? And how is this a bad thing?

There's winelib for developers, Google used it for Picasa instead of doing a native port to Linux. And it's bad for the Mac just like WINE is bad for Linux, it lowers the chance of native ports being created.

I agree, if too many developers get complacent and say "Ooh, we can just port it through Cider" then they won't bother to make it native, which leaves us in roughly the same spot, which is that we have windows installed to play games and run the few programs that the developers wont properly port over to OS X.

 

[sourceninja]

I still don't see it. I'd rather have official support on a mac then nothing at all. I didn't think Picasa was all that bad either. A 'native' port is not going to have much advantage over cider. Especially as they get used to writing efficient code for cider.

 

[0roo0roo]

i dunno, do they cheat with multi console releases as well?

 

[fobis]

I'm pretty sure that the developers won't really code for Cider. Rather, they'll do kind of a more trial and error process tweaking the Cider prefs little by little to make it work best with their games.
I mean, think about it, all the games EA announced aren't going to be RECODED just for the sake of Mac users.
And while I think that there is the negative side to Cider (no native Mac versions, no PPC compatibility, blah blah blah), I'd rather have it on Mac through Cider than nothing at all. I hate booting into Windows.

 

[chcarnage]

From the Transgaming website:

Cider powered games use the same copy protection, lobbies, game matching and connectivity as the original Windows game

Does that mean that soon, we'll have to deal with excessive copy protection, corrupted drivers etc. on OS X, too?

 

[HermDogg]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
i dunno, do they cheat with multi console releases as well?

Yeah but on console ports they at least have to write code that will run on different architectures. This is more like MAME.

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

I don't see the big deal. At least it is a start. Maybe they are testing and this is the most feasible move before they go full out?

 

[Nothinman]

I don't see the big deal. At least it is a start. Maybe they are testing and this is the most feasible move before they go full out?

If this works they'll never go full out, why would they?

 

[sourceninja]

if it works, who cares.

 

[Nothinman]

if it works, who cares.

Because with things like this it usually only sort-of works.

 

[Fox5]

They better only do 1 sku if this is how they're doing it. IE, one box with the PC and Mac version inside.
Still, is it really that much effort to recompile for mac, especially now that they're on the same processors? I guess the DX to OpenGL conversion is a problem, but there's a solution to that... use OpenGL natively!
Performance isn't going to be up to speed this way. Maybe they'll compile for OSX but just use cider to convert from dx to ogl? Probably not.