57 replies to this topic

[IMG News]

Apple's recently released OS 10.7 Lion operating system no longer supports Rosetta, emulation which allowed Intel Macs to run older PowerPC applications. Aspyr Media has provided a list of its older game titles which will not run under Lion, and suggested that users create a partitioned drive with an earlier version of the Mac OS for the purposes of playing their older titles.

Titles that use Rosetta:

• Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
  
• Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire
  
• Zoo Tycoon Complete Collection
  
• Deus Ex
  
• Mah Jong Parlour
  
• Spongebob Squarepants The Movie
  
• Medal of Honor: Allied Assault War Chest
  
• Medal of Honor: Breakthrough Expansion
  
• Battlefield 1942: Secret Weapons of WWII
  
• Battlefield 1942: Deluxe Edition
  
• Homeworld 2
  
• Clive Barker's Undying
  
• Crac & Thog: Bonkheads Deluxe
  
• Harry Potter Deluxe Edition
  
• OttoMatic
  
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein
  
• Star Trek: Elite Force II
  
• Star Wars Battlefront
  
• Stubbs the Zombie
  
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
  
• Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 2005-
  
• Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon -
  
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
  
• Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation
  
• Tomb Raider: Gold
  
• Tomb Raider: II
  
• Tomb Raider: III
  
• Tomb Raider: Chronicles
  
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4

Head over to the link below to read more.

Return to Full Article - InsideMacGames News

[the Battle Cat]

I'm starting to frakin' hate Apple.

[halprin]

IMG News, on 22 July 2011 - 05:34 AM, said:

Apple's recently released OS 10.5 Lion operating system

Just an FYI:  Apple recently released Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion".  Not 10.5.
And yes, it is sad that PPC has officially gone away.  

[ltcommander.data]

When I first read the article title "Aspyr Addresses Lion OS Game Incompatibilities" I thought "Yay, patches galore". But instead it's pretty much an EOL announcement for a whole bunch of games. At the very least they should UB the rest of the Quake III engine games like Elite Force II, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and Medal of Honor since previous porting work for Jedi Knight and Call of Duty can be help lower the barrier.

[Riko]

Fuuuuuuuuuuuu.....!

Not happy. Ugh!

[Smoke_Tetsu]

It's not the dropping of PowerPC that bugs me right now it's how some of my UB patched Aspyr games namely the quake 3 arena engine ones like Alice and Jedi Knight II are crashing on startup now. Most of my other games work though so in my opinion it's not so much Apple's fault than it is Aspyr for not keeping up with patching these titles. Breakage is going to happen sooner or later when you neglect old software we've been having that for years going up from version to version like when the omni ports started breaking going up from tiger, to leopard to snow leopard. When it comes to older games my self wrapped ones are actually proving to be more hardy... ironically. Although I wouldn't like to switch Alice and JKII to wrapped because I actually had Antialiasing working in the Aspyr versions.

I'm guessing the "new" copies of the jedi knight games on game agent\the mac game store are a little more updated than the retail editions with the latest available UB patches? Only thing is I already splurged my money this month finally getting a copy of Killing Floor and then getting Lion and I don't want to spend upwards of $40 upgrading my Jedi Knight games and possibly still having them be broken. Also I wonder if they are going to patch\rerelease Alice..... or if they are going to port the new one and include the new port of it like what was done on the PC\Consoles.

[Riko]

Oh, btw, how *do* you run Deus Ex under rosetta? I was under the impression that DX was D.O.A. after apple introduced the Intel Mac.

[Tacohead]

Some dude on MacAppStorm posted the following (in reply to an article about how to make a Lion Boot disc):

"I DID in fact need the Snow Leopard DVD after a clean install and here's why: I do video editting on my Mac and I own Final Cut Studio 2. While the whole Final Cut Studio 2 package is Universal Binaries, the installer is not. But Lion discarded Rosette, so what should I do? Of course, I could install Snow Leo, install FCS2, then install Lion, but I want a clean install.
The reason I needed the Snow Leo DVD is, because you can still install Rosetta from this DVD onto the clean installed Lion and then install FCS2. Sadly, Rosetta cannot be easily copied from the Snow Leo DVD to keep somewhere seperately, but I'll have to experiment more with that."

