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Windows Games on Macs Without Windows

Posted by Zonk on Thu Aug 03, 2006 04:39 PM
from the holy-land dept.
Dotnaught writes "TransGaming Inc. is making its 'Cider' portability engine for Apple's Intel-based Macs available to Windows game developers. The software promises to let Windows games run on Intel Macs without Windows or Apple's Boot Camp. '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,' the company claims. Cider is a software for game developers, not end-users. Cider-enhanced games are scheduled to appear as soon as October. If Cider works well, will there be any more Mac-specific game development? And if not, will it matter?"
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  • Cool! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pdscomp (637112) on Thursday August 03 2006, @04:41PM (#15842981)
    (Last Journal: Tuesday January 27 2004, @08:40PM)
    If this is for real, then we might just see more Mac ports of games, and quicker turnaround than before (since most of the work of "porting" will be handled by the library). I'd worry about DirectX games though... They'd probably have to dynamically translate the DirectX calls to OpenGL which could get hairy.
    • Re:Cool! (Score:5, Informative)

      Transgaming already does translate DirectX and Direct3D to OpenGL with little overhead. If the rumors are true, they are currently working on Pixel Shaders 2.0 and up.

      Cedega is a fork of Wine from back when Wine was BSD licensed. It's really cool; I play lots of Windows games on Linux with it.

      Presumably Cider is a Winelib-style toolkit to generate OS X games from Windows games. I, for one, welcome our Cedega-lib powered OS X overlords ;-)
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:Cool! by Uart (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @05:15PM
        • Re:Cool! by greyhill (Score:1) Thursday August 03 2006, @05:24PM
          • Re:Cool! by cyberkreiger (Score:2) Friday August 04 2006, @06:28AM
          • Re:Cool! by eno2001 (Score:3) Friday August 04 2006, @09:02AM
            • Re:Cool! by kyouteki (Score:3) Friday August 04 2006, @11:17AM
              • Re:Cool! by eno2001 (Score:2) Friday August 04 2006, @12:21PM
              • Re:Cool! by IthnkImParanoid (Score:3) Friday August 04 2006, @01:06PM
              • Re:Cool! by Omestes (Score:2) Friday August 04 2006, @01:28PM
              • Re:Cool! by eno2001 (Score:2) Friday August 04 2006, @03:04PM
              • Re:Cool! by isilrion (Score:1) Friday August 04 2006, @03:39PM
              • Re:Cool! by Omestes (Score:2) Saturday August 05 2006, @03:44AM
      • Re:Cool! by Rix (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @05:43PM
        • Re:Cool! by smallfries (Score:3) Thursday August 03 2006, @06:56PM
          • Re:Cool! by VikingThunder (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @07:24PM
            • Re:Cool! by giorgiofr (Score:2) Friday August 04 2006, @04:23AM
            • Re:Cool! by monoqlith (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @11:18PM
              • Re:Cool! by tsa (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @11:26PM
              • Re:Cool! by monoqlith (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @11:26PM
            • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
          • Re:Cool! by treak007 (Score:3) Thursday August 03 2006, @07:30PM
          • Re:Cool! by kryten_nl (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @07:53PM
          • Re:Cool! by Rix (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @09:15PM
            • Re:Cool! by Eideewt (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @09:43PM
            • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
          • Re:Cool! by Darren Winsper (Score:2) Friday August 04 2006, @04:58AM
      • Re:Cool! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mabhatter654 (561290) on Thursday August 03 2006, @07:28PM (#15843762)
        they need to open up all their code and do a massive sync with the Wine/Darwin, React, & Crossover groups. Between the groups they just about have the whole windows clone thing whipped. If you put all the programmers together from the groups, they could just about lick this thing. And that would make MS really happy!!!
        [ Parent ]
        • MOD PARENT UP by mrchaotica (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @08:03PM
        • LGPL by mwvdlee (Score:2) Friday August 04 2006, @08:44AM
      • Re:Cool! by Tom (Score:3) Friday August 04 2006, @03:44AM
    • Re:Cool! by djdavetrouble (Score:3) Thursday August 03 2006, @04:45PM
      • Parallels by shmlco (Score:3) Thursday August 03 2006, @04:58PM
        • Re:Parallels by bnenning (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @08:43PM
          • Re:Parallels by shmlco (Score:3) Thursday August 03 2006, @11:31PM
    • NOT COOL (Score:5, Interesting)

