Halo 1 & 2 for PC
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Subject: Havok on the Mac, and Halo 2

Firstly, no, I've not been sucked in by an April Fools' joke.

http://www.insidemacgames.com/features/tuncersblog.php

Apparently, an anonymous Mac developer's figured out a work around for letting Havok-based games run on the Mac, without having to port Havok itself (and pay the requisite costs associated with that task). Until now, I've pointed out in most of the "Halo 2 for Mac?" type threads that it's not a real possibility, because Halo 2 uses the Havok physics engine, and the Havok people have acted like tossers about the prospect of a Mac compatible version of Havok.

This could mean that that rather imposing brick wall between Halo 2 and the Mac has been knocked down. Sure, there are some more hurdles to get past before somebody could port Halo 2 to the Mac, but this one has been the only technical reason it absolutely couldn't happen.

It's all pretty up-in-the-air right now - whether it's actually true (though there's no reason to doubt that Tuncer's telling the truth), whether Microsoft is willing to let someone do a Mac port of Halo 2, and whether there aren't any legal issues regarding Havok's IP, to name a few. But nonetheless, it's a glimmer of hope for all those old-time Bungie fans who couldn't stomach the thought of buying an Xbox.

- Reiginko

  • 04.02.2006 6:07 AM PDT
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Interesting. Its a little vague though, and it seems like there will be some legal trouble. I sure hope it all works out though, macs should get more games. I might even switch if there are enough games, as that is a big draw to windows for me.

  • 04.02.2006 6:53 AM PDT
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interesting. although i don't think havok will like it when game devs get around their little ploy to get money. or maybe they will. at this point im skeptical.

lets see what happens with this :)

  • 04.02.2006 8:46 AM PDT
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*sings and dances..*

"Directx directx directx!!!"

show me a mac running directx well (without it being one of those hacked intel macs on xp), and you shall have your gaming on mac. 'Till then, be smart and buy a real computer. No new games are ever coming to mac, because frankly; macs are -blam!-e for damn near everything.

[Edited on 4/2/2006]

  • 04.02.2006 9:39 AM PDT
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*sings and dances..*

"Directx directx directx!!!"

show me a mac running directx well (without it being one of those hacked intel macs on xp), and you shall have your gaming on mac. 'Till then, be smart and buy a real computer. No new games are ever coming to mac, because frankly; macs are -blam!-e for damn near everything.


Your ignorance on this subject is amazing.

No new games are coming to the mac? You must have some pretty high standards if you don't consider CoD2, Quake 4, and Fable: LC to be games. Those are just the games I can name off the top of my head because I want to get them. There are plenty more games coming out, but I don't suppose a computer genius like you has heard of a little thing called OpenGL?

[Edited on 4/2/2006]

  • 04.02.2006 11:35 AM PDT
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no he's right, macs arent as good for gaming. Seriously only mac fanboys will argue against this. Macs are vey nice computers, just not for gaming though.

  • 04.02.2006 11:53 AM PDT
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go look at the mac compatible ATI card specs... compared to the pc cards, they suck.

macs arent made for gaming. im not saying they wont do it, but a PC will do games better.

  • 04.02.2006 1:51 PM PDT
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Posted by: Teh Vidmaster
Your ignorance on this subject is amazing.

No new games are coming to the mac? You must have some pretty high standards if you don't consider CoD2, Quake 4, and Fable: LC to be games. Those are just the games I can name off the top of my head because I want to get them. There are plenty more games coming out, but I don't suppose a computer genius like you has heard of a little thing called OpenGL?


CoD2, Q4 and fable are all a tad old now, i was thinking more in the region of UT2007 and oblivion (due in 2-4 days *drools*). Also; OpenGL is slightly -blam!- when compared to directx for full-scale games. It can do the job, but directx will outperform it in most respects and has much wider integration in PCs, so is used more widely by developers. Also, macs use intels and ati cards. I am of the opinion that games should never be played on intel cpus or ati gpus. Playing them on both deserves a slapping tbh; it's a recipe for overpriced disaster. Face it, macs are good for about one thing; the scrapheap. They're overpriced, ugly as sin, run insanely hot, run stupidly slow and use crappy hardware.

[Edited on 4/2/2006]

  • 04.02.2006 2:36 PM PDT
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Oblivion has been out for like a week...

