General Dev Question

[drech]

Just a general dev question...

I thought most developers these days wrote compliant code on unix boxes so they could easily port apps to other platforms. I thought this was true moreso for games.

Is that not the case and will we ever see a Mac release of Ryzom? I have many friends that use Apples because, well, OS X is pretty sweet, but there still doesn't seem to be a large pool of games for them.

I've always wanted to use a Mac as a gaming rig because, as far as I can tell, they're very powerful with a vid card upgrade (I've only been a PC user, so I could be way off here).

Macs seems to have a huge and loyal installed user base, so why not more games for them?

Someone in the know, please learn me

Edit - fixed typo

[raynes]

I'm not a dev but I doubt they will ever release a Mac version of the game. The question comes to mind: What would be better? Spending time to develop a Mac version or spending that same time to develop more stuff for the existing pc version. Not to mention if they develop a mac version then chances are they have to deal with fixing double the bugs.

One thing I have been wondering is if games like Ryzom would work on a mac emulating a pc?

[btamilio]

One thing I have been wondering is if games like Ryzom would work on a mac emulating a pc?

You might have some success with a G5 and a high end Radeon card using Virtual PC with Win XP. You'd probably need at least 1 GB of RAM, however.

I wouldn't invest money for these upgrades though unless you've heard of someone else having success. It's hit or miss O.o

A quick google didn't get me too far. Perhaps someone has already tried?

[drech]

@Rraynes: hence the development using compliant code - no writing two versions of the code Just a compile of the same code on the relevant platforms. It would all have to be OpenGL though. But in any case, Ryzom isn't written that way or there would probably be a Mac version already, so it's most likely too late (?)

@btamilio: yeah, not sure i'd wanna go the emulator route. Native is best!

[jurism]

A Linux Version of Saga Of Ryzom is to come in the future. No dates or specific informations tho. This has been mentioned in early beta phases a lot... don't expect a Client for another plattform anytime soon, i am sure they will work on those things once the game itself is running smooth and is more or less feature-complete.

[elfmatic]

probably comes down to their use of DirectX so M$ has em by the nutsack.

[jurism]

Ryzom has been OpenGL only for a long time... sometime early this year they made up their mind and added a Direct X Alternative to the Client. Ryzom is still based on NeL, Nevrax' own Open Source Project. so chances are not that bad for some conversions onto other plattforms later on...