A Plea

[lurrp]

Over a year ago, I made the mistake of buying CM:BN from the App Store for my MacBook Air. Since then, I've pretty much played the game to death, and would love to experience all the add-ons and material BFC has released for the game. I'm no developer, and there may very well be a plethora of issues outside my understanding about this, so pardon me. Is there any chance in the near future for the release of anything BfN-related through the AppStore?

[Guest]

Apple's put us in a difficult position. Basically, the way our modules and expansions work on all other platforms (including the normal OSX version) won't work with the App Store's permissions as of 10.8 or so. Apart from making customers buy standalone versions of each module, without having the modules be able to talk to each other, we don't have any options.

Apple *does* make updates that may help us out at some point, and we do check when those come through, but so far they haven't fixed the restrictions that keep our modules from working.

[Michael Emrys]

And they have always been damnably lax about attending to the needs of game players. At least that has been my impression over the last 15+ years.

:mad:

Michael

[Artofwar]

Lot of people seemingly worship the APPstore and Apple computers but they have a giant vortex black hole sucking out all things decent relating to gaming where one enjoys oneself and unwinds and basques in the shine of an online community so it quite puzzles me that many seem to be convinced that the Apple Computer meets every computing need there ever was or ever shall be.

[lurrp]

I also don't understand the flak Apple users take from practically everyone in said gaming community. I love my MacBook Air, and don't regret buying it. My last PC died on me with a virus, and I've never had a problem with my Air. Ever. I agree heartily with every complaint about the AppStore, but it is a good way (for me) to find new games that I might otherwise have missed. I'm not trying to offend and I doubt you wanted to either, but I get a little irked when the inevitable guy shows up at every Mac discussion with the "Macs $uck!!1!1" spiel. I'm sorry again if this is taken wrongly, but I needed to vent.

[poesel]

lurrp - get used to it.

As soon as I recognize such posts I skip over them, no use replying. Everyone is free to buy and use the computer they like. As long as my preferred manufacturer stays in business (and it very much looks like that) I'm good.

Hey maybe BFC can give you a 1:1 rebate so you can buy it on their store again. Then you can buy the other modules. IMHO a win for both sides. I suggest asking them through the helpdesk instead of here.

[JyriErik]

I agree heartily with every complaint about the AppStore, but it is a good way (for me) to find new games that I might otherwise have missed.

One possible solution is to use the Appstore to find the games, but then buy them directly from the publisher to avoid this type of problem. That said, I've never had any trouble with anything I've gotten from the App Store, but everything I've gotten is stand alone so it doesn't apply to this situation.

Hope some soultion can be worked out. The base game is great, but the modules make it incredible.

Jyri

[Lt Bull]

Running Win7 on a Mac:

No personal experience except I have a friend who uses a Mac Pro to run CAD software that only works on Windows platforms. No problems and it works exceptionally for him.

[Jock Tamson]

Win 7 runs very well on a Mac Air (I am using it to reply to this), however I wouldn't use it for gaming - no discrete GPU, not enough RAM. And not upgradeable on either count.

[poesel]

Hey - I'm playing with a 3 year old Mac Air under OSX with 4Gb RAM. No problems and settings are one above medium.

[YankeeDog]

Yeah... best to avoid buying non-Apple software from the Mac App Store if you can. There are some great aspects to the Mac App Store (I love auto update), but Apple makes publishers jump through so many hoops that it's often difficult for them to get updates up onto the app store in a timely manner. It's particularly hard on smaller publishers like BFC. And support for things like BFC's "modules" framework is generally poor as well, if it exists at all.

What I often do is use the App Store to search for software titles, and then Google the title to see if the OSX version is available directly from the publisher rather than through the App Store.

Unfortunately, since you've already purchased from the App Store I'm not sure there's much BFC can do as Apple has already taken their 30% cut; BFC would actually be losing money if they offered you a non App Store copy of the game for free. Its may also violate Apple's ToS for BFC to "convert" you to a non-App Store version of the product.

It's kind of a Catch-22 for BFC: Offering the game on the App Store allows them to reach an audience that might otherwise never hear of the game. But supporting the App Store version is a royal PITA and in the long run leads to a substandard customer experience.

So unfortunately I think your choices are to accept your losses and buy the game again directly from BFC, or live with the App Store version and accept delayed updates and modules. Not sure what else can be done.

As far as Windoze on the Mac, yes Boot Camp runs pretty much all flavors of Windoze fine and you'll see the same performance you would see on similar hardware from a PC manufacturer. But there's no reason to do this just to play CM -- the OSX version of CM is as good or better than the PC version if you buy the OSX version direct from BFC. There are some differences in how the OSX graphics drivers handle the game vs. the Windoze ones, but IMHO these differences kind of wash out. Graphically, the game is better under OSX in some ways, better under Windoze in others. Overall, the difference is minor.

If you want to run other Windoze software (games or otherwise), in addition to CM, then setting up a Boot Camp partition may be more worth it. I had one for a long time, but finally gave it up after I replaced the last legacy piece of PC software I was using.