      by alexmogil (442209) on Thursday August 03 2006, @05:10PM (#15843162)
      (http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Thursday October 03 2002, @10:05AM)
      Cedega is the most unstable, buggy, and alltogether awful gaming product on Linux. It has done more to hold back Linux gaming than anything I can imagine. Why should a developer waste any resources when "Cedega allows you to run Windows games in Linux!" Newsflash: The games don't FUCKING WORK.

      Transgaming brags about all these great results on their website but the sheer number of workarounds and hacks to get a game to play are unbearable. And what's worse is that the games, once installed, randomly crash, screw up graphics, display incorrect fonts, lose mouse control, can't position correctly on the screen, takes an inordinate amount of Microsoft software to even function... BLAH.

      I bought (and still pay) for Cedega because of their promises of Civilization IV stability. Nope. Will their tech support help you? Nnnnope. Will Fixraxis ever consider putting out a Linux binary? Why should they? Transgaming's site just brags and brags about how well Civ IV works under Cedega. Now take a look at Transgaming's forums and see just how successful their product is at running Civ IV: it isn't.

      Add Transgaming's SHIT license and restrictions (We steal from Wine. We Do not GIVE to Wine. And don't even think about adding Cedega to your distribution.) and you have a complete turd of a product.

      Cedega's major improvements to their software in the last two months has been: Interface improvements and a patch for Guild Wars. That's it. The end. I'm not just asking for Civ IV support either. There's scores of games that are supported by edega that just don't work. Just check their forums.

      If this is the future of gaming on the Mac, there is NO future of gaming on the Mac.
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:NOT COOL (Score:5, Interesting)

        Add Transgaming's SHIT license and restrictions (We steal from Wine. We Do not GIVE to Wine. And don't even think about adding Cedega to your distribution.) and you have a complete turd of a product.

        This is actually what stops me, not the poor quality of the software. You've got to start somewhere, right? But they promised to give back to Wine in a timely fashion and they are not doing so. People who break their promises to other people will probably break their promises to you, too.

        [ Parent ]
        • Re:NOT COOL by Ilgaz (Score:3) Thursday August 03 2006, @05:51PM
          • Re:NOT COOL (Score:5, Insightful)

            Why these people doesn't buy some Dell or Alienware if they wanted to run Windows so bad for these years? The fruit on their box? "Image" thing?

            I'm pretty sure they didn't want to run Windows, that's why most of them don't buy a normal PC. They want to run MacOS, but they still want to run certain Windows programs.

            I, too, want to run windows games, but on linux. There is a certain amount of truth to the idea that if I want the games to be on linux, and not on windows, that I should pay for them. The problem is that the only game I actually want to play that is available for linux (at least, the only commercial game) costs more than twice as much for linux as it does for windows. I'm just not going to support that kind of behavior. I'd rather dual-boot. Or, as I am now doing, I'd rather run windows, and put linux in a vm so I can run linux software.

            [ Parent ]
            • Re:NOT COOL by Bing Tsher E (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @07:54PM
              • Re:NOT COOL by drinkypoo (Score:2) Friday August 04 2006, @10:50AM
              • Re:NOT COOL by Bing Tsher E (Score:1) Friday August 04 2006, @05:15PM
              • Re:NOT COOL by drinkypoo (Score:2) Monday August 07 2006, @12:01PM
            • Re:NOT COOL by billcopc (Score:1) Thursday August 03 2006, @10:39PM
              • Re:NOT COOL by giorgiofr (Score:2) Friday August 04 2006, @04:31AM
              • Re:NOT COOL by powerlord (Score:2) Friday August 04 2006, @09:29AM
            • Re:NOT COOL by BiggyP (Score:2) Friday August 04 2006, @09:08AM
              • Re:NOT COOL by drinkypoo (Score:2) Friday August 04 2006, @10:52AM
          • Re:NOT COOL by drinkypoo (Score:2) Friday August 04 2006, @10:58AM
        • Re:NOT COOL by mrchaotica (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @08:09PM
          • Re:NOT COOL by LordVader717 (Score:1) Friday August 04 2006, @04:57AM
          • Re:NOT COOL by powerlord (Score:2) Friday August 04 2006, @09:33AM
            • Re:NOT COOL by drinkypoo (Score:2) Friday August 04 2006, @10:56AM
        • Re:NOT COOL by daterabytez (Score:1) Friday August 04 2006, @01:14PM
      • Re:NOT COOL by thesandtiger (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @06:08PM
        • Re:NOT COOL by samkass (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @07:22PM
          • Re:NOT COOL by minuszero (Score:1) Thursday August 03 2006, @08:16PM
      • Re:NOT COOL (Score:4, Informative)

