Steam coming to Macs in April. [Surf, Ain, and Karth's only]

[KarthXLR]

This is a good day for Mac User(s).

[backfire]

Hey, I got one too. That macbook I said I had which copy of windows expired? Put me in the title dammit >

Ugh, I need to get another copy of windows to use in the mean time. Wish they would just release beta testing for it now.

[Mission Difficult]

Probably something no one else will care about, but I'm wondering if they will implement surround sound for Valve games on Macs. As far as I know there is no surround out of the box for them.

[Ianki]

Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates

damn, they have hard enough times not breaking their games just worrying about windows.

[Squishy3]

Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates

damn, they have hard enough times not breaking their games just worrying about windows.

pretty sure this only applies to tf2

[copulatingduck]

[quote author=Ianki link=topic=4270.msg140567#msg140567 date=1268109379]

Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates

damn, they have hard enough times not breaking their games just worrying about windows.

pretty sure this only applies to tf2
[/quote]

only because they havent come out with anything else in a while (specifically, anything multiplayer that they insist on updating/breaking)

[ainmosni]

The biggest news is that the source port will be native and not running in a cider environment. The other big one is that I will be able to play the games on mac without having to repurchase it. on the subject of bugs, cross platform development usually produces less bugs because of the nature of cross platform development... Having to make sure that it builds and runs on multiple platforms catches bugs a lot faster. NetBSD has proven this many times over.

And for all the haters out there... Doing this only cements Valve as one of the leading PC gaming developers and they're going for more customers which don't mind paying for their services, I'd say this is good news all around.

[zaneyard]

now if they only go for linux they could secure their place in world domination

[cbre88x]

The biggest news is that the source port will be native and not running in a cider environment. The other big one is that I will be able to play the games on mac without having to repurchase it. on the subject of bugs, cross platform development usually produces less bugs because of the nature of cross platform development... Having to make sure that it builds and runs on multiple platforms catches bugs a lot faster. NetBSD has proven this many times over.

And for all the haters out there... Doing this only cements Valve as one of the leading PC gaming developers and they're going for more customers which don't mind paying for their services, I'd say this is good news all around.

agreed

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

[quote author=ainmosni link=topic=4270.msg140596#msg140596 date=1268118628]
The biggest news is that the source port will be native and not running in a cider environment. The other big one is that I will be able to play the games on mac without having to repurchase it. on the subject of bugs, cross platform development usually produces less bugs because of the nature of cross platform development... Having to make sure that it builds and runs on multiple platforms catches bugs a lot faster. NetBSD has proven this many times over.

And for all the haters out there... Doing this only cements Valve as one of the leading PC gaming developers and they're going for more customers which don't mind paying for their services, I'd say this is good news all around.

agreed
[/quote]

But, this *IS* Valve we're talking about.  *points to the backburner and the time where explosives never led to gibing, but other attacks gibbed left and right and it took them like 2 months to fix it*  This is also going to lead to a lot more cannon fodder.

[beep beep diglett]

i guess i just dont get the point of this, (most) people who own macs are not gamers

[Mission Difficult]

i guess i just dont get the point of this, (most) people who own macs are not gamers

Probably because there weren't many games on macs.

[KarthXLR]

TF2 blog answers your questions.

[beep beep diglett]

[quote author=diggs link=topic=4270.msg140730#msg140730 date=1268183532]
i guess i just dont get the point of this, (most) people who own macs are not gamers

Probably because there weren't many games on macs.
[/quote]

thats a factor, but any semi serious "gamer" isnt going to buy a mac in the first place

edit: pc gamer

[Spore]

[quote author=Mission Difficult link=topic=4270.msg140737#msg140737 date=1268185527]
[quote author=diggs link=topic=4270.msg140730#msg140730 date=1268183532]
i guess i just dont get the point of this, (most) people who own macs are not gamers

Probably because there weren't many games on macs.
[/quote]

thats a factor, but any semi serious "gamer" isnt going to buy a mac in the first place

edit: pc gamer
[/quote]

Tee Eff Turr r serios gaem 4 serius plaer olny.

[beep beep diglett]

[quote author=diggs link=topic=4270.msg140743#msg140743 date=1268188068]
[quote author=Mission Difficult link=topic=4270.msg140737#msg140737 date=1268185527]
[quote author=diggs link=topic=4270.msg140730#msg140730 date=1268183532]
i guess i just dont get the point of this, (most) people who own macs are not gamers

Probably because there weren't many games on macs.
[/quote]

thats a factor, but any semi serious "gamer" isnt going to buy a mac in the first place

edit: pc gamer
[/quote]

Tee Eff Turr r serios gaem 4 serius plaer olny.
[/quote]

yeh how u think i got deez dimon grilz? i got dem playin 2da TOP BITHC YOU AINT NUTHIN I WILL CRUHSSS UUUUUU

[KarthXLR]

Protip: Diggs knows everything about macsbecause he pro

[beep beep diglett]

Protip: Diggs knows everything about macsbecause he pro

protip: karf get raped

anyways i guess this might get more people to try games, but i wont care because i dont have a mac hahahahaa

[copulatingduck]

digg please exit the thread, you are mucking up what was otherwise an interesting thread with terrible jokes that only you laugh at and it is sad



i remember months (possibly over a year ago by now) when valve was openly looking for programmers to port their engine and steam to other systems, specifically mac and linux. I wonder if/when they'll get some sort of linux port. i will not pretend to know much about the differences/similarities between osx and lunix but i'd imagine if they got it working on mac then a great deal of the work is already done, no? or is linux support just a silly pipe-dream?

[ainmosni]

digg please exit the thread, you are mucking up what was otherwise an interesting thread with terrible jokes that only you laugh at and it is sad

Thanks duck, Diggs has no idea what he's talking about and only made "it's not what I have so it must suck and be useless" jokes. This is relevant to PC gamers as this has the potential of GROWING THE COMMUNITY and making sure that PC (and now also Mac) gaming stays relevant, it's actually in PC gamers best interests to be OS independent because the less barriers of entry PC gaming has, the better. Also, many people keep windows around just because there are so few mac games, this might be the beginning of the end of my windows install... I can only hope...

About finding bugs and why multiplatform ports actually cause less of them: The source code will be mostly the same with the only the rendering/control/sound modules being seperate code. What happens with multiplatform code is that many ugly hacks won't work on one of the two platforms and will have to be done in 'The Right Way'. Further more, because they see the mac port as a Tier-1 port, the game as a whole will get more (and better) quality assurance because some bugs will be more pronounced in the mac port than the windows port, this will lead to them being found and fixed faster.

i remember months (possibly over a year ago by now) when valve was openly looking for programmers to port their engine and steam to other systems, specifically mac and linux. I wonder if/when they'll get some sort of linux port. i will not pretend to know much about the differences/similarities between osx and lunix but i'd imagine if they got it working on mac then a great deal of the work is already done, no? or is linux support just a silly pipe-dream?

Well, this makes a full linux port very easy for valve as they've already done the hardest part by porting from D3D to OpenGL, as OS X and Linux share this mechanism for rendering it shouldn't need too many changes besides this. It also depends on the audio and control libraries they used for the port, if they used SDL, they could essentially build it for linux right now if they want but if they used apple's Core* API, it needs a third port. All in all, a linux port seems possible but it all depends on how this port was done.