I am suprised no one has said anything about Half-Life 2...

[HateEternal]

Awesome game, I however(unless someone has heard otherwise) have a severe doubt that it will make it to the mac platform. To port it to Mac would require that Steam be ported to Mac because currently you cannot play HL2 without steam. Valve seems to have a hard enough time keeping steam working for PC's I doubt the would ever port it to the Mac. I guess however, they could put a CD only version of HL2 out for the Mac, but I don't really see this happening.

What does everyone think about this? HL never came to the Mac and it is looked at as one of the greatest games of all time( at least with all the gamers that I know). HL2 is a hell of a lot of fun. I personally think it is a lot more entertaining than Doom 3 was.

[Viro]

Half-Life makes use of Direct3D instead of OpenGL as its 3D API. It's highly unlikely that it will be ported to Macs. There would be a lot of rewriting necessary and given Half-life's track record, I don't think itll be ported to the mac. I think that's a real shame.

[DanTekGeek]

do a search for half life, youll find the other thread.

[Damrod]

See -> 'Port of Half-Life to Mac'

As we all know that it was abondend, no one really expects that HL2 will be ported. *shrugs* Thatwon't stop the world from spinning, there could be worse. :)

[ex2bot]

Mac game developers have been using Direct3d to OpenGL wrappers for some time. A game being Direct3d by itself doesn't prevent a successful port.

Doug

[RGrphc2]

To port it to Mac would require that Steam be ported to Mac because currently you cannot play HL2 without steam.

Not really, Steam is just a "server" for all Valve games running of the HL/HL2 engine, everything is downloaded from a source and you don't need the CD to run HL, CS etc etc. everything running off the Half-Life Engine. Its a little bit over a Gig compressed, i remember when i had to re-format my wintel harddrive....I was ANGRY that i didn't back that file up so i didn't have to download it again

It would be nice to have Steam, Half-Life, and HL2, and all those games ported to the mac. Imagine playing HL2 on the 30" Cinema Display :)

Steam though when it comes to updates SUCKS! I have a Cable modem on my desktop PC and it takes over a half hour just to download less than 5 megs of updates. :confused:

[DanTekGeek]

it would be interesing to know what the difference in grpahics performance is between direct x and open gl/direct 3d

[Viro]

Mac game developers have been using Direct3d to OpenGL wrappers for some time. A game being Direct3d by itself doesn't prevent a successful port.

Doug

That's true, but it would involve a considerable amount of work depending on how the game was coded to do the port.

it would be interesing to know what the difference in grpahics performance is between direct x and open gl/direct 3d

There aren't any. Reason? All OpenGL and Direct3D calls get translated into the driver calls, which then interact with the hardware. The only thing that could cause some minor speed differences between the two is the maturity of the video hardware's OpenGL or Direct3D drivers.

I know, the general perception of the 'average gamer' is that OpenGL is slower than Direct3D, but that's false and they can demonstrate no reason why OpenGL or Direct3D should be slower.

[Twist]

I would love to see Half-Life 2 ported to Mac and it would probably be a big enough seller to actually justify all the work it would take.

I would love to see it ported by the same crew and with the dedication that the Unreal Tournament games get. That seems to be one of the few Mac ports where they truly try hard to maintain feature parity and compatibility for the mods and online play.

It is really sad to see that Halo and UT2k4 are both published by MacSoft and one game gets great support while the other gets a really half-assed port and none of the major enhancements that its PC counterpart has received since its initial release.

Anyway Half-Life 2 would probably set sales record for a Mac game if it was ported. Especially if it supported the mods and included Counter-Strike: Source like the PC version does.

[Lycander]

Porting Direct3D to OpenGL is not the problem. The problem is the Source engine uses a lot of shaders. Porting shaders is another big task on top of the D3D -> OGL translation. From what I hear, OGL shaders in MacOSX is a bit behind, waiting for Tiger to fix that.

