Forums | MacLife

I wonder why imikedaman continues to post after declaring himself the winner of the thread with "End of discussion."
Could it be that he doesn't feel that he has made his point?

That's cool, though.  He ended his participation in the discussion as arrogantly as the webmaster quoted at the start of this thread, which proves to me that it really IS the end of discussion with him.

Aqua OS X wrote:

Actually Phydeaux is the sole reason Halo 2 is not being ported to MacOS. Macsoft and Microsoft don't like his attitude.

My attitude and notoriety has spread far and wide! It also seems to time travel since I hadn't formed a strong opinion on it until yesterday when I read their smurfing rude comments about our platform of choice that MacSoft chose not to jump on the porting bandwagon!

Companies are in this to make money, not sift through confusing philosophies. My attitude is not "PIRATE ALL WAREZ 4 ME ZOMGWTFBBQ", it's "You guys smurfed up. You're compounding your smurf-up in retrospective, rude comments. You've had the lube mightily close to the customers' ass for a good few years now. At this point we can tell you to stuff it." If you don't deal with your financial issues gracefully, and seek out the issues of your own problems AND INSTEAD BLAME THE CONSUMER, AND THE POTENTIAL CONSUMER, you absolutely deserve to have some angry Mac nut on the internet bitch out your company and very existence on the internet.

hardreturn wrote:

absolutely, but not on the sequel to a game that wasn't sucessful, or was more trouble then it was worth.

That makes absolutely no sense. The fact that you've already wet everyone's whistle is even more reason to release the sequel but with increased copy protection. You already have an install base that doesn't need to be marketed to.

No doubt, the USS Speculation left the port a long long time ago. That said I would imagine that no Mac port has a lot more to do with Microsoft's use of Halo 2 to sell Vista and the Xbox, and or high licensing fees.

imikedaman wrote:

akb825 wrote:

You seem to be interested only in piracy.

Well duh, look at the point of this thread - people are wondering why Halo 2 isn't coming to the Mac, and I provided an article that explicitly states that future FPS games for the Mac may be in jeopardy due to the piracy of Halo 1. The Halo 2 release for Mac has nothing to do with MacSoft's slow patch releases at all, so stop talking about those. It's common knowledge that MacSoft wasn't quick with the bug fixes, but it has nothing to do with the thread.

Let me put it another way. You're focused only on the result: the piracy. We're talking about what helped cause that result: MacSoft's incompetence. Not as many people are going to buy a game that doesn't live up to what it's advertised as. I'm not saying that it's the only reason for piracy, but it certainly didn't help alleviate it.

Actually, if "speculation" didn't actually mean "speculation," and it actually meant something like "shark that shoots justice out it's ass,"  "speculation" would be a sweat name for a big ass boat. If you abandon it's definition, that word sounds like the name of something the Punisher would drive.

imikedaman wrote:

akb825 wrote:

We're talking about what helped cause that result: MacSoft's incompetence. Not as many people are going to buy a game that doesn't live up to what it's advertised as.

I covered that in my second post. That's called playing the victim - people are a victim of MacSoft' incompetence. It's also trying to rationalize piracy.

Well, there must be some rationality for the piracy if it has escalated significantly for this particular title. Halo's not the first popular Mac game and it not like stuff like this occurs in a vacuum.

I'm not rationalizing anything. I never pirated Halo, nor am I condoning it. I'm giving reasons why it could be pirated more. Just because it's "something bad" doesn't mean that it can't have reasons behind it, and it also doesn't mean that giving reasons is "rationalizing it". For example, I'm sure the piracy rate for DRMed CDs are higher than regular CDs. The Zelda example isn't really the same, either. A better example would probably be if Blizzard didn't keep WoW up to date. Say there's maybe 2 servers with the older version that Macs can play on, both sparsely populated. Now how happy are you going to be to buy WoW if that's the case? It's not quite the same with Halo since it at least has single player, but the multiplayer is a huge part of the game.

Yes, in an ideal world piracy shouldn't ever happen. Sure, it's easy to say "they're just stealing, they don't have to have a reason." However, people have a certain threshold as to where they will pirate something. For some people, it's so incredibly low that they'll pirate everything they can find. For others, they need to have a compelling reason, such as an exorbitantly priced piece of software. It can also include having crappy support. If you wanted to get Halo to play online, but find you can't play online with 90% of the other players, how likely are you going to buy the game? Others just pirate it so they can have at least part of the experience, but aren't willing to pay for it.

