One Million Reasons Why No HL2 for the Mac

[SgtSpamBoy]

Windows is better, period.

Why bother having any personal choices in life at all? Coke/Pepsi, Ford/Chevy, Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo, Boxers/Briefs. Clearly everything is black and white, and personal choice should be vanquished.
How about you just write down all of your personal preferences, send a mass email, and everyone in the world will follow them so we'll know what to like.

Truth is, Macs and Windows (and Linux) all have their ups and downs, period.
Buy what you like.

 

[Ennui]

Kazary, your posts ARE showing up; you triple posted the same thing (I assume because it wasn't showing up for you for some reason) so I deleted the two extras.

SgtSpamBoy, some things are clearly defined and others are not. The PC vs. Mac argument falls in the former category; at least, like I've said, because I've not seen a compelling argument for Macs. Also, it's a bit silly to criticize someone for discussing their opinion on which system is better, things like this are the basis of most of the content on these sorts of forums.

 

[Acepilotf14]

I still hate you, Kazary.
Ennui, I made a comment on your blog...

And yes, personal opinion is most likely the only thing driving this forum. Anyway, I prefer coke.

 

[Lh'owon]

<snip>
An initial lump sum being requested up front for porting & extra work for the Valve team to do so? Interesting how this payment for labour system works, it's almost like it makes sense!?

<snip>
If Valve dedicated 20 people in their team to porting the OB to OSX I'm quite sure they could do it, but it would be 20 people out of circulation in terms of working on future more profitable projects. These Macs guys are frankly asking for charity.

Valve wants money up front in exchange for developing a port for a niche market that would otherwise have no profit potential?

Why, those greedy bastards!

I don't really see how Valve could be the bad guy here. Want money for extra labor? OK

Either I'm missing something or none of you actually bothered to read it...

Within a day or so I got a call from one of Apple's developer relations manager who said my email to Jobs had made some kind of impact because Jobs forwarded the email to developer relations and told them to get on it. At some point Apple did meet with Newell, but I guess nothing came of it except that the project never could take off because of Valve's insistence that anyone who wanted to port Half-Life 2 to the Mac had to advance $1 million to Valve. That's right, that's $1,000,000. That might be peanuts to someone like Valve, but no Mac publisher in their right mind would have given Valve that kind of money just for the rights to publish Half-Life 2 for the Mac.

He is claiming (and there's no reason to believe he's lying) that Valve demanded 1m for the rights to port HL2.

So if someone like Aspyr wanted to bring HL2 to mac, they'd have to pay Valve 1 million dollars before even starting to port.

If I've read it correctly, that does seem a bit stingy on the part of Valve.... After all they'd be profiting from the port with no effort on their part. To ask for 1 million dollars just for the right for someone else to make money for them is a bit rough.

Whatever.

 

[Chabo]

Either I'm missing something or none of you actually bothered to read it...



He is claiming (and there's no reason to believe he's lying) that Valve demanded 1m for the rights to port HL2.

So if someone like Aspyr wanted to bring HL2 to mac, they'd have to pay Valve 1 million dollars before even starting to port.

If I've read it correctly, that does seem a bit stingy on the part of Valve.... After all they'd be profiting from the port with no effort on their part. To ask for 1 million dollars just for the right for someone else to make money for them is a bit rough.

Whatever.

As posted earlier in the thread, this is likely the same as the licensing fee to use the Source engine in a brand new game. After all, Valve's not going to give away the source code for free to anyone who says they want to do something with it. Not after 2003 anyway...

Truth is, Macs and Windows (and Linux) all have their ups and downs, period.
Buy what you like.

Yep, which is why I have one Windows workstation, and two Linux machines. If I had the money to buy a notebook of my choice, I'd probably buy a Macbook, just cause they seem tougher compared to all the flimsy shit on the market today.