  • 04.02.2006 4:45 PM PDT
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Posted by: OmniosSpartan
Posted by: TMH1988
no he's right, macs arent as good for gaming. Seriously only mac fanboys will argue against this. Macs are vey nice computers, just not for gaming though.


exactly Macs are made for MAKING games not playing them :)


no, they're useless for anything in 3d design aswell, unless it's opengl based, because it doesn't support directx, so you don't have access to the ultra-powerful directx-based CAD cards. when used in conjunction with PCs, it'll be perfect, but on its own, it would be useless.

[Edited on 4/2/2006]

  • 04.02.2006 5:07 PM PDT
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Wow elmicker, who shoved a stick up your ass? Anyway, Macs will do fine for gaming unless you are a hardcore gamer who is obsessed with having THE BEST computer or overclocks the hell out of every little piece of hardware so they can get 60 fps instead of 50. If that's you, I pity you and whoever is a part of your social life (which at this point is probably non-existent) If you don't like Macintosh computers, I can understand that but you really are making yourself sound ignorant by raving about how Macs are "ugly as sin" and that they have bad hardware. I guess you also forgot bungie uses Macs for a variety of things that they do for developing games. This isn't a Mac vs. PC thread, the person who posted the topic was just trying to say that Halo 2 on Mac is a possibility.

  • 04.02.2006 6:52 PM PDT
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Posted by: impurity
Reiginko says, "Stay on topic, -blam!-es."


ok then. Let's say.. never. to do it effectively you'd have to either port both havok and directx to mac, or rebuild halo 2 using alternative mac-compatible engines. Seeing as this time it's being ported in house by microsoft, i doubt it will be moved away from microsoft products and compatibility. Chances are; it would be cheaper to buy every mac owner a vista-capable PC than it would be to port the engines and the game.

  • 04.03.2006 5:33 AM PDT
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Posted by: Reiginko
Firstly, no, I've not been sucked in by an April Fools' joke.

[url]http://www.insidemacgames.com/features/tuncersblog.php[/ url]

Apparently, an anonymous Mac developer's figured out a work around for letting Havok-based games run on the Mac, without having to port Havok itself (and pay the requisite costs associated with that task). Until now, I've pointed out in most of the "Halo 2 for Mac?" type threads that it's not a real possibility, because Halo 2 uses the Havok physics engine, and the Havok people have acted like tossers about the prospect of a Mac compatible version of Havok.

This could mean that that rather imposing brick wall between Halo 2 and the Mac has been knocked down. Sure, there are some more hurdles to get past before somebody could port Halo 2 to the Mac, but this one has been the only technical reason it absolutely couldn't happen.

It's all pretty up-in-the-air right now - whether it's actually true (though there's no reason to doubt that Tuncer's telling the truth), whether Microsoft is willing to let someone do a Mac port of Halo 2, and whether there aren't any legal issues regarding Havok's IP, to name a few. But nonetheless, it's a glimmer of hope for all those old-time Bungie fans who couldn't stomach the thought of buying an Xbox.

- Reiginko

Very cool... although it'll be quite while before it comes out on mac though (legal reasons and politics). If it's possible, they eventually will pick it up to make at least a little profit on it.

  • 04.03.2006 8:45 AM PDT

If you don't got it, you want it. If you got it, you want more of it. Of course if you don't know what it is, it's hard to get any in the first place.

Halo 2 on a Mac *glee*

  • 04.03.2006 9:57 AM PDT
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Posted by: RoboChocobo
Halo 2 on a Mac *glee*


Halo 2 on my pc *is moist*

  • 04.03.2006 3:24 PM PDT
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ok then. Let's say.. never. to do it effectively you'd have to either port both havok and directx to mac, or rebuild halo 2 using alternative mac-compatible engines. Seeing as this time it's being ported in house by microsoft, i doubt it will be moved away from microsoft products and compatibility. Chances are; it would be cheaper to buy every mac owner a vista-capable PC than it would be to port the engines and the game.

Translating games from DirectX to OpenGL is nothing new, it's something companies that port games to the Mac have a lot of experience at.

If there is to be a port, it would bealmost certainly not be handled by Bungie or M$.