Q. Why isn't Halo 2 coming out for the Mac?
A. Phydeaux.

imikedaman wrote:

akb825 wrote:

I'm giving reasons why it could be pirated more.

It's common knowledge why it's pirated more, but unfortunately it's not the subject of this thread.

To sum it up:
Q. Why isn't Halo 2 coming out for the Mac?
A. Financial reasons.

You didn't seem to have much trouble talking about it earlier. And you seamed to just dismiss everything as "rationalizing" pirating. Hm, ok.

But regardless, all games that don't make it to the Mac seem to be for financial reasons. Of course, if companies really cared about it, they could set up a system that will essentially make making games for both platforms simultaneous relatively easy. However, they wouldn't be able to essentially sleep with Microsoft for everything they do. I suppose the other tricky part would be with Havock, but hopefully with Agia coming into the picture, that will get better.

oatmeal wrote:

I've been looking about for any info on the release date for this, but didn't find anything until I ran into this FAQ:

Q : What systems is Halo 2 available for?

A : Halo 2 is being made for the Xbox and the PC . There are currently no plans to bring Halo 2 to Mac, PlayStation 9 or the Commodore 64.

Is that true?  If so, does anyone else feel like beating someone's face for being so smug about it to include the Commodore 64, as if Bungie was saying that Macs are just as obsolete?

Oh, my. Here we go again.

It's been mentioned various places and discussed/argued to death and back long before now. I guess I'm just surprised it's still controversial even here; it's been up for many months. Anyway...

1) It's the Interweb. One person wrote it, we don't know what was intended, and this thread shows how moody folks can be when posting, and how riled when reading... it does seem to have misfired as humor. I'd agree that, if judged as a measured piece of journalism, the wording is unfortunate- but Oats, it's already been pointed out that the PS9 of 2030 probably isn't obsolete, and is given equal billing.

2) If you read Bungie's Weekly Updates, you might remember this and at least one other mention on these lines, early in the year:

Update: Bungie.net has posted an article about the upcoming Vista version of Halo 2. Towards the end of the article, a mention about a Mac version is made:

There's loads of questions the Bungie faithful will ask, like, "Will there be a Mac version?" We can't answer that yet. It's not out of the question, but it's not definitely happening either. We promise to keep you posted.

So while this not good news for Mac gamers, it at least shows that Bungie is aware of Mac gamers and their desire to play Halo 2 on a Mac. We'll be sure to keep you posted.

http://www.insidemacgames.com/news/stor … leID=12862

The article mentioned isn't linked, so I can't give easy links to it/them. Maybe in a few days. I think this is probably a lot more reflective of Bungie's attitude.

3) Bungie isn't porting Halo 2 for Vista, either, as they didn't port the first. Bungie is busy making Halo 3, and overseeing an independent team called, aptly, Hired Gun. Recent link For that matter it's doubtful Bungie has the coding expertise in OSX to port it themselves, let alone time and manpower to spare from H3; and if you read the now-gone Halo porting thread at IMG, you'd remember what a hard time Westlake had with it, which brings us to

4) Money. H2V is being considerably pumped for Vista over the Xbox release, including 'updating shaders to the latest version.' (DX9/10, Shader Model 3.0/4.0?) All of [MA]Halo and many in Games remember- yep- issues with Apple's OpenGL, like the awful perf hit taken when cranking up lens flare, a signature Halo graphical feature. HaloPC never had a setting for it; it wasn't problematic. Not fixed until 12/04, when a patch made it hardware-accelerated- and some recent reports aver that the recent UB brings it back somewhat for some users. Sound is being improved in Vista's revamped audio stack... potential porting tech issues hurt potential profits.

Piracy, mentioned. Hurts profits.

Havok. H2 uses it. More profit margin shot; and even if possible to substitute another component like PhysX, likely not compatible with H2V hence no crossplatform multiplayer. (I think Vista uses both IPv4 & v6; that also might impede CP MP. Can't say, but maybe).

Bootcamp. No AAA shooter for Mac has been announced since it came out. Beta support for Vista is already in the newest version, so...

