Valve to Deliver Steam & Source on the Mac

[LondonLad 13]

http://store.steampowered.com/news/3569/

[sparks50 0]

Good, I'm not a big fan of Mac but Microsoft needs any competition it can get.

[dunedain 48]

I agree with that. Would be good to see some competition, good for us.

Edited March 9, 2010 by dunedain

[Deadfast 43]

DICE is looking into a Mac version of BC2 as well.

[echo1 0]

This is good in an indirect way - if mainstream game devs start making things for Mac, this means more OpenGL support, which means that it's more likely that game companies will make native Linux clients in the future.

[AnimalMother92 10]

Woot this is great news :D

[Richey79 10]

At first, I was 'meh', but apparently PC and Mac will be able to play together, which sounds great. Nicely played, Valve, as always (well, mostly).

[Zipper5 74]

Cool initiative, but I simply see this creating more rivalry between Mac and PC fanbois... :rolleyes:

[TRexian 0]

I'm not sure what to make of it.

Probably a good thing to bring games to the Mac, as that is clearly an underserved market. Good way to build marketshare overall and grow the company.

But, at the same time, I don't see that as being a huge market to begin with, in terms of people who will use the service. Mac "gamers" have clearly worked out other ways to game - most likely on consoles.

[AnimalMother92 10]

Hopefully this brings some life to OSX gaming which is pretty dull at the moment. My Mac Pro handles Arma 2 nicely though :p

[echo1 0]

But, at the same time, I don't see that as being a huge market to begin with, in terms of people who will use the service.

Mac has something like a 10% market share, and is increasing as time goes on. Makes an awful lot of sense as far as I'm concerned.

Mac "gamers" have clearly worked out other ways to game - most likely on consoles.

So we shouldn't make games for Mac because there are currently no games for Mac? Seems like a bit of a circular argument to me...

Edited March 12, 2010 by echo1

[Pyronick 21]

Also, if you don't exploit it first. Someone else will eventually.

[Madus_Maximus 0]

Since the move to Intel there are plenty of Macs that are capable of playing games. The more recent ones will handle most things on the market with little issue so it's about time someone took note of that and exploited it. The major factor behind the lack of games in the past has mostly been the DirectX API. Microsoft managed to get most studios locked in with it rather than OpenGL which could do all the same things but require less hardware to do it, and with the advantage of running on all platforms. When we start seeing more Mac games it wouldn't surprise me if we started to see them relesed for Linux too using the same install disc. More PS3 games may start showing up too as that also uses OpenGL (and it runs on Windows too so they could use the same disc for all 3 main OS's).

Edited March 14, 2010 by Madus_Maximus

[LeftSkidLow 1]

The way mac builds their systems into really thin fully enclosed LCD screen combo things, seems like there will be some heat issues. Yeah they can take an i7 but some games need the power of large GPU's like a GTX 295.

I hate macs because of their users and I don't think overly simplistic controls of a complex machine are good thing..

[echo1 0]

More PS3 games may start showing up too as that also uses OpenGL (and it runs on Windows too so they could use the same disc for all 3 main OS's).

The issue with the PS3 is the Cell CPU is supposed to be a nightmare to develop for. In fact, even Sony recognizes that the thing is a bitch to make games for... even Valve who are usually quite progressive and not-lazy refuse to make games for it.

I hate macs because of their users and I don't think overly simplistic controls of a complex machine are good thing..

Simplistic? How?

[Madus_Maximus 0]

The Cell itself isn't really the problem, it's more the case they use 7 CPU cores which are split up to do different tasks. Tying the code together is the ballache. Paralell programming is hard enough as it is before you add the complexity of handing specific tasks off to different cores. SONY need to come up with an API similar to Grand Central Dispatch that Apple made for the Mac to handle all the multi-core stuff and the developers just piggy back onto that system. SONY messed up early on by not having a full SDK with the compilers ready which just made things even more of a pain for developers.

I think he's mistaking "simplistic" for "it's not needed so it isn't there". Many people seem to make that mistake. How many of the extra lights and buttons do you use on your PC? On Macs you have a power button and the inputs like USB and so on. You don't need anything else. It's industrial design at it's most pure. The idea is to have nothing distracting you from what's on the screen, unlike some of these PC cases with flashing lights and stuff all over the place. Also, how is making it easy to use a complex bit of kit bad? Should we go back to machine code in command lines because using a GUI is too simplistic? Don't mistake a well designed interface with being "overly simplistic".

[echo1 0]

The Cell itself isn't really the problem, it's more the case they use 7 CPU cores which are split up to do different tasks. Tying the code together is the ballache. Paralell programming is hard enough as it is before you add the complexity of handing specific tasks off to different cores.

That's what I meant. Afaik, the 'cores' in the Cell aren't like cores in regular multicore chips - there's one master core and a load of subordinate ones that have to do things like memory access through the main one, which makes it horrible to write efficient code for.

I think he's mistaking "simplistic" for "it's not needed so it isn't there". Many people seem to make that mistake. How many of the extra lights and buttons do you use on your PC?

I think it comes from the whole 'they only have one mouse button thing' (of course, in the meantime, UNIX users were looking at Windows machines and thinking "Hah, they only have two mouse buttons") But with some of the multi-touch touchpads and mice they have, they seem to have reversed that trend.

[Pyronick 21]

That's what I meant. Afaik, the 'cores' in the Cell aren't like cores in regular multicore chips - there's one master core and a load of subordinate ones that have to do things like memory access through the main one, which makes it horrible to write efficient code for.

That was until they invented the abstract OpenCL API.

The Cell Broadband Engine was way too new when they integrated it in the PlayStation 3 platform.

Having to write in 3 or 4 different assembly languages, various parts in OpenGL ES 1.0 and the binaries in C++ and Cg just makes it a living hell.

Now there is OpenMP, OpenCL, OpenGL ES 2.0 with regular OpenGL 3.3+ supersets.

And next year will be the year of heterogeneous processing, starting with AMD Fusion and Intel Sandy Bridge.

[Madus_Maximus 0]

That was until they invented the abstract OpenCL API.

I'll correct it for you ;)

That was until APPLE invented the abstract OpenCL API.

There you go! I'm sure you knew, just others won't and are unaware of a lot of the things Apple actually do in the open source community. They've open sourced a big chunk of Grand Central Dispatch too which is used to control multiple CPU cores/threads rather than having to write the code every time for new apps.