 

[Qhartb]

Anyone know what the licensing fee for the Source engine is? The fee you have to pay to get access to the complete source code? If it happens to be $1M, then this is just being consistent. Obviously they shouldn't just give all their code to anyone who says they're going to port it.

 

[Lh'owon]

Yarharhar

http://www.hylobatidae.org/minerva/blogsheep.php?action=articleinfo&id=59

Adam runs XP on an iMac to develop Minerva. I'm not sure what to conclude from that, but...

/thread

 

[Krynn72]

Adam runs XP on an iMac to develop Minerva. I'm not sure what to conclude from that, but...

/thread

And what benefit does it get him?

No benefit besides having to restart to get back to OSX.

/thread

 

[Lh'owon]

Sigh... I wasn't meaning that in a pro or anti-mac way. Just throwing it out there, as it seemed to encompass the whole issue. But by all means, overreact! Be my guest!

 

[Cole]

Blizzard can afford to sell through macs because WoW generates regular money for them, so the overheads are covered.

Actually, that is not the scenario. It does not explain:
Diablo, Wc2, Starcraft, Wc3, and Diablo 2 all coming with a Mac Version on the same disc.

Blizzard has a much different engine design that most game companies, that allows them the flexibility of creating a Mac/Windows version. Besides for a few exceptions, the only thing they change is a dll file (storm.dll).

 

[sickre]

What exactly is the problem here? Porting is a lot of work. Do they expect Valve to do it for free, whilst Apple get all the benefits of increased demand for their platform?

 

[Frraksurred]

Valve requesting to be paid for their work? Doesn't that kind of fall under the category of:

"Well duh!"

:afro:



Actually, if you think about it, that is exactly the reaction I would expect from Steve

Jobs.

 

[Smigit]

Aside from the fact the article may or may not be pure BS...

Isn't $1million roughly what it costs to license the UT3 engine alone, let alone the fact that by porting the game you'd be getting access to a complete games assets and the like?

Doesnt sound that expensive to me.

 

[Lh'owon]

What exactly is the problem here? Porting is a lot of work. Do they expect Valve to do it for free, whilst Apple get all the benefits of increased demand for their platform?

The author is not expecting Valve to do the porting themselves. Valve (according to him) wants to get paid 1m by a porting company for the privilege of porting HL2. So Valve does (next to) no work, but demands 1million dollars anyway. That's before the profit they earn from the port (again, without actually porting themselves).

If it was for a console or whatever I wouldn't have a problem with the 1 million. But mac porting houses need all the help they can get. As in, they really can't afford that. Call it charity if you will, but it seems a bit mean-spirited of Valve not to cut them any slack. Especially as Valve will profit from the port.

Actually, I give up. Whatever.

 

[Operational]

The background on this is that Valve is a pretty picky company. They want things done a certain way up to a certain standard, and when its crap, they scrap. They've had some bad experiences with third-party companies. If they simply handed over HL stuff to some company and they put out a shitty port, Valve would risk nothing and stand to make a bunch of money... but they would also have put out a shitty port.

They also seem really irritated by the lack of support from Apple to add things to their APIs that could help Valve port things over. If Apple cared, if they wanted to make it a priority, what they need to win people like Valve is actually respond to these sorts of tech requests. You better believe Microsoft does it. All the hardware makers do it. But Apple for some reason seems to be really lousy on this score when it comes to games, which is especially sad because they are so good at it in other arenas.

Thought that this was a pretty good comment on the article.

 

[McGooTheWise]

Wow... 24k?
Amazing.
I want that.
Now.

Mac: Hey! Guess what? I got a 24karot gold layering!
PC: How does that help?
Mac: Uhm... I'm more valuable than you now!
PC: And what does that do for your processing?
Mac: Everyone wants me!
PC: ...

Mac is such an attention whore. PC kicks his ass.

 

[FISKER_Q]

I don't think 1 million dollars is a lot at all, i agree with the comment Operational posted.

