Question:
Do you want to see Lock On: Modern Air Combat on your Apple Macintosh? Would you like UBI to port this magnificent game to your brand new G5? Come on, I know you'd like to! :-D

Choices:
Yeah, we mac users want!
Nope, I'm satisfied with my X-Plane
Who? Mac? What? Why?

 

Get a real computer.

Sorry, but Never gunna happen!

quote:

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Originally posted by 214th_Hitman:
Get a real computer.

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<flamebait>

erm, the Mac is more a "real" computer than ANY pc compatible will ever be. It's based on modern CPU arch (RISC with better pipelining than x86), modern bus arch (IRQ? 1976 tech, mate) and an OS that's far superior in terms of modularity, stability and security than Windows. If I had £1500 to spend on a new computer in one go, I'd have a Mac...

</flamebait>

while we're at it, how about a version for Linux? I get significantly better FPS on Americas Army under Linux than i do on exactly the same machine running windows...

It's completely irrelevant which system is superior (while I hate my Windows far more often than I like it, I wasn't exactly blown away by that shiney Mac OS either once I had to work with it). The question is whether there is a market big enough to refinance the development effort of porting Lock On (which relies heavily on DirectX in many areas) to a totally different platform, no matter if Mac or Linux.

And guess what, the market is not there.

What everyone should do for O/S is Linux. If I knew anything about Linux I would have installed it on my computer a long time ago. (it being a free download and most stable and all...)

BTW...a few ppl I know in the 214th have and play on linux.

quote:

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Originally posted by 214th_Hitman:
What everyone should do for O/S is Linux. If I knew anything about Linux I would have installed it on my computer a long time ago. (it being a free download and most stable and all...)

BTW...a few ppl I know in the 214th have and play on linux.

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Best way (IMHO) to get "into" Linux would be to pick up a Linux magazine with a Linux on the cover CD. Most magazines carry a major distribution such as Fedora (the Red Hat freebie version), SuSE, Mandrake, Debian, Gentoo etc. Gentoo's not a great place to start unless you like pain; you have to compile the entire OS from scratch! The benefit there tho is that it compiles for your specific hardware so you get hte most efficient Linux possible for your machine.

When you say some ppl in the 214th play on Linux, do you mean they play Lock On on it? There are packages like WiNE (Windows Emulator) that allow SOME windows apps (but not games, usually) to run under Linux, or it could be done using VMWare and having a Windows virtual machine... I'm very interested in finding out how your colleagues do this, can you tell me where I can find out more from them?

Cheers,
gamelan (112th_8bit in HL)

last i heard was over a year ago when he told me he flew lomac on linux apache. prolly a few weeks after lomac came out. And yes he did. I dont remember how he managed to do it, just that he did. And like I said, if I knew how I would have installed linux a long time ago.

Would a Mac be able to run something like Lockon, whats the fastest cpu speed for the mac?

Yes, a Mac could easily play lomac as far as specs go, the clock speed isnt really relevant though. macs do as many or more processes a second than a windoze PC with twice the clock speed.

Chances are itd have even better looking graphics too.I used to fly F/A 18 hornet and the korean expansion on an old beige G3 with G4 sonnet processor, and it worked just fine.

but the reason I have this wondoze box that Im typing on now is because of the lack of support for games on the mac platform.

would it sell if it was ported to mac? absolutely. the mac faithful are so starved for good titles theyd jump all over a title like lomac or FB ( I remember a thread just like this in FBs forum)

but, itll never happen. Id just like to see a little patch to fix some minor little bugs and I doubt that will even happen.

if they DID do a port, chances are that there wouldnt be any way to play online with windows users either. knowing that at least two of the people here know a little about macs, you are no doubt aware that gamespy is pricing its rights for mac games out of the realm of reasonable just to keep from having to figure out how to make the macs and PCs get along.

sad really, because I much prefer the Apple OS.XP is OK, but OS X is great. (yes, I stood in line to get a copy at 10pm at nite, in the rain,at the Apple store when Jaguar came out)

I'm typing this on a Mac right now. I bought my girlfriend a 3 year old PowerBook G3 for Christmas and I was suprised it still seems like a quick machine after a few years. My 3 year old Dell laptop I use from work isn't nearly as snappy or responsive as the G3.

I *love* MacOS X. I work in the IT industry and have experience of windows and Unix/Linux operating systems and I think MacOS X is a genius piece of operating system engineering. Non IT-literate users will never know MacOS X is a UNIX based operating system but I like that, rather than plow relitively low-return investments into it's old style proprietary OS they moved to a solid and dependable base operating system.

As for hardware, the PowerMac series are tower-cased machines with AGP and PCI slots. The Mac G5 is a blisteringly fast processor and when coupled with 1Gb of DDR-400 RAM and an ATi Radeon 9800XT you've got a kickass machine. Mac games should be able to communicate with their PC version brethren without problem so long as the developers use the same protocols and message structures across both platforms.

Why would you wanna port a flight sim to a mac? As if you have alot of PC users buying flight sims. Most mac users are professionals.

That's partly true - in Europe at least, but with the exploding popularity of iPod the number of iMac and iBook sales is increasing. Additionally with the ever-increasing threat of spyware and viruses on the Windows platform people are looking for alternatives such as Linux, BSD and MacOS. I know a number of Mac users now whereas these people all had PC machines a year or two ago.