        by smallfries (601545) on Thursday August 03 2006, @07:01PM (#15843652)
        (http://www.slashdot.org/)
        How much of this is down to Cedega? I've got a dual-boot so that I can play Civ4 on either windows, or in linux. Actually, that is literally why I have the machine... it's a very addictive game. Since the 1.52 patch came out it has been as stable on linux as on windows, and I've stopped rebooting to play it. I wouldn't go as far as to actually call it stable, but then it isn't on windows either. It tends to fall over after running for an hour or so. It sometimes can't reload games if they've gotten too complicated. And when it does decide to crash it can just fall flat with no warning at all.

        But this is Firaxis's programming - this is the state of the game under windows. And sadly it has improved a hell of a lot since the shipped version...

        As far as installation goes. This was a bitch at first, but most of those forum posts are about how to get the game installed *before* Cedega supported it. Now you just run the installer (selecting XP mode or whichever way round it is) and then hit properties afterwards to set the right windows version. Everything else is automatic.
        [ Parent ]
      • Re:NOT COOL (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jlarocco (851450) on Thursday August 03 2006, @07:07PM (#15843678)
        (http://jlarocco.com/)
        Cedega is the most unstable, buggy, and alltogether awful gaming product on Linux. It has done more to hold back Linux gaming than anything I can imagine. Why should a developer waste any resources when "Cedega allows you to run Windows games in Linux!" Newsflash: The games don't FUCKING WORK.

        That's why I don't use Cedega. I've already paid for the games, and if I have to spend MORE money to play them, I'm just going to spend $400 for a Windows PC. Yeah, it's more expensive, but it'll play 100% of my games 100% of the time. It doesn't make sense to pay for something that doesn't work.

        I guess that's a benefit of only playing older games.

        [ Parent ]
        • Re:NOT COOL by Orangejesus (Score:1) Thursday August 03 2006, @07:56PM
        • Re:NOT COOL by Bing Tsher E (Score:1) Thursday August 03 2006, @08:03PM
        • Re:NOT COOL by grumbel (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @08:16PM
          • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
        • Re:NOT COOL by sauron_of_mordor (Score:1) Friday August 04 2006, @05:05AM
        • Re:NOT COOL by CyDharttha (Score:1) Friday August 04 2006, @09:25AM
          • Re:NOT COOL by jlarocco (Score:2) Friday August 04 2006, @06:56PM
      • Perfect emulation (Score:5, Funny)

        by Subacultcha (921910) on Thursday August 03 2006, @08:17PM (#15843942)
        Transgaming brags about all these great results on their website but the sheer number of workarounds and hacks to get a game to play are unbearable. And what's worse is that the games, once installed, randomly crash, screw up graphics, display incorrect fonts, lose mouse control, can't position correctly on the screen, takes an inordinate amount of Microsoft software to even function... BLAH.
        Sounds like they've got the Windows emulation working perfectly.
        [ Parent ]
      • Re:NOT COOL by sgtrock (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @09:04PM
      • Re:NOT COOL by Ash-Fox (Score:2) Friday August 04 2006, @01:59AM
      • Re:NOT COOL by Chilli_DA (Score:1) Friday August 04 2006, @05:13AM
      • Re:NOT COOL by gilboad (Score:1) Friday August 04 2006, @05:14AM
      • Re:NOT COOL by onetwofour (Score:1) Friday August 04 2006, @06:26AM
      • Not as bad as Cedega by Nurgled (Score:2) Friday August 04 2006, @06:40AM
      • Re:NOT COOL by Mattintosh (Score:2) Friday August 04 2006, @10:00AM
      • Re:NOT COOL by mbirkis (Score:1) Friday August 04 2006, @01:08PM
      • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.
    • Finally! (Score:5, Funny)

