812 replies to this topic

[edddeduck]

Smoke_Tetsu, on 01 November 2011 - 05:54 PM, said:

What's interesting is some developers (such as Wolfire) claim it's easier to make a game cross platform if you design it that way from day one rather than wait and port an entire finished codebase later on. So according to them in theory it would be better and more efficient if a porting studio worked hand in hand with the original developers making the game cross platform from the ground up than for said porting studio to take code that was totally meant for another OS or System and port it to the Mac.

It's six of one half a dozen of the other to be honest. I could give you 10 reasons why either method is better in theory. In the real world it seems porting once development is done (or very close to being done) is the more popular route at the moment based on games on shelves. But as I said above the best method depends on so many factors saying one method is better than another can only be true per project it will unlikely to be perfect for all projects all the time.

Edwin

[Wumpus]

Tropico 3 announced

So that just leaves "Cool Picks" as the mystery. That's the only one I didn't know what it was in advance. Hmm, just have to wait and see.

[tcrown]

edddeduck, on 07 November 2011 - 09:16 AM, said:

It's six of one half a dozen of the other to be honest. I could give you 10 reasons why either method is better in theory. In the real world it seems porting once development is done (or very close to being done) is the more popular route at the moment based on games on shelves. But as I said above the best method depends on so many factors saying one method is better than another can only be true per project it will unlikely to be perfect for all projects all the time.

Edwin

I'm assuming with UDK now cross compiling native for Mac, that should make UDK ports much faster, no?

[devSin]

I think Feral doesn't actually license the engine (and by the time the PC code gets to them, it's already morphed into Frankenreal), so no, I don't think it will help? They still have to port the game over themselves (and Brad proved that they can if they want to).

It would help you, if you were creating an Unreal Engine game and wanted to also publish a version for Mac OS X. Honestly, I can't imagine there are many studios that would even bother, native UDK and all.

[Smoke_Tetsu]

Epic reworded the Mac part of their supported platforms to this:

Quote

Renewing our long standing support for the Mac platform, Unreal Engine 3 now supports Mac OS, available both to licensees and in the UDK.

So both their licensees have access to it and people using the UDK. Although I've asked an indie developer or two about it and they either said "We want to focus on the PC version first but we'd like to" or "We're using an older version and would have to upgrade our project to that specific new version that supports cross compiling for the Mac". Also so far I haven't seen any major studio announce Mac support but most of the current known UE3 games out or in the works are all made using older versions and I guess would have to be upgraded as well. Sadly it doesn't appear to have helped much so far.

So from what I've heard it would mostly help the original developer where starting a UE3\UDK project from scratch using the latest version and they decided to cross compile it themselves. They'd probably need some Mac specialists on their team as well to help out.

But yeah it would not affect Feral at all either way as they always do their own thing. Also I wonder if the people porting the UDK\UE3 for Epic wrote it with multichannel sound support like Feral's Batman Arkham Asylum. Not all unreal engine ports have it such as Feral's Bioshock and Aspyr's Duke Nukem Forever ports don't.... although those aren't true UE3 games I realize (they are UE2.5 or UE1 modified respectively... but support multichannel on other platforms).

[edddeduck]

Smoke_Tetsu, on 12 November 2011 - 04:25 PM, said:

Not all unreal engine ports have it such as Feral's Bioshock .... don't.... although those aren't true UE3 games I realize (they are UE2.5 or UE1 modified respectively... but support multichannel on other platforms).

BioShock was ported using older Mac sound libraries, we swapped to newer libraries around the time of Rome Total War this means games after this point usually have full 3D audio, games before this point will be limited to stereo.

Edwin

[Smoke_Tetsu]

I also wonder about those sound modes where it's only two channel sound but spatialization was added to the audio streams so when decoded by a Dolby Pro Logic II sound system one gets positional sound much like true multichannel audio. Bioshock 2 has it and it worked when played through a wrapper in OS X. Any variant of WINE only supports two channels yet that type of surround spatialization works in it... even with older miles libraries I have noticed if I can manage to change the sound provider to Dolby.

