128 replies to this topic

[iRolley]

edddeduck, on 01 July 2011 - 03:01 AM, said:

You have not needed a disk in the drive for about 6 months at least now All Feral games in 2011 (including re-releases of games like BioShock and LEGO games) can play with a DVD or using a serial code it is the users choice (one time activation required after that you can play forever offline without internet). We now sell all our new games and release at least one older game in the new DRM format every month we have about 12 games available using this system so far and plan to keep growing the catalogue in the future.

As a side note all Feral games available to download all have exactly the same DRM so you don't need to worry about what store you buy the game (MacGameStore, D2D, GameAgent etc) it will always be the Feral system, all patches and updates always come from our servers directly once you bought the game you don't need to wait for your specific store to patch the title. AppStore patches might in some cases be a few days later as they need to wait for Apple approval.

Edwin

Good news !! Just placed my pre-order on feralinteractive's store

From what I understand my Bioshock CD did not come with a serial, so I can't play without CD yet ? Where will we be able to get a serial ?

[edddeduck]

iRolley, on 05 July 2011 - 05:33 AM, said:

Good news !! Just placed my pre-order on feralinteractive's store

From what I understand my Bioshock CD did not come with a serial, so I can't play without CD yet ? Where will we be able to get a serial ?

We have a manual method right now (automated comes later) for those who can prove they own the game and cannot wait. Just email the game support email and our support guys can take you through the upgrade procedure from DVD to Serial manually.

Cheers,

Edwin

[mattw]

edddeduck, on 06 July 2011 - 05:34 AM, said:

We have a manual method right now (automated comes later) for those who can prove they own the game and cannot wait. Just email the game support email and our support guys can take you through the upgrade procedure from DVD to Serial manually.

Cheers,

Edwin

That sounds good - please could you advise what we need to e-mail to support as proof of ownership - a photo of the product or a copy of the invoice from the shop?

[lewdvig]

The DRM worked fine on Borderlands - I like being to quickly see my activations.

If it is priced right I might buy it again on Mac just to support you guys.

[edddeduck]

mattw, on 06 July 2011 - 02:56 PM, said:

That sounds good - please could you advise what we need to e-mail to support as proof of ownership - a photo of the product or a copy of the invoice from the shop?

Support can advise on you specifics if you have the receipt that is always best but I know we have alternative methods of upgrading for people who no longer have the receipt.

Cheers,

Edwin

[ltcommander.data]

edddeduck, on 30 June 2011 - 11:04 AM, said:

DX11 water effects will not be on the Mac version as Mac OS (and the version of OpenGL bundled) does not support Hardware Tessellation. This means things like the DX11 eye candy in DiRT2 will have to wait for more of the OpenGL 4 features to be implemented on the Mac before it is possible to have DX11 style effects on the Mac.

However as mentioned by others the DX11 stuff is very subtle so on new iMacs the Mac version will look a lot nicer than the XBox or PS3 versions but very slightly less than a PC with DX11 enabled but if you run them side by side at full speed you would have to look closely to notice! I have to say on new Mac's DiRT2 will be the nicest looking game in the Feral list of games and will be up their for the status of being the nicest looking game on the Mac. Then again I am a little biased

Edwin

It seems I've been slow to comment on Feral's DIRT 2 announcement considering I mentioned last year hoping that Feral would address the lack of recent Mac racers with DIRT2 or GRID. Needless to say I'm looking forward to this great release.

In terms of DX11 support I wouldn't expect tessellation support as even Lion only has OpenGL 3.2. Similarly, I don't expect 64-bit HDR support since even if Apple supported OpenGL 4.x, I believe the limitation would still be that ARB has not defined 64-bit texture formats yet for OpenGL. I'm guessing the graphics difference wouldn't be worth re-implementing the DX11 Compute Shader High Definition Ambient Occlusion in OpenCL although doing so would get Feral recognition as shipping the first major game incorporating OpenCL which perhaps could be leveraged with Apple or AMD for some marketing benefits. (nVidia seems to be all CUDA so likely couldn't care less). The one thing in the DX11 codepath that hopefully you can implement in OpenGL is full screen resolution post-processing. The DX9 codepath does port-processing at quarter resolution presumably for performance reasons to support older GPUs who default to DX9, but if Apple's OpenGL drivers are now up to scratch, full resolution post-processing can perhaps be implemented for newer/faster Mac GPUs at the very least.

I'm guessing due to Games for Windows Live in Windows, there will be no cross-platform online multiplayer support?, but will cross-platform LAN games still be possible?

