Hi,

with EA releasing their major new titles (Command and Conquer 3, Battlefield 2142, Need For Speed Carbon, and Harry Potter) for mac in July, I want to point the devs to Transgaming's "Cider" (which is also the thing EA will be using), which is an engine to port games to Intel Macs running OS X without touching the code.

Quote :

Cider requires no changes to the original source code. Instead, Cider actually loads the Windows-based game and links them to a set of optimized Win32 APIs. The process is similar to how WINE/CrossOver works allowing users to run Windows applications under Mac OS X without emulation."

Of course cider isn't for free. I don't know how much it costs, but a statement in their "Sales sheet" lets me believe that an inquiry (by the devs) could be worthwile. It reads:

Quote :

5) How much does does Cider cost?
The business model for Cider is based on a revenue share with the publisher with no upfront fee, no risk and lots of upside potential.

I think there are a lot of mac users out there who would be interested in LFS, if it was available on their platform. Especially in the US, where macs are more widespread than in europe, LFS could gain quite some marketshare.

By the sounds of it, it would be slow, because all it does is uses special .dlls in some sort of WINE, so I think it would be slow. Bootcamp is a much better, easier, and more compatible way to run it. Parallels or VMware = Shit for games. Cider seems like it could be decent, but only with a bit of special care by the dev. Using Bootcamp to run it natively, especially now with Leopard bringing in Hibernation for OSX, switching will take all of 20 seconds.

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

By the sounds of it, it would be slow, because all it does is uses special .dlls in some sort of WINE, so I think it would be slow.

True. More Exactly: It would be slower than running native. But as all intel macs have decent processors (core duo 2GHz and up), this wouldn't be an issue I think.

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

Bootcamp is a much better, easier, and more compatible way to run it.

False.
First, you have to buy a Windows licence (or be a pirate).
Then you have to install and maintain it on your system. It does not only cost several GB of harddisk space, most mac users don't want or even are not able to install/use Windows properly.

Why should the dev focus on Mac? There isn't even a dedicated server for linux. It's focused on windows, you should live with this idea in mind as i did.

Anyway, a lot of solution are aviable to get lfs working on every os.
The linux's way (work for me):
- Install linux (today's distribution are realy easy to handle now).
- Get wine (not cedega. It's quite crapy for lfs and it isn't free).
- wine lfs.exe that's it

The linux's way with a powerfull computer:
- Install vmware then install windows. But as somebody said upper it's quiet slow but worked well for me before i tried wine.

The smart way for mac's user: Install windows (a friend of mine did it with his mac book pro but i don't have any idea how he did it).

3 Diffrents solutions to solve youre problem. So let the dev work on more important things that the crossarch support.

Cider is CPU intensive, this doesnt bother EA because their games live on the GPU, but LFS is CPU intensive, so you'd end up with the little brother of the PC version ... and Mac users dont want that.

I see no gain porting LFS to an Intel Mac, seeing as most users will already either have a PC or bootcamp if they want to sim race, there may have been some point in doing it for PPC, it would have expanded the market slightly but for Intel I really can't see who would want to play LFS slower for the slight advantage of not having to load Windows

Quote from Becky Rose :

Cider is CPU intensive

Might be true for games making heavy use of directx librarys. But I think the most CPU intensive stuff happening in LFS is physics, and I can't believe that they use any MS library for complex calculations like this.

Quote from shadow2kx :

Why should the dev focus on Mac? There isn't even a dedicated server for linux. It's focused on windows, you should live with this idea in mind as i did.

[...]

3 Diffrents solutions to solve youre problem. So let the dev work on more important things that the crossarch support.

I can live with it perfectly, having a dedicated LFS-Pc. But I was not speaking about me here. I think that there are potential _new_ customers.

Read my second post again, to find out why it's (IMO) not very elegant to install Windows on a Mac (at least for Mac-only users).

Quote from ajp71 :

[...], seeing as most users will already either have a PC or bootcamp if they want to sim race, [...]

You are totally right, because mac users who want to sim race do not have another option at this time.

But there are a lot of mac users who don't know that they want to sim race, because they don't know LFS. If there would be a mac version of LFS, they would know.

I've used Cedega on Linux to play not only Live For Speed, but also Counter-Strike:Source and it played very well. Cider being newer and also coming from Transgaming I would expect to not only be faster, but also more compatible with current games then Cedega was / is.

Simple equation: Mac Users wanting to play LFS <<<<<<<<<<<<< worktime needed to do that now and keep up to date due to the continuos changes in LFS code.

I bet, if you come around with 10000 Mac Users licenses, the devs might consider it.

Quote from Vykos69 :

Simple equation: Mac Users wanting to play LFS <<<<<<<<<<<<< worktime needed to do that now and keep up to date due to the continuos changes in LFS code.

Naaah. If I've understood cider correctly, the cost would be minimal, like 1d of additional work per release. (You just have to compile the same sources with some cider-tool.)

Quote from Vykos69 :

I bet, if you come around with 10000 Mac Users licenses, the devs might consider it.

While 10000 being a bit too optimistic, 1000 (in a short term, i.e. a year or so) sounds quite realistic.

Quote from nilo :

First, you have to buy a Windows licence (or be a pirate).
Then you have to install and maintain it on your system. It does not only cost several GB of harddisk space, most mac users don't want or even are not able to install/use Windows properly.

A copy of XP costs <£50, as a Mac user I'd rather pay that than push the price up for everyone else even by a penny. They don't need the Mac parts, so why should they pay?