      by joe_bruin (266648) on Thursday August 03 2006, @06:12PM (#15843442)
      (http://slashdot.org/~joe_bruin/ | Last Journal: Wednesday April 14 2004, @09:25PM)
      A Mac without Win32 is like a chocolate cake without ketchup and mustard. Thanks, TransGaming, for remembering to bring the condiments.
      [ Parent ]
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:Cool! by yerM)M (Score:1) Thursday August 03 2006, @06:44PM
    • by AHumbleOpinion (546848) on Thursday August 03 2006, @07:44PM (#15843808)
      (http://slashdot.org/)
      If this is for real, then we might just see more Mac ports of games ...

      No, this will not mean more Mac ports. If anything it may mean fewer. Developers considering Mac may be able to blow off native Mac ports using the same reasons that they blow off native Linux ports: (1) Dual boot. (2) Emulation of the Win32 gaming APIs. Under PowerPC dual booting was not an option and emulation would mean emulating a CPU not just a gaming API. Since running the Win32 version of a game on Mac hardware was not realistic, a native port was justified. If Ciders allows Win32 games to run "well enough" then there is no economic reason to do a native Mac port.

      The market for a game is *not* the number of Mac/Linux purchasers. Yeah, that sounds odd but hang on a minute. The market is really only those who refuse to dual boot or emulate and won't buy unless they have a native port. Those who are willing to dual boot or emulate and run the Win32 version don't count because they do not add any revenue. They are already customers buying the Win32 version. A native Mac/Linux version would generate no additional revenue from these people, it would only move a sale from the Win32 column to the Mac or Linux column. So there is no new revenue, but there are the expenses from development and support, and these expenses have to be paid for by those who would never buy the Win32. Under Linux there are too few of these people.

      Today Mac has the advantage over Linux that Mac gamers have a proven track record of spending money. If developers can get Mac gamers to to accept Cider in large enough numbers then native Mac ports will no longer occur.
      [ Parent ]
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • Winelib? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 03 2006, @04:41PM (#15842987)
    So it's just Transgaming's derivation of winelib, right?
    • Yep. by CarpetShark (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @05:03PM
      • Re:Yep. by Aphoric (Score:1) Thursday August 03 2006, @05:09PM
        • Re:Yep. by Morky (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @05:22PM
          • Re:Yep. by contrapunctus (Score:1) Thursday August 03 2006, @05:39PM
            • Re:Yep. by imthesponge (Score:1) Thursday August 03 2006, @08:54PM
  • I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Delphix (571159) * on Thursday August 03 2006, @04:44PM (#15843004)
    I've never really underderstood Transgaming's focus on cross platform gaming. Most Linux and Mac users aren't heavy gamers. Most people tend to use Windows or consoles for gaming. If you're using OS X or Linux it's generally to get something (real work) done.

    Not that Linux and Mac aren't technically viable game platforms, but that's not their general use.
    • Re:I don't get it by Amouth (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @04:49PM
    • Re:I don't get it by Aadain2001 (Score:3) Thursday August 03 2006, @04:49PM
      • Re:I don't get it by deathy_epl+ccs (Score:1) Thursday August 03 2006, @05:36PM
      • Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)

        by 70Bang (805280) on Thursday August 03 2006, @09:41PM (#15844209)

        Besides, Windows started out as just a "work" OS (as all computer were for "work" back in those days).

        But Windows wasn't Microsoft's brain child. It was the brain & love child of Microsoft and IBM. When the collaborative license was due to be renewed, Microsoft bolted, putting Plan B into effect: making one of their own. For a while after that, OS/2 and Windows software were interchangeable. There were even OS/2 focused books ~1993+ (Win 3.1 was ~May '92) before the publishers saw the spraypaint on the wall. I've probably got one somewhere in my unusual stack. (e.g. The first Internet book - Ed Krol ~Fall '92, the last OS/2 (user) book, a VB/DOS book, etc.

