Sign the Petition!

[Brad Oliver]

Do you think they respect us by shipping buggy titles a year after they hit the PC market with marginal support?

Who do you mean when you say "they" - Mac developers and publishers? (In other words, me?)

Yeah, shipping a Mac game a year after the PC version is released sucks major balls. But often the PC publisher doesn't even want to start talking about the Mac version until shipping time approaches for the PC version. So by the time the contracts have been worked out and we can get code from them, we're frequently looking at 2-3 months past the PC release. Tack several months of Mac development on that, and there you go. I believe this is where we're having a disconnect. Look back on that process and you'll see that there's really not much to be gained from having our customers petition us for simultaneous releases, since we're often pressing the deal as fast as we can in the first place.

I'll again point to Civ3 as an example of one of the very few times we were able to get some serious momentum on the Mac version before the PC version shipped. This was not a case of us waking up one day and deciding that, hey, we need to show some love to Mac Civ3 players for the heck of it and then return to the status quo for everything else.

As for "buggy" titles, I'm not sure what specifically that is meant to imply, but using Civ3 as an example again, I don't believe it's appreciably more buggy than the PC release. I'm sure the companies I've worked for have released clunkers every now and then, but I'd say that's the exception, not the rule. I should add here that I've never done work for MacPlay.

This is about getting some respect as a consumer and not being treated like an afterthought. It's that simple. Anyway, I saw the business mechanics of how they dealt with their Mac releases and I know other companies have similar approaches. It's sad.

The 3 main Mac publishers (Aspyr, MacSoft and Feral) have really only one line of business - Mac games, and the mechanics of this business are such that there's really not an easy way to get simultaneous releases; those things are more often than not out of our hands entirely. It's not a matter of "respect" or treating customers as an "afterthought", it's a question of "is this even possible?"

Over the years, I and my other colleagues working on Mac game conversions have tried to educate Mac gamers as to how the business works with the intention of sharing some of the obstacles we're up against. A few of these have been mentioned earlier in this thread, but I'd be happy to talk about them if you'd like to hear about them.

I don't expect much of this petition as it would be very difficult to get the signatures required to raise the eyebrows of the developers

The problem is a bit deeper than that. You could have a billion Mac users sign it and it wouldn't do any good if we couldn't work out a deal with the PC publisher before the PC version ships. That's why, as someone else said, this petition is essentially preaching to the choir.

 

[Synergy67]

Old thread, but...

1) Brad O., if you are still around, thanks for the great work on the Mac port. I spent many an hour on my Mac with Civ III and noticed no bugs and almost never crashed. The only thing I couldn't figure out how to do was get a view of the other leaders' faces in the F4 screen when I had more than six other nations in the game. I could never see entirely who had right of passage with whom or who was at war with whom.

2) I can live with a delayed release. I am sorely disappointed to be unable to use or enjoy Conquests and other mods to graphics and gameplay. That is the way in which I feel sadly neglected as a Mac user and like I am missing out on a lot of fun.

Can anyone tell me why exactly Conquests was not or cannot be readily ported to Mac?

 

[AlanH]

The only thing I couldn't figure out how to do was get a view of the other leaders' faces in the F4 screen when I had more than six other nations in the game.

You can see seven rivals at a time on F4. If there are more, and you know them, then you can shift-control-click any of the spaces to bring up a menu of the invisible ones and select one of them to replace the one you clicked. Your new set of seven then remains in action for future visits to F4 until you change it again.

 

[Brad Oliver]

Can anyone tell me why exactly Conquests was not or cannot be readily ported to Mac?

I can't because I don't know. However, I can assume.

It was my understanding that initially, sales of PTW on the PC were not so hot - enough to make a Mac port unprofitable.

I believe that eventually changed though, but it was long after I'd left Westlake for Aspyr. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say lack of manpower (combined with the age of the game) is now the main factor stopping Mac Conquests/PTW. But I'd like to stress that this is just an educated guess.

 

[dkamionk]

I signed- -whether or not it helps, it only took like 30 seconds of my life, which is less time than it would take to express why I doubt it would help, and what do we have to lose (other than @ 30 seconds). Thanks for taking the time to set up the petition.

 

[Metropolis Man]

To Brad Oliver —

Hey, Brad, thanks for the great port of Civ III. It's nice that a "big wig" from a Mac software company drops by our little forum.

So, help me out here. Aspyr's and MacSoft's main job is to port already existing PC games to the Mac, correct? There are no new games created that could be dual platform from the get-go?

I guess I'm thinking of what Blizzard does. It's too bad they have such a tiny, tiny amount of games to choose from. And they are all the same genre — not that they're bad. Starcraft and Warcraft rank up there with the all-time greats.

Anyway, I'm rambling. It would be nice if there were more dual platform releases.

 

[Wolp]

I just signed the petition (possibly twice by mistake) and I echo many of the other sentiments here by saying it won't make a difference the way the system is set up. If Apple sales of the Mac Mini are ten times what the iMac were you might start to see a shift in the way developers do business. It's all about numbers and they (PeeCees) have more...a lot more.

Why, if you wanted to make the most money, would you develop a game for the Mac first? Or even simultaneously if it would slow your efforts to reach the most gamers? Get the game out on PC, if it sells well, port it to other platforms (Mac, Linix, Consoles) and make more money to make more games.