I could just as well go up to Valve and say i want to port your game to the mac, ok sure here's the source code and assets, and i leak the source code for Steam and HL2.

To me the 1 millions represent a some sort of guarantee that the port will be taken serious, and really do take wording and intention seriously, because he does write "1 million dollars in advance"

The thing is if neither Aspyr nor Apple realizes that nothing can be achieved by putting money onf the line, then there will never be any significant gaming market on the Mac.

Even Gabe Newell privately funded and made sure the company stayed on top before/during/after the source code leak and publisher lawsuits, on the other hand his company now owns, probably, the best digital content provider in the world at the moment.

Microsoft's Xbox department isn't(wasn't?) earning any money either, but it's becoming a great success now.

To be honest Apple always were the anti-trust bastards, not Microsoft, Apple just never had the market share to warrant it.

 

[Kyorisu]

The solutions is to stop crying and dual boot until more companies figure it's smarter to use OpenGL so they can easily port their apps to other operating systems.

 

[314URBLOC0017]

Windows is better, period. I don't think it really counts to say "NO CAUSE YOU CAN DUALBOOT XP". Why not just single boot XP and not have that OS X crap to worry about?

I lol'd hard at all of these, but especially the one above

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

The solutions is to stop crying and dual boot until more companies figure it's smarter to use OpenGL so they can easily port their apps to other operating systems.

Given that the trend is away from OpenGL, that's not too likely.

 

[Kyorisu]

Given that the trend is away from OpenGL, that's not too likely.

Hence a problem arises. Unless MS become more money hungry and demand monies for the DirectX SDK. In the end it's just a Mac fanboy having a cry. Hardly news worthy.

If I've read it correctly, that does seem a bit stingy on the part of Valve.... After all they'd be profiting from the port with no effort on their part. To ask for 1 million dollars just for the right for someone else to make money for them is a bit rough.

Whatever.

No. Games cost millions of dollars to develope and it's only fair a company would have to pay a hefty fee to get the right/ability to port that product. Especially such a successful product.

 

[the.v.dog]

Whether the blog post is true or not, it still doesn't answer the state of Mac gaming in general, or rather, the lack thereof.

It's a serious catch-22; gamers don't buy Macs as there's no games, while developers don't make Mac games because the demographic isn't there. This isn't going to change unless Apple ponies up the money and the support. Ultimately, the fate of Mac gaming rests in their hands, and not in companies like Valve.

That being said, I doubt it will ever happen; It would cost them a truckload of money, and years of support before it reaches critical mass (and that's if it ever actually gets there). And like Pi Mu Rho said, with more games using DirectX (and XNA) over open standards, Apple's battle, should it choose to fight, is not going to get any easier any time soon.

 

[$kelet0r]

[Deleted]

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

How do you bind Mouse2?

 

[$kelet0r]

[Deleted]

 

[Chabo]

How do you bind Mouse2?

Since Macs have USB ports, you can use pretty much any mouse you want. Just grab an MS/Logitech, and plug it in.

 

[Kadayi]

Macs are great - give me an imac or a pro over a pc any day.
If I want to play games, I boot windows on leopard or bootcamp (and macs play games very well), if I want to do anything else I use osx. Simple.
Why Apple are even worried about gaming I don't know, the customer base of Apple computers and gaming computers are on opposite ends of the spectrum, and at the same time if a gamer wants high end performance on a mac for gaming, the option is already there.

Q: You know the difference between a mac and a PC in terms of nuts and bolts hardware?
A: Nothing whatsoever. Apple don't make the parts they just put it together, no magic going on at all.

Seriously if your going to dual boot you might as well just get a PC that you can upgrade fully, rather than buying a shiny box that is hardware locked throughout (oh you can up your Ram...whoopie do) and is going to landfill in 4 years.

