A couple Mac OS ET related Questions

(jeffbax) #1

Hello a few questions for you (preferably developer)

I am an Intel Mac owner, and was wondering if you guys keep contact with the person who did the Mac port of ET.

Basically, I’m wondering if he has any interest in making the game universal so both PowerPC and x86 Mac users can play.

Sure sure, there is the “Rosetta” emulation solution, but as any FPS gamer knows - thats not really a tasteful solution. You might have the Mac gamer who really doesn’t know whats what saying it runs “acceptably” but chances are its not that great - and the last thing you want in an FPS are inconsistent hickups at the worst possible times when your hardware can easily run this game at the highest settings.

I only ask because porting from PPC Mac to x86 Macs is generally dead simple. I believe the guy who handled the UT2004 port got a build running in like two hours.

I didn’t know if you guys are still in contact with the person who ported it to Mac, because it could be great to get a Universal build. The best part about id games is their high-performing cross platform nature (Quake 1 - 4, Doom 3 are all Universal games already), and native ET would be a great thing to have and I’m sure a lot of gamers with shiny new Intel macs would appreciate it :slight_smile:

Thanks, and I hope I can frag with you soon (and hopefully in Quake Wars as well!) :drink:

(SCDS_reyalP) #2

The Mac port was done by Brad Oliver from Aspyr AFAIK.

The thing about the port is that even if the actual port is dead simple, there’s still a lot of work associated with making a release.

Someone really needs to implement a linux ABI compatability for OSX, like the one available on the *BSDs. Such a thing should run far better than CPU emulation of the PPC binary. You could also of course boot Linux or Windows on your intel Mac to play ET.

(jeffbax) #3

Not a solution :moo:

That said, thanks for the name, I will email him and see if he has any interest :slight_smile:

Linux ABI would rock, booting into another OS does not :slight_smile:

-Jeff

(SCDS_reyalP) #4

Linux ABI would rock, booting into another OS does not

Fair enough. I thought I should point it out as the one current way you can run ET natively on your hardware. FWIW, with linux you could almost certainly set it up to run from a live CD or DVD.

(B0rsuk) #5

Except that patching wouldn’t be very convenient. No ban list saved etc.
You could use 2GB flash drive instead, but I wonder if it’s going to be enough for megatexture. I mean, it should be possible to have a server without actual data, only information which part of map is grass, dirt, etc.

(SCDS_reyalP) #6

As far as I know, he was only asking about ET, not ET:QW. Simple enough to mount the home directory anyway, although I’m not sure how stable linux HFS+ support is.

(jeffbax) #7

Its not having the OS installed, its the fact that its inconvenient to shut everything down, pause to wait, repeat etc.

As for a Linux live CD, they generally aren’t really that easy to get your drivers set up perfectly, especially video.

Trust me, I have an XP Partition… basically just for when new Half Life 2 eps come out, but I don’t buy new Windows versions of software anymore, its not really worth it. As a Linux gamer how he feels about “dual booting” as the solution, its nowhere near as nice as the native thing.

I emailed the dev about it and he says the hardest part is that to do it you’d have to patch the Windows and Linux versions too to support it I think, hopefully they will do it but he didn’t sound all that enthusiastic from the short blurb he wrote back.

Err… and I’m not trying to be snappy either, kind of a reflex when everyone always shrugs and says “boot Windows”. You don’t get progress that way :slight_smile:

(jeffbax) #8

Well… maybe some hope :slight_smile:

>>Ah, I see.
>>Does this mean the chances are slim?

I wouldn’t necessarily put it that way. More honestly, it’s mostly out of my hands for the moment. I typically find out about patches to the PC/Linux versions very late (they snuck one out recently that would have been perfect for a UB build) so I’ve let them know to let me know when the next patch is planned.

Really appreciate the name :slight_smile:

(Nail) #9

instead of bootcamp, maybe this would be better

(jeffbax) #10

No, Parallel’s is way too slow to game, and no hardware video support.

(Nail) #11

well, in that case you may be pooched on ET, but I think there’s a small possibility that the mac intel release may be a small part of the delay in demo and therefore final release of ET:QW , no reason other than my own fertile imagination for that idea though