NS2 on Mac Operating System?
the_x5
the Xzianthian Join Date: 2004-03-02 Member: 27041Members, Constellation
the Xzianthian Join Date: 2004-03-02 Member: 27041Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">Might miss a market for selling</div>I know there are Linux fans in the NS community, but what about Apple's Mac OS? There might be a good market there.
Are there plans to make NS2 compatible on multiple operating systems? Do you all think there should be?
Or are we only for Microsoft's Vista? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" /> (that would make x5 sad it would, I don't care for Vista much)
Are there plans to make NS2 compatible on multiple operating systems? Do you all think there should be?
Or are we only for Microsoft's Vista? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" /> (that would make x5 sad it would, I don't care for Vista much)
Comments
Even if UWE wanted to support Mac OS it would be impossible to do so without the help of Valve. And if it really were that easy to port the whole Steam/Source system to Mac OS, don't you think that Valve would already have done it?
NO !!! 'cause we have a LOTS of Pentium 3 only , and the GAMING P4 is wery expensive for us (the hungarian NS FANS) this is bad idea.
we plays NS now in P3 in the steam, and in <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?s=1250673578449118208&showtopic=100321" target="_blank">LAN PARTIES</a> .
Only in my dreams.
A Mac OS version of the client is totally out of the question though, sorry. It's pretty rare for there to be a business case for porting a million-plus selling title to Mac OS, and it's unlikely NS2 will sell anywhere near that many copies (although that would be great if it did!)
Max
Yeah, that's what I've heard. If you don't mind my asking, is that because of heavy integration with directinput, or something else?
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I don't think porting is the major issue -- many games now-a-days are developed cross platform, and the PC certainly has a lot more in common with a Mac than with a console system. The differences in APIs for graphics and other low-level operations are generally negligable in my opinion. Any decent engine (Source included) will abstract the platform specific code into a few modules that can be replaced without too many changes to the rest of the code.
The problem is that there's essentially no market for most games on the Mac OS. The latest numbers suggest that Macs are only about 2% of the home compuer market share, and when you consider all of the overhead of releasing a game on a platform (QA, manufacturing, etc.) even if the porting is realatively easy it's not worth it if you aren't going sell a decent number of copies. With Intel Macs and Bootcamp the incentive for releasing on Mac OS is probably dropping even more.
Max
I think you're confusing "a good market" with "four people who could just run Bootcamp if they wanted to play NS." The kind of work it would take to get NS on a Mac is totally not worth it for a small company like Unknown Worlds.
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There is small companies that do thrive on the Mac OS. Bungie started off with Mac OS and you can tell where they are today.
There is small companies that do thrive on the Mac OS. Bungie started off with Mac OS and you can tell where they are today.
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Bungie was bought wholesale by Microsoft before developing Halo. Not many people can name their previous games, which were MacOS only. That's hardly a compelling reason to develop for the MacOS platform.
But that's incidental to the fact that, as some other people have pointed out, NS2 is going to be on the Source engine, and the Source engine is currently Windows only. Not only that, but the odds of the Source engine being ported to MacOS are <i>very</i> slim, as it is built on DirectX. Most other native Macintosh games such as WoW are built on OpenGL, which allows them to be more easily ported across platforms.
Bungie was bought wholesale by Microsoft before developing Halo. Not many people can name their previous games, which were MacOS only. That's hardly a compelling reason to develop for the MacOS platform.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Actually, Bungie was bought while they were developing Halo for the Mac. It was going to go Mac first, the Windows. Also, some of their previous games were Oni, Myth and Marathon (I still have the original floppies for it).
And most people I know can name Marathon as one of their games (at least the gamers I know can.)
-Sheepe
We're developing on Windows XP right now, so NS2 definitely won't be Vista only. The supported operating systems will probably be the same as HL2: Windows 2000/XP/ME/98/Vista and Linux for dedicated servers.
A Mac OS version of the client is totally out of the question though, sorry. It's pretty rare for there to be a business case for porting a million-plus selling title to Mac OS, and it's unlikely NS2 will sell anywhere near that many copies (although that would be great if it did!)
Max
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its going to out sell gears of war in the first 10 weeks. and gears of war sold like what? 3,000,000 copies lol
I don't think porting is the major issue -- many games now-a-days are developed cross platform, and the PC certainly has a lot more in common with a Mac than with a console system. The differences in APIs for graphics and other low-level operations are generally negligable in my opinion. Any decent engine (Source included) will abstract the platform specific code into a few modules that can be replaced without too many changes to the rest of the code.
The problem is that there's essentially no market for most games on the Mac OS. The latest numbers suggest that Macs are only about 2% of the home compuer market share, and when you consider all of the overhead of releasing a game on a platform (QA, manufacturing, etc.) even if the porting is realatively easy it's not worth it if you aren't going sell a decent number of copies. With Intel Macs and Bootcamp the incentive for releasing on Mac OS is probably dropping even more.
Max
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But isn't that because there are prratically no good games for Mac? That's my key point, and why I feel I see there to be an oportunity for NS.
