Mac Alternatives Now That CoH is Gone?

Started by Wammo, December 03, 2012, 06:21:48 PM

avelworldcreator

The Phoenix Project does plan on being multiplatform. One of our main developers uses a Mac and several others prefer Linux. The latest game engine we are looking at appears to support this better and we will strive to keep the community informed as we progress.
Missing World Media primary co-founder, senior developer, UI/UX acting lead, and software toolsmith.

Wammo

Decided to download the trial of Crossover and see if CO is a good alternative...ever try Crossover anyone?

Starsman

I tried crossover once for the one piece of software I NEED for productivity in my mac. The fact that it didnt work is why I still have my PC set to the left of my 27" iMac :P
For the sake of the community: please stop the cultural "research" in your attempt to put blame on the game's cancelation.

It's sickening to see the community sink that low. It's worse to see the community does not get it.

I'm signing off and taking a break, blindly hope things change.

Starsman

Quote from: avelworldcreator on December 04, 2012, 06:30:45 PM
The Phoenix Project does plan on being multiplatform. One of our main developers uses a Mac and several others prefer Linux. The latest game engine we are looking at appears to support this better and we will strive to keep the community informed as we progress.

Nothing against Pz, but that is a WAY far aways for current Mac alternatives (But then again, Elder Scrolls is not here either so maybe I should not complain :P)

Curious: what is the "latest" engine you are looking at? Unity?
For the sake of the community: please stop the cultural "research" in your attempt to put blame on the game's cancelation.

It's sickening to see the community sink that low. It's worse to see the community does not get it.

I'm signing off and taking a break, blindly hope things change.

Wammo

Hey Stars...I downloaded Crossover and then CO but when I launch it the game isn't patching...just frozen on patch screen...any ideas?

Starsman

Quote from: Wammo on December 04, 2012, 06:56:06 PM
Hey Stars...I downloaded Crossover and then CO but when I launch it the game isn't patching...just frozen on patch screen...any ideas?

Nop. I would recoment just to remove crossover and use the wine wrapper in the documentation. It's not just about getting the thing up, but also configure it so itproperly does things. The guys at the STO forums already put a lot of work on making sure everything works with their documentation, so I'd say that's your best bet.
For the sake of the community: please stop the cultural "research" in your attempt to put blame on the game's cancelation.

It's sickening to see the community sink that low. It's worse to see the community does not get it.

I'm signing off and taking a break, blindly hope things change.

avelworldcreator

Quote from: Starsman on December 04, 2012, 06:55:03 PM
Nothing against Pz, but that is a WAY far aways for current Mac alternatives (But then again, Elder Scrolls is not here either so maybe I should not complain :P)

Curious: what is the "latest" engine you are looking at? Unity?

Unity? Oh hell no! That crap lags on my modern PC! x64 and it lags! on the demo!

No. We are using parts of the Mulitverse system and the Crytek 3 engine with customizations

Edit. And next to this computer I'm on I have an old G3 Mac I need to upgrade. I want to do real testing and not guesswork.
Missing World Media primary co-founder, senior developer, UI/UX acting lead, and software toolsmith.

Starsman

Quote from: avelworldcreator on December 04, 2012, 10:31:03 PM
Unity? Oh hell no! That crap lags on my modern PC! x64 and it lags! on the demo!

No. We are using parts of the Mulitverse system and the Crytek 3 engine with customizations

Edit. And next to this computer I'm on I have an old G3 Mac I need to upgrade. I want to do real testing and not guesswork.

Never had issues with Unity slowing down on any machine I have. Been working with it for nearly two years now. Mind you: I paid for the Pro edition and have debugging and profiling tools available.

I was not aware Crytek did Linux publishing now. That was why I asked, I only was aware of Unity targeting all 3 OSs. Are they doing the same as UDK with the 25% commission on anything developed with their engine? That's VERY important to take into account as they may not care about how much it takes to run the servers and still demand their share be taken from the top. Licensing is the main reason I use Unity (that and it's extremely large target range.)
For the sake of the community: please stop the cultural "research" in your attempt to put blame on the game's cancelation.

It's sickening to see the community sink that low. It's worse to see the community does not get it.

I'm signing off and taking a break, blindly hope things change.

avelworldcreator

Missing World Media primary co-founder, senior developer, UI/UX acting lead, and software toolsmith.

