Possible Bungie departure would open door to Mac games - Page 3

WoW plays on the mac, Tolkien online does not. What other MMORPGs run on the mac?

Jason Jones was not only the programmer on all the games mentioned above, he developed all the story lines for Pathways, Marathon, Myth, and of course, Halo. Jones is the lifeblood of Bungie and a true genius.

I have no doubt that if this story is true, it's all because of Jason, who I'm sure is not happy working for Microsoft. His name isn't even in the credits for Halo 3 (just a thank you) so I'm guessing he's been working on something other than Halo for the last few years.

I think later I said in bootcamp for other than WoW...but yes, only WoW has a native port. Most MMORPGs aren't all that graphic intensive or at least play well on lower settings.

Pretty much all strategy, adventure and simulation are PC domain. So is poker with real money.

I don't see mods on consoles ever getting to the point they are at on PC's, that is, free to release and free to install, allowing a measure of creative chaos and allowing new kinds of gaming to try its wings. Only things that are considered to be of interest to relatively many people will make it into XBox or PS online. Those that do, will be censored and otherwise altered to suit the "console demographic".

If I understand correctly, WoW's probably the least graphic intensive of the bunch, and it only runs tolerably on iMacs and Mac Pro in OS X. Of those, Mac Pro is insignificant. I wonder what percentage of Macs are iMacs?

What does MAC stand for? Are you a friend of Wakashizuma? Or are you Wakashizuma yourself.

No self-respecting Mac geek will ever call a Mac a MAC.

In fact, when I wanted to play games, I bought a console - not a PC. PCs are ridiculously expensive if you are just going to use it for playing games. And I use my Mac for everything else a PC can do.

Okay, plain and simple, Macs as they are today are NOT capable gaming machines, unless you pay big $$$ on a Mac Pro + graphics card. However the "then go and buy a PC" and "then go and buy a PS3" comments aren't well-founded.

If Macs are capable of doing all the great things that you pundits have said they should be doing instead (medical research, movie edited, etc, whatnot) why should they banished from the gaming world as well? Actually, it makes LESS sense that they "shouldn't" be allowed to game. We've all used Macs and all know the great performance we get from them. If the performance was only geared toward graphics processing (AND IF WE HAD DRIVER SUPPORT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), Mac-loving gamers (like me) could have their cake and eat it too.

The other side to this (beyond gaming performance & driver support) is physical design. For obvious reasons, you can't stuff a high-performance GPU in an iMac. Moreover, I would bet that few gamers can afford a Mac Pro, especially when it's so cheap on the PC.

Case in point: I maintain a self-built PC for non-hardcore, but still graphics-heavy gaming (currently GTA III & spin-offs, Sims 2, Sim City 4). Every few years, I spend about a hundred bucks upgrading it with a new graphics card. For a hundred bucks you can get last year's best model. Aside from the intermittent Mo-board/CPU/RAM refresh (~$300 for last year's best), it is a very cheap way to stay on top of the PC gaming scene.

It's sort of a chicken-and-egg conundrum, though. Right now there aren't enough good games for Mac that make it worth switching, cold-turkey. I see Apple taking the right steps, though. The first was making the Mac dual-bootable into Windows. The catch, however, is that current graphics cards must be Mac & Windows compatible. That would be the next step. The following step would be a unit that was easily upgradable. (Just because I like my Macs to run for 6 years, doesn't mean I want to suffer through the last three.) If you build it, [they] will come. (Mac game developers.)

-Clive

Oops, very sorry, I misread one of your posts. However just swap out modding with daily updates and there ya go, same story. Neither of them started daily updates to games to improve on small things. The idea itself has been around for a while.

Very sorry about how I misread your post though.

Are you seriously saying that the 2400XT can't run GTA III, Sims 2 or Sim City 4 in all its glory? I ran WoW on my old old G4 Quicksilver and GeForce card even with BC (tho' laggy sometimes). The MBP ran WoW fine with the X1600.

If you are non-hardcore the iMac is fine in bootcamp or with native Mac games.

And the "go buy a PS3" or 360 are well founded as much of the gaming market has gone exactly that way and the casual PC games run fine on a 2400XT.