I have yet to upgrade so can't comment on the validity of this. Is this even possible?

-PN

[ltcommander.data]

Tacohead, on 22 July 2011 - 08:26 AM, said:

Some dude on MacAppStorm posted the following (in reply to an article about how to make a Lion Boot disc):

"I DID in fact need the Snow Leopard DVD after a clean install and here's why: I do video editting on my Mac and I own Final Cut Studio 2. While the whole Final Cut Studio 2 package is Universal Binaries, the installer is not. But Lion discarded Rosette, so what should I do? Of course, I could install Snow Leo, install FCS2, then install Lion, but I want a clean install.
The reason I needed the Snow Leo DVD is, because you can still install Rosetta from this DVD onto the clean installed Lion and then install FCS2. Sadly, Rosetta cannot be easily copied from the Snow Leo DVD to keep somewhere seperately, but I'll have to experiment more with that."

I have yet to upgrade so can't comment on the validity of this. Is this even possible?

-PN

Wouldn't a PPC app still need to link against PPC frameworks? If all the frameworks in Lion are no longer Universal Binaries most PPC apps probably wouldn't work even if the PPC to x86 translation part of Rosetta is installed. Perhaps something like an installer doesn't need to link against frameworks external to the app.

[clocknova]

Actually, the best way to play most of these games now is to pick up the Windows versions (from GOG, whenever possible), install them into Wineskin or CX wrappers, and play them natively, right in Lion.  Most of them work better that way than they did in Rosetta.  Deus Ex, for example, runs flawlessly.  Yes, it involves spending a little bit of money (if, in fact, you opt to pay for them) but the hassle is far less.

Check out Good Old Games.  No DRM to bother with when you buy them there and they're dang cheap, especially if you wishlist a game then wait for it to go on sale.  I picked up Fallout and Fallout 2 for less than $3 each.  I also bought all of the Infinity engine games ( Baldur's Gate, etc,) for Less than $5 each.

I've had some experience with using wrappers (yes, it's perfectly legal), so if you're lost, let me know; I might be able to help.

[Eric5h5]

Riko, on 22 July 2011 - 08:16 AM, said:

Oh, btw, how *do* you run Deus Ex under rosetta? I was under the impression that DX was D.O.A. after apple introduced the Intel Mac.

Right, Deus Ex was Classic only, so it only ran on PPC Macs, and Rosetta wouldn't help in the least.

--Eric

[nagromme]

Dropping PowerPC support is a real shame, and disappoints me. Now, I’m amazed, looking at my ancient apps, to find MOST of them were updated for Intel. But some have not! My beloved Freehand will be relegated to some external boot drive for occasional use, or an old Mac in the corner!

That doesn’t mean I’m looking to blame the game makers or Apple. These are OLD products, and porting to keep them alive isn’t always easy or cheap. It may simply be impractical. Rather than blame companies who aren’t updating from PPC to Intel, at this late date, I’ll praise the ones who do!

I certainly would like to see Intel-ready games (like Alice) get a Lion patch if they need one. I’m happy that Alice is NOT on that list, and am hopeful I’ll get to run it still. But there are often apps (even big productivity titles) that need a patch for a new OS, and it’s not rare that the patch doesn’t make it to release until the OS has been out a while. With a game as old as Alice, I don’t find a delay (currently about 50 hours and counting) to be that unforgivable.

As for why Apple had to switch to Intel, and then, why they had to remove the PPC code when evolving their OS? If you think those decisions have bad consequences, I’m with you. But we must also admit that those decisions have very real benefits as well. Benefits to us as Mac users. And, I suspect, they’re worth it.