Starsman

Just checked their site seems its 20% of the revenues (not just box sales.) I bet the actual contract is written to make sure monthly fees and all IAP are included. By saying "revenue", they make sure they take their cut from the top, even if you spend more in hosting than you made.

QuoteWe want you to make games with CryENGINE 3 that people will want to play. We hope that your work will lead to a product you can commercialise. If this is the case, before you can sell your work or your game, you must seek a development license for CryENGINE 3. We'll offer a royalty-only license model for Independent Developers, where Crytek require only 20% of the developer's revenues from the commercial launch of their game.
For the sake of the community: please stop the cultural "research" in your attempt to put blame on the game's cancelation.

It's sickening to see the community sink that low. It's worse to see the community does not get it.

I'm signing off and taking a break, blindly hope things change.

avelworldcreator

#30
Quote from: Starsman on December 05, 2012, 04:44:20 AM
Just checked their site seems its 20% of the revenues (not just box sales.) I bet the actual contract is written to make sure monthly fees and all IAP are included. By saying "revenue", they make sure they take their cut from the top, even if you spend more in hosting than you made.

Good catch. I'll pass it on.

Edit (from Skype):
Quote
[11:43:08 PM] Richard Robertson: How much EXACTLY is Crytek charging for use?
[11:43:41 PM] Richard Robertson: quote:
Just checked their site seems its 20% of the revenues (not just box sales.) I bet the actual contract is written to make sure monthly fees and all IAP are included. By saying "revenue", they make sure they take their cut from the top, even if you spend more in hosting than you made.
[11:43:51 PM] Richard Robertson: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,6681.new.html
[11:44:18 PM] Nate Downes: revenues of the game itself, they cannot charge for F2P systems using add-ons
[11:44:24 PM] Nate Downes: already verified that
[11:44:30 PM] Richard Robertson: Ah.
[11:44:49 PM] Richard Robertson: So advertising revenue CAN be charged for?
[11:45:02 PM] Richard Robertson: And microsales?
[11:45:17 PM] Nate Downes: how are those the game itself?
[11:45:29 PM] Richard Robertson: Hmm.
[11:45:40 PM] Richard Robertson: Ok. Those aren't fees.
[11:45:53 PM] Richard Robertson: I thought we might charge a fee though.
[11:45:56 PM] Nate Downes: a monthly fee could be charged, yes
[11:46:14 PM] Richard Robertson: Which 20% is still acceptable on $15.00 USD.
[11:46:17 PM] Nate Downes: right
[11:46:28 PM] Nate Downes: but extra costume bits, character slots, etc, no
Missing World Media primary co-founder, senior developer, UI/UX acting lead, and software toolsmith.

Starsman

Getting this thread a bit back on topic:

Antoher Mac alternative can be City of Steam (if you can get a beta key.) It's actually a web-browser MMO, but not a Flash one. It's actually done in Unity, that in turn is not runing a secondary emulation layer. The plugin is actually just running the full native engine in the browser (with few features disabled for security.)

The Steampunk theme also may be a nice departure from the perpetual fantasy mmo flod out there.
For the sake of the community: please stop the cultural "research" in your attempt to put blame on the game's cancelation.

It's sickening to see the community sink that low. It's worse to see the community does not get it.

I'm signing off and taking a break, blindly hope things change.

Thunder Glove

City of Steam is okay, but you need a two-button mouse to play it.  The game treats Control-clicks (and Command-clicks, for that matter) as left-clicking, so you can never change the camera angle unless a cutscene does it for you.  I played it for a half-hour or so and it was incredibly frustrating.

Starsman

Quote from: Thunder Glove on December 05, 2012, 03:53:43 PM
City of Steam is okay, but you need a two-button mouse to play it.  The game treats Control-clicks (and Command-clicks, for that matter) as left-clicking, so you can never change the camera angle unless a cutscene does it for you.  I played it for a half-hour or so and it was incredibly frustrating.

Despite my love for macs, I hate the Apple mouse. Ah the nostlagia... back in the 90s I would carry a 2 button Kensington mouse to the computer lab I at school to use instead of the built in mouse they had...

...but isn't the Magic Mouse actually "2 button" that can detect left or right click based on what side you make the pressure on? (Don't know for sure because I went back to the  Apple store a day after my wife got me my iMac to return the mouse and get the big trackpad instead, use it only for OS gestures.)

Anyways, City of Steam is still in beta. May be a good idea to give them the feedback about allowing players to customize they key input to turn too.
For the sake of the community: please stop the cultural "research" in your attempt to put blame on the game's cancelation.