        This should not prove to be a surprise. Ethically or Financially, Right or Wrong, Microsoft has made a lot of money (and saved a lot of time) purchasing & modifying the work product of others. See OS/2 & Windows (above), Microsoft providing HQ service & support with Compu$erve (someone asked me what I thought would happen then and I told them: "Micro$oft is preparing for an online service by seeing the ins and outs of how someone makes theirs work." M$N. Front Page. Visual SourceSafe, GIANT software, etc. Heck, look at DOS. Bought it a leverage of $50'000, hoping IBM would license it. (whew! they did). No chance for Microsoft Bob. The marriage to WHG III got in the way. So they scrapped it for pieces -- that's how Clippy was born.

        People have talked about submarining patents, Microsoft has done the same thing with products. Never write what you can buy or steal. Or, as Nathan said after getting his JD: "You can't out-develop Microsoft, but you can out-invent them." The part re: not-develop is because they can buy a couple of companies in an extremely short period of time, out-developing someone else in what amounts to a short period of time. And Nathan should know, as his JD focused upon patent law and his group has focused specifically upon investing in or purchasing patents and been rather open about it. In fact, he and Microsoft have invested in the same companies (despite claims of animosity). The danger of trying to out-invent them is hearing the spooky voice of a landshark saying one word, over & over: " Farnsworth ".

        This just in: Bush announces Exit Plan: January 20, 2009.

        [ Parent ]
      • Re:I don't get it by westlake (Score:2) Friday August 04 2006, @12:11AM
    • Re:I don't get it by mcguiver (Score:3) Thursday August 03 2006, @04:51PM
    • Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by shmlco (594907) on Thursday August 03 2006, @04:56PM (#15843073)
      (http://www.isights.org/)
      Chickens and eggs. You're right that Mac's aren't heavy gaming consoles, but a good portion of that is a lack of games. Plus, as mentioned, let it support more games, and you'll get still more cross-over from PC-to-Mac types who might have switched, but didn't want to give up their gaming.
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:I don't get it by kosanovich (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @05:00PM
    • Are you new here? by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Thursday August 03 2006, @05:15PM
    • Re:I don't get it by MrDiablerie (Score:1) Thursday August 03 2006, @05:19PM
    • Re:I don't get it by jeffbax (Score:1) Thursday August 03 2006, @05:22PM
    • Re:I don't get it by vux984 (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @05:32PM
    • Re:I don't get it by JulesLt (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @05:55PM
    • Re:I don't get it by diamondsw (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @06:20PM
    • Re:I don't get it by Shiny One (Score:1) Thursday August 03 2006, @06:47PM
    • Re:I don't get it by brainplay (Score:1) Friday August 04 2006, @01:45AM
    • Re:I don't get it by rtechie (Score:2) Friday August 04 2006, @05:43AM
    • Re:I don't get it by squiggleslash (Score:2) Saturday August 05 2006, @07:26AM
    • 3 replies beneath your current threshold.
  • by linuxci (3530) on Thursday August 03 2006, @04:45PM (#15843005)
    (http://jfctravelclub.com/travelblog/)
    As long as these games perform well on Intel macs this can only be a good thing as games are different to other applications.

    With games then they're usually full screen and you see none of the usual OS user interface and so a game does not need a Mac look and feel like for example a word processing application.

    So for apps an approach like this would be bad, imagine companies stop producing their mac apps because they could easily port over using something like winelib then you'd lose the mac experience, but for games it does not matter as they don't follow platform conventions anyway.
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • It's called Qt (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mozumder (178398) on Thursday August 03 2006, @04:46PM (#15843012)
    with OpenGL.
    • Re:It's called Qt (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Aladrin (926209) on Thursday August 03 2006, @04:51PM (#15843045)
      Your post is short and won't get the attention it deserves.

      In short, there are already many ways to write games that run on Windows, Mac and Linux simultaneously. Qt is one. SDL is another.

      Having yet another framework to program with doesn't change the fact that testing and quality control on multiple operating systems is a -nightmare-.

