14 replies to this topic

[Frigidman™]

MacPlay aka MPDigitalGames

Ok, so who still living around here remembers MacPlay?

[Janichsan]

I certainly do remember the old MacPlay of yore. I still have among others their Mac versions of Icewind Dale and Fallout sitting prominently on my shelf.

I'm wondering how much the new MacPlay has really to do with the old one. If I remember correctly, the name changed hands a few times.

[macdude22]

Star Trek: Judgment Rites is literally in the Centris 650 caddy right now. Those were the days. When my gaming graphics were better than your average PC. I probably have at least a dozen Macplay boxes floating around.

Man that MacPlay logo looks a lot like the OnLive logo......

[Cougar]

Yeah, I doubt there is anyone there who actually worked at the old one.

After reading their mission statement I am still unsure of what they actually do. All those games are Paradox games (Paradox is listed as a "partner"), none of which were ported by MacPlay. And it's not like Paradox needs a publisher, because they are a publisher themselves.

[Frigidman™]

Its actually a publisher of Mac titles for services like App Store, and some others. The name was passed on from the original holders to the new owner (two guesses who, without cheating!). They wont (at least up front) be doing any direct development of games. That may come later when MacPlay regains momentum as being a lead for Mac releases (rumor, not confirmed).

Developers (and publishers as well) want an easy way to get their titles out to Mac, and so pass the burden onto someone else. MacPlay is an old household name too, so it carries weight there.

It just got re-launched, so the game setup is slim.

Oh, and the "mpdigitalgames" is due to Apple being a complete ASS about the three letters of 'mac' in the url. They absolutely hands down refuse any game to App Store if it has 'mac' anywhere in the company/support urls. I hear it was about two-three months of haggling with Apple, only to end up having to register a second domain just to point to the exact same stuff.

[DirtyHarry50]

I do remember MacPlay well from when I was a manager at an Egghead Software Boutique! Remember Egghead? The in-store Macs are what caused me to fall in love with Apple computers a long time ago but it was not until many moons later I finally had one to call my own. I remember many of the Mac titles we carried back at that time which would have been around late 80's through early 90s. It wasn't until around 1997 that I finally got my first Mac, a Performa 6300. I think it ran System 7 if I recall correctly. I loved that computer but sadly, I had to go back to the dark side for work reasons for a long time. There was no bootcamp then of course or else it might have been a different story.

Anyway, glad to see MacPlay back and part of bringing Pillars of Eternity to MAS. I hope they become a force for bringing more goodness to us.

Hmm, I am getting older. I think I may have my dates mixed up a bit because I know I bought and played Ultima VII: The Black Gate along with various other Origin classics of the day, such as Ultima Underworld, Wing Commander II, etc. and that would have been around 1992. Oops, I just confirmed I did have the dates about right. Never mind! lol

Did I mention I am getting older?

[MichalM.Mac]

Quote

MacPlay’s engineers have over 50 years of experience on the Mac. Yep, no kidding.

They are from the future! :-D

[mindnoise]

MichalM.Mac, on 18 April 2015 - 01:18 AM, said:

They are from the future! :-D

The Days of Future Past

[DirtyHarry50]

MichalM.Mac, on 18 April 2015 - 01:18 AM, said:

They are from the future! :-D

Maybe they have 50 engineers who all got out of college last year.

[Frost]

DirtyHarry50, on 18 April 2015 - 10:35 AM, said:

Maybe they have 50 engineers who all got out of college last year.

This is what I always think, rightly or wrongly, when I hear combined experience. I picture in my head a large group of retards and frak ups with very little experience.

[Matt Diamond]

DirtyHarry50, on 17 April 2015 - 11:09 PM, said:

I do remember MacPlay well from when I was a manager at an Egghead Software Boutique! Remember Egghead?

Oh sure. Fond memories of looking through the Mac section, which wasn't large but I only rarely bought a game. Lots of anticipation, for weeks sometimes, while I made up my mind. Then I'd savor the game. I bought the puzzle game Heaven and Earth fr Egghead, not sure what else.

Nowadays it's flash sales, impulse buys, and the game is playable on your desktop a couple minutes later. And then you put it in the queue forever, or rush through it to get to the next one. Feh!

(If you want lyrically appropriate music for my little rant, put on "We Used to Wait" by Arcade Fire.)

p.s. And don't get me started on those horseless carriages!

[Frigidman™]

Now it seems some publishers and developers are SOO lazy they dont even compile their rushed crap anymore. Get this... so, a submission comes in thats a pile of mixed mac/windows/linux files, and a bunch of .bat and .sh files all jumbled into one archive. I go 'wtf is this?!'... and then we get a snide response from the developer of the like 'well, we dont know how to compile an actual application or executable... because steam just lets us submit all this junk and they figure it out...'.

At that point I was like... ok, so you dont even know how to compile the basics of an app or exe?!?! Yet you want to SELL this thing you somehow managed to create?!?! ... good lord.

So, for a company like MacPlay to try and step into this game, and straighten things out for some developers or other publishers for the Mac, maybe some good will come of it, and purge this lunacy trend that steam has been encouraging with its greelight and early access, and now unfinished-crap-we-sell-anyways business models.

/rant.

[Frost]

Frigidman™, on 22 April 2015 - 07:08 AM, said:

Now it seems some publishers and developers are SOO lazy they dont even compile their rushed crap anymore. Get this... so, a submission comes in thats a pile of mixed mac/windows/linux files, and a bunch of .bat and .sh files all jumbled into one archive. I go 'wtf is this?!'... and then we get a snide response from the developer of the like 'well, we dont know how to compile an actual application or executable... because steam just lets us submit all this junk and they figure it out...'.

<coffee comes out nose>

What?

[Frigidman™]

I paraphrased, thus the single quotes, and not double. I didn't post the real text, to protect the innocent, and to not piss anyone off who were involved. But yes, the gist of it was surly that.

[DirtyHarry50]

Frigidman™, on 22 April 2015 - 03:24 PM, said:

I paraphrased, thus the single quotes, and not double. I didn't post the real text, to protect the innocent, and to not piss anyone off who were involved. But yes, the gist of it was surly that.

That is some seriously funny stuff, well for anybody who is not you that is.

That is the game you know. The object of this puzzler is to see if somehow, against all odds you can persist and overcome and find a way to make whatever this is build. That's part one. In part two the real fun begins where you then have to figure out why it instantly reboots your computer to a black screen after you have built it. Once you get past that you need to download open source development tools if you don't have them handy already so you can then debug this steaming pile and fix the astounding number of issues you will find (you can think of these as levels, many levels which offer many hours of entertainment) after which you rebuild it yet again and try playing the game only to find out that you just created a Mac version of Daikatana! You win! Congratulations!

There is a light in this darkness. You don't need to bother with any of this yourself. Just zip all the crap right back up and put it up under the name, "Game Construction Kit" which will run on anything, maybe price it at $14.99 and put up a disclaimer noting that due to the nature of this title refunds are not possible and all sales are final. People love stuff like this. Another idea for the title would be, "Game Development Simulator 2015" which then leaves the door open for future releases of equally stellar games that must somehow be assembled before being played.

As you can tell above, I know nearly zero about Mac development so further consultation as to development tools for the Mac version will be needed here. If they cost anything, just sell them as day 1 DLC.

OMG! That's it! Release assembly language DLC to go with it!

This is all you are getting for free out of me. Next time we'll need to discuss terms for a consulting position on the MGS staff which as you can see here is a hire you'd never regret.