[Arden]

HL2 is a great game... there are so many little things about it that are awesome that it's hard to dislike much. So far, I've gotten partway through Nova Prospekt, though this is at the LAN arcade and I don't play it there much anymore. I play HL2:DM, though, which is more fun than a barrel of monkeys.

I read something from the developers that they killed the Mac port of Half-life because they didn't want to treat Mac users like second-class citizens, i.e. tardy updates, less-than-stellar driver performance, etc. Which would you prefer, being treated like a second-class citizen or being treated like you don't exist?

Of course, I initially read that Sierra looked at the sales figures of Caesar III on the Mac and, seeing that it didn't sell very well, decided that Half-life wouldn't, either, and cancelled it. Which was (is?) stupid logic, considering how well Half-life did.

Twist: Which game are you referring to as having great support? I've heard both of those descriptions for both of those games; personally, I think Halo is an awesome game on the Mac, especially considering how it's a port of a port of a port of a port. But maybe it was the G5 I was playing it on...

[Viro]

Porting Direct3D to OpenGL is not the problem. The problem is the Source engine uses a lot of shaders. Porting shaders is another big task on top of the D3D -> OGL translation. From what I hear, OGL shaders in MacOSX is a bit behind, waiting for Tiger to fix that.

A bigger problem is the Havok physics engine, the physics engine behind Half-Life 2 and loads of other titles. It isn't ported to OS X. As such, titles that use the Havok engine take a while to be ported to OS X, and the performance isn't as good since the ported engines aren't as optimized as Havok is.

Shaders aren't too difficult (or too long). There's nearly a one to one correspondence between the D3D and OpenGL dialects anyway.

[sinclair_tm]

will hl2 ever come to the mac?

http://steampowered.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/steampowered.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=98&p_created=1092949398&p_sid=MPCULfBh&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MiZwX3Byb2RzPTAmcF9jYXRzPTAmc F9wdj0mcF9jdj0mcF9zZWFyY2hfdHlwZT1hbnN3ZXJzLnNlYXJjaF9ubCZwX3BhZ2U9MSZwX3NlYXJjaF90ZXh0PW1 hYw**&p_li=&p_topview=1

looks like the anwser is a big no!

btw, i love hl2. far better than doom3.

[texanpenguin]

I'm not a fan of FPSes at all, but anything is portable; it's just a matter of being worth their while (and it still not being anywhere near as good [short of a near-total rewrite for the different architecture]).

If every Mac user bought Doom 3, it would certainly send a message to games producers that there's a market for FPSes on the Mac.

But I think it's true that if you're going to play games you're not likely to be a Mac user. It kinda goes with the territory.

[Lt Major Burns]

macs are very powerful in terms of dtp/multimedia/scientific research. the software is written for and optimised for PPC chips, and take advantage of the more-chug-per-GHZ philosophy that macs are about.

games need clock speed. games don't care how powerful each process is, it just sees a 2.0ghz g5 as running half the speed of a 4ghz pentium. primitive, but the truth.

for this reason then, game developers see the macintosh as bad ground to multiply on. leave it to the few game that do get realeased to hoover up what market there is.

if half life 2 is worth it that much (i don't know, i havent played it yet :(, but i can honestly say that the first one is just so amazing it hurts. never been so nervous in my life than after playing that awesome game. never so elated!), then go out and spend £350 to play it - buy a base level dell - it'll be well within the base requiremnts of the very flexible havok engine (in terms of low end PCs)

[Lycander]

games need clock speed. games don't care how powerful each process is, it just sees a 2.0ghz g5 as running half the speed of a 4ghz pentium. primitive, but the truth.
Are you making an educated guess or just being hateful? Because I'd like to know how some of the best games of my time, ran on a 4 MHz Z80. And now a 16 MHz ARM. I'm talking about Nintendo's GameBoy family btw.

I can prove your statement completely false by pointing to benchmarks of games that show a lower clocked AMD64 beat a 3+ GHz Pentium 4 system.

