[Janichsan]

Sans Cider, that is. Here's the news (translated from French). And while the guys at Virtual Programming were at it, they also ported X3 Terran Conflict.

[ltcommander.data]

Wow. They are actually re-porting a game in-house that they already paid Transgaming to port and giving it to existing users for free? That's impressive. Even Macsoft charged for their UB of Halo to move from Codewarrior to XCode. When I filled out VP's Contact Us page to suggest they bring over Terrain Conflict seeing it shares the same engine as X3, I had no idea they'd do a native port. More native ports are always great.

I wonder if Transgaming has commented? Must really take the wind out of their sails to have a developer basically reject their work.

[Eric5h5]

Yep, that's kind of unprecedented. Good for VP though; that's one heck of a "bugfix"....

--Eric

[ltcommander.data]

The other interesting thing is that it's only the middle of January and we already have announcements of Mac ports/re-ports of Rome - Total War, Bioshock, X3: Reunion, and X3: Terran Conflict, all seemingly native. 2009 might well turn out to be a great year for Mac gaming.

Since Aspyr came up in the Bioshock thread, now that Feral has Bioshock and Rome - Total War, VP has X3: Reunion and X3: Terran Conflict, and Macsoft presumably still has UT3 and Gears of War, I wonder where is Aspyr's salvo?

[bobbob]

ltcommander.data, on January 16th 2009, 11:15 PM, said:

I wonder where is Aspyr's salvo?

BtS, MotB, SoZ, Supreme Commander, Forces of Corruption, Resurrection of Evil, CoD and CoD:UO universal updates, ... it's going to be quite a ride.

[macdude22]

Terran Conflict, hot diggity daffodil. Now my coworker can stop gloating that he has Terran Conflict and I don't.

[Sargiel]

Very interesting news!

I originally bought X3 via digitial download from Mac Game Store so am both looking forward to a new native version of X3 & the opportunity to purchase Terran Conflict

It really is shaping up to be a great year for Mac gaming. All I need now is Aspyr to announce the NWN 2 expansions

[jackdawsson]

There's been quite a bit of good Mac gaming news lately, it'd be easy to be almost blase about any single game. With more great games being released (& reworked) for Mac, I'll echo all the comments here. I certainly look forward to Mac developers continuing this upward trend, which I'll happily support by buying more OS X games this year. - Just wish Apple would pull their fingers out in this dept before Windows 7 goes gold!

[Dark_Archon]

I hope my Windows X3:TC saves can transfer over.

[Janichsan]

The release dates get more concrete: according to Egosoft, X3 Terran Conflict comes in April, the new version of X3 Reunion 3–4 weeks later.

[dojoboy]

VP's announced X3TC beta testing has begun.

[Dark_Archon]

dojoboy, on May 7th 2009, 12:02 PM, said:

VP's announced X3TC beta testing has begun.

Will saves from the PC version be compatible?

[Rev-O]

So I have X³. Liked the game (in theory) but hated the controls. Found the learning curve on the controls ridiculously steep and completely non intuitive. Never played the game for any length of time because I so loathed the controls. Really want to play the game, and am really excited about the expansion coming out.
Any words of advice on how to get up and rolling with the game? Should I play the main scenario or should I just play a custom solo game? How long does it take to get used to pressing command+control+shift+option+q+m to autotarget the next closet enemy ship (yes, I'm being facetious. That's my impression of how silly the controls are).
Any advice or suggies?

[Dark_Archon]

The main scenario has some fun missions and you can always ignore it if you choose. The controls didn't really bother me too much. I did use joystick buttons to target nearest enemy and do most combat controls. Everything else is for things that aren't completely urgent. You don't really get used to remote trading/management until you have a fleet so you really need it. Making your first million doing boring stuff is the hardest but once you have some money, you can get a cargo ship and trade command mk3 and set up a sector trader/universe trader which is very profitable and frees you up to do other stuff.

[strangemax]

dojoboy, on May 7th 2009, 04:02 PM, said:

VP's announced X3TC beta testing has begun.

Any further word on a release date?

[Sargiel]

Seems pretty quiet Hopefully things are progressing well - I'm looking forward to this release and the re-release of the original game as a native port.

[Janichsan]

Sargiel, on July 4th 2009, 07:04 PM, said:

Seems pretty quiet Hopefully things are progressing well - I'm looking forward to this release and the re-release of the original game as a native port.

I'm wondering if they use the opportunity to include the latest expansions into the games (Bala Gi missions for Reunion, the Aldrin missions for TC).

[Sargiel]

I noticed on youtube VP have put up a trailer citing Terran Conflict is due out for Mac Sept 09 - http://www.youtube.c...h?v=i9JIUwBL6kc.

[dojoboy]

Sargiel, on September 16th 2009, 04:57 PM, said:

I noticed on youtube VP have put up a trailer citing Terran Conflict is due out for Mac Sept 09 - http://www.youtube.c...h?v=i9JIUwBL6kc.

Two words:

(1) Snow
(2) Leopard

[RGoulder]

According to Virtual Programming's twitter page X3 Terran Conflict is coming friday 9th of October