And out of curiosity, DIRT 2 was marketed as the first game to use the Rapture3D software OpenAL sound engine which is Windows only. Will you be porting this sound engine to OS X or re-implementing the sound using OS X's built-in OpenAL framework? If the later, do you anticipate any differences in sound quality or performance for better or worse?

[UmarOMC1]

From what I've run into on page 319 of Appendix C of the OpenGL 3.2 spec I believe there is a reference to the RGTC compressed texture format which is 64-bit. As far as sound goes, I'd be sure the licensing money required to port Rapture3D isn't worth it. I'm sure it would sound great on my DTT3500 5.1 setup, but, honestly, most stereo media sounds great, too. Most Mac users, unfortunately.... errrRp- full stop, while writing this and through multiple Google searches I ran into an Unreal Tournament 3 (wasn't that slated for mac release, too!?) video comparing the audio effects of "Generic Audio" and "Rapture3D"–if not playing with headphones please close your eyes and pay attention to the sound... the Rapture3D parts appear to handle Doppler effects with a richer contrast:

It would be nice for us, but I'm happy with the game... here's another sampling:


I tried this with line-out and digital-optical... the digital optical definitely sounds more crisp on my end... the analog's the way to go for bass and parties, though! lol

Feral did a great job with BioShock and I believe my experience on the Mac surpassed my experiencing it on the XBOX360 - the developer's use of the Havock engine allowed me to turn everything to Max settings with smoother gameplay after enabling 4-core usage via the proper *.ini file (it defaults at 2).

Blah blah blah...

[ltcommander.data]

UmarOMC1, on 15 July 2011 - 09:51 AM, said:

From what I've run into on page 319 of Appendix C of the OpenGL 3.2 spec I believe there is a reference to the RGTC compressed texture format which is 64-bit.

I'm no graphics designer so I may be way of base on this, but RGTC only defines up to two color channels, Red and Green, each only 8-bit and is intended for use as normal maps and brings OpenGL current with texture support formats introduced in DX10. I believe what DIRT2 uses in DX11 64-bit HDR requires a texture format with 16-bits in each of the Red, Green, Blue, and Alpha channels.

Rapture3D does seem to offer a larger volume environment for the 3D sound so that positioning is more distinct. Since Rapture3D seems to be an implementation of OpenAL, I was just wondering whether it'll be possible to recreate everything with OS X's native OpenAL framework.

And yes, I too have every confidence in Feral doing a good port.

[Smoke_Tetsu]

Rapture3D I've noticed even has settings for doing 5.1 surround via matrixing to Dolby Pro Logic II however when trying that on the PC I don't think I was able to get it working. The darkplaces engine for quake has a prologic spatialization console variable that when enabled gives positional stereo surround effects from dolby pro logic II so I know it's technically possible. I'd be happy if all games had similar sound code as that game. Seriously it works very well if you sat a person down and listened to darkplaces with that cvar on they'd swear it was true 5.1 surround sound. Miles sound system used to have a similar function in certain windows games but darkplaces version is even better than that. I'm not sure what API darkplaces use for the sound but I kind of think probably OpenAL but I'm not sure. If you play any darkplaces based game like nexuiz or that other new spinoff or even just quake you owe it to yourself to set snd_spatialization_prologic "1"  and hear for yourself. It even beats some "true" implementations of multichannel surround sound.

[UmarOMC1]

ltcommander.data, on 15 July 2011 - 08:58 PM, said:

I'm no graphics designer so I may be way of base on this, but RGTC only defines up to two color channels, Red and Green, each only 8-bit and is intended for use as normal maps and brings OpenGL current with texture support formats introduced in DX10. I believe what DIRT2 uses in DX11 64-bit HDR requires a texture format with 16-bits in each of the Red, Green, Blue, and Alpha channels.

Rapture3D does seem to offer a larger volume environment for the 3D sound so that positioning is more distinct. Since Rapture3D seems to be an implementation of OpenAL, I was just wondering whether it'll be possible to recreate everything with OS X's native OpenAL framework.

And yes, I too have every confidence in Feral doing a good port.

24-bit color = 8-bits per RGB channel 16.7 million colors, add another 8-bits for alpha channel ("RGBA8", AKA "32-bit" color, which really isn't)... most people, save for the rare female with the genetic, ocular ability to recognize billions of colors, cannot discern colors beyond this 16.7 million color gamut. Whatever. What I ascertain is that each texture has to specify whether its data is stored in, for example; 64-bits per group of X [amount of] texels, so its more of a data format than a color gamut I believe.