 

[Chabo]

Seriously if your going to dual boot you might as well just get a PC that you can upgrade fully, rather than buying a shiny box that is hardware locked throughout (oh you can up your Ram...whoopie do) and is going to landfill in 4 years.

And then you can dual-boot with something like Ubuntu (if you want an easy OS) instead of OSX.

 

[Kadayi]

And then you can dual-boot with something like Ubuntu (if you want an easy OS) instead of OSX.

Still I'm not seeing the advantage in buying a hardware locked box. If I was going to buy a mac for home use I'd buy a Mac Pro (which I use at work) as I can bung in a few spare hard drives and up the ram considerably as well as changing the GC, but even then I'm still processor locked and in a few years the spec is going to be inferior and found wanting.

 

[$kelet0r]

[Deleted]

 

[Chabo]

Still I'm not seeing the advantage in buying a hardware locked box. If I was going to buy a mac for home use I'd buy a Mac Pro (which I use at work) as I can bung in a few spare hard drives and up the ram considerably as well as changing the GC, but even then I'm still processor locked and in a few years the spec is going to be inferior and found wanting.

I was saying that you could buy the PC, not the Mac. Then you don't need to have OSX loaded at all, you can have Windows and Linux; a dual-boot between Windows and Ubuntu would be cool.

 

[Chabo]

Duh?
If you want to build your own computer or buy a computer solely for the purpose of constantly upgrading and playing the latest game on the highest possible setting which you are going to bin in 2 years anyway ... well good for you.
For the normal consumer who wants a reliable, user-friendly, aesthetic, low-cost and powerful ready-built machine, you would be quite frankly mad not to have an Apple Imac on or near the top of your list of options. It's just so much ... better

Not necessarily... what I see as the best route for gamers without a giant budget (such as myself) is this: spend $600-800 on a machine, then spend ~$100-150/year on upgrades (maybe RAM, a GPU, and a hard drive, or some such), and then build a new machine in 4 years.

 

[Kadayi]

I was saying that you could buy the PC, not the Mac. Then you don't need to have OSX loaded at all, you can have Windows and Linux; a dual-boot between Windows and Ubuntu would be cool.

My apologies, I thought you were supporting the mac argument.

Not necessarily... what I see as the best route for gamers without a giant budget (such as myself) is this: spend $600-800 on a machine, then spend ~$100-150/year on upgrades (maybe RAM, a GPU, and a hard drive, or some such), and then build a new machine in 4 years.

Exactly the route I go down to be honest. I pretty much recycle my spares by giving them to friends/clan mates etc.

Duh?
If you want to build your own computer or buy a computer solely for the purpose of constantly upgrading and playing the latest game on the highest possible setting which you are going to bin in 2 years anyway ... well good for you.
For the normal consumer who wants a reliable, user-friendly, aesthetic, low-cost and powerful ready-built machine, you would be quite frankly mad not to have an Apple Imac on or near the top of your list of options. It's just so much ... better

Unless you want to play games in which case it's a complete no show. If your going to install XP or Vista on it anyhows your not gaining any advantage.

 

[$kelet0r]

[Deleted]

 

[McGooTheWise]

I could argue that you are. How many pc's allow you to have 2-3 operating systems running on the one machine and switch between them at a whim.

Err... I could be used as an example.

Well, I have 2 hdds in here. I could install mac os on one IF I WANTED TO. But why bother with it when I got XP home on one and XP office (or w/e it is) on the other? Frankly, I can't see why.

one's used for school (Very small, bout 10 gig) and one for games and music. (320 gig)

 

[$kelet0r]

[Deleted]

 

[Cargo Cult]

Seriously if your going to dual boot you might as well just get a PC that you can upgrade fully, rather than buying a shiny box that is hardware locked throughout (oh you can up your Ram...whoopie do) and is going to landfill in 4 years.

Disclaimer: I have three Macs, two of which are dual-boot between Windows XP and Mac OS X. ;-)

Yes, you can upgrade PCs - especially ones you've built yourself. But unless you're planning on upgrading very regularly, it can get a bit pointless.

