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Offline Alec

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Mac Indie Games
« on: May 17, 2007, 06:37:34 pm »
So yeah, I got a Mac Book Pro fairly recently to work on the Mac port of Aquaria, and I've been looking for games for Mac.

Yeah, I realize there's a lot of games for Windows, and I dual boot XP... but still. Mac seems like it could be an awesome platform for indie games.

I've played ports of Kenta Cho games, Cave Story, some Jeff Vogel stuff, some ambrosia demos. But I'm wondering if there's any hidden gems I don't know about yet. (especially Mac-only games)

Mac fans, speak up! :)

Offline xander

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Re: Mac Indie Games
« Reply #1 on: May 17, 2007, 07:45:50 pm »
Ambrosia Software, as you say, is a good place to start.  All of the EV games are excellent, SketchFighter is a blast, and they have a library of older games that are really quite good (I am particularly fond of Apeiron and Maelstrom).  Ares is also an excellent game, but it does not get along with OS X.

Lux Deluxe is a high quality Risk clone that is, I believe Mac only.  Great support for custom maps, internet multiplayer, and reasonably good AI (plus pluggable AI).

Mutant Storm is certainly not Mac only, but it is a great game (pom-pom's other game, Space Tripper, is also worth a play through).

There are others, but I am at work at the moment, and most game websites are blocked.  :\

xander
« Last Edit: May 17, 2007, 07:48:02 pm by xander »
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Offline Zam

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Re: Mac Indie Games
« Reply #2 on: May 17, 2007, 10:44:06 pm »
Vendetta online (Sorry, I'm obligated to : D) Indie space MMORPG. Fly's like descent.

http://www.vendetta-online.com

They've only had 3 or at maximum, 4 people working on it at a time, for at least 5 years now.

Eh, Jeff Vogel is good, cave story...Hmm.. I just wish mac os X could support those old games, most of the best indie games are from that time frame.

Okay, I'd also suggest Ev : Nova and Sketchfighter.
EV is just fun.


*edit* I was  reading through the FAQ, man, John is poetic sometimes...http://www.vendetta-online.com/h/faq_general.html
« Last Edit: May 18, 2007, 12:55:51 am by zamzx zik »

Offline Toom

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Re: Mac Indie Games
« Reply #3 on: May 17, 2007, 11:49:06 pm »
I don't use my Mac for gaming (it's my workhorse; games go on my creaky PC so that I don't spend all day playing when I should be elbows-deep in Photoshop), and these aren't exactly indie games, but it's worth noting that Bungee's Marathon series, plus their earlier Pathways Into Darkness, are abandonware nowadays. HotUd to the rescue again! (NB: pretty much all of these run under Classic.)

Truth be told, I've otherwise found the Mac gaming scene to be in a shocking state.

Offline Alec

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Re: Mac Indie Games
« Reply #4 on: May 18, 2007, 12:24:28 am »
Truth be told, I've otherwise found the Mac gaming scene to be in a shocking state.

Its pretty depressing.

But it still seems like the platform has potential to be a sexy base of operations for indie games... maybe things will be looking better in a few years.

Offline Toom

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Re: Mac Indie Games
« Reply #5 on: May 18, 2007, 01:49:54 am »
If Mac users had something in the TGF/MMF mould that didn't mong forty dongs (I'm lookin' at you, GameMaker, you dong-monger), I'd probably never see sunlight again and the indie scene would explode.

Offline xander

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Re: Mac Indie Games
« Reply #6 on: May 18, 2007, 04:11:01 pm »
... but it's worth noting that Bungee's Marathon series, plus their earlier Pathways Into Darkness, are abandonware nowadays.
They aren't exactly abandonware -- abandonware tends to imply that the company that made the game is no longer in existence, and has allowed the game to fall into a nebulous state of ownerless copyright protection.  Bungie, before they went over to MS, released the source to Marathon II / Infinity.  If you want to play the Marathon games on a modern Mac, pick up AlephOne, which is an open source version of the engine, and grab the game files from Bungie's website.

