Valve's launches whisper campaign for new Mac version of Steam

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  • Reply 41 of 61
    cdyatescdyates Posts: 202member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by kpluck View Post


    As others have pointed out, Steam is just a game distribution system.



    Thinking stuff you bought on the PC through Steam would start suddenly working on the Mac would be like thinking iPhone apps would run on your Windows Mobile phone because Apple has a Windows version of iTunes.



    Even if Valve were to port the Source Engine to OS X, that would just be the first step. Havoc would probably have to be ported as well and then the games would have to worked on. I would not hold my breath for any of that happening. Although I sure as sh@t would be happy if it does.



    -kpluck



    Nobody's mentioned that since the teaser ads are showing characters from source engine games (Alyx, Heavy, turret from Portal ) shouldn't that be a pretty strong indication that Valve is indeed moving the source engine to OSX? I think that's huge - never thought it would happen.
  • Reply 42 of 61
    cdyatescdyates Posts: 202member
    Loos like this one didn't make it into the article for some reason.







    Freeman with a more apple looking hazard suit with the apple logo stamped on the chest.
  • Reply 43 of 61
    chronsterchronster Posts: 1,894member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by cdyates View Post


    Nobody's mentioned that since the teaser ads are showing characters from source engine games (Alyx, Heavy, turret from Portal ) shouldn't that be a pretty strong indication that Valve is indeed moving the source engine to OSX? I think that's huge - never thought it would happen.



    Yeah why would they include a bunch of source games in the ads if source won't be coming to osx?



    Guess somebody's gonna be pleasantly surprised.
  • Reply 44 of 61
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by RichL View Post


    The other part of the excitement is that Valve games tend to be a variation on the FPS genre. The genre is much more suited to mouse and keyboard than a control pad. I wonder what Valve will be able to do with the Magic Mouse?



    Unless they see fit to write (or at least license) a custom driver that overrides Apple's atrocious way of handling left/right-clicks, as little as possible, I hope.

  • Reply 45 of 61
    richlrichl Posts: 2,213member
    Haha.
  • Reply 46 of 61
    hirohiro Posts: 2,663member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by cnocbui View Post


    What is all the excitement for?



    Surely anyone who wanted to play those games would have already purchased them for a different platform. My son has most of these for Xbox and they have all been played to death. We would not for minute consider buying them again to play on a Mac.



    I can see the point for future new content but back catalogue stuff is irrelevant.



    Any new titles we would get for the Xbox as well since games tend to look nice on a big plasma.



    I think you underestimate how many non-ultra-hardcore Mac Gamers would buy native titles, because they don't have gaming rigs or consoles.



    Porting is inexpensive compared to development and because the titles are a bit older the slightly behind the curve Mac GPU drivers won't be as much of a bother. So port and extend the franchise's financial life a bit, tat's what the devs are looking at.



    Also, why would Valve put those titles in their Mac Steam ad campaign if they didn't intend to release them as native ports? Not releasing HL2/Portal/L4D and TF2 (in some reasonable timeframe) would make all those non-ultra-hardcore Mac Gamers I mentioned above a bit confused and then pissed, soiling that market. Smart money says those 4 apps are already well along in the porting process and we will likely hear something out of GDC about how Valve is going to expand their market by going Mac, with projected delivery dates.
  • Reply 47 of 61
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Shunnabunich View Post


    Unless they see fit to write (or at least license) a custom driver that overrides Apple's atrocious way of handling left/right-clicks, as little as possible, I hope.





    Upgrade your fingers? Although it's by no means comparable to the classic multi-button gaming mice, I just finished HL2 with the Magic Mouse without any trouble at all. Although I missed the extra buttons occasionally, HL* isn't the most control heavy game. I found it very precise and comfortable aside from that. I'm not sure the Mighty Mouse would have done as well, though...



    Admittedly, I've "graduated" to a more casual gamer these days, but I never felt the need to drag out the USB ball, er, mouse and chain.
  • Reply 48 of 61
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Crimguy View Post


    Guys give up the notion that all your games on Steam will magically run on OSX because steam is ported. The vast majority of those titles use DirectX for graphics. It's still up to the game designers to either port their title to osx, or license the right to port the title.