I've got a (thinking...) Athlon 64, 3200+ at home. 1 GB speedy memory. GF6600, PCI-E graphics. SATA hard disk. Decent case, all put together myself. It was pretty speedy when I got it a few years ago, and it's basically the best PC I've ever had. Rock-solid stable, quiet, and did everything I needed (from a Windows and Linux point of view, anyway).

If I upgrade it to something properly modern, though - I'll have to replace the processor. Which means an new motherboard. And new memory. I'll also need a new graphics card. And hard disk. And optical drive.

... At which point, there's pretty much just the case, keyboard, mouse and monitor left from the old PC. May as well buy a new case too, and have a whole new base unit independent of the old one. My dad can have the old computer.

As for the state of gaming on Mac OS X - it's truly embarrassing. Mediocre games that are many years old still selling at full price, that kind of thing. I saw Red Faction for ?35, or something like that. Game-related OpenGL performance on Mac OS X is often, frankly, piss-poor - some of the graphics drivers need serious optimisation.

 

[undertone]

heres where my patience with mac fanboys falls short. you like the mac OS more? awesome, good ****ing job. personally i find it to be a whole extra heap of extra problems that i really don't want to deal with. windows xp media edition works great, and has worked great since i got it. i can play games, i don't have to dual boot to play said games, and i can run any program i want to run for the advancement of firearms:source. not to mention, photoshop and illustrator run just as well on windows as on mac osx.

its a matter of personal preference i guess. and i prefer not having to dual boot just to do basic things like... play video games.

 

[slashandburn]

I don't want to get into the flame mac vs windows posts, but it seems like there are few potential problems with porting HL2 over to mac.

- Before Hl2 or Games could be ported they would need to make steam for the mac. It seems trivial, but they would most likely have to branch they're development if their steam platform wasn't abstracted enough way from the os.
- Now they would have two different branches of a steam platforms to deal with.

- Also like with the PS3 port of Half-life 2, it would take time. The systems from the hardware perspective are almost the same, but the technologies involved with each are vastly different.
- Sure they can both run nvidia & ati cards, but the DirectX framework is still a windows exclusive. For a mac port the rendering engine would have to be re-written with OpenGl code instead of DirectX. Which would branch the development of future games.
- Think of all the new effects valve has been putting into their games. With a port new ways would have to be found to implement the same effects. It can be done, but the time and effort may not justify the need.

- Also if a mac version is ever ported then a Linux version would not be that far away, but from what I saw a few posts back the "CrossOver" solution for the mac seemed like a good idea. But the ad for why to use crossover to play TF2 seemed a bit one sided.

 

[FISKER_Q]

I don't want to get into the flame mac vs windows posts, but it seems like there are few potential problems with porting HL2 over to mac.

- Before Hl2 or Games could be ported they would need to make steam for the mac. It seems trivial, but they would most likely have to branch they're development if their steam platform wasn't abstracted enough way from the os.
- Now they would have two different branches of a steam platforms to deal with.

- Also like with the PS3 port of Half-life 2, it would take time. The systems from the hardware perspective are almost the same, but the technologies involved with each are vastly different.
- Sure they can both run nvidia & ati cards, but the DirectX framework is still a windows exclusive. For a mac port the rendering engine would have to be re-written with OpenGl code instead of DirectX. Which would branch the development of future games.
- Think of all the new effects valve has been putting into their games. With a port new ways would have to be found to implement the same effects. It can be done, but the time and effort may not justify the need.

- Also if a mac version is ever ported then a Linux version would not be that far away, but from what I saw a few posts back the "CrossOver" solution for the mac seemed like a good idea. But the ad for why to use crossover to play TF2 seemed a bit one sided.

Well apparently they're looking for Linux porters, and they specifically mention 3D, so it's definitely not a server port.