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Omni Group Updates Mac OS X Games Page
9:21 AM | Lucian Fong | Comment on this story
While it has been known for some time that the Omni Group is porting several popular games to Mac OS X (one, Giants: Citizen Kabuto, will be OS X only), their games page has been somewhat sparse. Before, it only contained a link to download the Heavy Metal F.A.K.K. 2 beta, but now, it has been improved significantly.
The revamped page lists the games being ported (Alice is now missing, but Quake 3 is present) with links to subpages containing information on each game, links to the developers and publishers of the game, system requirements, known issues, and release notes.
Especially interesting are the release notes for Giants and Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force. As noted in our interview with Tim Wood, Giants performs very well on a dual processor G4 under OS X and is very competitive with fast Windows machines:
• This is the only version of Giants that can use multiple processors. We actually added multi-processing support while we were doing the port, as well as doing various optimizations on the graphics routines (and changing the graphics library from Direct3D to OpenGL). The end result is we're getting the same framerates on our Macintosh dual 500 MHz G4s with a GeForce 2 on an AGP 2x bus as we do on a brand-new, top of the line Wintel AMD 1.3 GHz Ahtlon with a GeForce 3 on an AGP 4x bus and DDR RAM. Surprisingly, the Elite Force page notes that the OS X port is based on the expansion pack code. Does this mean that Aspyr Media will be publishing the Elite Force Expansion? Only time will tell. Here is the rest of the text from the release notes:• This is the only port of Elite Force for any platform that will use multiple processors. In our tests, we found an amazing 100% gain in framerates on our dual-processor 500MHz G4s over single-processor mode, which all of our introductory computer science classes told us should not happen. Well, c'est la vie.
• This port is of the expansion pack of Elite Force. It's our understanding that this port will work with the original Elite Force game and with the expansion pack.
We can already hear the dropping jaws and pools of drool forming. One notable issue found in Oni and Elite Force updates is that the Bink movies will not play properly; there is a Carbon Bink player, but no Cocoa support just yet.
Omni has not set specific release dates, but the page indicates Oni and Elite Force are complete. For more information, surf on over to their slick new website and browse around.
 Omni Group Game Ports Page
MacPlay (add to watch list)
Planet Moon Studios (add to watch list)
Omni Group (add to watch list)
Giants: Citizen Kabuto (add to watch list)
 Buy Giants: Citizen Kabuto
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