      Devs don't ignore linux/mac because they lack a framework, they ignore it because their employers have told them it doesn't make monetary sense. Adding the cost of a game framework onto that cost won't help it any.
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:It's called Qt by MBCook (Score:3) Thursday August 03 2006, @04:56PM
    • Re:It's called Qt by ChrisFedak (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @05:37PM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • The Sky is Falling (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nastard (124180) on Thursday August 03 2006, @04:47PM (#15843021)
    This, just a few articles up from the "Vista sucks!" story.

    The biggest road blocks I hear of for switching from Windows to a Mac are "price" and "games". I won't fuel the flamewars by making definitive statements about either point, other than to say that it looks like those blocks are starting to come down.

    Microsoft has to be worried about this.
  • Please ... NO!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)

    '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,' the company claims.

    This is absoultely the worst idea. Better to write your favorite company and tell them to use some open and standard technologies (e.g., OpenGL, OpenAL, SDL, etc.). What they want to do will only promote the status quo.

    • Re:Please ... NO!!!! (Score:5, Informative)

      by MBCook (132727) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Thursday August 03 2006, @05:02PM (#15843116)
      (http://www.foobarsoft.com/)
      I switched to the Mac last year (I have a G4 so this is a moot point for me for now). The fact is I think this is an EXCELLENT idea. Now I agree that this is not a long term solution. But look at it this way: how many millions did it cost to port and test Civilization 4 for the Mac? It was still viable though.

      Now if porting games was (almost as) easy as re-linking with an extra library, we'd see many more games for the Mac. The problem would be that they have to pay money to get the library, but it doesn't cost as much as a full port. Now they can do this and get a bunch more money.

      Now the suits take over, as well as some logic from the programmers. "Sure, we made money off the Mac there. But with a little more time upfront and using OpenGL we can make this next game Mac too without having to pay for that library! It will probably perform better too."

      Next thing you know, more and more games are Mac native. If that doesn't happen, then what's the loss? Mac gamers still get more games that we have now. It's not ideal, but it's a plus.

      I agree that OpenGL/OpenAL/SDL is the ideal solution. But this may lead to that.

      Now let's not forget just how many games these days (especially big name stuff like movie games, etc) are put on EVERY platform. They are put on the PS2/GC/XBox/360/Wii/PS3/PC. Guess what runs on almost all those platforms? OpenGL. If you want to make it easy to go on a console later (or multiple consoles) then just use OpenGL. Oh... look... now making it work on a Mac is trivial.

      This is either useful, or will propel steps in the right direction. Either way, it's good.

      [ Parent ]
    • Re:Please ... NO!!!! by Ilgaz (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @05:43PM
    • Re:Please ... NO!!!! by grumbel (Score:2) Thursday August 03 2006, @07:58PM
  • Lemme get this straight.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by carlmenezes (204187) on Thursday August 03 2006, @04:49PM (#15843030)
    (http://carlmenezes.blogspot.com/)
    the site says "play games without any change to the source code"... and then the summary says "cider enhanced games are scheduled to appear"...aren't those two contradictory? Why won't cider work with games right here, right now?
  • Like Cedega? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BHearsum (325814) on Thursday August 03 2006, @04:51PM (#15843044)
    (http://www.wittydomain.com/)
    And are the games going to work as "well" as they do with Cedega?
  • But Cedega is still Linux-only? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Silent sound (960334) on Thursday August 03 2006, @04:55PM (#15843065)
    This sounds pretty awesome. I almost wish, though, that they'd just release Cedega itself for OS X. That way we wouldn't have to trust in developers.

    The implications of Cedega as a cross-platform product would be really interesting. Like, something I keep wondering is whether, once they've got DX10 support working on Cedega for Linux, Transgaming could release a Windows version that would enable DX10 [Vista] games to run on Windows XP.
  • Well (Score:2)

    by lucabrasi999 (585141) on Thursday August 03 2006, @04:56PM (#15843067)
    (Last Journal: Wednesday March 21 2007, @11:19AM)
    If Cider works well, will there be any more Mac-specific game development? And if not, will it matter?"