[Eric5h5]

UmarOMC1, on 15 July 2011 - 10:55 PM, said:

most people, save for the rare female with the genetic, ocular ability to recognize billions of colors, cannot discern colors beyond this 16.7 million color gamut.

The colors represented by 8 bits per gun aren't at all adequate to cover the gamut viewable by humans.  People are typically sensitive to some colors over others (which is why 16-bit color is usually 565 for RGB), so a lot of the colors in those 16.7 million are "wasted" and many that we can see aren't present.  Banding artifacts with smooth gradients are pretty noticeable for many colors; in particular, just 256 shades of true gray is paltry.  Also, image processing benefits a lot from having 16 bits per gun.  I believe 10 bits is the minimum necessary for real "truecolor", but sadly that would be restricted to few people, given how popular display tech is rather hopeless in this regard (how many panels won't even go past 18 bits and use dithering to simulate 24?).

Ahem.  Anyway, yeah, Dirt 2!

--Eric

[Smoke_Tetsu]

Higher color also benefits things like multiple layers of transparency and things like that. It helped quite a bit when we went up to 32-bit from 16-bit making transparent stuff like plasma bolts, fire, etc. look less grainy but yeah some colors\types of shading still get banded especially when doing multiple layers.

[bismilah]

Can't wait for this one  

Slightly off-topic, I prefer buying boxed versions, to get the real disc, the box and the printed manual. So I like the idea of activating online to avoid disc scratches.
I know VPLTD allows 3 maximum registrations with a serial number. What is the maximum with Feral ?
I'm asking because sometimes I give the games I don't play anymore to family or friends.

[edddeduck]

DiRT 2 should support surround sound perfectly fine, we are using a custom AL engine not Rapture3D (or the Apple AL version). This means you get reverb effects (not available in Apple's version of OpenAL) when travelling thorough tunnels. I am not an audiophile but the PC and Mac sound very similar to me when playing with headphones.

The Mac version will not access the DX11 path so DX11 specific features will be missing from the release. It should be noted in most reviews commonly it is commented that the DX11 features are very subtle and not that noticeable while playing.

As games start using DX11 more and Apple provides more OpenGL extensions we will increase our DX11 support as feasible but DiRT 2 will not have any DX11 path options on launch.

Edwin

[Vallen]

Not sure if this was addressed anywhere else...but when is the release date for Dirt 2?  My nephews and I can't wait!  Also, how will the MP be handled? Direct IP?  Thanks.

[iRolley]

Vallen, on 25 July 2011 - 12:19 PM, said:

Not sure if this was addressed anywhere else...but when is the release date for Dirt 2?  My nephews and I can't wait!  Also, how will the MP be handled? Direct IP?  Thanks.

yup, I was expecting it last week

[Janichsan]

Vallen, on 25 July 2011 - 12:19 PM, said:

Not sure if this was addressed anywhere else...but when is the release date for Dirt 2?  

According to Feral's news page, August.

[Sneaky Snake]

JaguarGod, on 16 June 2011 - 09:41 AM, said:

my new Mac racing sim setup.

Vision Racer VR3 New "Carbon" Unit with modded keyboard holder
G27 Wheel
27" LED 1080P monitor (waiting for the triple monitor stand from Vision Racer later this year)
1000w Audio System (only 2.1 though)
Buttkicker LFE
Modded Mac Pro built into Thermaltake Level 10 BMW Design Case

good gosh, how much did that cost?

[JaguarGod]

Sneaky Snake, on 28 July 2011 - 08:39 PM, said:

good gosh, how much did that cost?

A lot! I am married with 3 children, so money is always tight, but developing racing games and sim racing are my only hobbies so all of my disposable income goes toward it. And for as much as hardware costs for sim racing, I do not think I can handle any more hobbies! But I have been sim racing since the early 90's and have adapted with the tech and hardware as the years have gone on. I have taken a lot of popsnizzle for building a Mac sim racing rig, but I don't care. I want to race on the Mac and I have used Macs for so long that I am jaded. I am very lucky to be able to have these nice things and I am always appreciative for the job lets me afford them.

The situation at the moment though is the lack of sim-style racing games (or just really good racing games) on the Mac where the PC side has an abundance of arcade style and sims. Though Dirt 2 is not really a sim, it is still a triple-A title and I am very happy to be getting it soon.

Oh, and just as a quick plug, I have developed a Mac Racing game that will be submitted to the Mac App Store soon. I will post some information about it soon. It is a very small game, but is definitely more on the sim side, but cut down to appeal more to the casual crowd who may download it. I am also already working on the update for it to add another car series and another track.

Here are a few pics of the unit before the buttkicker.

[Sargiel]

That set-up is mental Congrats!