Maybe a possibility to play URU Live on Apple?

Q'uatermass · **Posted:** Tue Aug 08, 2006 6:04 pm

How about this?

CrisGer · **Posted:** Tue Aug 08, 2006 6:28 pm

From the last Town Hall meeting log at the DRC Laision site,
with Rand:

Julie: Is there growing hope for Uru for Mac?
Rand: I think it's not growing right now - we still have hopes. I use a Mac and even Blake uses a Mac. But we've got other things to get done first. (And Blake has had success with Boot Camp - but I don't have an Intel Mac.)

Nighthawk · **Posted:** Wed Aug 09, 2006 1:28 am

CrisGer wrote:

From the last Town Hall meeting log at the DRC Laision site,
with Rand:

Julie: Is there growing hope for Uru for Mac?
Rand: I think it's not growing right now - we still have hopes. I use a Mac and even Blake uses a Mac. But we've got other things to get done first. (And Blake has had success with Boot Camp - but I don't have an Intel Mac.)

Edit: My emphasis.

For now, that looks like the best hope for Intel Mac users, and for non-Intel Macs, maybe an Wintel emulation program.

Lial · **Posted:** Fri Aug 11, 2006 1:36 am

People are running UU on Intel Macs using Boot Camp and Windows. I'm told installation is very straightforward. Just follow Boot Camps installation directions; then follow Uru's instructions. Given that UL should also run from a Mac.

Does anyone know of someone who's used KI chat from a Mac? Will GameTap see through the ruse or accept the machine as just another Windows box?

I wonder if Rand knew about Transgaming's Cider when he answered the question. If he didn't, I wonder if knowing about it would have led him to answer Julie's question differently?

Lial

Alahmnat · **Posted:** Fri Aug 11, 2006 8:10 am

If a Mac can do Boot Camp, it behaves just like a normal PC, and GameTap shouldn't care at all, so long as you meet the minimum hardware requirements and minimum connection speeds.

tamarok · **Joined:** Wed Nov 01, 2006 6:04 pm **Posts:** 7

While Boot Camp is a solution, for me this is not "Uru running on MacOS X". I bought a Mac to avoid Windows and the security issues, so I would rather avoid any solution that requires me to boot back into it.

For me Uru Live is a no buy, until I find a suitable solution.

Maratanos · **Posted:** Wed Nov 01, 2006 10:46 pm

You know, we really DON'T need 10 bumps on ten different topics all pertaining to Uru Live on Macs... :roll:

tamarok · **Joined:** Wed Nov 01, 2006 6:04 pm **Posts:** 7

Maratanos wrote:

You know, we really DON'T need 10 bumps on ten different topics all pertaining to Uru Live on Macs... :roll:

Hmm, maybe I was being a tad over zealous. Note to self: self moderation is should be better

jayctravis · **Joined:** Tue Aug 22, 2006 3:22 am **Posts:** 168

Uru:Complete Chronicles works just fine on XP under Boot Camp. I would guess Uru:Live shouldn't be that much different.

I've seen that they're doing a free beta for a program called Crossover, which apparently wraps the program in a shell that makes it run on mac, though I'm not sure how well it works. Might be worth a try. Allegedly they've gotten the PC version of WoW to work under it, though it hasn't been extensively tested with a lot of games.

KrystalPi · **Posted:** Thu Nov 02, 2006 6:38 pm

I tried CC and UU under parallel desktops, and unfortunately it did not work. But yes, with bootcamp everything works fine.
I installed cross over too, but only very common programs seems to fit in that solution. I was not able to install CC.
So I guess that bootcamp for now is the only solution. We can only hope that URU Live will work too that way.

PaladinOfKaos · **Joined:** Thu Aug 03, 2006 10:55 pm **Posts:** 625

There are two (three, I suppose) technical reasons stopping UL from ever running on a Mac or Linux box.

1) PhysX doesn't have Mac or Linux support.
2) UL uses DirectX for graphics. DirectX is Windows-Specific, and isn't available on MacOS or Linux
3) Gametap is Windows-Only

The third is completely outside of Cyan's control, of course. The first two would require a completely re-write of the physics and graphics of the game engine. I'd love to have UL on Linux, but I'd rather see it now on Windows, then never on anything.

Alahmnat · **Posted:** Sat Nov 04, 2006 4:03 am

While I can't speak to 1, 2 is fallacious, and 3 is comparatively moot.

Yes, Plasma runs on DirectX. However, Myst V was ported to Mac, and runs quite smashingly, so apparently the engine either relies on DirectX as little as possible, or is written in an efficient manner so that OpenGL can be substituted without requiring an entire engine reconstruction. Given how many other DirectX games have also been ported to the Mac (Black & White, Homeworld 2, etc.), I'd say that doesn't preclude the game from making it to the Mac OS.

GameTap is a potential sticking point, but not one I think is capable of actually preventing this from happening. GameTap isn't available in most of the countries people will be playing Live from as it is, so an out-of-GameTap method of connecting to the game must be in place (and given that the beta doesn't require a GameTap account according to Cyan, it must therefore also already be working). I would imagine Mac users would be able to access the game just like anyone outside of GameTap's existing availability "zone"... download a client, create an account (again, if Live is available internationally, a system for this must be in place by the time it launches), and log in.

As far as point 1 is concerned, I seriously doubt that Cyan would put themselves in the same position as the one they were placed in by Havok last time around. While I can't speak with any authority on the status of PhysX's cross-platfom compatibility, I can say that the move by Apple to the Intel x86 architecture ought to presumably make porting the physics engine to at least the Intel-based Macs a likelihood, else I'm pretty sure Cyan would have kept looking. I know a lot of Mac users (myself included) still have a PowerPC-based machine, but as with OS 9 before and the move to IBM's PowerPC chips before that, eventually, support for the PowerPC will dry up completely, and I wouldn't be surprised if Ageia doesn't port to it.

Lial · **Posted:** Sat Nov 04, 2006 1:27 pm

PhysX can be used as middleware by Mac games just as it is for Windows and Linux games. What Ageia hasn't done is create a hardware acceleration card (PPU) for Macs, but I don't think many of you Windows users have purchased the card. Am I right? I don't think its use is limited to Intel Macs, but the article doesn't say. Given that the overwhelming majority of Macs still in use are PPC Macs, I'll guess it can be used with both PPC and Intel Macs.

Here's a reference to one article I found: http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/05/11/physx/. There hasn't been much written about it. There are a few limitations to this approach, as pointed out in the last sentence of the article to which the link above takes you. I'll guess the same thing would apply to Windows pcs that don't have a PPU installed, but I don't know for sure.

Lial

blightstrider · **Joined:** Fri Sep 22, 2006 9:00 pm **Posts:** 4

I hope URU live for mac becomes a reality, I was devestated when I found out the original URU wasn't going to be mac compatible, not that it really ended up mattering, but still.

I wonder how well Myst 5 did on mac? Is the mac base big enough to give them a reason to do a port?

Tiran · **Posted:** Wed Nov 08, 2006 10:30 pm

When talking about Macs (Mac OS X) and Linux please remember that both Unix OS are running on multiple CPU architectures. Mac OS X is running on i386/x86 and PowerPC platform, Linux is running on even more platforms.

With Cedega and Cider you can run Windows games on x86 computers. IIRC both systems are wrappers that wraps Win32 and DX api calls to native X Window or Aqua/Cocoa/Darwin api calls. They aren't an emulator (Wine is not (an) emulator) but compatibility layers around the OS.

Maybe a possibility to play URU Live on Apple?

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