    YES!!! .....errr.....NO!!!!!.....errr...MAYBE!!!!!!

    Stop asking me all these questions. I can't handle the pressure!!!!!!!

  • by laxcat (600727) on Thursday August 03 2006, @05:06PM (#15843142)
    (http://laxcat.com/)

    When Boot Camp was released, many speculated that it was only the begining of things to come. I wouldn't be surprised to see even tigter Windows integration in Lepord. Boot Camp being bundled in is given. But will it be taken to the next step even with some sort of solution that doesn't require rebooting? Would something like this be sufficient for gaming?

    I guess we'll just have to wait until Monday [apple.com] to find out.

    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • How about some equality... (Score:5, Funny)

    by hollowedOut (940591) on Thursday August 03 2006, @05:08PM (#15843150)
    I mean, this is great and all, but when are we going to get the ability to play Mac games on Windows?
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 03 2006, @05:16PM (#15843188)
    So, that's why we haven't had a real update to Cedega's engine in many months. I guess I missed the month everyone voted for the Mac version to be worked on. Glad I'm paying for Mac users to be able to run Windows games.
  • will it matter? (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by nurb432 (527695) on Thursday August 03 2006, @05:25PM (#15843235)
    (http://slashdot.org/~nurb432/ | Last Journal: Friday August 27 2004, @03:24PM)
    Not in the long run. As apple moves farther in to the 'PC market' and keeps pushing windows as an alternative for OSX its a matter of time before they exit the comptuer market totally and focus on the 'media' market ( ipods, etc ).

  • If (Score:1)

    by NexFlamma (919608) on Thursday August 03 2006, @05:40PM (#15843307)
    (http://realitybynex.blogspot.com/)
    If they can manage to get 90% or more of Windows games running at within 15% of their original speed, I would see this as the first truly viable Windows alternative, not only for myself, but for millions of other people who are chained to Windows because of the games.

    I desperately would like to be able to buy a mac and just use that for everything, but since about half of my PC usage is videogames, it's just not feasible for me.

    I think Jobs and Co should be providing all the help and support they can to these guys. Sadly, Apple is not as much a fan of videogames as the rest of the world.
    • Re:If by Joe The Dragon (Score:1) Thursday August 03 2006, @05:56PM
      • Re:If by Jerry Rivers (Score:1) Thursday August 03 2006, @06:03PM
        • Re:If by Joe The Dragon (Score:1) Thursday August 03 2006, @06:07PM
          • Re:If by Jerry Rivers (Score:1) Monday August 07 2006, @02:37PM
      • Re:If by NexFlamma (Score:1) Thursday August 03 2006, @06:58PM
        • Re:If by Joe The Dragon (Score:1) Thursday August 03 2006, @07:10PM
          • Re:If by NexFlamma (Score:1) Thursday August 03 2006, @11:53PM
  • Well then... (Score:1)

    by GmAz (916505) on Thursday August 03 2006, @05:45PM (#15843325)
    (Last Journal: Monday May 08 2006, @10:06AM)
    Ok, so Cider loads the Windows program, presumabely a game, into Memory (ie RAM), how much RAM do you actually need then? I mean Windows doens't load the entire game into RAM, just the content you are using at the time. It would be nice to see this though. I like PowerBooks more than Windows laptops.
  • by dublea (978870) on Thursday August 03 2006, @05:56PM (#15843373)
    Ok, first yea, being able to play Windows based games on Mac... so what? My biggest and foremost problem, and with many PC users, in not being able to play games on them, but its functionality. Like, if I can't build it myself, I don't want it. Just because you can play games on it, doesn't mean you will get most of the PC world to switch.
  • by slowbad (714725) on Thursday August 03 2006, @06:01PM (#15843403)
    With games past the $60 mark, maybe some enterprising company will bundle XP Home edition that can only be installed from OS X. Talk Microsoft into selling tens of thousands more copies without cannibalizing sales from customers who would otherwise have purchased XP.

    Companies have always jumped at opportunities to target a specific customer-base at ten times their current penetration, and selling a 5 year old product at wholesale for half price isn't unreasonable. Unless they have too much pride to not receive "top billing" on a product bundle

  • meh (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Knara (9377) <swalsh76@NOsPAm.gmail.com> on Thursday August 03 2006, @06:04PM (#15843412)
    Other than it's crappy licensing...

