6 ms·

Mac gaming renaissance coming in 2011, powered by Steam

41 points by abraham 16y ago

houseabsolute 16y ago
I was hacking around in jME (a game engine for Java) today, and I am pretty amazed by how much work goes into such software. This is to all appearances and amateur production which has still received an incredible amount of work. Comparing what it took to get a bit of code running in that versus j3d made me realize that a good, cross-platform engine for developing games could be a serious economic advantage for a developer. And it appears that that is what Valve is doing here. Very impressive.
xsmasher 16y ago
It seems that Mac games do not have the same performance as PC games, even on the same hardware. Maybe not surprising with Valve, who is new to the mac platform, but it is surprising with Blizzard who's been Mac from way back. I can only assume that it's either an OSX issue or bad drivers. Either way, hopefully this is the start of a virtuous circle where more games = better drivers = more gamers = more games.
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  Is it possible OSX just has more overhead? I mean it's not like Valve or Blizzard write the drivers, Apple does and they've of course been with OSX from day 1. I know when I ran Warcraft III on an OSX machine, it felt like a little app in a window/box, whereas on Windows it's allowed to basically take over the machine.
  - pxlpshr 16y ago
    We worked with John Carmack building out Quake Live a long time ago. It took them awhile to release their OSX port, and there was a lot of internal talk about how much game developers loathed the OSX development process because the drivers for the video cards were terrible. As a whole, there was just little focus put on OSX + gaming from Apple's perspective. I think it was short-sighted given how much games have driven adoption in the past.
  - giantfuzzypanda 16y ago
    I doubt OSX has more overhead, if games run faster on linux than they should run at least as fast as windows on osx, with proper drivers.
  - Tamerlin 16y ago
    "Is it possible OSX just has more overhead?" Most likely, it's because Apple hasn't cared much about 3D performance in the past -- and even if they did, they'd be behind, because nVidia and ATI can dedicate entire teams of people specifically to opimizing drivers. Apple really can't do that, because Apple makes operating systems and consumer electronics, not graphics processors. And as the graphics processors get more powerful and evolve toward being ever more general-purpose, the driver gap between the specialists (ATI, nVidia, and eventually probably the Larrabee team at Intel) and the likes of Apple will only grow. And the case in point -- Microsoft provides reference drivers, nVidia and ATI provide the real deal... those highly optimized drivers aren't Microsoft's code.
    - azim 16y ago
      Graphics drivers on OSX don't come from Apple. They're written by ATI/Nvidia. However, for a variety of reasons including larger development teams and end user upgradeability, Windows drivers just have the cutting edge tech available first. Just like with Apple, were you to go to Dell.com or HP.com and download manufacturer certified drivers, you'd find them woefully out of date also.
mkramlich 16y ago
I think we should wait til 2011 to make this conclusion.
paolomaffei 16y ago
Yeaaah... I've got a 2010 MBP 13' and steam there sucks. Everything is slow and takes ages to load, I had to install windows. Edit: also not just graphics, for example Europa Universalis III, it took a couple of minutes to *loadé on my 2004 windows xp PC. Now on this MBP with OsX it takes like 10 minutes.
- ioquatix 16y ago
  It sounds like the real problem is poor programming - maybe game developers need to use better algorithms and profile their code.
Xixi 16y ago
The Mac gaming renaissance has been announced every other year for the last 15 years... Macs are at an all time high in the households, that's a huge plus. But with shitty drivers, and most games written for DirectX, I don't know how it will turn out. We will see, but I have low expectations.
- whatusername 16y ago
  As I get older - I'm beginning to really only play the AAA stuff unless I'm really passionate about something.. And that means Blizzard (who make Mac games), Valve (Who have ported Source to Mac and are releasing all new games on Mac), Firaxis (aka Civ V).. The mac can now pretty much cover all of my PC gaming needs.
  - omarqureshi 16y ago
    It's a shame that Firaxis haven't given commitment to Civ V on the Mac .. yet - http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/13/gdc-2010-civilization-v-probably-mac-bound-eventually/ http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/13/gdc-2010-civilization-v-proba...
    - whatusername 16y ago
      Good thing I don't have a mac. :) I was going on the basis of ComputerGuru's post here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1587352 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1587352
- maw 16y ago
  Yeah, but this time it's for real! It's the Year of the Linux Desktop that you need to be skeptical about.
- Tamerlin 16y ago
  At least now Apple isn't operating with a massive performance deficit by using a processor designed for an ATM switch in its PC's. And the price premium for example between MacBook Pro vs a comparably equipped competitor, excluding a factory direct Sager, is is relatively small now. If Apple decides to support the gaming market by working more closely with ATI, Intel, and nVidia to get high-performance drivers into OSX and also work closely with the game developers to improve the tools and libraries to match up with what XNA offers, then the renaissance could be real this time around.
ComputerGuru 16y ago
I posted this to HN forever ago, it's a list of games coming to Mac OS X in 2010 and 2011: http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/our-list-of-highly-anticipated-games-for-os-x/ http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/our-list-of-highly-anticipated... Only games scheduled for simultaneous release on both Windows and Mac or Mac-only releases are included in that list. Games that are being ported to Mac after being available on Windows or gaming consoles previously are not included. StarCraft II is the first of the bunch, and there are a _lot_ more exciting games to look forward to. I think the days of OS X gaming are finally upon us.
kaiserama 16y ago
A note to anyone who wants to play games powered by the Source engine, don't upgrade to 10.6.4. The graphics performance is very poor. I will bootcamp into XP just to play source games. http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1314406 http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13144...
ioquatix 16y ago
I think one big issue with Steam is the fact that it won't work on path-sensitive installs of Mac OS X, and when I filed a support request the response was that they (Valve) have no intention of fixing this.

