MAc OS X game conversion software news (really)

[aka_tom_w]

This is interesting..

hmm

"Each Alky Converter will solve these issues by converting a specific Windows game into a fully native OSX or Linux executable. Alky is fully 64 bit capable and has no Wine-like server architecture to provide unnecessary overhead and speed degradation."

web page inside mac games news

Fallen Leaf has announced Project Alky promising to bring high quality Windows games to Mac OS X and Linux operating systems. Project Alky uses "Alky converters" to convert binaries of games from one operating system to another. The technology behind this program at this time is vague, but clarifications by IMG members and the lead engineer of Project Alky determined the technology used Project Alky is not based on WINE, as previously stated in this news article.

While Wine, at this point, is certainly a far more mature offering than Alky in certain regards, it falls well short in crucial areas including speed, overhead, and the inability to support the coming age of 64 bit computing.

Each Alky Converter will solve these issues by converting a specific Windows game into a fully native OSX or Linux executable. Alky is fully 64 bit capable and has no Wine-like server architecture to provide unnecessary overhead and speed degradation.

Project Alky appears to be concentrating on Mac gaming, unlike other offerings which have had little to no success with games.

Features:

-Exclusive sneak peak access to development builds of Alky Converters.

-When you signup now, you will immediately receive access to the first ever alpha release of Alky which will convert the Prey Demo to run natively on OSX with full surround sound support! (Intel-based Macs only. Linux support coming soon)

-Free access to all future Alky Converters. Current titles being worked on are Prey, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and Neverwinter Nights 2

While we can't guarantee which gaming titles we will finish and release, we can guarantee that every converter for every title that we do finish and release will be provided free of charge to all Sapling members. The ESRP for these converters will be initially set at $20 each.

-Exclusive voting rights in the Polling Station (Coming Soon)

-Wanting to see a particular title converted? Vote for it!

-Discounts on games for Windows, OSX, and Linux provided by our partners (50+ titles coming soon)

-This gaming membership alone will begin being sold for $20 per year beginning in 2007. As a Sapling member, you receive lifetime access!

-Members only Forum access to interact with fellow Sapling members, Alky engineers, and Falling Leaf Systems management.

-Let your voice be heard! Drop in to interact with fellow Sapling members or post questions or concerns for us here at Falling Leaf. We will do our best to be as responsive as possible.

-Members only scheduled chats with Falling Leaf Systems staff

-The first chat will be held in January with Alky lead Engineer Cody Brocious

-Access to staff member blogs (Coming Soon)

-Access to our events calendar (Coming Soon)

[Redwolf]

Doesn't sound like they know what they are doing.

Wine is not a "server" as such, and it doesn't add any thick amount of layer to common system calls.

The major slowdown from playing in Wine comes in when DirectX games are played, because the DirectX graphics calls are converted to OpenGL.

Hard converting (on disk, before runtime, before starting the application) of the system calls is probably a useless microoptimization. Converting DirectX calls before runtime is certainly not possible (parts of DirectX are Turing-complete so you cannot know what they will do before the programs run).

[Wicky]

...Alky which will convert the Prey Demo to run natively on OSX with full surround sound support! (Intel-based Macs only..

and reading between the lines why bother if it 'only' converts games to run on Macintels. Might as well buy whatever PC game and simply boot up in windows.

[karch]

Originally posted by Wicky:

.....Might as well buy whatever PC game and simply boot up in windows.

Lots of people will be put off by the $299 for XP Pro or $199 for XP Home. Yes I know geeks go pick up OEM licenses, but most users will just go to Best Buy/Circuit City to pick up a copy and that's expensive. I understand your point, but someone with a new Mac can't "simply boot up in Windows". It's not as simple as that.

That being said, I'm curious of the quality of a ported vs Windows game. If it were "good enough" I'd rather not boot into Windows.

[Other Means]

Originally posted by Redwolf:

(parts of DirectX are Turing-complete so you cannot know what they will do before the programs run).

[Slapdragon's Ghost]

Originally posted by Redwolf:

Doesn't sound like they know what they are doing.

Wine is not a "server" as such, and it doesn't add any thick amount of layer to common system calls.

The major slowdown from playing in Wine comes in when DirectX games are played, because the DirectX graphics calls are converted to OpenGL.

Hard converting (on disk, before runtime, before starting the application) of the system calls is probably a useless microoptimization. Converting DirectX calls before runtime is certainly not possible (parts of DirectX are Turing-complete so you cannot know what they will do before the programs run).

