6 replies to this topic

[IMG News]

CCP Games has posted a new guest dev blog from TransGaming founder and chief technology officer, Gavriel State. The developer described the process of bringing an MMO like CCP's EVE Online to Mac users through the use of the Cider Portability Engine, as well as the ongoing efforts to keep the Mac version running smoothly.

When an issue is found by one of the QA teams it is then tested to determine whether it is a general game problem, or something that is somehow specific to the Mac version. This is critical, because bugs that are on both platforms can only be solved by the game developer themselves. It's also a difficult job, especially with bugs that only happen sometimes. As you might imagine, having a series of concrete steps that can reliably reproduce a bug makes it much easier to solve.

When an issue has been identified that is specific to the Mac, TransGaming's R&D team becomes responsible for tracking things down and fixing the problem. This is no easy task, and requires developers who have broad knowledge of Windows and MacOS, DirectX and OpenGL, and who really really enjoy debugging complex problems - if you think that describes you, please let us know! 8-). Every change that the R&D team does to the core code for Cider is rigorously examined with a two-level code review process, one review by peers on the team, and another by a lead developer who is intimately familiar with the code in question.

In some cases, the problem turns out to be not within Cider, but with code at the Operating System or driver layer. At that point, we file bug reports with Apple's 'Radar' system, and try to provide as much information as possible to them so that they can reproduce a bug. To help with this process, we often use an internal tool which we call 'Snap', which records all D3D graphics commands used within a frame of a game into a file that can be played back later, separately from the game itself. This is especially useful for us when complicated steps are required to get to a point in the game where the problem occurs, so that the driver developers don't have to actually play things through to reproduce a bug!

Visit the page below to read more.

Return to Full Article - InsideMacGames News

[Sargiel]

Actually that's really interesting to see how this works in practice. Sounds like Eve online is very well supported.. I'd be tempted if it wasn't for the fact I've not much gaming time free as it stands at the minute. I can't justify subscribing when my game time will be so casual.

[Ubisububi]

Anything made with Cider is an instant "no-buy" for me. Every single game I've played that was developed using this craptastic toolset has been painfully slow compared to the windows version. While I prefer to play games using MacOS, I'll boot into Windows every time rather than load a "ciderized" game.

[ikir]

Ubisububi, on 14 October 2010 - 11:00 AM, said:

Anything made with Cider is an instant "no-buy" for me. Every single game I've played that was developed using this craptastic toolset has been painfully slow compared to the windows version. While I prefer to play games using MacOS, I'll boot into Windows every time rather than load a "ciderized" game.

Dragon Age is one of the best game i've ever played and the performance are acceptable. A good compromise imho.

[Mister Mumbles]

I used to be of that mindset, too, especially after the initial travesty that Heroes of Might & Magic 5 was. It certainly has had its growing pains. I do think Cider has finally come along far enough to be worth considered as an alternative to a native port. Dragon Age has really driven the point home for me that this wrapper has come a long way, so I expect it to get even better with time. Comparatively, in some ways it can already do better than some native ports as far as graphics card compatibility/effects are concerned.

[antdude]

I can't speak for Dragon Age, but I have been playing Eve on my 4-year-old MBP, and it plays fairly well for me. I do have an occasional Cider crash, but generally, it's stable. I would prefer that CCP put some effort into writing a OS X client for Eve, especially as Eve is about to get a second retail box push, and I find it hard to believe, with all the new rocket science going into the game, that the devs can't write a native OS X client for it.

[Janichsan]

Well, for me DA:O was quite the opposite: horrible performance, serious stability issues and (until recently) a complete lack of support turned me against Cider and Transgaming for good.

I will never buy any product "ported" with Cider and/or the name "Transgaming" on it again.