As to the state of Mac gaming, I think it comes down to the fact that most Mac users don't see Macs as gaming machines.  I have a few games on my computer, but I mostly use it for work.  If I want to play a game, I have a PS2.  I don't think that this attitude is uncommon in the Mac world.  Now, I suppose, it may be argued that it is a self fulfilling prophecy -- the Mac gaming scene sucks because there are no Mac gamers because the Mac gaming scene sucks -- but I think that most Mac users buy computers knowing that there are not many games.  People who want to play games don't buy Macs.  Thus, the status remains quo (or something like that).

xander
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Offline Toom

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Re: Mac Indie Games
« Reply #7 on: May 18, 2007, 04:29:52 pm »
Yeah, that makes sense; I certainly didn't buy my Mac so I could play games on it, I bought it so I could run Photoshop and Freehand and Painter simultaneously for hours at a time without the OS suiciding ;). I did play quite a lot of games on my last Mac, in the form of emulators, but it's hardly the same thing.

"Abandonware" may imply that the parent company's gone bust or otherwise relinquished rights to the software, but my understanding of the term has always been that it refers to software no longer available for purchase from the original distributors.

Offline xander

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Re: Mac Indie Games
« Reply #8 on: May 18, 2007, 06:36:06 pm »
"Abandonware" may imply that the parent company's gone bust or otherwise relinquished rights to the software, but my understanding of the term has always been that it refers to software no longer available for purchase from the original distributors.
Doesn't Bungie still sell the Marathon disks?  I would check right now, but I am at work, and Bungie is blocked.

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Offline Toom

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Re: Mac Indie Games
« Reply #9 on: May 18, 2007, 06:55:02 pm »
I don't think so; I certainly haven't seen an actual physical Marathon CD in the thick end of a decade, but I've been wrong before!

Offline xander

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Re: Mac Indie Games
« Reply #10 on: May 18, 2007, 08:17:58 pm »
I don't think so; I certainly haven't seen an actual physical Marathon CD in the thick end of a decade, but I've been wrong before!
Oh, they were selling CDs three or four years ago -- I know because that is when I replaced mine.  However, that was before they released the original data files, so I don't know about now.  At any rate, I will have a look when I get home, and don't have to muck around with the filters at work.

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Offline xander

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Re: Mac Indie Games
« Reply #11 on: May 19, 2007, 02:04:07 am »
Sorry for the double post if it offends anyone -- I am not sure entirely what the etiquette here is with regards to editing vs new posts.

Indeed, Bungie still distributes Marathon, Marathon 2, and Marathon Infinity.  The engine has been open sourced, and the data files are freely available from bungie.net .  So, I would not consider Marathon to be abandonware.  It is now freeware, but not abandoned.  The main Marathon website and all of the needed files are hosted at bungie.org (which, I think, is not affiliated with Bungie, but seems to have their blessings).

Perhaps it is just a difference in the way in which we use the word "abandonware."  Bungie is no longer supporting Marathon, and they are not really publishing it any longer, they fully support the distribution and modification of the original Marathon games.  To mean, abandonware means that nebulous state where you don't know what the actual status of a piece of software is, i.e. the publisher has not released the source, is not selling the game any longer, but still holds copyright.  This is much the same category that books fall into when they go out of print, but before the copyright has expired.  Bungie didn't abandon Marathon, in that sense -- they released it into the public domain (with a few caveats, I'm sure).

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Offline Quemaqua

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Re: Mac Indie Games
« Reply #12 on: July 11, 2007, 03:40:00 pm »
This doesn't directly apply to indie games, given that they tend to need less power, but I think the Mac gaming scene is largely dead because of cost and lack of customization.  If you're trying to build a gaming machine, you're going to pay out the nose for a Mac of the same power as a PC, and you won't be able to do anything to the machine once you get it.  My wife used Macs for years and years, but after she met me and saw all the stuff she was missing (and how much more she was paying), she switched to PC and never looked back.  Now she hates Macs even more than I do, which I find somewhat amusing.  But it strikes me as relevant that the things cost as much as they do.  If you're buying a Mac, it's probably for a very specific reason, otherwise you wouldn't  be shelling out that kind of money for something you could get much cheaper elsewhere.