For someone who has any sort of computer skill (which most LFS players will have) installing and maintaining Windows is extremely easy. Apple provides complete instructions for the installation process and partitioning using Boot Camp Utility is a breeze. As for maintaining, download free AV, firewall and spyware utilities and run them every month or so.

I think when you say "most mac users are not able to install/use Windows" what you really mean is "I'm too stupid to work it out and I own a Mac, so that must mean everyone else is stupid too". Any user of any OS can use a "foreign" OS perfectly well after about a day.

Also as others have said, LFS is very CPU intensive (with a full grid of AI cars even I see my fps drop below 40 on my iMac). Having something else eating the CPU is not a good idea. Also, there would be compatability issues with controllers and FFB under OS X.

Quote from spookthehamster :

I think when you say "most mac users are not able to install/use Windows" what you really mean is "I'm too stupid to work it out and I own a Mac, so that must mean everyone else is stupid too".

No need to insult me here. I know how to install/use Windows very well.

Edit: And don't alter my statements when quoting! This is not very fair! I have written "most mac users _don't want_ or even are not able..."! (The word "even" was meant to soften the "most", sorry If anyone got me wrong there.)

Quote from spookthehamster :

Any user of any OS can use a "foreign" OS perfectly well after about a day.

Haha. Are you serious?

Quote from spookthehamster :

Also as others have said, LFS is very CPU intensive (with a full grid of AI cars even I see my fps drop below 40 on my iMac). Having something else eating the CPU is not a good idea.

Yes, others have said this, no need to repeat them. I replied to this issue.

Quote from spookthehamster :

Also, there would be compatability issues with controllers and FFB under OS X.

Wow, finally a wise argument from you.

This came to my mind, too. OS X does support FFB since 10.2.9 or so, don't know how it will work with a decent wheel.

Logitech doesn't have mac drivers, I could imagine there would be some problems (setting max rotation, spring and strength settings). With EA releasing NFS for mac, maybe Logitech wakes up and provides drivers.

Ive got a SLOW windows notebook from way back when, i just reformated the drive and freshly installed windows and in single player mode with no AI it only gets 20 fps. im looking at getting a mac because of their extremely well thought out OS and iLife suite, but i CANNOT leave LFS either. Their supposed 2 have boot camp included with their new 10.5 leapoard OS, so im hoping that that will work with LFS better. Has anyone tried lfs on boot camp or parallels yet? please reply if you have. Also, whaddya think about the glossy notebook screens? ive heard that they have really bad glare, but i could be wrong

Quote from nilo :

Haha. Are you serious?

whats so hard about it? Anybody who is computer literate could work a new OS in a matter of hours. They maybe cant work them perfectly well, but after a couple of hours most people would work out how to do most of the stuff they need from the OS. For example, i installed ubuntu the other day and ive allready got the hang of it. Can do everything i want to on it easily (apart from LFS, but thats acceptable). And if you cant, you can just google it and the likelihood is that somebody somewhere will have written something to help you out anyway.

Quote from Taylor Finger :

Ive got a SLOW windows notebook from way back when, i just reformated the drive and freshly installed windows and in single player mode with no AI it only gets 20 fps. im looking at getting a mac because of their extremely well thought out OS and iLife suite, but i CANNOT leave LFS either. Their supposed 2 have boot camp included with their new 10.5 leapoard OS, so im hoping that that will work with LFS better. Has anyone tried lfs on boot camp or parallels yet? please reply if you have. Also, whaddya think about the glossy notebook screens? ive heard that they have really bad glare, but i could be wrong

Leopard does include Boot Camp (Is a Downloadable item for Tiger also), but it does require either a SP2, 32 bit version of XP, or a 32 bit version of Vista. The Leopard version of Boot Camp (From experience), is identical to the Tiger version, but with the final release of Leopard, you will not need to burn a CD of drivers, the drivers will be on the Leopard disk, in a CDFS partition on the HFS+ DL DVD.

Thanks

I've got bootcamp plus XP SP2 on my intel imac 17" and the only thing i need to install beside the default video driver is ATI Tray tool to enable some AA settings

It works without a hitch

I'm using actually the latest Vista drivers for ATi Cards (7.2 are the last to support mobility cards) on my 20" iMac.

LFS works perfectly on my Mac Pro running XP SP2 under BootCamp.

Quote from ajp71 :

I really can't see who would want to play LFS slower for the slight advantage of not having to load Windows

It's a matter of personal priorities. I'd rather stop playing LFS than go through the hassle of buying and installing Windows, and restarting the computer just to play a game.

You boys and girls need to sort your lives out and get linux works on any machine and i get the best lfs performance than what i can get from windows!

"Definition of windows"
"Need a Patch"

Well, most of us need windows because of our Wheels which are craply supported in Linux, FFB support is very little in linux and only works for like joysticks and maybe 1 wheel, and to run LFS in Wine/Crossover Office (Linux/MacOS), you haffto disable shadows and even then, it still runs slower than running it natively in windows.

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

I'm using actually the latest Vista drivers for ATi Cards (7.2 are the last to support mobility cards) on my 20" iMac.

I assumed you are using Vista thru Bootcamp on your iMac. But have you tried running LFS S2 on your iMac thru Bootcamp or thru Parallels? If so, does S2 run smoothly at all?
Also, will a FFB steering wheel (lets say it is a logitech wheel) works thru bootcamp?
The reason I am asking is that if S2 will work on Bootcamp, then it's a safe bet that AutoCAD will work thru Bootcamp too.
I am a Windows user for a long time, but recently I added a Macbook for myself to take it for travelling. And I would love to bring these two applications with me in the MacBook on a trip.

Cheers,
DDmak