Also the open sourced darkplaces engine has it if you turn on snd_spatialization_prologic to "1" in the CFG files. The effect it produces is so convincing it almost seems like one has true multichannel in the game rather than two channels which technically speaking it is. Like when passing torches you hear them pan and fade to the correct surround speaker and anything else in a "3D Audio" fashion. You can check out how they did it in their source code if you wish. But games like Bioshock 2 have it already and it should be possible to translate it to the Mac. I mean if WINE can do it why not? The Mac supports it obviously if it works both in a native port of a game and wrapped ports.

I've even noticed gameplay trailers on youtube encoded with dolby pro logic II specific support such as the Bioshock Infinite 12 minute trailer. I got positional audio from watching those decoded by my stereo. Youtube doesn't support AC3 or DTS or any of those audio codecs.. just two channel sound. Most of the consoles support that as well especially Wii where it's the only choice for surround sound.

More people would be able to get positional audio that way other than the ones who have either third party sound cards or MDP to HDMI adaptors. Such as most of those people who got computer oriented surround systems that only have RCA or optical inputs available.

Also like I've noted elsewhere the FMV's in Batman Arkham Asylum don't correctly use the center channel speaker (or at all really) neither do the "you lose" screens. Borderlands had similar issues when it comes to the players sounds like your own gunfire and voice. Instead of coming from mostly the center speaker with the appropriate reverb from other channels it mostly came from the left and right speakers.

The FMVs could use some kind of programmed in pro logic decoding in the sound libraries if they don't come with more than 2 channel audio tracks and for the latter I'm sure the voices are supposed to come from the center speaker and your own gunfire in Borderlands as well although I'm not sure if it has the same behavior in the PC version.

That being said the true multichannel audio support in Batman Arkham Asylum when in-game is currently the best I have heard so far on the Mac except for the FMVs and losing screens of course.

[Mister Mumbles]

*presents Smoke_Tetsu with the 'Nerdiest Geek' award*

I'm sorry, I just can't help myself. It's just seems that every other post from you is some super-technical detail breakdown of something or another.

[Smoke_Tetsu]

If I don't do it no one will. It's my self appointed duty to point out these things in hopes it gets a ball rolling somewhere. Windows shouldn't have better support for everything.   

[Marathon4ever]

Well, Mafia II came out of nowhere - which is totally friggin' awesome!!!

The Mac Game Library keeps getting better and better!

[DurandalTycho]

How is "Cool Picks" related to Mafia II???

[Janichsan]

DurandalTycho, on 18 November 2011 - 10:24 PM, said:

How is "Cool Picks" related to Mafia II???

My assumption is that this and the teaser picture have something to do with the Playboy centerfolds you can collect in the game – but I haven't found definite proof for that.

[DaveyJJ]

Janichsan, on 19 November 2011 - 02:32 AM, said:

My assumption is that this and the teaser picture have something to do with the Playboy centerfolds you can collect in the game – but I haven't found definite proof for that.

The teaser pic ... here's the one that matches Mafia II (aka Cool Picks) ... see the "New".

[Janichsan]

DaveyJJ, on 19 November 2011 - 10:25 AM, said:

The teaser pic ... here's the one that matches Mafia II (aka Cool Picks) ... see the "New".

I notice the blatant lack of playmates. My theory crumbles.

[edddeduck]

Smoke_Tetsu, on 16 November 2011 - 10:19 PM, said:

The FMVs could use some kind of programmed in pro logic decoding in the sound libraries if they don't come with more than 2 channel audio tracks and for the latter I'm sure the voices are supposed to come from the center speaker and your own gunfire in Borderlands as well although I'm not sure if it has the same behavior in the PC version.

That being said the true multichannel audio support in Batman Arkham Asylum when in-game is currently the best I have heard so far on the Mac except for the FMVs and losing screens of course.