+1. Rare times when we're 100% on the same page for more than 1 post a day

Those games are about a year old, two years old and four years old. Sims is the newest and the game genre is remarkably light on graphics. These days even the simplest casual-aimed RTS is going to need some graphics power.
"Casual" vs "hardcore" is in my opinion better understood as skill/intensity level and time investment. Only those games e.g. ultrarealist simulators that require too high knowledge and skill barriers of entry from the casual player are off limits to him. Otherwise you'll find mr. Casual and mr. Hardcore often in same games, just playing different difficulty levels, in different company, or perhaps the exact same thing with different outcomes (they might find the same Halo match great fun, just one winning and one primarily getting his ass kicked, for example).

The only link to hardware we can make is that the casual player won't have *very* powerful hardware since they don't care so much whether they're in high resolution, surround sound, shaders on, HDR on, anti-aliasing on, and so forth. It simply makes no sense to pay for the ultra high end gear.

Still, you can be a casual player and still play the latest Madden or Bioshock because both looked like nice distractions at the store. You don't need much of a machine for it either - $700 will do just fine. You do need to make a conscious decision that you'll be gaming a little, so you make sure some of that money goes towards graphics.

Here's what I consider good enough hardware to market to a "casual gamer":
It must run every game on the store shelf at time of purchase. Maybe it has go to low resolutions and turn all effects off to accomplish that, but the game must run at playable framerate, say 20 minimum.

2400XT isn't enough.

Why the contention. Apple hasn't been the best gaming platform for a long time. Everyong knows this. It is OK for casual gaming and can provide hours of entertainment except for the more demanding 3d games.

What is only contentious is it would take very little on Apple's part to offer a machine that could play the more demanding games. Apple chooses not to for whatever reasons. This is not news.

Bungie's possible exit from Microsoft is also not news. It won't magically get Apple to offer anything but AIO and Mac mini consumer desktops, Bungie won't care, Apple won't care.

Haha.. common Tuncer, he didn't do all the story for Marathon.

But I agree about Jason being a genius.

Sure they'll run today's games and the games I listed just fine. They're older games. But what about next year’s games? I will definitely want to plat StarCraft II. I have a NVidia GeForce FX 5500 (a 2004 card) which plays the games I listed beautifully and will probably handle SCII on lower settings. Will the 2400XT, with that legendary Apple graphics card support (*laughs*) be able to play new games four years from now? Errt. Try again.


Finally! Someone who understands me!

I don’t require the best resolutions and break-neck framerates. I just want to play, and I want to be able to play games for the next few years… Not like my circa 2002 top-of-the-line 800MHz G4 iMac which couldn’t even play Unreal Tournament 2003. On lowest settings, I had about 5 frames per second. Sad.

-Clive

Those are the games he listed. Pick different ones.


I finished single player of World in Conflict on medium on the 7300GT. The ATI HD 2K series sucks but the 2400XT should be on par. Don't have one to test so I'll try it on my old X1600 but I bet it at least runs in low. I was running medium.

WIC is hardly a wimp when it comes to graphics.


Except that on the PC the hardcore is differentiated by the level of hardware they have.


And the 2400XT is about par for what the casual player has right? Its a lower middle of the pack chip. Other than ATI/AMD suckage at the moment the older iMacs were middle of the pack at the time as well.


When Oblivion came out no "casual" gaming PC was going to run that sucker with 20 FPS. The X1600 is fine for current games at low settings on any but the most hardcore engines.

Vinea

It sure does, seeing how bad it hurts, surprised you're still around.

One. Your G4 can't bootcamp.

Two. I loaded World in Conflict onto my Rev 1 MBP with X1600 and ran the benchmarks.

In 800x600 low I got 52FPS average, 130 mac and 9 min (nuclear explosion).
In 800x600 medium I got 25 average, 43 max and 9 min
In 1400x1050 low I got 39 average, 104 max and 10 min
In 1920x1200 very low I got 39 average, 90 max and 9 min
In 1920x1200 medium I got 9 average, 14 max and 6 min

The 2400XT should be better. (note, these were all on the external monitor designated as primary).

As a RTS/RTT it's not a wimp graphics wise.