I figured, early in the year, H2 would reach OSX. I've thought otherwise for a long time... whether anything else figures in, I can't say, but money issues alone seem enough to shoot down this deal with room to spare. Look at Destineer.com to see what games MacSoft's parent company is publishing for Windows and other platforms. Hell, they're easily found at Wal-Mart- Red Orchestra is a WWII Eastern Front mod for UT2004 gone commercial, and, Top News,

Destineer Announces New Anime Title Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy for Nintedo DS.

http://www.destineerstudios.com/

Further down, the only AAA title announced for OSX all year, AFAIK- AoE III.

'k? (Oats, c'mon- you know I'm your One-Stop Halo Shoppe.* )


*when Matt isn't around

Last edited by Bat (2006-11-06 9:12 am)

New FAQ at Bungie. Fairly long, with bits such as

Why release Halo 2 for the Vista platform?

While the Xbox consoles are very popular, many gamers prefer the controls and customizability of their Windows machines. Halo 2 for Windows Vista will give these players a chance to enjoy the story and multiplayer action from Bungie’s most recent game. Taking Halo 2 to the Windows Vista platform also opens the door to user-created content, such as that seen in Halo 1 PC.

Will the game work on Microsoft Windows XP?

No, as the name suggests, Halo 2 for Windows Vista will only run on the upcoming Microsoft Windows Vista operating system. The game is tied to Windows Vista in order to take advantage of new Live functionality and multiplayer features that aren't avaialble on XP or other operating systems.

&

How do visuals and audio compare between Halo 2 for Windows Vista and the Xbox versions?

The quality of H2V scales with the hardware it has available. This will be the first time Halo 2 fans can play the game natively at resolutions like 1080p or even higher. The base art and audio from the Xbox has been re-used, with some retouching to help the game shine on high-end PC equipment. Audio will also scale with the equipment of your PC, and the game supports 5.1 surround sound. Suffice it to say that Halo 2 has never looked better and playing the game at 1920x1200 is a thing of beauty.

Do you plan to enable anti-aliasing? Other visual features?

Halo 2 for Windows Vista makes use of several DirectX 9 features such as edge anti-aliasing, anisotropic texture filtering, enhanced resolution shadow buffering, additional dynamic shadows, improved normal map filtering, parallax mapping, and per pixel specular mapping.

Why will Halo 2 for Windows Vista not support DX10?

Halo 2 will certainly support DX10 graphics cards but the game itself is not being re-written to specifcally take advantage of upcoming DX10 features. The more robust your graphics card, the more visual features and fidelity you will be able to enjoy.

Dedicated server stuff too, Levi.

http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.asp … afaqupdate

Gary Patterson wrote:

These people hate Mac gaming and are doing their best to kill it. By ensuring sales don't happen, they turn devs to other platforms where the volume outweighs the damage caused by piracy.

This logic seems flawed IMO. If they "hate Mac gaming" and would never buy a Mac game, then pirating would just mean that they play the game rather than not playing it. Either way, the devs would never get their money, so the only harm is the fact that they're essentially removed from the list of potential customers. It seems to me that all it does is inflate the number of pirated copies, where the number of sales stays the same, not really hurting anybody. (I'm not saying that it's wrong, but from the dev's point of view it's as if nothing ever changed, since the pirate would have never paid even if they couldn't pirate it)

The people who would actually hurt the market through piracy would be the people who would willingly buy the game, then see it on BitTorrent, LimeWire, etc., then decide to get it for free instead of buying it. Unfortunately, it's impossible to separate these numbers, or we could see how many of these people are truly hurting Mac gaming.

Gary Patterson wrote:

These people (who pirate games for the Mac platform) hate Mac gaming and are doing their best to kill it.

Do they hate freedom too?  Are they longing for the defeat of the United States? If we let them get away with it this far will they eventually be compelled to marry toasters?

Is your argument strong enough to stand up for itself without making up absolutely ridiculous nonsense about their malicious intent?

I think it entirely more likely that the people who pirate Mac games  A) Never thought about the effect it had on the platform and B) just wanted to play the game they pirated.  Nothing more complex or devious than that.

::goes out to stop Mac pirate tying a helpless woman to train tracks::