Half-Life 2
My friend received his £999 Dell a few days back and we have been sitting playing Half-Life 2.
All I can say is WOW!
Whilst I have never seen graphics like this in a game before, it is the scale of the game that is breathtaking. The amount of work that has gone in to this game is truely mind-boggling.
I was also very impressed with the performance of his Dell, and its PCI Express graphics card. I can't help but think that my G5 would struggle with these sorts of graphics (if a game like this was even available for the Mac).
Was Half-Life ever released for the Mac? Do you think HL2 be released for the Mac?
Also, is the 256MB GeForce 6800 graphics card that Dell is selling the same card that Apple wants £349 for?
All I can say is WOW!
Whilst I have never seen graphics like this in a game before, it is the scale of the game that is breathtaking. The amount of work that has gone in to this game is truely mind-boggling.
I was also very impressed with the performance of his Dell, and its PCI Express graphics card. I can't help but think that my G5 would struggle with these sorts of graphics (if a game like this was even available for the Mac).
Was Half-Life ever released for the Mac? Do you think HL2 be released for the Mac?
Also, is the 256MB GeForce 6800 graphics card that Dell is selling the same card that Apple wants £349 for?
Comments
I was also very impressed with the performance of his Dell, and its PCI Express graphics card. I can't help but think that my G5 would struggle with these sorts of graphics (if a game like this was even available for the Mac).
A PCI Express Dell is probably between single and dual G5s in terms of CPU grunt. Half-Life 2 runs fine on cards available for the G5 (well, the Radeon 9600 and up, as the nVidia GeForce 5200 isn't very quick in DirectX 9 mode).
I could do with another PC and Dell are looking rather tempting...
Originally posted by Messiah
Was Half-Life ever released for the Mac? Do you think HL2 be released for the Mac?
alas, no. and it was quite a brutal play by sierra (who was that game house that would have made it happen), as there was even a half-life for mac beta at one point, and they killed it before completion. i believe they blamed it on network play issues. of course, under os 9, that might be believable, but still, to go from beta to "no, you're not getting the game of the year or any of its expansion packs" really, really hurt. i played it ont he ps2 years later, and despite the bad controls (it was meant to be played with a keyboard/mouse, not a dual-shock controller), it was entirely engrossing... and then got to insanely-f'n-who-the-f*ck-are-they-kidding difficult at the end. keep in mind for the last three levels, i kicked on EVERY CHEAT and it still took forever.
I can't believe the work that's gone in to it. At one stage you're ripping around on a kind of hover craft. We kept stopping and jumping out to look at the details of the trees or the grass. Even along the shoreline there are ripples in the sand like you might find in real life.
We were going out of our way to get of the beaten track and even in the darkest corners as soon as we shone the flashlight there was so much detail there that even 0.05% of players would even notice.
I reckon you could play that game from end to end and only ever see about 1% of the detailing that's gone in to it.
Incredible.
As others have stated, the look and artistry in this game are really incredible.
What many people realized as most likely the main reason though, was that the contract for the Mac port didn't cover additional work for things like updates and future patches (much like how Westlake Interactive kept on doing patches for Unreal, or how MacSoft did patches for Quake 1). Valve and Sierra just didn't want to bother with that, even though Andrew Meggs, who did the port volunteered to do the extra work for free (IIRC).
I think another reason were lagging sales of the Mac version of Caesar III, a really good game that was marketed very poorly. That prompted Sierra to cancel the Mac version of Pharoah.
As if that wasn't enough, Sierra at around the same time decided to cancel the eagerly awaited Babylon 5 space-sim game, which was rumoured to be on its way to the Mac as well.
We won't see the series Mac side though. The price of entry there is a PC.
And I'll be the first to admit, I have the hots for Alyx.
After playing it for six or seven hours at a friend's house, every other game seems to utterly pale in comparison. There's this feeling in the game, this atmostphere, this unshakable patina of the real that no other game has. Ravenholm was scarier than any part of Doom 3, because it was in world not too different from the one I live in, unlike the harsh Martian facilities of D3. The characters in the game don't make you wince with disbelief; on the contrary, they give convincing and moving performances, each with their own idiosyncrasies and movements.
I understand that the Havok physics engine is one of the larger obstacles standing between us and a Mac port, but perhaps when Havok finishes their promised Mac SDK, we'll finally see this masterpiece on the Mac.
Originally posted by ryukyu
One of the biggest deterrents to porting this to Mac is that they make extensive use of DirectX.
