Ever since StarDock announced that it had hired one of the lead devs for Civ 5, I KNEW this was soon to happen. Galactic Civ 2 was generally praised for it’s amazing AI, and fun, deep mechanics. I loved it long before I really got into Civ.
Haven’t read much about it yet, other than the announcement, but so far it’s been said to be 64 bit only, which implies a large memory footprint… intriguing.
I’ve lost count of how many times you’ve said this of various games. If you still haven’t come to terms with the fact that Macs have a severely restricted selection of games, perhaps you should consider switching to a more game-friendly OS.
I don’t know why he doesn’t just Boot Camp into Windows. I have an iMac and play any Windows game I want on it. And fully intend to play this one, because it looks RAD.
My OS is game-friendly, thanks; some companies just decide to ignore a potential revenue source is all. And I don’t want to give Microsoft any money. I see no reason to sit meekly and hope that game developers decide to make products for Mac OS; I use my voice and my fingers to express my desire for their products.
Do you think everyone should just remain silent and hope that people decide to see things from their perspective? :dubious:
It looks to me like you *are *sitting meekly and hoping that game developers decide to make products for Mac OS. Periodically announcing on the SDMB that you won’t buy non-Mac games is unlikely to sway anyone into accommodating you.
Well you should have asked rather than just trying to dis me. If you had, I’d have told you that I’ve been having an email correspondence with Sean Drohan, the support mgr at Stardock about this. I always email game devs and ask them if they plan to release a Mac client and if not, why not.
I used to do it with Steam as well, and you’ll notice that in the last year or so they’ve really upped the number of Mac OS games they have.
Now can we end this pointless attempt to discuss my OS and my gaming habits and my gaming system? Thanks in advance for agreeing.
I went ahead last night when I got the announcement email, and spent the $99.99 for the elite founder preorder package. I played many hours playing GalCiv 2 and its expansions, and more importantly have developed a level of trust in StarDock that I never had with a company before. Especially after the fiasco of Elemental: World of Magic - bought at release due to the name “StarDock”, wasn’t that good… but they made it better, and gave me the perfected version free.
I never would have spent $99.99 on a preorder, sight unseen, to any other company then Stardock.
Just want to remind you, the original Galciv was released on OS/2 way back when. Stardock was only an OS/2 company till the end, when IBM discontinued their bread and butter operating system. I don’t think they have any loyalty to Microsoft as a company, they just had to go where the customers were. If they knew there was money to be made, I think Stardock would make a Mac version. If you won’t be able to do a dual boot, or emulator to play their game, post on their forums, www.galciv3.com , and let them know. Maybe if they get enough requests, they will consider if it is worth the $$$ to port.
Yeah it’s all about them perceiving a market to exist for their game on Macs. I think it probably be worth it to them to do a post launch OpenGL port of the engine. But they have to feel like it would be a worthwhile investment.
Were there a lot of Mac games out there that Steam just didn’t carry? I’d have assumed that, if a Mac version of a game they were selling existed, they’d sell the Mac version, too. Was that not the case?
Mac also isn’t particularly game friendly. It has stupidly gimped Open GL support and (obviously) no Direct X support. Apple is intent on writing their own OpenGL implementation, and by this point it’s several years behind Open GL on every other platform. All the modern Open GL features are 3.3+, and the current version is 4.something, and Mac GL has been stuck on GL 3.2 for a while now.
Now, of the games that use OpenGL, a lot of them do have modes that use GL 2.1 (just like how most Direct X games have DX9 options), but it’s still not ideal and kind of gimps the platform from the start. Even in comparison with Linux.
A lot of times they will, but many times there’s licensing issues preventing it. For instance, Steam doesn’t allow revenue to be disambiguated between platforms, so (before Origin and all that) Sims games never got their Mac version on Steam. This is because Maxis pays a porting company to port The Sims to Mac, rather than doing it themselves. The contract for the port, of course, stipulates that the porting company gets a portion of the profits, but Valve wouldn’t let them set anything like that up. (Or wouldn’t give them enough data to be able to do it themselves or whatever, something along those lines)
