New portability engine for Intel Macs

[Nimos]

According to this (http://www.gamerscan.com/articles/06/08/03/faster.win.mac.game.ports/) article there is a new portability engine specifically designed for Intel Macs. This new engine is called Cider (http://www.transgaming.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&file=index&func=display&ceid=24) and it's developers claim to have found a way to work with Win32API's on a MacOS enviroment, which practically means faster and easier porting of Windows games to Macs.

[Eggplant!]

I think this is just Wine/Cedega for Mac. Don't expect much. It doesn't work all that well under Linux.

[total]

This is in fact Cedega and not WINE. I've tried using both and they work about as well as you would expect a Gamecube emulator to work. In other words they don't. I could almost get CS and WoW running but it wasn't anything close to as polished as a Windows native client.

If anything this is going to hinder development of games on the Mac platform.

[jeffbax]

You are both wrong, its not Cedega at all.

Cedega is an end-user solution.

This is for developers to use as they build their game and include with the Win32 version so it runs on Intel Macs. Assumingly they would test it in this to fix issues that Cedega might be plagued with.

[Thenetcase]

I think it's more like cheap malt liquore myself.....

But I do have to say..
BWAHAHAHAHHAHA INTEL MAC.. ROFL ... Eat it, Mac fuckers!!!

-TNC-

[total]

You are both wrong, its not Cedega at all.

Cedega is an end-user solution.

This is for developers to use as they build their game and include with the Win32 version so it runs on Intel Macs. Assumingly they would test it in this to fix issues that Cedega might be plagued with.


Fair enough. The end result is the same though, it pushes developers to not bother releasing native Mac ports. Why waste the money developing Mac code when you can just write it for Windows and rely on this for Mac compatability. And for the record it is made by the same people who develop Cedega; and Cedega is it's current form is terrible.

[J Arcane]

I'm a bit torn on it. In theory, something like the Cedar libraries would be really cool. It'd mean not having to wait quite so long for any game release that doesn't come from iD, Epic, or Blizzard.

Trouble is, I was rather unimpressed with Transgaming's other project, and even if it isn't as hideously bad as Cedega's Win32 emulation, it's still not gonna be as good as just getting developers to work with more open libraries.

The Mac porting process doesn't have to be any harder than porting to anything else, especially now that they're even running on Intel processors. The biggest stumbling block is DirectX. It can be got around as well, but switching from DirectX to OpenGL, or adding OpenGL support to an engine, takes work.

But use of more open libraries from the get go, means you can be working on compatible binaries for all target platforms through the entire development process. This is the way some games are developed anyway, a lot of dev work is done in Linux, and essentially just cross compiled for Windows.

Of course, Microsoft wants developers to use DirectX for the exact reason anyone with an interest in cross-platform gaming doesn't, because it's harder to port. And the more push MS puts on developers, the harder it's gonna be to sway some of them to use anything but DirectX.

It really is gonna all hinge on Vista and DX10. That's a big deal right there, and this is the biggest jump in a Windows OS since 95. How many people upgrade, and how good DirectX10 is, is gonna have a huge effect on gaming, even the cross-platform kind. If not enough people make the jump to Vista, it's gonna mean developers are still gonna have to find ways to continue to support of 98 and XP, and if MS decides it doesn't really wanna support DX9 anymore, then those devs are going to have to find other ways to cater to those who don't want to upgrade.

Because as much as MS wishes otherwise, the transition to a new version of Windows is never a quick process. There's still quite a number of people sticking with 98. Me I'm stuck in WinME, thanks to the crappy Gateway firmware that pretty much locks me into it. Even now, games that actually require XP are relatively rare compared to the ones that still support 98.

And this also affects the usefulness of Cider. Because it's probably going to be a long time before they get stable enough Cider APIs for DirectX10; hell, their DirectX9 isn't very stable as it is. Which means really, even if it doesn't suck, it's just a stopgap measure, and it's usefulness is going to again heavily influenced by the conversion rate for Vista, and how this affects developers.

[jeffbax]

Fair enough. The end result is the same though, it pushes developers to not bother releasing native Mac ports. Why waste the money developing Mac code when you can just write it for Windows and rely on this for Mac compatability. And for the record it is made by the same people who develop Cedega; and Cedega is it's current form is terrible.
I'm not saying its ideal.

As an Intel Mac owner, I personally don't really like this much at all. Native is always better. That said, if Half-Life 2 had this at least I'd be able to play it without booting XP.

That, and it would likely be a lot better than Cedega since the developer is building his game and testing that it works well in this, not an afterthought by a 3rd party like Cedega is.


That said, I wish more devs would just use OpenGL, SDL, OpenAL... the problem is that DirectX is just such a sweet all in one package.