    It's still a great delivery mechanism for games and i'm pretty excited for it. I particularly like their occasional sales. I picked up Empire: Total war the other day for $9.99 on steam.



    You know nothing about game engines...



    Steam, like 99% of all other game engines, runs graphics through an "abstraction layer". This allows them to create their own graphical functions in whatever coding language they use (in this case, C++) by linking it through a graphics API, such as Direct3D or OpenGL. This means that they do not need to remake the entire engine.



    The reason why the port of the steam engine will port all steam games is because just like 99% of all other game engines, Steam uses a "scripting layer (or scripting engine)". Scripting is cross-platform, because it is not an API like OpenGL or DirectX. These scripts go through the code and output whatever is needed. Regardless of what platform you are on.



    Basically, all Valve needed to do was port the DirectX APIs (DirectControl, DirectAudio, Direct3D, etc.) into something that Mac understood (Cocoa, OpenGL, OpenAL, etc.)



    Granted, the models and textures will need to be ported into something for OpenGL, but that only requires a few presses of buttons...
  • Reply 49 of 61
    4metta4metta Posts: 365member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Cbswe View Post


    Playing a game on a console is always an inferior experience then paying it on a computer.

    Often games are developed with a primary platform in mind.

    I'd say all of Valve's games are originally written with the PC (as opposite to the console) in mind.



    Fixed in order to make it easier to understand for non-gamers.





    Also two words: dedicated servers. Look it up. It's something console versions of multi player games sorely lack. As a result they are all lagfests.
  • Reply 50 of 61
    cbswecbswe Posts: 116member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by 4metta View Post


    Fixed in order to make it easier to understand for non-gamers.





    Also two words: dedicated servers. Look it up. It's something console versions of multi player games sorely lack. As a result they are all lagfests.



    I'd agree with you on that one

    However there are people who prefer the console.. I don't really sympathize them :P
  • Reply 51 of 61
    cbswecbswe Posts: 116member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Neotyguy40 View Post


    You know nothing about game engines...



    Steam, like 99% of all other game engines, runs graphics through an "abstraction layer". This allows them to create their own graphical functions in whatever coding language they use (in this case, C++) by linking it through a graphics API, such as Direct3D or OpenGL. This means that they do not need to remake the entire engine.



    The reason why the port of the steam engine will port all steam games is because just like 99% of all other game engines, Steam uses a "scripting layer (or scripting engine)". Scripting is cross-platform, because it is not an API like OpenGL or DirectX. These scripts go through the code and output whatever is needed. Regardless of what platform you are on.



    Basically, all Valve needed to do was port the DirectX APIs (DirectControl, DirectAudio, Direct3D, etc.) into something that Mac understood (Cocoa, OpenGL, OpenAL, etc.)



    Granted, the models and textures will need to be ported into something for OpenGL, but that only requires a few presses of buttons...



    The nasty thing is that Direct 3D, in contrast to OpenGL, is proprietary.

    Direct 3D is already "semi-ported" though, by the Wine team...
  • Reply 52 of 61
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Neotyguy40 View Post


    You know nothing about game engines...



    Steam, like 99% of all other game engines, runs graphics through an "abstraction layer". This allows them to create their own graphical functions in whatever coding language they use (in this case, C++) by linking it through a graphics API, such as Direct3D or OpenGL. This means that they do not need to remake the entire engine.



    The reason why the port of the steam engine will port all steam games is because just like 99% of all other game engines, Steam uses a "scripting layer (or scripting engine)". Scripting is cross-platform, because it is not an API like OpenGL or DirectX. These scripts go through the code and output whatever is needed. Regardless of what platform you are on.



    Basically, all Valve needed to do was port the DirectX APIs (DirectControl, DirectAudio, Direct3D, etc.) into something that Mac understood (Cocoa, OpenGL, OpenAL, etc.)



    Granted, the models and textures will need to be ported into something for OpenGL, but that only requires a few presses of buttons...



    I hate to break it to you but you are the one who doesn't know about game engines. For starters Steam is not a game engine. It's a store front with some community features for chat and multiplayer matchmaking (games have to be written to take full advantage though). Source is Valve's game engine which runs in tandem with Steam but also has to be ported for their games to work. Porting steam doesn't automatically port source and vice versa. Steam does not run any graphics other than its own.