One of the problems is that OSX is pre-emptive. No one single running process can take over all the resources of the system, basically 100% of CPU time. A pre-emptive kernel is great for when you're multi-tasking because a lower priority app has the opportunity to jump ahead and get a few CPU cycles in to do what it has to.

Back a few weeks ago there was that article on BareFeats in which a rep from Aspyr responded to questions about the performance of the Doom3 port. No one single app can have the complete attention of OpenGL. I'm really watering down the explanation but go ahead and read it for yourself.

The needs of games depend on what type of game it is, lets just ignore graphics for the moment because we're focusing on the CPU not video card. The more intensive games involve realtime physics and do a lot of number crunching. IBM brags about PPC chips being able to do multiple instructions per cycle. Ok well, now you need to couple that with low latency high performance memory.

But for graphics, if the graphics subsystem forces the game code to drill through layers and layers of system calls to get the end results than yeah that will waste CPU cycles rather than be all GPU bound.

[Lt Major Burns]

i eat my words! but it was a generalisation. generally "pc" based games will run better on the pc they were designed for. macs nowadays are almost exclusively ported for, not developed for, in terms of gaming at least. it's a vicious cycle. it's a shame that even photoshop is now veering towards being a windows app ported to mac. cs is a lot more friendly to windows than previous versions. i heard (don't quote me) that this was a result of it (cs) being developed for pc's first, and then for mac

[Viro]

Good job Lycander, I was going to post a reply but you've taken the words out of my mouth :).

The fact is, PPC chips can do multiple instructions at once thanks to Altivec. Only problem is, not many problems can be vectorized to make use of Altivec. Making code use Altivec also involves significant rewrites of code and that increases the cost of development. Many companies can't justify such expenditure.

[Lycander]

Hehe, the good news is the PPC is such a wonderful chip that even non-vectorized instructions (like simple arithmatic) are multi execution per cycle. So irregardless of Altivec or not, the PPC is doing more per cycle. Altivec is great if you need to do the same operation on a vast set of like data.

I never took issue with the PPC's technical merit. I have less faith for OSX's architecture and the way apps have to drill through the runtime to get things done.

[Lt Major Burns]

but the developers need to be bothered to try this method. they can't. everyone has a pc. therefore there is a market. games are made for pcs, so they run on pc's taking advantage of what pcs have - faster overall clockspeeds. not clever, just fast. ergo pc's are better for playing games on because games are written for - and run better on pcs. keep macs for what they are for and are good at.

[Viro]

Uhm....I'm sorry if I come across rude, but what are you on about?

The fact that games run better on PCs rarely has anything to do with faster clockspeeds. Read the article on Barefeats.com that Lycander mentioned. It is available here (http://www.barefeats.com/doom3.html#why).

Notice, none of the offered reasons have to do with clockspeed. Hardware wise, PowerPCs are competitive with x86 offerings. Even more so if Altivec is used and code is vectorized. On x86, SSE2 is somewhat similar to Altivec, although not as powerful. Even so, not many games actually vectorize their code.

[sinclair_tm]

how did we go from hl2 on the mac to cpu wars? hl2 will not come to the mac because valve, for some reason, simply will not do it. the truth may be because it just is not ecomiclly feasable, and it will never be untill the mac gets a much, much larger market share, which is really what the software makers look at.

[Viro]

If you've followed the thread, you'll see that I post a major reason for them not porting is due to the Havok physics engine that Valve uses, which is not available for Mac OS X. It would be too much trouble for developers to port it for what they perceive as far too little gain.

No idea how it spiralled into a CPU war though :). Well, it's more like a CPU misunderstanding.