We may never know how much more slowly OS X would evolve if PPC app support were left in. What features would have come later, or been skipped? What bugs would have cropped up? How much extra development time would Apple have had to put in, and how much later would Lion (or the next version) be? How much time would Apple have put in for PPC testing? Or what would they have neglected to spend time on while handling support for ancient PPC apps? We’ll never know what might have been.

In a way it would be cool if they spent those resources and kept PPC support for years to come. But I’m betting, if we saw that future, it’s just not worth it.

After all, our Macs still run the same games after Lion came out. Nothing has changed unless we choose to upgrade, and we do have options for keeping Snow Leopard if we wish.

[Smoke_Tetsu]

Alice is not on the list as it's UB and not a PowerPC app but it's not working for me and others. If crashing with a .cpp error doesn't mean it needs a patch I don't know what does. They have not addressed it as this was all about their PowerPC games and I guess they may not have the rights to Alice any more so it may not be updated. So sadly I may have to end up wrapping it if I want to play it again. Hell to the no on dual booting to Snow Leopard for a game like that.... I didn't even want to dual boot to windows much less that. I just don't want to do it, alright?

[mattw]

Smoke_Tetsu, on 22 July 2011 - 12:53 PM, said:

Alice is not on the list as it's UB and not a PowerPC app but it's not working for me and others. If crashing with a .cpp error doesn't mean it needs a patch I don't know what does. They have not addressed it as this was all about their PowerPC games and I guess they may not have the rights to Alice any more so it may not be updated. So sadly I may have to end up wrapping it if I want to play it again. Hell to the no on dual booting to Snow Leopard for a game like that.... I didn't even want to dual boot to windows much less that. I just don't want to do it, alright?

I'm going to miss Alice, COD 1, JK2, JA etc. When a certain someone worked at Aspyr you could be sure there would be a patch even if done out of hours - now I'm not so sure?

They have moved some of these titles to the Appstore & MGS as downloads so there is a chance. The thing is for those of us who purchased them at retail before these avenues existed the patches haven't arrived. I ended up getting KOTOR when it was on sale on the App Store to get around issues with the retail CD release. I guess I could look to do the same for the others but why should I have to pay again? A small token amount to move to the digital version maybe (like MacPlay did with the Halo UB patch) but not full price.

[Pessot]

Please! Stop whining about Apple dropping PowerPC and Rosetta-support. At the same moment Apple announced they would go Intel only, you knew the day would come. You have had more than five years to prepare!
As for Aspyr. I really don't care what they do anymore. They dropped the ball long ago. They are a company in free fall.

[UniversalWolf]

clocknova, on 22 July 2011 - 08:49 AM, said:

Check out Good Old Games.  No DRM to bother with when you buy them there and they're dang cheap, especially if you wishlist a game then wait for it to go on sale.  I picked up Fallout and Fallout 2 for less than $3 each.  I also bought all of the Infinity engine games ( Baldur's Gate, etc,) for Less than $5 each.

Yeah, gog.com is great.  Highly recommended.

[dojoboy]

I'm not updating anytime soon. It can't be that great.

[dorkhero]

And this is why I am not upgrading to Lion any time soon. I plan to run my current Mac laptop with Snow Leopard until the wheels fall off. After that, who knows? If I'm running most of my gaming apps through CrossOver/Wineskin/VirtualBox etc. why bother even having a Mac? There probably won't even be any Macs anymore, just iPads. Actually, that might not be such a bad idea...

[Eric5h5]

dorkhero, on 22 July 2011 - 08:51 PM, said:

If I'm running most of my gaming apps through CrossOver/Wineskin/VirtualBox etc. why bother even having a Mac?

Er...if playing games is the only reason you have a computer, probably a Mac wasn't the best choice to begin with.

--Eric

[Smoke_Tetsu]

OK if playing games is the only thing you use a computer for.. period.. why have a computer? I'd like to think most people who bought a computer got one for more than just games.