41 points by abraham 16y ago

I was hacking around in jME (a game engine for Java) today, and I am pretty amazed by how much work goes into such software. This is to all appearances and amateur production which has still received an incredible amount of work. Comparing what it took to get a bit of code running in that versus j3d made me realize that a good, cross-platform engine for developing games could be a serious economic advantage for a developer. And it appears that that is what Valve is doing here. Very impressive.

xsmasher 16y ago

It seems that Mac games do not have the same performance as PC games, even on the same hardware. Maybe not surprising with Valve, who is new to the mac platform, but it is surprising with Blizzard who's been Mac from way back. I can only assume that it's either an OSX issue or bad drivers. Either way, hopefully this is the start of a virtuous circle where more games = better drivers = more gamers = more games.

sliverstorm 16y ago
Is it possible OSX just has more overhead? I mean it's not like Valve or Blizzard write the drivers, Apple does and they've of course been with OSX from day 1. I know when I ran Warcraft III on an OSX machine, it felt like a little app in a window/box, whereas on Windows it's allowed to basically take over the machine.
- pxlpshr 16y ago
  We worked with John Carmack building out Quake Live a long time ago. It took them awhile to release their OSX port, and there was a lot of internal talk about how much game developers loathed the OSX development process because the drivers for the video cards were terrible. As a whole, there was just little focus put on OSX + gaming from Apple's perspective. I think it was short-sighted given how much games have driven adoption in the past.
- giantfuzzypanda 16y ago
  I doubt OSX has more overhead, if games run faster on linux than they should run at least as fast as windows on osx, with proper drivers.
- Tamerlin 16y ago
  "Is it possible OSX just has more overhead?" Most likely, it's because Apple hasn't cared much about 3D performance in the past -- and even if they did, they'd be behind, because nVidia and ATI can dedicate entire teams of people specifically to opimizing drivers. Apple really can't do that, because Apple makes operating systems and consumer electronics, not graphics processors. And as the graphics processors get more powerful and evolve toward being ever more general-purpose, the driver gap between the specialists (ATI, nVidia, and eventually probably the Larrabee team at Intel) and the likes of Apple will only grow. And the case in point -- Microsoft provides reference drivers, nVidia and ATI provide the real deal... those highly optimized drivers aren't Microsoft's code.
  - azim 16y ago
    Graphics drivers on OSX don't come from Apple. They're written by ATI/Nvidia. However, for a variety of reasons including larger development teams and end user upgradeability, Windows drivers just have the cutting edge tech available first. Just like with Apple, were you to go to Dell.com or HP.com and download manufacturer certified drivers, you'd find them woefully out of date also.

mkramlich 16y ago

I think we should wait til 2011 to make this conclusion.

paolomaffei 16y ago

Yeaaah... I've got a 2010 MBP 13' and steam there sucks. Everything is slow and takes ages to load, I had to install windows. Edit: also not just graphics, for example Europa Universalis III, it took a couple of minutes to *loadé on my 2004 windows xp PC. Now on this MBP with OsX it takes like 10 minutes.

ioquatix 16y ago
It sounds like the real problem is poor programming - maybe game developers need to use better algorithms and profile their code.

Xixi 16y ago

The Mac gaming renaissance has been announced every other year for the last 15 years... Macs are at an all time high in the households, that's a huge plus. But with shitty drivers, and most games written for DirectX, I don't know how it will turn out. We will see, but I have low expectations.

whatusername 16y ago
As I get older - I'm beginning to really only play the AAA stuff unless I'm really passionate about something.. And that means Blizzard (who make Mac games), Valve (Who have ported Source to Mac and are releasing all new games on Mac), Firaxis (aka Civ V).. The mac can now pretty much cover all of my PC gaming needs.
- omarqureshi 16y ago
  It's a shame that Firaxis haven't given commitment to Civ V on the Mac .. yet - http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/13/gdc-2010-civilization-v-probably-mac-bound-eventually/ http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/13/gdc-2010-civilization-v-proba...
  - whatusername 16y ago
    Good thing I don't have a mac. :) I was going on the basis of ComputerGuru's post here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1587352 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1587352
maw 16y ago
Yeah, but this time it's for real! It's the Year of the Linux Desktop that you need to be skeptical about.
Tamerlin 16y ago
At least now Apple isn't operating with a massive performance deficit by using a processor designed for an ATM switch in its PC's. And the price premium for example between MacBook Pro vs a comparably equipped competitor, excluding a factory direct Sager, is is relatively small now. If Apple decides to support the gaming market by working more closely with ATI, Intel, and nVidia to get high-performance drivers into OSX and also work closely with the game developers to improve the tools and libraries to match up with what XNA offers, then the renaissance could be real this time around.

ComputerGuru 16y ago

I posted this to HN forever ago, it's a list of games coming to Mac OS X in 2010 and 2011: http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/our-list-of-highly-anticipated-games-for-os-x/ http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/our-list-of-highly-anticipated... Only games scheduled for simultaneous release on both Windows and Mac or Mac-only releases are included in that list. Games that are being ported to Mac after being available on Windows or gaming consoles previously are not included. StarCraft II is the first of the bunch, and there are a _lot_ more exciting games to look forward to. I think the days of OS X gaming are finally upon us.

kaiserama 16y ago

A note to anyone who wants to play games powered by the Source engine, don't upgrade to 10.6.4. The graphics performance is very poor. I will bootcamp into XP just to play source games. http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1314406 http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13144...

ioquatix 16y ago

I think one big issue with Steam is the fact that it won't work on path-sensitive installs of Mac OS X, and when I filed a support request the response was that they (Valve) have no intention of fixing this.