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OS/X Games.. why?

digitalpencil

digitalpencil

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 2, 2007
343
0
Manchester, UK
Hi, i've perused this forum a few times and have found many posts announcing/discussing games on OS/X. Whilst I understand this is an Apple games forum, i'm wondering why many of you opt to run games in OS/X rather than the Windows variant? I've never tried the former but have been informed that performance is greatly reduced on mac games as compared to their window's equivalents. More even than XP to Vista.
Therefore i'm curious to know what the reasons are that many of you opt to play games in OS/X rather than Windows? Is it simply to avoid Windows? Or, like me are you tired of rebooting whenever you want to play a game?
 
Rebooting, not purchasing Windows in the first place and support of Mac development are the main reasons...
 
I think rebooting is #1.

But hardcore gamers should just stick to windows at the first place.
 
The only reason Mac games are slower than their Windows counterparts is because of shoddy ports. If people actually developed Mac games properly there is no specific reason why they should run any slower on a Mac than a PC if you assume the hardware was exactly the same on both.
 
Not having to juggle a separate partition, and rebooting wastes precious time that could be spent admiring my luxurious hair.
 
Cromulent said:
The only reason Mac games are slower than their Windows counterparts is because of shoddy ports. If people actually developed Mac games properly there is no specific reason why they should run any slower on a Mac than a PC if you assume the hardware was exactly the same on both.
Click to expand...

or, if apple supports directX better? OpenGL lost the game war year ago.
 
clevin said:
or, if apple supports directX better? OpenGL lost the game war year ago.
Click to expand...

No it didn't. OpenGL is as good as DirectX when it comes to graphics.

Apple can't support DirectX, it is a Microsoft technology and unless they license it to Apple (which they won't) then Apple have to rely on either their own propriatory system (which is a bad move) or use an industry standard such as OpenGL.
 
Cromulent said:
The only reason Mac games are slower than their Windows counterparts is because of shoddy ports. If people actually developed Mac games properly there is no specific reason why they should run any slower on a Mac than a PC if you assume the hardware was exactly the same on both.
Click to expand...

And which are proper mac games?....just asking. :rolleyes:

I think all, except cider games. Am I wrong? ;)
 
iLao said:
And which are proper mac games?....just asking. :rolleyes:

I think all, except cider games. Am I wrong? ;)
Click to expand...

Well, the proper Mac games are the ones which were properly developed for the Mac. So yes ones which were optimised specifically for the Mac, much like games are specifically optimised for Windows.

The problem is not the technology as such, but companies just wanting to get a Mac port out in the shortest possible space of time with the least expense and that means that certain aspects of games suffer. One is optimisation unfortunately.
 
clevin said:
or, if apple supports directX better? OpenGL lost the game war year ago.
Click to expand...

The difference between Direct3D and OpenGL isn't that big. The real problem is that when you highly optimize a game, you wind up optimizing for a /specific/ implementation of Direct3D or OpenGL. A highly optimized Mac-first game won't port easily to Windows, and vice versa, because of the subtle differences in the implementation, even if most of the API is the same.

Hell, there have been cases where code that runs against DX8 great lose a fair amount of performance just going to DX9 because the implementation of D3D changed in areas that the developer optimized heavily for.

Oh, and optimization is probably one of the most expensive parts of game development. Lots of work, for a few percent performance gain.
 
digitalpencil said:
Hi, i've perused this forum a few times and have found many posts announcing/discussing games on OS/X. Whilst I understand this is an Apple games forum, i'm wondering why many of you opt to run games in OS/X rather than the Windows variant? I've never tried the former but have been informed that performance is greatly reduced on mac games as compared to their window's equivalents. More even than XP to Vista.
Therefore i'm curious to know what the reasons are that many of you opt to play games in OS/X rather than Windows? Is it simply to avoid Windows? Or, like me are you tired of rebooting whenever you want to play a game?
Click to expand...

First of all performance isn't 'greatly reduced' on mac games your talking maybe a 5-7% difference, by your logic nothing should be developed for the mac and people should just boot into windows instead of 'opting' to use the mac developed software, in my opinion installing windows on a mac defies the whole point of getting one. the most popular titles usually find there way to the mac, and more people are starting to take the mac seriously and develop for it
 
Macmadant said:
First of all performance isn't 'greatly reduced' on mac games your talking maybe a 5-7% difference
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, it's frequently a lot more than that. It's certainly possible to make Mac ports run as fast or even faster than the Windows originals, but it takes resources that no porting company has. They have to be developed for the Mac in mind to begin with for that to happen.

Anyway, there's no way I'd ever mess around with Windows and go through the bother of rebooting to play games. (Of course, since I have a G5 it's a moot point. :) )

--Eric
 
Only game I've really played on a mac recently was WoW. Consoles are the way to go for games as far as I'm concerned.
 
