33 replies to this topic

[UmarOMC1]

Matt Diamond, on 24 January 2020 - 11:51 AM, said:

Not to be confused with System Shock 3, which is also being worked on (by Warren Spector!) https://otherside-e....system-shock-3/

Speaking of System Shock 3…

[Matt Diamond]

Oh dear.

I guess we'll now get silence from the developer for a year or two, like Descent Underground.. Confirming that it is dead would be the final straw that would actually kill it, because they'd lose that 1% chance they have of getting a new publisher interested.

[henryfakesmile]

Rodanne, on 19 January 2020 - 06:52 PM, said:

Honestly I despair,  there just doesn't seem to be much left  or upcoming in the area of FPS on macOS.  
Because I do a lot of mac forum stuff I like to keep my software updated on all my devices and the recent upgrade to macOS Catalina has limited my choices even further than before.  Even then I would have been limited to re playing games I had already played like Bioshock Infinite or Deus Ex both 32bit games and now unavailable to me.
I prefer solo games because my internet speeds are not good enough for team play.
I do not like RPG's most of which are just glorified board games in my opinion despite the obvious complexity and quality of some of them.
Apple's new innovation, Arcade is much the same.  Lots of fast moving colourful games ideal for family play with the kids on big screens, not something that appeals to me.
What I have loved over the years have all been shooters with a good underlying plot, charecters i could identify with and missions with clear objectives.  I can trace my mac game playing back to the Marathon Trilogy and Halo which in my mind are still better than many of the offerings on the App Store today.  Even Quake 3 and the last Doom edition had believable story lines, great graphics, atmosphere, sound and objectives.  Prey which was for a time available on the App store was perhaps the least of these games yet even that excelled in every area over the stupid, seemingly pointless zombie shooters available now.  
The Metro series was yet another great example of what I would like to have today.  I would gladly pay whatever the price for a similar quality game but there don't seem to be any.
Please tell me that there is some glimmer of hope on the horizon or do I have to finally accept that buying a dedicated Windows gaming PC is the only way forward.
Right now I am on my fourth play through of Borderlands 2 as Zero (my least favourite character).  After that it looks like a dead end.

at least we still have this great FPS coming
https://twitter.com/...4185626626?s=21

[henryfakesmile]

Rodanne, on 19 January 2020 - 06:52 PM, said:

Honestly I despair,  there just doesn't seem to be much left  or upcoming in the area of FPS on macOS.  
Because I do a lot of mac forum stuff I like to keep my software updated on all my devices and the recent upgrade to macOS Catalina has limited my choices even further than before.  Even then I would have been limited to re playing games I had already played like Bioshock Infinite or Deus Ex both 32bit games and now unavailable to me.
I prefer solo games because my internet speeds are not good enough for team play.
I do not like RPG's most of which are just glorified board games in my opinion despite the obvious complexity and quality of some of them.
Apple's new innovation, Arcade is much the same.  Lots of fast moving colourful games ideal for family play with the kids on big screens, not something that appeals to me.
What I have loved over the years have all been shooters with a good underlying plot, charecters i could identify with and missions with clear objectives.  I can trace my mac game playing back to the Marathon Trilogy and Halo which in my mind are still better than many of the offerings on the App Store today.  Even Quake 3 and the last Doom edition had believable story lines, great graphics, atmosphere, sound and objectives.  Prey which was for a time available on the App store was perhaps the least of these games yet even that excelled in every area over the stupid, seemingly pointless zombie shooters available now.  
The Metro series was yet another great example of what I would like to have today.  I would gladly pay whatever the price for a similar quality game but there don't seem to be any.
Please tell me that there is some glimmer of hope on the horizon or do I have to finally accept that buying a dedicated Windows gaming PC is the only way forward.
Right now I am on my fourth play through of Borderlands 2 as Zero (my least favourite character).  After that it looks like a dead end.

have you tried this? its kind of nice paying with the elite 2 controller
Save 55% on Tannenberg on Steam
https://store.steamp...com/app/633460/

[pofox]

I recently discovered iortcw and I'm reliving this awesome FPS (using my legal CD). I'm also using my old iMac (running Sierra) to play 32 bit games. I just bought a few on sale from MGS. Yes they're old games but still great fun, and some I never got round to buying and playing in the first place. Those will keep me busy for a while.

[UmarOMC1]

In hindsight, I would've loved a port of Wolfenstein:The New Order rather than six months of Black Ops 3 multiplayer (they still haven't updated the Steam macOS requirements to note that macOS players cannot play with Windows players).

[dr.zeissler]

In my opinion, make the 32bit-games available for purchase again, not everbody wants the latest and greatest stuff.
It would be very nice to be able to get the older games that run up to 10.14 for purchase.

[jos]

dr.zeissler, on 06 June 2020 - 06:20 AM, said:

In my opinion, make the 32bit-games available for purches again, not everbody wants the latest and greatest stuff.
It would be very nice to be able to get the older games that run up to 10.14 for purchase.

I couldn't agree more. There was absolutely no reason to remove those games from digital stores in the first place. Why would you just remove all of them if you could also just keep on selling them to people who are still running older versions of macOS? It's extra revenue for them if they'd just continue selling those games.

I've got several MacBooks and only one of them is running Catalina. The other MacBooks are still running Mojave or even older versions of macOS and there are several games I was still going to buy. What's the result of just removing them all? Lost revenue as I was ready to pay for a game like for example Rage.

I think it's absolutely ridiculous. It doesn't hurt anyone to just keep on selling those games. Just take a look at Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun. That game is still being sold. The only thing they did was putting a warning at the top of their listing on the Mac App Store to warn buyers of the incompatibility with Catalina. Why didn't Aspyr and Feral just do the same? Let people just buy your stuff.