Yeh, the leaked beta used opengl. As far as I know.
should still play it ok, 2600+ AMD XP, 1Gig Mem and an ATI-video card (not the most recent though, ouch...)
Too bad really they don't port it for the Mac.
Hopefully the Mac market will be appealing enough in a short time.
The game is amazing. Realistic graphics and story and all executed so well, you really feel like it is you in there.
Anyway, it really taxes even the higher end systems (if you want to have any nice level of detail-don't use the lower details as they look worse than half life 1)
That said, I do beleive that the game would excel far better on a G5 Mac, dual or no. The G5 trounces the P4 and stands up to AMD 64. The hughest end graphics cards are being made for Mac as well and the Mac should breeze through this game. Given a choice, I would choose a Mac version. Valve did everything to make this game useable on a wide variety of system specs, while the most gorgeous graphics are reserved for the highest end systems. This would be perfect for all the variety of Mac systems and probably every guy and even some gals would buy this game. It is good and really would be every bit as good on a Mac. Technically, there is no reason why not.
Originally posted by Placebo
I understand that the Havok physics engine is one of the larger obstacles standing between us and a Mac port, but perhaps when Havok finishes their promised Mac SDK, we'll finally see this masterpiece on the Mac.
i thought havok would not port their physics engine to mac
the most recent article i found is this one at img. afaik the physics engine cyan is talking about is havok.
As for DX9, many games that make excessive use of that engine have easily been ported, most notably Halo and Doom 3.
Originally posted by Placebo
I remember seeing somewhere that Havok would be making a Mac implementation. I forget where though, I'll see if I can find it.
As for DX9, many games that make excessive use of that engine have easily been ported, most notably Halo and Doom 3.
I thought all of ID's software used OpenGL. Did they change over to DirectX?
Originally posted by Whisper
I thought all of ID's software used OpenGL. Did they change over to DirectX?
You thought correct. Remember that DirectX is a huge API that does a lot more than OpenGL (Direct3D is more like the equivalent to OGL), so technically, I'd hazard a guess that you could build a game with OpenGL graphics and DirectX network and sound.
On another note i have Pacific fighters which allows the user to run the game in directx or opengl. Its Perfect Mode meaning highest detail,water effects etc is only in the opengl mode. Absolutely beautiful when flying over water in a WW2 aircraft. Another great game that may never make it to Mac. Marketshare does matter.
Originally posted by Whisper
I thought all of ID's software used OpenGL. Did they change over to DirectX?
They have an OpenGL renderview interspersed with D3D effectts, such as heat shimmer. Those shaders had to be ported.
Originally posted by Aurora
Another great game that may never make it to Mac. Marketshare does matter.
a freidn of mine said the exact same thing about knights of the old republic, when he was lauding pc's over macs. "kotor: release date for mac = never" was what he said.
admittedly, it wasn't simultaneous, but it did arrive, and after a total abandonment of the platform by lucasarts for what felt like an eternity (really, only about 4-5 years).
Originally posted by Aurora
Best FPS bar none in my view.
How many FPS games have you played?!?! I have never understood why people think that graphics make a game good. There are two things going for HL2. First, the graphics. Yes, they are good. Nothing revolutionary, but a very good progression in terms of detail. Second, interactivity is great. There are many things you can do to different objects, most of which are used to kill your enemies in different ways (ie you can blow up barrels, which can break structural supports, which in turn will smash your enemies to little bits). This is rather fun and makes the action more engrossing.
Here is the big however...
1. The game feels rather linear, like you dont have any options in terms of where you can go and what you can do.
2. The story line is sucktastic to the Nth degree, what little there is. This is a BIG step backwards from Deus Ex, Unreal 2 and other FPS in the last several years. Most of the game revolves around killing your enemies because they are shooting at you first, not because you have any real objective. And you have no other option but to kill them all, you cant resolve any particular situation in any other way.
3. The ending is a big letdown. You expect to get some answers and they never come. Sure, you can piece together bits and pieces from here and there. But the lack of any real conclusion is rather disturbing.
4. Steam blows. Anyone who dissagrees is obviously employed by Valve, or enjoys having intrusive software on their computer.
5. I feel like I wasted $45. The one consolation is that it comes with Counterstrike Source, which is pretty fun.
6. Still, its always nice to have more games on the Mac. However, I have a strong suspicion that "non-portability" of the physics engire will be the deciding factor here. Exactly what happened to Uru (which is far more sad IMO).