The FMV relies on BINK library (the library that we use for the videos) which on the Mac is lacking support for more than stereo sound.  When/if Bink gets support to playback the videos like the PC we can look at supporting it in our games for all FMV tracks with surround audio. The losing screens I would suspect will be the same as the PC but I have not the time to check.

Janichsan, on 19 November 2011 - 02:32 AM, said:

My assumption is that this and the teaser picture have something to do with the Playboy centerfolds you can collect in the game – but I haven't found definite proof for that.

You could be onto something with that idea but I could not possibly comment.

Edwin

[tcrown]

Edwin

I realize you can't comment on this but hoping that a port of Skyrim is in the cards. As it stands it runs quite well in Cider and Wine on a top end 15" Macbook Pro, which would seem like it would be a relatively easy port. Would love to have a native Mac version.

I realize that Bethesda are not very Mac savvy, not bringing Fallout or Oblivion over to Mac, both of which run quite well in Wine but a native ports would be much better.

[Smoke_Tetsu]

edddeduck, on 28 November 2011 - 08:47 AM, said:

The FMV relies on BINK library (the library that we use for the videos) which on the Mac is lacking support for more than stereo sound.  When/if Bink gets support to playback the videos like the PC we can look at supporting it in our games for all FMV tracks with surround audio. The losing screens I would suspect will be the same as the PC but I have not the time to check.

Figures it would have something to do with the mac version of bink not supporting it. At the moment you either get one or the other... proper sound during the FMVs or true multichannel surround sound during the game. The losing screens are an odd one because they are done in game as far as I can tell yet don't use the center speaker properly.

BTW, I was mentioning the explicit prologic support that certain windows versions or a couple of mac versions of games have because if it's possible to get that to work on the Mac with more games it'd likely give a more consistent effect since the 3D audio would be spatialized to pro logic II (or above) and the FMVs would be run through the same thing. Since I guess with true multichannel sound Bink would have to support playing to multiple uncompressed PCM channels just like the game is doing.

In darkplaces engine I noticed I get more consistent results with its explicit prologic II spatialization support for 3D Audio than it's true multichannel support. But of course whether a game in windows supports that in the first place varies from game to game but I know for a fact that Bioshock 2 has a specific Pro Logic II mode which worked when wrapped in WINE so in theory Feral should be able to get it to work in their professional port. Additionally I've heard of a patch that adds specific Pro Logic II (or whatever you have) modes to OpenAL which I think is worth looking into. Especially for those who have computer oriented surround systems that can only use an optical cable and don't have any kind of third party audio card or capability of hooking up an MDP to HDMI adaptor which are what is required to setup multiple channels in Audio MIDI setup.

[clocknova]

tcrown, on 28 November 2011 - 05:15 PM, said:

Edwin

I realize you can't comment on this but hoping that a port of Skyrim is in the cards. As it stands it runs quite well in Cider and Wine on a top end 15" Macbook Pro, which would seem like it would be a relatively easy port. Would love to have a native Mac version.

I realize that Bethesda are not very Mac savvy, not bringing Fallout or Oblivion over to Mac, both of which run quite well in Wine but a native ports would be much better.

I second, third, and fourth this.  Someone, sometime, has absolutely GOT to get us a port of some of Bethesda's RPGs.  Yes, they all run reasonably well in Wine/Crossover, but not great.  Any of their Elder Scrolls or Fallout titles would be an absolute coup for whomever manages it.

[edddeduck]

clocknova, on 03 December 2011 - 03:40 PM, said:

I second, third, and fourth this.  Someone, sometime, has absolutely GOT to get us a port of some of Bethesda's RPGs.  Yes, they all run reasonably well in Wine/Crossover, but not great.  Any of their Elder Scrolls or Fallout titles would be an absolute coup for whomever manages it.

Noted, your comments have been taken on board but as always no promises

Edwin

[clocknova]

edddeduck, on 05 December 2011 - 05:03 AM, said:

Noted, your comments have been taken on board but as always no promises

Edwin

I hope that means something.  Thanks, Eddie.