Titius.Vibius wrote...
They don't have a technical department solely for the mac version or for any games? Why on hell would they port it to Mac if support for this version is null and next to impossible? This is bad and why go forward with the version while no one will receive and work on the issue or just acknowledge that someone or it is working to resolve the issue.
I am not a Mac user but this kind of response from "Roberto" is very negative to me and should be clarified better.
Simple:
Because they don't port their games to the Mac. This is outsourced and handled by Transgaming, who have taken an open source technology (Wine) and are charging companies for the support/their work on making Windows games run on other platforms. What Cider/Wine does is take the Windows specific commands a game sends out and translates it into stuff the host OS (in our case Mac OS X) understands. Responses to the game are then translated again so the game thinks it runs on Windows. Basically like having an interpreter in a conversation between 2 foreign diplomates. Which is where the problems come in.
For one, the translating bit takes time/processing power. Games running on Cider are performing noticeably worse. The Warhammer Online Cider port is downright unplayable even with NO other players on your screen (on a 2008 model 24" iMac, 3GHz C2D and 8800GTS). The same game runs perfectly smooth under Windows.
Then the next problem - Wine doesn't know newer "phrases", so to speak. All the advanced stuff developers use to make a game look pretty? Cider cannot handle it. So your game in addition to being MUCH slower will look a lot worse as well.
The only reason why it's still there? It's cheaper than having a bunch of people sit there and actually recode your engine so it doesn't rely on DirectX anymore.
Now that we've established that it's cheaper, it's also relatively hassle-free. With normal ports, every time you release a patch, someone has to go and recode it so it applies to the new, ported engine. With Cider, all you have to do is wrap a Mac compatible launcher around the patch that knows how to open the game app and work its patch magic there. In theory, that is.
So, companies like Blizzard have their own Mac Tech support - because they actually release Mac games. All their games run natively on a Mac and therefore need Mac tech support. EA games are just games that only speak "Windows" and come with a (rather inept) interpreter attached so your Mac can have some simple conversations with them. Which means they don't actually need a Mac support team, since, well, they aren't exactly developing Mac games, strictly speaking. If there are Mac problems, they'll hand it over to Transgaming, who they've paid for product support anyway (since the actual product is open source, and... well, free to anyone who cares to use it AFAIK).
If there were mor ecompanies to develop native Mac games, then EA would maybe wake up and see that Cider is not the way to go. But since Microsoft's DirectX API is rather good, Mac gamers are few and far between and "beggars can't be choosers"... I think Cider is here to stay for a bit longer.
kcnightfang wrote...
*snip*
I'm betting what let's Blizzard do what it does is that it uses OpenGL instead of DirectX. DirectX is Windows/Xbox only and makes things a pain to port, whereas OpenGL works on PC, Mac, PS3, and the Wii.
*snip*
OpenGL is also a royal pain in the backside according to a friend of mine. It's intended for professional use, so while it does have all the bells and whistles for gaming, it's also pretty bloated and to make it do what D3D does you need to bend over backwards first. Which is one of the reasons id Software released its "Mini GL" back in the Quake days. Because gaming only needs so much of OpenGL, and more would be unnecessary bloat. Direct3D and DirectX as a whole on the other hand just takes what game developers need and lets them address it in a pretty efficient way, as far as I was told. Same goes for hardware manufacturers on the other side of the spectrum.
It's a catch 22 stituation. Developers make games for Windows, because it's easier to do. So people buy Windows to play games, so developers make games for Windows, because more gamers own Windows PCs. And XBoxes as well.
Modifié par HaloKT, 11 mars 2010 - 03:00 .
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to put my money where my mouth was and support there being a Mac port.