The Mac platform is increasing in popularity. A number of high-profile games such as most of id's range (quake series, doom series), Halo etc are becoming available for Mac, in fact Halo was originally going to be a Mac exclusive until Microsoft saw it while looking for developers for the XBox and offered stupidly large sums of money for it.

For those that want to play games on a computer as opposed to a console but maybe don't have the tech-savvy and/or budget to change graphics cards etc every year or two, the Mac platform would be an ideal half-way house. Add the stability and security of the platform and some more high-profile titles and you've got a serious contender in the gaming market.

I was just talking with a freind of mine who is still in the Mac business, said Apple is releasing a 499.99 price point computer. most likely something in the 1.2ghz G4 range, " just add monitor"

I know, I know, its not gonna be a gaming computer really, although with enough ram and a good video card it wouldn't be a slouch. But it will bring the Mac OS into the mainstream.which may prompt game developers to look into ports and such in due time.

*sigh*

too many people buy into Apples marketing, they see all those lovely Apple put together benchmarks and think hey thats fast!

2GHz Dual G5 with all the bells and whistles and 9800XT graphics 2,650

2.2GHz Dual Opteron with all the bells and whistles and XT800 1,750

kicks the Dual G5 in all non-apple apps

u do the maths

i switched my home computer from a Mac to PC back in 96 (user of Macs since '84, was a mac freek up til '96) was using both up till 2002 then went pure pc because of bang for buck

since Jobs came back, the build quality of the Mac has dropped, went from SCSI to IDE etc, have yet to see a Mac that comes with 6 or 7 channel sound..

Ummm... If I had a gun to my head, whose trigger would be pulled the moment my computer locked up or froze, I would prefer to be using a Mac. On the other hand, at least I could play REAL games on my pc as I died.

If you're into cadd or other industrial 3d rendering software, get a Mac. If you like games, leave the apple to rot in a dark corner and get a nice p4.

P.S.- I'm running a Dell 4600C P4 3.0 Ghz, 1Gig ram, 128mb.AGP(of course) Nvidia Geforce FX 5500 vid. card. When I upgraded to my 128mb card, I had to hunt down a low-profile one. After upgrading, I realised that my "it's good enough for us" (Dell's motto) power supply was only a pitiful 160 watts!!! my new minimum specs for the vid. card are 250 watts. Anyone know where to get a min. 400 watt power supply slim enough to fit my pc?? It is barely 5 inches wide. I would upload a pic but do not yet have permission to do so. Thanks for any input!!

Pullermann- you need a "Yes because I feel sorry for neglected Mac users" choice.

quote:

Originally posted by Flame-out:
Ummm... If I had a gun to my head, whose trigger would be pulled the moment my computer locked up or froze, I would prefer to be using a Mac. On the other hand, at least I could play REAL games on my pc as I died.

If you're into cadd or other industrial 3d rendering software, get a Mac. If you like games, leave the apple to rot in a dark corner and get a nice p4.

This is such a dated concensus, Maya, Houdini, Softimage, they all run on the linux platform, and im not even talking about the rendering farms yet.

The rendering farms are a whole other deal here, since macs are relatively more expensive then 64bit linux pc's, you can figure out what the os and architecture will be.

There is only 1 program i really miss, thats illustrator, the Gimp and Scribus are good alternatives for photoshop and pagemaker.

Agreed. My comments are based on the majority... the dreaded steaming pile of Windows users which I belong to.... Linux is a whole other story, and a much less steaming pile...

quote:

Originally posted by Flame-out:


P.S.- I'm running a Dell 4600C P4 3.0 Ghz, 1Gig ram, 128mb.AGP(of course) Nvidia Geforce FX 5500 vid. card. When I upgraded to my 128mb card, I had to hunt down a low-profile one. After upgrading, I realised that my "it's good enough for us" (Dell's motto) power supply was only a pitiful 160 watts!!! my new minimum specs for the vid. card are 250 watts. Anyone know where to get a min. 400 watt power supply slim enough to fit my pc?? It is barely 5 inches wide. I would upload a pic but do not yet have permission to do so. Thanks for any input!!

Flame-out,

I have a Sony with P4 3.0 HT, 1.5 ram, and was limited to an ATI 9600XT (128MB) with the low watt power supply that came with. I wanted the ATI x800 (256MB) but of course would have to upgrade the power supply to do so. Could not find one singe power supply to fit the Sony case, much like the issue your having now.

Ended up dropping my Sony parts in a new Antec Super LANboy case with a new Antec TrueBlue 480 watt power supply so I could upgrade the video card. Pain in the rear but I couldn't be happier.

http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=15001
http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=20481
http://homepage.mac.com/lloydfrancis/Antec_Case_Mod/PhotoAlbum30.html (yes I have a Mac too)

I have to agree with the majority here... I LOVE MY MAC!!! But if you want some good gaming options your going to have to buy a PC! This is my first PC and though I had my power supply issues it was well worth it.

The Mac does have some great games that have been ported over, NASCAR Racing 2003, Raven Shield series, and a few others. Seems they all suffer some during the port from PC to Mac though, requiring even more Mac processing power to get the same game playability of the PC original.