Oh yeah Oblivion uses..............you guessed it Havok. Middleware is the primary factor limiting the number of titles available for the mac.

Elmicker: I don't think you're going to persuade any Mac fanboys to give up gaming, and I doubt any Mac fanboys will sway your opinion on the Mac.

[Edited on 4/3/2006]

  • 04.03.2006 5:47 PM PDT
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I can't see this happening, Halo is one of Microsofts gaming weapons - with Halo Microsoft wield great power, just as you won't see Halo on the PS3 I can imagine you won't see Halo 2 on the mac (at least, not officially).

As for this OpenGL / DirectX thing, I don't think anyone can really say which is better - fact is Microsoft push DirectX on the PC via Windows, but for everything that isn't Windows (Linux, macs, etc) there's OpenGL, and while there's developers out there like John Carmack (Quake/Doom guy) who will only write for OpenGL then it'll stay a pretty hot api. I don't think anyone's yet aware of what difficulties there'll be in translating a DX10 game to OpenGL, so I think we can leave that one for time to tell.

  • 04.03.2006 6:09 PM PDT
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i actually prefer DX over openGL. dont know why, exactly. for some reason openGL graphics, to me anyway, lack substance. But its probably just me. They just seem.... thin...

what ive heard about DX10 is amazing. i hope it holds up to what they promise.

  • 04.03.2006 7:07 PM PDT
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What about the "Boot Camp".... the recent Apple announcement of Windows XP being able to be utilized on a Intel Mac...? Could that mean that Vista may be bootable too?

Then you get into thinking of the Nvidia or ATI cards available for Macs.... I'd be very interested in knowing about some benchmarks for an Intel Mac Mini running XP.... (HDTV, console 'ish setup with WiFi; despite the horrible Mini's "Intel GMA950 graphics processor with 64MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared with main memory")

What framerates does Unreal or Halo CE run on that system? (InsideMacGames.com? www.xlr8yourmac.com?~now xlr8 posts some benchmarks for games on Macs.)

[Edited on 4/5/2006]

  • 04.05.2006 5:02 PM PDT
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Just because a mac is using an intel chip and can run windows doesn't mean it has the same motherboard as a PC. You probably can't use any PC parts in a Mac right now, so Boot Camp doesn't change any performance issues.

  • 04.05.2006 5:20 PM PDT
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You probably can't use any PC parts in a Mac right now, so Boot Camp doesn't change any performance issues.

Um......wow........that's some mighty powerful ignorance........
The only real difference now between Macs and PCs is the OS!!!!
Macs have been using the same hard drives, memory, video cards, and many of the same peripherals as PCs for years.

Boot camp is an interesting development since it means that I could probably run Halo 2 on Apple hardware eventually. However, it would be nice if it ran on a real OS and not the overpriced OS X knockoff M$ is trying to make Vista.

In the meantime it really kicks those Havok jerks right in the nutsack. They wanted all that money for their precious PPC Havok physics code and now NOBODY is going to buy it. Think about it. Why would anybody pay for a PPC Mac version of Havok?

[Edited on 4/5/2006]

  • 04.05.2006 6:50 PM PDT
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Chewy Limpdick, Gummy Bear Crotch, Walking Carpet.... Nvidia and ATI have been making cards for Macs for years. Teh Vidmaster, is right. I have not read anyhthing about Vista... Here's a question fo those Windows Hawks... Is the Vista built on top of a Unix base/platform (of sorts; like OS X)?

The meat of the matter in bringing up video cards, might have lead to many more questions, like Chewy suggested (in a mean spirited sort of way), could the Windows targetied products become completely compatible with the Intel Macs....? I don't know until I know more about Vista. When booted in OS X, a Windows XP targeted hardware product will not likely work well or at all for the Mac OS. While booted in XP, sure (with all the required drivers). This poses a nice future for those 3rd party manufacturers.... I think. If they can produce one fluid line of products that work on many OSes (Mac, MS...Linux too?) Streamlining their efforts, might result in maximized profits in the not so distant future.

Macworld has a booted XP on a Mini with only 512MB RAM, that didn't do so well on games. The person said they will repeat the tests when he gets his replacement 2GB of RAM.
(time to do some Vista research_¿¿Unix??)

  • 04.06.2006 9:05 AM PDT

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