OSX Gaming: Now for Serious? Yarly!

[Hambone]

For those living under Sandro's helmet, the Mac OSX gaming scene was rocked recently with the announcement of <a href="/http://www.transgaming.com/index.php?mo ... ">Cider</a>, a cross-platform "wrapper" from Transgaming Technologies that will allow PC games to run seamlessly under OSX after only a few hours or days of tweaking. Cider is licensed using a revenue-sharing arrangement with producers like Ubi or EA, who can then release a hybrid game disk containing both PC and OSX versions.



VP of Freeverse Colin Smith confirmed that Cider won't have any effect on the OSX port of HOMMV as it is already well underway and still on target for a 2006 release. More details are available on the <a href="http://hommv.utopos.net">HOMMV for OSX!</a> website.



However, the long term implications of Cider and other recently announced virtualization software like <a href="/http://www.parallels.com/">Parallels Desktop for Mac</a> and <a href="/http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/"> CodeWeavers' Crossover</a> are significant. Gamers who have traditionally ignored OSX for its lack of entertainment options might want to pause and consider that they can now run the same great PC games under an OS that is virus and malware free. And unlike earlier virtualization software, these programs are able to access the native Intel hardware in all new Apple machines, meaning there is little to no performance hit and no code emulation. Of course, Apple's own <a href="/http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/">BootCamp</a> already allows gamers to partition their Mac into a dual-boot machine that runs WindowsXP just as normally as on any PC. In fact, you can buy Apple hardware and run nothing on it but WindowsXP if you really want.



While no games have yet been released under Cider, we are promised that primary publishers are interested in entering the Mac market. Parallels and Crossover are still in beta testing, but users in the discussion forums at <a href="http://www.insidemacgames.com">InsideMacGames</a> report success running such titles as Half-Life.

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https://www.celestialheavens.com/1155496369

[VortexD]

Great news! I've never used a Mac, but if I understand this it does mean that games need to be modified to work with Cider, does that also count for Parallels Desktop and CodeWeavers' Crossover?

[Hambone]

Parallels and Crossover are a little different.



Parallels works like the old emulator Virtual PC by creating a disk image file in the MacOS. You then install a copy of WindowsXP into this disk image. When you run Parallels, Windows boots off the disk image (treating it like its own separate hard drive), but is essentially running as a program on your Mac. You install additional programs and games into the disk image just like you would on a normal PC. It is all quite straight forward when you see it in action, and offers the added bonus that you can back-up and "freeze" an entire Windows install by simply copying a single file, the disk image. The chief downside to Parallels is that its support for 3D cards is currently limited, however, their plan is to implement full 3D card support.



Crossover is an implementation of Wine, which ports WindowsXP APIs to run on OSX. This means that it doesn't require a copy of Windows run to Windows programs (!!) and uses the regular Mac interface for stuff like installing and saving. Crossover PC apps will run along side your MacOSX apps seamlessly (in theory). The downside to Crossover, as I understand it, is that support for particular apps isn't always perfect. Crossover has a list of supported applications, but as I have noted, games have already had some success running various games with the Crossover beta. Presumably as the software matures, more and more titles will be compatible.



Cider works similarly to Crossover, but by working directly with the game developer, can ensure perfect compatibility for running within OSX.






Edited on Sun, Aug 13 2006, 23:11 by Hambone