There is actually a lot of work going on in this, from many angles (not just Mac). There are numerous problems with Windows, even Vista has its share (I say this as three of my machines now run it. It is loads better than previous versions, and reminds me a lot of MacOS 10.2, but it is expensive, sort of bulky, and I am not convinced security has reached the basic level of Unix yet). The holy grail of a lot of people is to write some code that allows you to knock Windows out from under its various technologies so you can substitute something not locked into Redmond's vision. And the era of secret Windows function calls and instruction sets known only to Microsoft are a thing of the past.

I am not saying it will ever come to light, but the people I work with seem to think it is possible, and some heavy hitters are working at it besides these people mentioned in the article.

[Jarmo]

As for Mac users simply being able to run windows.

Vista, which happens to be where it's heading, does have stricter licencing policy than XP.

The main hassle being, it's not allowed to run the home versions in a virtual machine. So you'd be looking at either purchasing the $299 business version for Parallels or rebooting for a game. And that's harder and much more bothersome than it first seems. Having to boot in OS9 worked for a while, but has since driven me off CM entirely.

So add up CM2, Parallels, Vista. It's a $400 game.

Quite a bit more than I'm willing to spend.

[Pzman]

Then don't buy Vista, the price of XP should go down once it comes out too. I wont get Vista for a while, if at all.

[karch]

Hey Slapdragon,

have you tried to run CM from inside Parallels?

Just curious.

[Pzman]

CM will not run in Parallels because Parallels does not support 3D graphics acceleration.

[Wicky]

Crossover for Intel Macs sounds very promising for £30 / $60 without needing Windows OS.

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/

CrossOver Mac allows you to install your favorite Windows applications and games on Mac OS X. CrossOver includes an easy to use, single click interface, which makes installing Windows software simple and fast. Once installed, your application integrates seamlessly in OS X. Just click and run your application directly from the OS X Finder. Clicking a Windows file or document — including email attachments — will launch the appropriate Windows program, allowing you to work on the files. Best of all, you do it all easily and affordably, without needing a Microsoft operating system license. Adding your favorite Windows software is easy, using their normal installation CDs. Just place a Windows CD in your Mac, and CrossOver will recognize it and offer to begin the installation process. CrossOver then completes the installation and configures your application to run on your Mac. That's all there is to it.

Many of the most popular Windows applications are supported by CrossOver Mac, such as Microsoft Office (including native Outlook support for Exchange servers); Microsoft Visio and Project; Intuit Quicken and QuickBooks; and best-selling games like Half Life 2 and Prey.

[ January 09, 2007, 08:28 AM: Message edited by: Wicky ]

[karch]

Originally posted by Pzman:

CM will not run in Parallels because Parallels does not support 3D graphics acceleration.

There are a lot of posts about them trying to get 3D accelleration into the next version. I need to run Windows a lot so I like that option, but if there is some way CrossOver could work, that would be the cheapest solution to for people that don't want to run/purchase Windows.

[Redwolf]

CMBB and CMAK do work in Cedega on Linux.

I assume the Cedega people have a Mac version by now.

[Peter Cairns]

With Mac OS leopard due out within 3 months it might be worth waiting to see how far Apple have advanced BootCamp.

After all it might suit them to let people run software written to run on windows on a Mac, but there dosen't seem much business sense in them encouragng people to buy windows.

A system that let you run PC games without buying windows would seem to be a better thing for them to pursue, or as close to it as you can get.

Peter.

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by Peter Cairns:

A system that let you run PC games without buying windows would seem to be a better thing for them to pursue, or as close to it as you can get.

Peter.

Is this technically possible?

I am a Mac Teck Geek and consider myself fairly well informed regarding trends and the future of Mac and Apple's emerging technologies, but I have NEVER heard any rumors to that effect ever before.

So the suggestion is OS X 10.5 Leopard somehow might run windows software without the user being required to buy Windows???? :eek: :confused:

That sort sounds like it is begging a lawsuit from Microsoft. but I am not in the legal profession so maybe not?

Do you have any references or rumor sites or web pages that have even speculated such a concept?

"A system that let you run PC games without buying windows would seem to be a better thing for them to pursue, or as close to it as you can get."

Sounds great, but I don't think even Apple will be interested in trying to pull that off.

-tom w

[Wicky]

See 'CrossOver 6' four posts above

Apple surprised many folk by making BootCamp so Peter may be onto something with Leopard and beyond.

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Peter Cairns:

A system that let you run PC games without buying windows would seem to be a better thing for them to pursue, or as close to it as you can get.

Peter.