    It still doesn't run EVE right, so what's the point?

    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • Yes, it does (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tom (822) on Thursday August 03 2006, @06:31PM (#15843514)
    (http://web.lemuria.org/)
    It matters, and a whole lot.

    I'm the proud owner of a MBP since about a week. Aside from the psychological pain of inflicting something as ugly as windos on something as slick as the MBP, there are a lot of practical concerns.

    The two most important ones are the constant rebooting - on a machine I would otherwise pretty much never switch off, but only send to hibernate by closing the lid - and, probably worse, partitioning.

    On a notebook, you get 100 GB or so. Games take a _lot_ of space. If you do anything else that takes space, music or digital photography or anything, then partitioning a 100 GB drive in such a way that you feel even remotely confident that it'll be enough for both systems for the forseable future is anything but easy.

    Add the fears that some crazy windos virus does something bad to the harddisk that's bad enough to wipe out the OSX partition.

    No, Sir. It matters a whole lot whether or not there will be Mac games in the future. And quite frankly, Linux gaming is as dead as it gets, and I'm not sure if transmeta and WineX/Cedega don't have a part in that.
  • I think at this point, it's probably safe to give up on OS X being a viable platform for most game development, for economic reasons (too small marketshare). Hopefully technology like this will at least allow me to play somewhat new games on my intel mac - if it does that, I'll be happy. That's probably it for most native games, except shareware, though.
  • PPC Porting...? (Score:1)

    by paintswithcolour (929954) on Thursday August 03 2006, @06:59PM (#15843641)
    (http://zetablog.wordpress.com/)
    If this is successful I guess it finally kills of those few of us still playing PPC OS X ports. Means I may have to make the Intel switch sooner than I thought...


    Also anyone wonder whose going to support these games? The orginal publisher? I find this hard to believe...are they going to jump to support a platform they have no experience in and know nothing about? Surely supporting OS X is a very different situation to providing help to Windows users?

  • by delire (809063) on Thursday August 03 2006, @07:24PM (#15843747)

    This is the most reliable trajectory to ensure increased dependence on Windows and Windows products, most of all through the technology lock-in that is DirectX. Anyone touting this as the boat that will carry them from the foul shores of Microsoft are clearly out of their dangling minds.

    This is bad for OpenGL/SDL/Qt and bad for any platform which relies on these tools for both game and non-game applications; as long as people can author games on the Windows platform and run it in a WINE-like wrapper, they won't consider native releases. OpenGL will get less attention as the market consolidates on DirectX and the quality and feature-set of the code falls behind as a result. It really can, and in fact does, work like that.

    DirectX has risen from near nothing in a few short years. MS invested alot of money strategically situating the platform dependent DirectX in opposition to the platform neutral OpenGL on the Windows platform through tools and API development, and to a large degree it has worked. Games are faster made for the Windows platform using these high-level Windows-only API's, and so now many developers consider DirectX on Windows as the only sane context for game development altogether. As a result, DX will continue to rise at the great expense of platform portable tools like OpenGL if it is blindly, yet directly, supported by idiocy like this. Let's not invite a day we have 'DirectX only' on the back of some graphic cards.

    I'll say it again. Projects such as Cedega and 'Cider' ensure long-term codepedency with MS, as a technology provider, at the expense of high performing, native games. This simply takes Apple and Linux build targets 'off the map' from the perspective of game development and lets them get on with making great games for Windows - ensuring MS is always that arsehole you call when you're high, dry and have got the shakes.

    Dumping Windows for Linux or OSX is only the first step to being free of MS products, the dirty blood runs deeper than that.

    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • Darwine (Score:2, Informative)

    by Shrithe (972491) on Thursday August 03 2006, @09:22PM (#15844167)
    (Last Journal: Friday May 26 2006, @06:57PM)
    See also: Darwine [opendarwin.org], which has been working on integrating Wine with QEMU, for running on PPC, for some time now. There doesn't seem to any word on it's future in light of OpenDarwin closing, but I suspect they'll continue their work.