Three. Since I think the 2400XT and 2600 Pro are DX10 parts they should be able to run games at low in 4 years.

Macs are by no means stellar game machines. But they can run casual games or hard core games in "casual" (low rez) mode. Enough for a casual gamer not out for ladder glory or in a laid back clan. Those somewhere in between casual and hardcore can supplement with a console.

For true hardcore you need a PC and a decent one at that.

Vinea

I forgot to mention how MMORPGS are played on PCs

I forgot to mention that MMORPGS are for super nerds

This was my first point! I said it didn't have to be that way! Macs *COULD* be capable of medium to high-end gaming, and *COULD* be stellar at it, but Apple won't take the simple steps needed to court SW and HW developers to make it happen!

Is it too much to ask that Apple do this?

-Clive

I love when people say that. You'd be surprised at the huge variety of people you will find in an MMO. Is hardcore 7 nights a week raiding for the super nerds? Ya, for the most part. But the majority of people, in my estimation, just enjoy playing a game that has somebody else on the other end of it. Most of the game time is spent socializing over voice chat. It's more fun, casual, and normal than most people think.

As for the people telling us to grow up and stop playing games: Do you watch TV? Maybe follow an NFL team? Race cars? Work on your car on the weekend? Build things? Models maybe? GROW UP and start doing something worthwhile with your time! See? It's the same stupid, inflammatory argument either way, and you should be intelligent enough to understand that people like to enjoy their free time in different ways. Just because you don't like their choice is no reason to flame them.

Now, back to Macs and gaming. If Apple were ever to listen to it's customers and release a mini tower design with a single upgradable GPU slot, it would be a potential gamers paradise. CPUs stay good for a few years, GPUs do not. It would allow for the necessary upgrading that gamers need, which is mainly the GPU, without the added expense of a Mac Pro. Will we ever see one? Perhaps not, but I really wish we would.

This is irrelvant, since neither of them develop games anymore. However, with a long history of success and creativity, Bungie HAS hired a great team. They are definitely a valuable company with or without the other founders.

Let's see here for instance:
http://www.elitebastards.com/cms/ind...=449&Itemid=27

The 2400XT can pretty much run Oblivion at 1024x768. Need for Speed: Carbon has it struggling. It does far worse in Company of Heroes. I can't find 1024x768, all effects off Bioshock benches now but I suspect it'd be somewhat painful to play.

All those are games I think you can expect someone to grab off the store shelf. It seems the 2400XT is not quite as bad as I thought, and by all means if you have one you can play a lot of existing stuff with it, but the verdict stands: too weak to be advertised for gaming. Games in spring will kill it. The 2600Pro would be okay for now. It'll probably struggle in spring like the 2400XT does now, but at least it could run them.
Here's some real life counterexamples: one guy I know who held nation's #3 or so Starcraft spot and had a then old computer, and my neighbor playing insanely complicated and difficult strategy games on an old computer. These guys are hardcore players period.

On the other hand, I see casual players on arstechnica and other sites that like to play a little fps or WoW now and then, don't sink a lot of time in that, aren't necessarily very good at those games, but have a Geforce 8800GTX ticking alongside a watercooled quad Conroe. Because they like machines, overclocking, running pifast (!!!). Being a hardcore player not required.


ATI/AMD suckage is no excuse. If they can't make parts, Apple shouldn't buy them. It really is that simple.
Sometimes a game that has freaky hardware requirements comes out. Oblivion was one of those games. There's nothing particularly "hardcore" about it as a game - it was released for the 360 right? - but it takes a while for average graphics cards to catch up to these things. I don't know of a particularly problematic game right now.

The 20 minimum fps limit was probably too strict. It really depends on the game and the player, too - WoW for instance gets pretty decent average framerates on GMA 950, but is unplayable because it fails where you most need the frames. Usually single player doesn't need as much as multiplayer.

Not only that but you're always having to upgrade your machine in order to buy the newer titles. It's frustrating and I gave up and got a PS 2.

If you start out with a decent machine it will play games just fine for 2-3 years. Then you can upgrade it. The sad fact is that PC gaming innovation far outpaces consoles.

Let's see if I can spell it out for everyone the best I can.