Where I work I've been seeing a ton of customer dissent over software incompatibility issues (usually hardware drivers) with Vista and complaint over the ammount of memory the base OS uses. If Apple is clever they can use this as leverage to gain market share. The one problem in my opinion is that the game industry drives the computer market to a large extend and most of your gamers (myself included) ARE the techies that will recommend computer products which will have a noticable effect on what sells on the market.
So Max, I can understand that you all can't do this if you can't, but as long as I made you think of an opportunity that might have more potential than it appears then I've done well with creating this topic/thread.
Natural Selection 2 isn't going to be a gigantic seller on Windows, just because it's not the kind of game that ends up being a blockbuster. PC games sell less than console games, and comparatively complex ones like NS that don't have some sort of movie license or something attached to them sell even worse.
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I think our ability to market the game will be much more of a limiting factor for us that the type of game that NS2 is, because we don't have a multi-million dollar marketing budget like most games. I'd point to Battlefield 1942 as a counter example to your point. That game was a blockbuster in terms of sales, and it was a multi-player only FPS based on new IP.
Interestingly, BF1942 was ported to the Mac after the initial release. I'm not up on the Mac game market, but my understanding is that almost all of the top games get ported over to the Mac eventually. Typically this done a company that specializes in Mac porting that receives a percentage of the revenue, although I'm not sure if this was the case for BF1942.
We'd love to have a Mac version, but it's just out of the scope for what we can do on our initial release of NS2.
Max
World War 2 actually isn't a new IP; [...] EA was making NS2, they would still spend less money marketing it. It's just the way prospects for games like that work.
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First, what is "IP" in this context? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/confused-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="???" border="0" alt="confused-fix.gif" />
Second, has EA ever heard of code efficency or creativity? Seriously, what's the most creative thing EA has made? If EA was making NS2? Pff, EA would never give NS2 the funding. They would deem it "too risky" to invest on. Although it would be sweet to have their advertising budget.
On that note, perhaps there is something the community can do to advertise NS2...
If directX weren't so good, and the alternatives so ... missing, more people would develop cross platform.
First, what is "IP" in this context? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/confused-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="???" border="0" alt="confused-fix.gif" />
Second, has EA ever heard of code efficency or creativity? Seriously, what's the most creative thing EA has made? If EA was making NS2? Pff, EA would never give NS2 the funding. They would deem it "too risky" to invest on. Although it would be sweet to have their advertising budget.
On that note, perhaps there is something the community can do to advertise NS2...
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I don't think you <i>quite</i> understood what I said. I wrote "If EA was making NS2, they would still spend less money marketing it. It's just the way prospects for games like that work" which is not contigent at all on EA ever making a game like NS2. The point is that it doesn't MATTER who makes it. EA, Unknown Worlds, former KGB operatives, it's still the same idea.
If you like games then there is NO WAY you would consider a mac over a PC. unless u jus wanna play WoW all day. Using a mac is like having the flexibility of a log. They are expensive to upgrade, often have manufacturing problems and can be a compatibility nightmare.
If you really want a gaming rig just buy a good PC which you can tailor to ure specific needs. An awesome PC will cost you about the same as a middle of the road mac.
Personally I hate the idea of mac's (and consoles for that matter)they are heading in a direction like many things where you have no control over the stuff you own and HAVE to take it to a "professional" or back to the maker to get them fixed if they go wrong.
<!--QuoteBegin-TychoCelchuuu+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TychoCelchuuu)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->World War 2 actually isn't a new IP; it has been around since at least the 40's. Nobody looks at a World War 2 game and says "I don't really understand the premise." <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=1622799:date=Apr 24 2007, 03:06 PM:name=the_x5)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(the_x5 @ Apr 24 2007, 03:06 PM) [snapback]1622799[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
First, what is "IP" in this context? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/confused-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="???" border="0" alt="confused-fix.gif" />
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Intellectual property. Often used to reference a particular self-contained fiction world or franchise, such as "all the stuff relating to Samus and Metroid", or "all the stuff relating to Link and Zelda and Hyrule". A new Zelda game would be based off existing IP, while a new game based off a character you just made up yesterday would be considered new IP.
On the topic of Battlefield 1942, no one can say "I just had this great new idea that we could base a game on having a second World War" because, well, its already happened and had hundreds of games based on it. I'd guess that Max was referring to the style-of-play of Battlefield 1942 rather than the storyline though. World War II in the pacific wasn't new, but the implementation was unique enough that BF1942 could be considered new. By contrast, BF2 and BF2042 wouldn't be entirely new IP even though they describe wars that haven't happened yet, because they continue the BF1942 franchise.
Does macOS really have practically no functionality?
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No. It's actually based on a BSD IIRC, and you can pull open a command prompt and h4x0r away to your hearts content. However, it's designed to be more of a useable tool than something that you'd tinker with -- so most of the nitty gritty is hidden by default. OSX actually does a lot of very nice stuff to make computers more useable. Note that I do not own a mac. I prefer Windows to OSX. However, OSX really is a nice bit of work. Of course, you can't really game on it. =(