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Offline xander

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Re: Mac Indie Games
« Reply #13 on: July 11, 2007, 05:34:21 pm »
This doesn't directly apply to indie games, given that they tend to need less power, but I think the Mac gaming scene is largely dead because of cost and lack of customization.  If you're trying to build a gaming machine, you're going to pay out the nose for a Mac of the same power as a PC, and you won't be able to do anything to the machine once you get it.  My wife used Macs for years and years, but after she met me and saw all the stuff she was missing (and how much more she was paying), she switched to PC and never looked back.  Now she hates Macs even more than I do, which I find somewhat amusing.  But it strikes me as relevant that the things cost as much as they do.  If you're buying a Mac, it's probably for a very specific reason, otherwise you wouldn't  be shelling out that kind of money for something you could get much cheaper elsewhere.
1)  I dispute your notion that other PCs are much cheaper than similarly powered Macs.  Pick a Mac of your choice, then go to Dell, HP, or any other large PC retailer, and build a machine with similar power.  It will come out very close to the Mac in price (the Mac might be a bit more expensive, but generally not by more than $100).

2)  In terms of customization, it is true that you cannot swap out the motherboard or processor (in most cases -- many processor upgrades have been possible in the past, though they tended to be expensive thanks to custom parts needed); but you can swap out pretty much any other hardware.  You can add more RAM; larger, faster hard drives; better or more video cards; &c.  And modern Macs will run Windows, either in virtualization (side-by-side with Mac OS X), or on its own (Apple provides Windows drivers for the hardware as part of BootCamp).

3)  I do not believe that either cost or customization have anything to do with the supposed dearth of independent Mac games.  For starters, most indie games that I have seen are significantly less intense than AAA titles.  AAA studios can afford to bang the hardware, and push the envelope -- they have tons of developers, and money to buy lots of hardware, and if their title pushes the envelope today, they can be confident that everyone will be able to play the game in a year or two, which is fine, because they have to money to go on without making sales.  On the other hand, indies tend to be small, and the budgets tend to be tight.  Their games need to do well from the get-go, and they probably don't have the money to buy the newest and shiniest computers every year.  Though you already admitted as much in your own post.

Honestly, I believe that this supposed dearth of Mac games could stem from two things.  First, the Mac market is small.  Second, most Mac users did not buy their computers for gaming.  There is a segment of the Windows PC world that buys computers specifically for gaming.  Some of them get really high end machines, and many of them get good to moderate range machines.  But these people are going to buy every game that comes out (more or less).  If this group makes up only 5% of all computer purchases, it still makes up nearly as many potential gaming clients as all Mac sales combined (about 6% of computer purchases).  Coupled with the fact that most Mac users are not gamers, there is little reason to make the game for the Mac.

As to having nothing to do with your computer once you get it, Macs are common in video editing contexts, and in many scientific contexts -- the ease of the Aqua GUI, combined with access to Unix command line utilities makes the Mac OS a good choice for scientific work.  Macs are also just as capable of running a word processor, an internet browser, or a spreadsheet.

Finally, I disagree with your basic assumption -- that the Mac gaming scene is dead.  Many AAA titles are ported to Mac, and there are many indies that sell Mac games.  Ambrosia Software is still alive and strong, after 10+ years of publishing Mac games.  Macs will play most of the really popular games (WoW, the Sims, &c), and even if they don't work with OS X, Macs can run windows.

Now, you are welcome to dislike Macs -- I really don't care, I'm not a fanboy.  I prefer Macs for myself, but would never try to push them on other people.  But if you are going to bash them, please do so without making things up, or repeating the party line of anti-Mac zealots.

xander
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Offline Alec

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Re: Mac Indie Games
« Reply #14 on: July 11, 2007, 08:12:36 pm »
I think Macs have this crazy potential to be almost like a console in terms of games, because of the limited range of hardware.

I wish Apple would do more with its games "division", like design their own controller. Sure Macs cost more, and have limited hardware range, but these could be advantages... people expect a certain type of experience from Mac software. I want to see games made specifically for the Mac that run with that aesthetic.

I love the idea of installing apps by just dragging them. If Apple had some kind of game channel panel that you could use to view games from an online database, and drag game icons from there to your apps folder to download the demos, that could be a really cool mix of XBLA + Mac sensibilities.

I also think Macs are/can be really indie friendly, and that gets me excited.