It's sickening to see the community sink that low. It's worse to see the community does not get it.

I'm signing off and taking a break, blindly hope things change.

Neutron-Star

Someone mentioned Freedom Force. I have always been intrigued by that game from a single player perspective.

I've looked around but can't find a Mac download. Steam seems to only have the PC version. But I'm not adept at game downloading. Has anyone seen a straight forward place to download FF for Mac?

Related thought. I'm curious about trying the wrapped version of STO and CO. But not sure if i shouldn't just try to duel boot.  Never bootcamped either but considering buying a cheap version of windows to try that. Any advice on which version: vista, xp, 7 or 8?

Thanks!

Regardless, I'd like to end up somewhere where there is a group of former CoHers, as I think they have similar expectations of fun and teaming. Not in the mood to start from scratch in a whole new community.

Starsman

Quote from: Neutron-Star on December 05, 2012, 05:02:59 PMRelated thought. I'm curious about trying the wrapped version of STO and CO. But not sure if i shouldn't just try to duel boot.  Never bootcamped either but considering buying a cheap version of windows to try that. Any advice on which version: vista, xp, 7 or 8?

If you running Mountain Lion, the only alternative is Windows 7. Apple (that I know) has not updated bootcamp to officially support Win8 (it MAY work,) they killed support for WinXP with Lion and don't think they ever supported Vista.

I would try the wrapper first, though. Way cheaper and convenient if the computer ends up being able to handle it.
For the sake of the community: please stop the cultural "research" in your attempt to put blame on the game's cancelation.

It's sickening to see the community sink that low. It's worse to see the community does not get it.

I'm signing off and taking a break, blindly hope things change.

RubiconX

Just to update, I'm running CO with the STO wrapper and it's running fine. I'm still trying to figure CO out as the only mmo i've ever really been into was CoH and after 8 years it's hard to get my mind wrapped around another way of doing things.

On a side note Elder Scrolls looks really promising, I'm not into the fantasy stuff and have no clue on the ES lore but I'll definitely check this out. In the mean time I'll keep chugging away at CO.

Xenos

Here's my experience getting CO to run on a Mac (4+ year old MBP).

I used the free trial for Crossover (http://www.codeweavers.com/products/tosf/) and the Crosstie for Champions Online: Free for All (http://www.codeweavers.com/bin/c4p/8464). This still requires you to download the full game client first, and the link they give is the one mentioned previously on this thread and it's dial up slow. But you can actually get the full game client from the CO website (and they list a number of alternatives too): http://co.perfectworld.com/download . I think I used the Gamers Hell link and the 3GB took about 2 hrs. Not too bad.

After that the install was easy. There were a few hickups in the process, but basically ignoring them was the way to go. The Crosstie sets the game up NOT to be fullscreen, but that's an easy fix (http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?app_id=8464;forum=1;msg=100256).

All in all, pretty painless, alas...I still don't like the game. It's just feels too cartoony (and yes, I got rid of the "comic book" style outlines). I'll try it for a few more days...but I don't have much hope for it.

dwturducken

The whole notion of porting has always kind of bothered me, but I'm not far enough into learning (or, really, re-learning) how to program to have done anything really complex, yet, but shouldn't compilers take care of that? I'll have to look at my laptop, but both the BASIC and C++ compilers that I have had Mac versions available. I know there are engine issues, but, when you build the engine yourself, as in the case of CoH, can't you just copy the code to a text file, transfer it to the OS you want to "port" it to, and copy the code into that version of the compiler?

I'm asking for a friend.
I wouldn't use the word "replace," but there's no word for "take over for you and make everything better almost immediately," so we just say "replace."

avelworldcreator

Quote from: dwturducken on December 10, 2012, 06:40:32 AM
The whole notion of porting has always kind of bothered me, but I'm not far enough into learning (or, really, re-learning) how to program to have done anything really complex, yet, but shouldn't compilers take care of that? I'll have to look at my laptop, but both the BASIC and C++ compilers that I have had Mac versions available. I know there are engine issues, but, when you build the engine yourself, as in the case of CoH, can't you just copy the code to a text file, transfer it to the OS you want to "port" it to, and copy the code into that version of the compiler?

I'm asking for a friend.

Some of the code is proprietary and you won't be able to get at the source to copy over.
And there are other issues as well. It starts getting really complicated, really fast.
Missing World Media primary co-founder, senior developer, UI/UX acting lead, and software toolsmith.