I have several friends who have been in the industry in different roles and they all pretty much say the same as Brad. It doesn't mean I like it, but it is the reality we live in now on our choice of computer platform. Talk to your PC buddies and get them to buy a Mac with their iPod... Then we will see more games.

 

[thescaryworker]

I have a mac with the origional civ. I had to get a PC and the conquests to finally play it. We should be treated equally. As it says in the Declearation of Independence written by the Aztecs and signed by Weorge Goshington, "All men are created equal."

 

[AlanH]

I have a mac with the origional civ. I had to get a PC and the conquests to finally play it.

Scary And did it make you feel better?

 

[Macintosh]

I signed!

Following the latest rumors (here in Germany) there will be no technical reason anymore because word is that in producing Civ 4 there is no use of MS. DirectX.

 

[AlanH]

I signed!

Following the latest rumors (here in Germany) there will be no technical reason anymore because word is that in producing Civ 4 there is no use of MS. DirectX.

That would be good news! Any links?

 

[Macintosh]

That would be good news! Any links?

Link - nop - sorry.

We had the discussion in the german webring in December 2004.

ColdFever told us about the fact, that Civ 4 will be done using C++ and Python.

Here is the link to the thread, which is in german in fact......pay attention to post No. 10

 

[thescaryworker]

Scary And did it make you feel better?

Well, I couldn't play the 9 million other PC games my parents had bought for me before then. They forgot to look at the boxes.

 

[AlanH]

Link - nop - sorry.

We had the discussion in the german webring in December 2004.

ColdFever told us about the fact, that Civ 4 will be done using C++ and Python.

Here is the link to the thread, which is in german in fact......pay attention to post No. 10

Thanks. I'll study that carefully.

My German is very rusty, but I think his emphasis is not on the C++ language itself, but on a high performance library they've used. I don't think C++ in itself would give us anything as end users, it just makes the code more modular and maintainable.

Python is related to the mod development facilites. It will be a lot easier for modders to adapt the game using Python as a scripting language.

The critical section re. multiplayer is at the end of post #10. I need to work out the precise translation of that sentence, unless you have it:

Und anstatt wie bei Civ3 einen Multiplayer-Modus am Ende oben drauf zu propfen, ist der Multiplayer-Modus von Anfang an Teil der Entwicklung und hat starken Einfluss auf das gesamte Event-Modell.

 

[ainwood]

Link - nop - sorry.

We had the discussion in the german webring in December 2004.

ColdFever told us about the fact, that Civ 4 will be done using C++ and Python.

Here is the link to the thread, which is in german in fact......pay attention to post No. 10

Well, Civ3 was also written in C++ (I think), and used Directx - Directx is simply a library of graphics functions that can be called pretty-much by any programming language. Given that its a heavily 3D game (by the looks of the screenshots), I'd imaging that they must be using some sort of graphics API / library - I would have assumed DirectX (why make the programmers learn another set of APIs?) - but if not, then would that mean its OpenGL? OpenGL is usable on Mac, isn't it? But the other "benefit" of DirectX is that it has DirectPlay for multiplayer. Is there an Open Source equivalent?

 

[dojoboy]

Well, Civ3 was also written in C++ (I think), and used Directx - Directx is simply a library of graphics functions that can be called pretty-much by any programming language. Given that its a heavily 3D game (by the looks of the screenshots), I'd imaging that they must be using some sort of graphics API / library - I would have assumed DirectX (why make the programmers learn another set of APIs?) - but if not, then would that mean its OpenGL? OpenGL is usable on Mac, isn't it? But the other "benefit" of DirectX is that it has DirectPlay for multiplayer. Is there an Open Source equivalent?

Halo also used DirectX (DX9) and was published on the mac which has cross-platform MP.

linky

 

[taltho]

I signed the petition, for "hope" if anything.

I also would like to thank Brad Oliver for his efforts, something I'v certainly benifited greatly by.

Mac users should not be forced to buy P.C.'s the anguish is just too much! Therapy is required to deal with the mental duress and phsycological dysfunction caused by feelings of being traped millions of years in the past dealing with non friendly, complicated, antiquated and frusrating machine. PC's "should have the greatest propoganda rating of all merchandise".

I'm still upset I should have to use a PC just to play a better version of a game I payed $50 US. for. I then found civIII and ptw and c3c all for $24.99. Now shouldn't the extra cost for the mac user help fund the project?

 

[AlanH]

DirectPlay is the fly in the ointment. It's M$ proprietary. Brad says it's no big deal, but if it was so easy why didn't they port PtW?

 

[dojoboy]

DirectPlay is the fly in the ointment. It's M$ proprietary. Brad says it's no big deal, but if it was so easy why didn't they port PtW?

Extremely low sales on the PC side. It was released very buggy and MP was, more or less, broken upon release. I think, IMHO, what did in a port of C3C is that cIV was announced, or leaked, relatively soon after C3C's release.

You're right about DirectPlay, but that shouldn't be a problem since most mac games released these days aren't cross-platform MP anyway.

 

[AlanH]

That explains the non-release of C3C. But I said PtW, not C3C. It was released way before C3C, and version 1.21 was playable relatively bug-free. It was available in late 2001, so could have been ported to Mac OS, even without the multi-play.