Is this technically possible?

I am a Mac Teck Geek and consider myself fairly well informed baout trends and the future of Mac and Apple technological software and hardware trends and I have NEVER heard any rumors to that effect ever before.</font>

[aka_tom_w]

OK then

I stand corrected, Crossover looks too good to be true. :eek:

(its for Intel Macs only of course, and you need 120megs of free disk space).

(sorry, I need to read WAY more about this stuff to stay on top of it, I don't have an Intel Mac yet, but plan to have one by the end of March. JUST in time for CM:SF he he (hoping) )

Cheers

Thanks Wicky

-tom w

[MikeyD]

"I don't have an Intel Mac yet, but plan to have one by the end of March."

Keep me (us) up-to-date on your purchase! Its either Intel mac or Vista PC for me in about the same time period. And I know frighteningly little about either

[Wicky]

Crossover -PC compatible games

I'd love to know if CMBB and CMAK PC versions run with Crossover on an intel mac. Can anyone here (BFC?) check to see if it works - If so then BFC could open up legacy sales and update the specs page for their products. Hopefully all we would need to do is install the PC versions of CM and just copy over our modded data folders from our old OS9 rigs for it to continue giving us CM delight into the 21st century.

Plus if they could test CM-SF with Crossover on an Intel Mac at an early stage (ASAP) to see if that works and iron out any compatibly problems, as I see not all PC games seem to work

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Peter Cairns:

A system that let you run PC games without buying windows would seem to be a better thing for them to pursue, or as close to it as you can get.

Peter.

Is this technically possible?

</font>

[jeffsmith]

I tried Crossover with CMAK

Just before I downloaded BootCamp

and installed XP on my Intel iMac

[Battlefront.com]

CrossOver looks really promissing. Though it might need some more time in the oven. Here's an article from a few months back:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/blog/cheapmacaddict/index.php?showentry=68

None of us have an Intel based Mac as of yet, but I expect I'll get one pretty soon. And of course I'll be trying to run CM:SF on it

Steve

[ January 10, 2007, 03:57 PM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[jeffsmith]

I went back and found my e-mails from CodeWeavers

regarding CMAK & Crossover

here are the two replies

POST FROM: Ken Thomases

BODY:

Wow, that was strange. I downloaded and installed the (CMAK) demo.

When I run it, it switches to each and every full-screen mode available with my video card and monitor. After that, it puts up a dialog saying it couldn't initialize Direct3D.

Maybe Stefan will know what's going on here.

POST FROM: Stefan Dösinger

BODY:

I didn't try running that game yet, but usually such failures happen when some high level dlls are missing(d3dx9_xx most likely) or d3d calls fail unexpectadely.

[aka_tom_w]

Hi

This is about a month old from Dec 6 2006 but it is VERY relevant

MacWorld Mag first look at mac games for 2007

There’s no question in my mind that the Intel switch made things more challenging for Mac game publishers, but let’s get something straight: 2006 would have been a lean year either way. People aren’t buying games for their Macs in huge numbers. And no one’s quite sure why, as the number of Mac users has been increasing. Maybe they’re satisfied with game consoles, or maybe they’re not aware of what their choices are. Maybe they just don’t want to play games.

Whatever the reason, this trend started long before the switch to Intel Macs happened. And as it turns out, the Intel switch is helping Mac gaming stay alive, not hindering it. Look for more of the same to happen as the calendar flips to 2007 as well.

hmmm

I hope Crossover works with CM:SF

or it buy a copy of Windoze and a NEW Intel Mac for me!

ugh

(or maybe I can just skip CM:SF.... but I doubt that.)

-tom w

[aka_tom_w]

This is what I was getting at earlier about 10.5 Leopard:

The most interesting tip, and one that seems too frank for Apple, comes from analyst Michael Wolff:

I had a talk with Phil Schiller at the opening of the 5th Avenue Apple Store, and I asked him the question, ‘will Apple include a virtualization solution in [the next version of Mac OS X] Leopard.’ He said ‘absolutely not, the R&D would be prohibitive and we’re not going to do it. Our solution is dual boot.’ (!)

Given the way Apple has promoted Parallels Desktop lately, however, it doesn't seem out of the question that the company might look into bundling the software and/or offering it as a build-to-order option.

I think we can lay to rest the notion that Apple will make OS X run Windows apps out of the box.

That was the source I was thinking about when I posted that Leopard was never intended to be developed to run Windows software or games (virtualization)

web page from Wired with Apple VP Quote

[ January 10, 2007, 07:02 PM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]