TO PLAY PC GAMES YOU DON'T NEED TO HAVE THE LATEST AND GREATEST HARDWARE. MANY EXISTING GAMERS DO NOT HAVE THE BEST OUT THERE AND PLAY JUST FINE.

Well the 2400 in the iMac I thought was clocked lower than the one in the review. So it could be as bad as you thought.


I assume, having not actually looked closely at the benches, that it will do far better than my X1600. I consider the MBP adequate for gaming for the next couple years. Far better than my 4 year old P4 Dell with GeForce 5700LE. I think it's a 5700 anyway...haven't booted it in a year.


Well arguably I play complicated and difficult strategy games (Hearts of Iron, etc) but I don't call that hardcore as much as...old school.

#3 on Starcraft is impressive and hardcore but I'm going to guess you can likely do okay with the equivalent RTS on an iMac today.

So say I agree with your statement about hardcore vs casual players...would you not say that a current generation iMac is as good as an "old computer"?


It's that simple from where we sit. It may not be so simple from where Apple sits. I really don't think they went out of their way to neuter the new iMacs for games. Why they when with AMD this go around amazes me but neither you or I are privy to why such a bad decision was made.

Oh, and if we're going to talk suckage the Nvidia FX series was also in that "suckage" category. The GeForce 4 was arguably better at the same level (Ti 4200 > 5600, MX440 > FX5200) and yet there were a bunch of systems built out there with those cards.


Sure...if I were playing WiC mulitplayer it would be on vlow settings with the highest resolution I could manage that kept a very high min fps. But hey, if I wanted to be pwned I could play tennis with my wife.

WoW won't play well on the 950 but the iMacs and MBP will do fine. If the MacBook and mini goto the X3100 it likely would run WoW good enough to play.

Did you guys read the cover piece on Halo3 in WIRED magazine? The guys all said Halo2 was rushed and they really weren't happy with it. It was a great article about how Bungie was developing Halo3.

You know, I was just poking fun, it's not a flame, more like a nudge and a smile.

Being a hardcore gamer already means you're a nerd to some degree. I game all the time, but i can't understand games where there is no end to it. I don't mean arcade games where you play for points, but endless games with no A or B. Just countless hours of tedium.

not my cup of tea and I'll probably never understand the phenomenon

Alright then. Us MMO players are used to taking flak, I guess. Makes you kind of defensive.

I don't remember us disagreeing so much that we agree that rarely.

I guess a lot depends upon a person's definition of 'decent' machine. Three years ago I bought an HP machine for my wife and kids to use. It has a 2 ghz Athlon chip and an nvidia ge force go video card with 64 mb of memeory (not sure the exact card part number, I'm at work and the machine is at home). At the time that was a 'decent' machine IMO. It wasn't a bargain basement entry level machine, it cost about $1200. Certainly it wasn't a "god" machine but 'decent' for that time IMO.

Not many new games can be played on it. It seems like a games that are 2 years old or older are the only ones that can be reliably played on it. I bought a FPS WW2 game(can't remember which one) and although my computer had acceptable specs for playing it, I was never able to load it and play. It would crash after loading.

PC gaming for me has always been frustrating and unpredictable. While COD 1 and Spiderman 1 seem to play well on my computer other games don't and it's difficult for me to predict what games will work on my computer and what won't.

With a PS 2, I've not had any of those problems. Pop it in and it just works.

The problem with that is you bought a machine with a very weak graphics card in the first place. You can spend upwards of 2-3k on a business machine that doesn't have a great graphics card. If you wanted to compare what your machine has now to what is on the market, that's like saying you bought a computer today with a x1300. Had you cut a corner and got a better graphics card, or just upgraded the graphics card in the first place, it'd be FINE. But you can't start out with a weak graphics card. The CPU would do fine though.

And btw a lot of gaming companies and breathing down HP, Dell, Gatewate, Lenova, etc, trying to get them to stop putting such horrible cards in their machines that cost that much. I know it's a hiccup, but the rest of the hardware in that machine would do fine... even if you put a 75 dollar graphics card in it.

LOL... guess again, Sparky. Bungie has indeed flown the coop. Gonna cry now?


It's official: Bungie breaks free of Microsoft:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...microsoft.html

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