Imagine Apple would do the same thing with the movies they're selling on iTunes. Nowadays you can buy movies in 4k with Dolby Vision. Imagine Apple would just remove all of the old movies that are not available in 4k with Dolby Vision. "All of these movies are using old technology and they won't be updated to 4k and Dolby Vision, so we'll just remove all of these thousands of movies. We don't care if people still want to watch them and are willing to pay for them. We don't care about customers who want to give us their money. Screw them."

[dr.zeissler]

The reason was that they fear a massive amount of people (noobs) that will possible contact them
because they are too dumb to read that these games do NOT work on current MacOS...but they
purchased them and now the games do not work...there is obviously no other reason for that...

[jos]

I don't understand how someone can be that stupid. When there's a big warning at the top of the page how can you still just buy it without checking if your Mac can actually run the particular game? I can't imagine there are so many people still buying 32-bit games on 64-bit systems that it justifies removing all of their games from digital stores.

Besides that, look at the listing of every single game made by Aspyr and Feral. This is the first line of Shadow of the Tomb Raider on the Mac App Store:

Quote

Before you buy, please expand this description and check that your computer matches or exceeds each of the requirements listed.

You'll find this text or something similar at the top of the listings of all of their games. If people don't understand the difference between 32-bit and 64-bit, they also have no idea about minimal system requirements. If Aspyr and Feral think there'll be that many people contacting them because their 32-bit game doesn't run on their 64-bit system, those same kind of people'll also be contacting them because they don't meet the minimal system requirements.

Okay, I just did a little test and it turns out the argument doesn't make any sense anyway. From a company like Apple I wouldn't even expect they'd create this kind of confusion and possible problems by allowing 32-bit apps to be bought on a 64-bit system. If a 32-bit app doesn't run on a 64-bit system, why would they even let you buy this app without any kind of warning? That would not make any sense at all.

So, here are the results:
- On this MacBook I'm running Mojave and of course the 32-bit game Shadow Tactics - Blades of the Shogun is showing up, because on this MacBook I'm signed in to the Mac App Store with the Apple ID I used to buy this game.
- Another MacBook is still running Sierra and on this particular MacBook I'm not signed in to my Apple ID, as I don't use FaceTime, iMessage or anything like that on this particular MacBook and I don't use the Mac App Store to buy games or apps. I searched the Mac App Store and indeed it shows me Shadow Tactics - Blades of the Shogun. This confirms this particular 32-bit game is indeed still for sale and can still be bought on any 32-bit system.
- Now let's check my 2018 MacBook running Catalina. Guess what? Absolutely no trace at all of Shadow Tactics - Blades of the Shogun.

This indeed confirms what I've always thought. There was absolutely no reason at all to remove those games from digital stores, because there'd be zero customer calls from people buying 32-bit games on 64-bit systems. It's complete nonsense, because you can't buy a 32-bit on a 64-bit system. Why would Apple let you buy something if beforehand they already know it's not going to run on your system?

[dr.zeissler]

Nobody cut's of revenue without a serious reason...they even have no costs of having that games on steam or any other digital store...so what is the reason?...so please make a guess why they did that?

[Janichsan]

jos, on 07 June 2020 - 05:09 AM, said:

I don't understand how someone can be that stupid. When there's a big warning at the top of the page how can you still just buy it without checking if your Mac can actually run the particular game?

Judging from how often threads pop up on the Steam forums with topics along the line of "I bought this and that currently popular (Windows only) game, why can't I play it on my ten-year-old MacBook without dedicated GPU": there are more people who don't read anything of that than you think.

[jos]

dr.zeissler, on 07 June 2020 - 05:15 AM, said:

Nobody cut's of revenue without a serious reason...they even have no costs of having that games on steam or any other digital store...so what is the reason?...so please make a guess why they did that?

Exactly, so why would they remove them. That's indeed a very good question and I've got absolutely no idea. I also want to know why they did it.

Janichsan, on 07 June 2020 - 07:29 AM, said:

Judging from how often threads pop up on the Steam forums with topics along the line of "I bought this and that currently popular (Windows only) game, why can't I play it on my ten-year-old MacBook without dedicated GPU": there are more people who don't read anything of that than you think.

Yeah, I might have misjudged people's stupidity there. What also surprises me every time is how people don't know the difference between rating the retailer or rating the product on websites like Amazon or eBay. Then you see someone giving a particular product only one star on Amazon and the reason for giving the product only one star is: "Product never arrived." Contact Amazon then, instead of rating the product with only one star. Then you're on eBay looking through the ratings of a seller and someone gives a negative rating with the following reason: "Boring movie. Expected more from it." You have to rate the seller, not the movie.

So, you're right. If people don't even understand the difference between rating the product they've bought or rating the one selling the product to them, how will these kind of people ever understand the latest Windows game doesn't run on a ten year old MacBook?

[nick68k]

Janichsan, on 07 June 2020 - 07:29 AM, said:

Judging from how often threads pop up on the Steam forums with topics along the line of "I bought this and that currently popular (Windows only) game, why can't I play it on my ten-year-old MacBook without dedicated GPU": there are more people who don't read anything of that than you think.

Saying that, I tried to run an Apple Arcade game last night on my 2020 MBA (10.15.5) only to be faced with a kernel panic. On rebooting I tried it again, with the same result. I then uninstalled it. If Apple can't get this right....

(The game was 'Stranded Sails' incidentally. Let me know if it works for you).