    Everything else uses independent engines and Like for example... Unreal Tournament III on steam still uses the Unreal Engine 3. id software still use their id tech engines and so on and so forth. They mostly only use Steam as a way to purchase, download and a DRM scheme like a disc check in conventional disc based games. Valve has software that they can hook into for things like achievements and again matchmaking but that's the extent of it.



    Game models and textures are independent of system or API so they don't need any kind of special conversion. It's the code that needs porting. Textures are basically just pictures made in a graphics program like photoshop that are .tiff, .png, etc. Models tend to be more engine specific but not API specific. Sounds are basically just .ogg, .mp3, .wav, etc. files.



    Because of projects like crossover\\WINE though I can see where the confusion comes from though. Just because games from steam run there though that doesn't mean that Steam is a game engine. It just means that WINE is running the whole kit and kaboodle through its "abstraction layer"... but it's still operating as separate independent engines like it does on Windows.



    It's not just DirectX to OpenGL that needs addressing for this to happen also it's a suite of other software such as Win32, .net, etc. some of these games work in WINE and others don't because of this. For example Batman Arkham Asylum doesn't run in WINE because it uses a version of .net that is not yet supported. It also uses the Unreal Engine 3 which has yet to materialize on the Mac (although you can get UTIII running in WINE). I'd like to be wrong and for all the games on there to just work day one in a better fashion than through crossover games (WINE) and its ilk but I doubt it. Many games in steam don't run in WINE because of various middleware issues and the fact that some engines aren't as supported as others. Cider is another example of a WINE based abstraction layer but as with the others it has varying levels of success as it can't even access the full features of the graphics card much of the time the same way a native port of a game can and there is almost always a performance hit by at least some %. When a game runs under Cider it's still running using its own engine it just is using a WINE based implementation of Windows APIs wrapped to access the OS\\hardware. Steam is not a Cider\\WINE type of software in and of itself. All those games on there where already native to Windows and YES have to be individually ported to other systems.



    It remains to be seen if Valve is including a WINE like layer with Mac Steam. That is what it would take for it to indeed act as you say and run all those windows games on there. Even if they did like I have indicated having an abstraction layer like WINE doesn't automatically "port all the games". If it did the work would have already been done by companies like codeweavers.



    Lastly Valve is including an error message for games that are not available\\supported on a particular platform... like if you where trying to get a PC only game on OS X. Why would they include this if Steam indeed was just a magical abstraction layer?



    Quite a few games that are on steam already have been ported to OS X though but it also remains to be seen what kind of deals Valve has made for including said titles in Mac Steam. No other publisher has made any announcements for supporting Steam on the Mac so far. But I'm sure that since showing Steam to Apple last year that Valve has had to have made some deals on that front. OK I take it back.. one developer that makes games for iPhone and PC has announced that they are interested in porting the kart racing game they made for PC Steam to the Mac. But again it requires porting!
  • Reply 53 of 61
    cbswecbswe Posts: 116member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by smoke_tetsu View Post


    I hate to break it to you but you are the one who doesn't know about game engines. For starters Steam is not a game engine. It's a store front with some community features for chat and multiplayer matchmaking (games have to be written to take full advantage though). Source is Valve's game engine which runs in tandem with Steam but also has to be ported for their games to work. Porting steam doesn't automatically port source and vice versa. Steam does not run any graphics other than its own.



    Everything else uses independent engines and Like for example... Unreal Tournament III on steam still uses the Unreal Engine 3. id software still use their id tech engines and so on and so forth. They mostly only use Steam as a way to purchase, download and a DRM scheme like a disc check in conventional disc based games. Valve has software that they can hook into for things like achievements and again matchmaking but that's the extent of it.



    Game models and textures are independent of system or API so they don't need any kind of special conversion. It's the code that needs porting. Textures are basically just pictures made in a graphics program like photoshop that are .tiff, .png, etc. Models tend to be more engine specific but not API specific. Sounds are basically just .ogg, .mp3, .wav, etc. files.