[Lt Major Burns]

that was my point

[InstaGiB]

Tsk tsk tsk - are you guys still waiting for HL2? Anyway - about IPC - Intel are very poor at that with the Pentium 4s usually managing 1 IPC whereas Athlons execute a tad more at around 3 IPC. This proves the earlier clockspeed theory wrong my friend. That is how an AthlonXP at 2.08GHz can outperform a Pentium at 2.8GHz. THis is why when i clock my AthlonXP to 2.8GHz i am getting the performance of a Pentium 3.6 Extreme Edition. So games dont need a faster processor necessarily to play at their fullest.

[Zammy-Sam]

well, macs are no expensive playstation like pcs. It's not self-evident for game developers to cover the mac scene with games. I wonder why one pays more than $2000 for a good pc when you can get a playstation for what?... 100 bucks? ;)

[nixgeek]

well, macs are no expensive playstation like pcs. It's not self-evident for game developers to cover the mac scene with games. I wonder why one pays more than $2000 for a good pc when you can get a playstation for what?... 100 bucks? ;)

Well said....this is especially true since most of the PC users like this particular person seem to only use the PC for gaming, and nothing else. Sometimes, it's just better to get a dedicated device suitable for the task. This is why people buy consoles for gaming, and also why people buy Macs for TRUE productivity. ::angel::

[Lycander]

I can't stand playing a first-person shooter on a PS2.

Once in a while some console games do ship with bugs. On a PC, I can just download a patch and the problem goes away. On a console though, too bad the discs are printed, done deal.

More often than not, PC games allow you to save your progress at any given point in time. Rather than rushing to the "magical stone" or whatever to save your progress.

Online multiplayer gaming on the PC is still far far ahead of the offerings on the console. That might change in the upcoming generation of consoles because they finally realize "gee, people like playing online with others and are willing to pay for it."

This last point might be debatable. My instinct tells me that the library of games on the PC is vastly larger than consoles. My brother use to bitch and moan about having to buy a whole new console every year to play the new games. Well I've had my PC for 5 years now, and year after year I keep playing new releases without having to replace my PC. The count of playable games increases even more if you factor in emulators that let you play old consoles images.

[Zammy-Sam]

Is that worth $2000 plus dealing with viruses, worms, hacks, spyware and God knows what? I'd rather change my console every year but pay 20times more for a pc, which is losing its value maybe by half every year. And lately I got the impression that really good and famous games are quickly licensed by the console manufacturers to make their consoles more attractive.
I think that the very lively warez community for pc games and pc software makes a pc so tempting.

[Viro]

Don't forget that PC's tend to become obsolete much faster than consoles. A PS2 that you bought in 2000 can still play the latest games, in 2005. A top of the line PC in 2000 will not run any of the games today.

[Lycander]

Is it worth it? Sure why not. I don't see it as a problem because I'm smart enough to not let that crap into my computers. It just takes a little effort, but unfortunately many people are impatient or just don't want to learn. Only once in my life have I gotten a virus and that was 7 years ago.

Believe it or not, there is a small population of Windows users who are smart and can maintain a decent running system without letting it get ridden with malware.

And that "warez" community you speak of is the birthplace for most of the viri and malware, so I stay away from that.

And although certain games appear on consoles first, there are just as many that appear on PC first or exclusive to PCs. That is until they figure out a way to make things work without a mouse and fewer keys for functions. Diablo is one example. Heck even RTS games like Starcraft eventually made it to consoles but that's long after their glory days on the PC.

[Damrod]

In the end, both have their yays and nays.

It's been ages I had so much fun playing a racing game, than I had yesterday playing Mario Kart Double Dash. And it was single player. Can't imagine how it will rock when we finally get a second controller.

On the other hand, I play Starcraft again, and that would be a pain on any console.

After all, it depends on the type of game you play/want to play. Racing, Jump n Run, Beat em Ups etc are best on consoles. Shooter, Real time strategy etc are much more fun on a PC/Mac to play.

[Lycander]

Sports games are more fun on consoles, hands down. I know you can buy a controller for Mac/PC, but still. Consoles have the controller by default, and we need something immediately to throw at our buddy when he starts that obnoxious "in your face" dance.