Mostly because my mac has a better display than my PC (24inch S-PVA lcd as opposed to a 19inch CRT). Originally I only got this display because it made reading and photo work soo much easier on the eyes, but some types of games beg for more screenspace. There is nothing to complain about quality wise to my CRT, does 1600x1200 @75hz and wonderful image, but I sit about 4 feet from the thing. Being that I'm stuck on PPC, I'm running out of games fast and will likely just get another large LCD for my PC.

If I had a mac pro with a decent videocard in it, I would not hesitate to bootcamp. Windows OEM is a small price to not get fleeced by the additional price and performance hit of Mac gaming to this day.
 
Krevnik said:
The real problem is that when you highly optimize a game, you wind up optimizing for a /specific/ implementation of Direct3D or OpenGL.
Click to expand...
AFAIK there is no difference between OGL on Windows and OGL on the Mac. There can't be, if there were then it wouldn't be standard.


Besides, games stopped using OGL due to ARB's slowness in getting vendor extensions added into the standards (ARB_command versus NV_command or ATI_command). Usually OGL has cool vendor specific extensions before D3D makes them standard. But is is vendor specific, so the competitors card can't run that path (or code).

Supposedly this is all supposed to change with the new ARB group, and OGL 3.0. But that remains to be seen. OGL 3.0 is late as it is.

Game makers have to write code for multiple paths, and that is just a pain in some of their behinds. Doom 3 uses OGL, you can put in a console command to change the render path.
r_renderer”x”. x specifies the rendering path to be used. Doom 3 features several hardware specific rendering paths, although it initially will detect the most appropriate path to use in the game. As such you shouldn’t need to alter this setting. For informational purposes though I’ll include them anyway – arb, arb2, nv10 (GeForce), nv20 (GeForce 3) and r200 (Radeon 8500). There is also an additional best option which indicates that the game detected and set the best rendering path to use.
Click to expand...
The problem is OGL doesn't require hardware support to run stuff, if the hardware support isn't there it falls back to software. Which is slow and a pain to test for. Whereas with D3D all you have to do is ask if a certain version is supported if not then you can kick them back out to the desktop. There doesn't have to be different rendering paths, and all of the rendering is done in hardware.

Anyways, it would be great if Macs got games natively made for it. I figure Apple dropping integrated graphics is a start. Plus reaching out to more vendors to get more GPU options available (in at least the Mac Pro).
 
diamond.g said:
AFAIK there is no difference between OGL on Windows and OGL on the Mac. There can't be, if there were then it wouldn't be standard.
Click to expand...

There is no difference in how to program for it, but there is a huge difference on how to optimise for it on different platforms. Remember the OpenGL standard does not state how it should be implemented, it just states how it should be interfaced with.

Plus Mac OS X Leopard has OpenGL 2.1 built in where as Windows Vista only has OpenGL 1.3 (or 1.4) built in.

If you optimise your game for Windows then you will need to do it again for the Mac OS.

As for the rest, OpenGL is does have its own share of problems but then so does Direct3D. I'm interested to see what OpenGL 3 is like when it arrives.
 
diamond.g said:
Game makers have to write code for multiple paths, and that is just a pain in some of their behinds. Doom 3 uses OGL, you can put in a console command to change the render path. The problem is OGL doesn't require hardware support to run stuff, if the hardware support isn't there it falls back to software. Which is slow and a pain to test for. Whereas with D3D all you have to do is ask if a certain version is supported if not then you can kick them back out to the desktop. There doesn't have to be different rendering paths, and all of the rendering is done in hardware.
Click to expand...

You can actually do the same with OGL, just not as 'easily' as D3D. You can actually query the video card for specific features and disable them in your render engine if you don't want software picking up the slack, or just kick the user back out into the shell.

This isn't always a great option to kick users out to the shell, as by doing this, you limit your sales. Even D3D games usually have multiple rendering paths to account for a particular video card vendor's quirks if they are heavily optimizing. They just shield you from them as a programmer (much as a OGL game would). But in general, D3D games use multiple code paths less often than an OGL game.
 
Macmadant said:
First of all performance isn't 'greatly reduced' on mac games your talking maybe a 5-7% difference, by your logic nothing should be developed for the mac and people should just boot into windows instead of 'opting' to use the mac developed software, in my opinion installing windows on a mac defies the whole point of getting one. the most popular titles usually find there way to the mac, and more people are starting to take the mac seriously and develop for it
Click to expand...

By my logic, i'll use whichever OS reaps the best performance/usability for each particular app. All my work, entertainment & general browsing etc. is done in OS/X, games are played in XP as it offers better performance which is important to me given my MBP can be sluggish with modern games.

Thanks for all your input though, interesting to learn about OGL/DX3D performance & the inherent optimization issues that come into play. Hopefully one day we'll see native games offering similar performance to XP and I can wave bye bye to windows once and for all. well.. apart for 3ds Max that is.
 
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