    Because of projects like crossover\\WINE though I can see where the confusion comes from though. Just because games from steam run there though that doesn't mean that Steam is a game engine. It just means that WINE is running the whole kit and kaboodle through its "abstraction layer"... but it's still operating as separate independent engines like it does on Windows.



    It's not just DirectX to OpenGL that needs addressing for this to happen also it's a suite of other software such as Win32, .net, etc. some of these games work in WINE and others don't because of this. For example Batman Arkham Asylum doesn't run in WINE because it uses a version of .net that is not yet supported. It also uses the Unreal Engine 3 which has yet to materialize on the Mac (although you can get UTIII running in WINE). I'd like to be wrong and for all the games on there to just work day one in a better fashion than through crossover games (WINE) and its ilk but I doubt it. Many games in steam don't run in WINE because of various middleware issues and the fact that some engines aren't as supported as others. Cider is another example of a WINE based abstraction layer but as with the others it has varying levels of success as it can't even access the full features of the graphics card much of the time the same way a native port of a game can and there is almost always a performance hit by at least some %. When a game runs under Cider it's still running using its own engine it just is using a WINE based implementation of Windows APIs wrapped to access the OS\\hardware. Steam is not a Cider\\WINE type of software in and of itself. All those games on there where already native to Windows and YES have to be individually ported to other systems.



    It remains to be seen if Valve is including a WINE like layer with Mac Steam. That is what it would take for it to indeed act as you say and run all those windows games on there. Even if they did like I have indicated having an abstraction layer like WINE doesn't automatically "port all the games". If it did the work would have already been done by companies like codeweavers.



    Lastly Valve is including an error message for games that are not available\\supported on a particular platform... like if you where trying to get a PC only game on OS X. Why would they include this if Steam indeed was just a magical abstraction layer?



    Quite a few games that are on steam already have been ported to OS X though but it also remains to be seen what kind of deals Valve has made for including said titles in Mac Steam. No other publisher has made any announcements for supporting Steam on the Mac so far. But I'm sure that since showing Steam to Apple last year that Valve has had to have made some deals on that front. OK I take it back.. one developer that makes games for iPhone and PC has announced that they are interested in porting the kart racing game they made for PC Steam to the Mac. But again it requires porting!



    The ad's made by Valve no doubt implies that they will attempt to make their own games mac compatible (by a WINE-like abstraction layer).

    It is far from hard, technically for a company like Valve.

    The complications arises however with the properitary components (such as Direct 3D).
  • Reply 54 of 61
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Cbswe View Post


    The ad's made by Valve no doubt implies that they will attempt to make their own games mac compatible (by a WINE-like abstraction layer).

    It is far from hard, technically for a company like Valve.

    The complications arises however with the properitary components (such as Direct 3D).



    Part of my point is they are probably doing an actual port of their engine rather than using wrapping technology such as WINE. Why else hire Mac engineers to help the lead engineer of source? They where doing so not too long ago as evidence by the job posting that was pointed out at a few sites like IMG. What part of their ad suggests their ports wont be fully native? It's not impossible. Source was originally the Quake engine and they've switched it from OpenGL to Direct3D and now obviously back.
  • Reply 55 of 61
    cbswecbswe Posts: 116member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by smoke_tetsu View Post


    Part of my point is they are probably doing an actual port of their engine rather than using wrapping technology such as WINE. Why else hire Mac engineers to help the lead engineer of source? They where doing so not too long ago as evidence by the job posting that was pointed out at a few sites like IMG. What part of their ad suggests their ports wont be fully native? It's not impossible. Source was originally the Quake engine and they've switched it from OpenGL to Direct3D and now obviously back.



    That would be very ambitious. I'd say it wouldn't be impossible.

    If it were EA games, I'd say it _would_ be impossible, they would never ever

    spend resources on doing something like that.

    But Valve on the other hand are, like id and Blizzard, ambitious in nature. So why not?
  • Reply 56 of 61
    cdyatescdyates Posts: 202member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Cbswe View Post


    The ad's made by Valve no doubt implies that they will attempt to make their own games mac compatible (by a WINE-like abstraction layer).

    It is far from hard, technically for a company like Valve.

    The complications arises however with the properitary components (such as Direct 3D).



    The ads imply that valve is moving the source engine to the mac somehow. It does not imply anything about an abstraction layer like wine. You made that part up.
  • Reply 57 of 61
    cbswecbswe Posts: 116member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by cdyates View Post


    The ads imply that valve is moving the source engine to the mac somehow. It does not imply anything about an abstraction layer like wine. You made that part up.



    I didn't mean the ads implied an abstracion layer specificly.

    It's just that an abstraction layer would be more probable then the more far-fetched idea about an engine re-write.
  • Reply 58 of 61
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Cbswe View Post


    I didn't mean the ads implied an abstracion layer specificly.

    It's just that an abstraction layer would be more probable then the more far-fetched idea about an engine re-write.



    How is it so far fetched? Other companies like telltale games have done it... it may not even need a total rewrite. Especially since their engine already had selectable APIs for graphics OpenGL just hadn't been implemented AFAIK for a while now. Like I said they already had OpenGL in the engine from its Quake heritage. Also indie games studios have made native OS X versions of their games without all the resources and funding Valve has. This includes individuals who make game engine ports for free (eduke32, doomsday engine), some of these support or had supported more than one graphics API. If Valve use a WINE like abstraction layer we may as well stick with bootcamp\\crossover games. Just because EA was lazy\\cheap and didn't want to turn to the usual people to port their games native is not a reflection on Valve and their abilities\\desires. They had been openly critical of Apple and their games support for years so I have a feeling that they would want to do things the right way. BTW, they seem to be doing a rewrite of the engine for HL2: Episode 3 anyway.
  • Reply 59 of 61
    cbswecbswe Posts: 116member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by smoke_tetsu View Post


    How is it so far fetched? Other companies like telltale games have done it... it may not even need a total rewrite. Especially since their engine already had selectable APIs for graphics OpenGL just hadn't been implemented AFAIK for a while now. Like I said they already had OpenGL in the engine from its Quake heritage. Also indie games studios have made native OS X versions of their games without all the resources and funding Valve has. This includes individuals who make game engine ports for free (eduke32, doomsday engine), some of these support or had supported more than one graphics API. If Valve use a WINE like abstraction layer we may as well stick with bootcamp\\crossover games. Just because EA was lazy\\cheap and didn't want to turn to the usual people to port their games native is not a reflection on Valve and their abilities\\desires. They had been openly critical of Apple and their games support for years so I have a feeling that they would want to do things the right way. BTW, they seem to be doing a rewrite of the engine for HL2: Episode 3 anyway.



    I didn't say it was far-fetched all in all. I said it was more far-fectched then an abstraction layer solution.

    Source might very well use some of the functions Direct 3D has, that OpenGL do not support (there are a few).

    That's when the conversion from Direct 3D to OpenGL as a rasterisatior becomes more then copy-pasting some bits of code, replacing Direct 3D calls with OpenGL ones..

    I don't want to be a nay-sayer. I just want to explain my view.

    Personally I hope they would walk over to OpenGL all in all, it's much more powerful (and requires programmers with better math skills).
  • Reply 60 of 61
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Cbswe View Post


    I didn't say it was far-fetched all in all. I said it was more far-fectched then an abstraction layer solution.

    Source might very well use some of the functions Direct 3D has, that OpenGL do not support (there are a few).

    That's when the conversion from Direct 3D to OpenGL as a rasterisatior becomes more then copy-pasting some bits of code, replacing Direct 3D calls with OpenGL ones..

    I don't want to be a nay-sayer. I just want to explain my view.

    Personally I hope they would walk over to OpenGL all in all, it's much more powerful (and requires programmers with better math skills).



    It has to go through OpenGL either way and the work has to be done whether they write an abstraction layer or port the game natively and use OpenGL directly. Besides, Apple is updating OpenGL in OS X to support those very things.



    It's still a lot of work to write an abstraction layer as evidenced by cider not having many of the features it has until many many revisions down the line and same thing with crossover games and WINE in general. Hell, it took years for WINE to go 1.0 If Valve is indeed using an abstraction layer and writing their own they are basically reinventing the wheel unless they licensed something like cider. But again they don't seem to be the kind of company that takes shortcuts and I think they'd rather go native than make some half assed abstraction layer port like a cider wrapped game.
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