Rise of Nations Macintosh Announcement

[dojoboy]

MacSoft Games has, after much speculation by fans, announced Rise of Nations (RoN) for the mac. It will likely be released some time this summer. You can locate the story on Apolyton's RoN news page.

[Gatekeeper]

Interesting. Is it an RTS game?

[dojoboy]

Yea, its an RTS game designed by Brian Reynolds (Civ2 & SMAC/x).

Big Huge Games

[Gatekeeper]

RTS. Strike one. Strike two. Strike three.

[Tassadar500]

Where is Conquests!?

[FlameFlash]

That would be strikes two and three...

MacSoft needs to prove to me they'll actually support and port everything a game has to offer before I'll buy from them again... (NeverWinter Nights anybody?)

[dojoboy]

Originally posted by Nuclear Master
Where is Conquests!?

On my Toshiba laptop.

But, not on my eMac.

[FlameFlash]

Oh... RoN won't be able to be played with PCs... just fellow Mac users...

[blackgryffin]

as usually ........

Rise of Nations was announced on mac at the beginning of july ... we are at the end of july and still nothing ......

i wonder ...

[FlameFlash]

I know I haven't bought a copy of it.

[Tassadar500]

And I know I won't ever.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by FlameFlash
Oh... RoN won't be able to be played with PCs... just fellow Mac users...

It's the same for most online games: they use proprietary Microsoft technology.

But then again, with it this way mac users get to meet a better class of people.

[FlameFlash]

They started out saying they would have crossplatform playing, however, Agathon, which just shows how little effort developers are putting into these games. If they're too lazy to give us the ability to cross-platform play, especially when they still haven't properly supported other games that could be cross platform easily (CivIII PBEM) I refuse to continue to support them.

[dojoboy]

RoN Gold Edition (includes Thrones & Patriots) goes gold.

MacSoft Announcement

[FlameFlash]

Big deal... Not buying anything new for the Mac gaming wise until they port what was promised: PTW.

[dojoboy]

Ain't going to happen. Civ4? How about buying a mac game from a company other than MacSoft?

[FlameFlash]

Nope. I'm done with mac gaming, period.

I might build my own windows computer after a while, but the wife and I are playing more games together now, and she's more of a consoler, coupled with MacSoft royally ticking me off, there's no way I can ethically support the 'Mac gaming movement' anymore.

Don't get me wrong, it's still my preferred OS, but if I really want to play Civ4, I'll go build myself a PC that can run it and at the same time buy everything for CivIII.

Plus maybe pick up Sims 2.

I'm sick of waiting, I'm sick of not being supported, and I'm sick of being ignored.

[blackgryffin]

we always have had mac at home ... and i think i'll never change the OS but the point is that for games, mac seems a so forgotten platform ... and nothing seems to change ... when we'll get rise of nation, or the sims2 ? i'm really fed up to do not having the choice ... so i agree with flameflash : maybe that's a solution : working and doing everything with mac OS X but buying a damned PC for playing ...

[FlameFlash]

That's my plan. It's certainly cheaper to build a gaming machine and upgrade that than to buy a new Mac every once and a while and TRY to update it.

[jewelsterdefro]

Glad to hear about Rise of Nations coming to the Mac (finally), but I'm very distressed about all the expansions which seem to not be coming such as those for Civ III, Europa Universalis II, Majesty, Stronghold, etc.. Not to mention all the games that never seem to make it to the Mac at all like Civ Call to Power II, Axis and Allies, Risk I, Europa Universalis I, Diplomacy, Magic the Gathering, Clue, Battleship, Stratego, etc.. I'm very very frustrated by all this, but I'm not going to cave in and buy a PC for gaming like many people on this board seem to be willing to do because if people do that then they'll stop making games for the Mac altogether because the market for them will go from small to non-existent. Instead, I'm doing just the opposite. Although I have a PC which was given to me for free, I only buy games for Mac even if they take longer to get because I want to support the continued expansion of games to the Mac and the only way to do that is to boycot PC games altogether. Fight the Power!!!

[dojoboy]

Originally posted by jewelsterdefro
Glad to hear about Rise of Nations coming to the Mac (finally), but I'm very distressed about all the expansions which seem to not be coming such as those for Civ III, Europa Universalis II, ....

There is no expansion for EU2.

[jewelsterdefro]

Originally posted by dojoboy


There is no expansion for EU2.

I was talking about EU2: Crown of the North which I believed was an expansion to EU2 based on the name. I've since looked it up and seen that it's actually a stand alone game of its own, but my point remains the same (ie-no Mac version yet).

[FlameFlash]

Hope for us Mac gamers yet!

If the rumor mills are to be believed, sometime after the first version of Xbox 2 comes out one will come out that is also a basically fully-functional PC. Which means we can buy the game console and still not technically own a PC.

[Gatekeeper]

Yeah. Asher was talking about it a few days ago — there's supposed to be three versions: the basic XBOX 2 w/no HD, an XBOX 2 w/a HD and then the XBOX 2 PC or something like that. They'd be released (I think) a year apart apiece.

Gatekeeper

[FlameFlash]

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
Yeah. Asher was talking about it a few days ago — there's supposed to be three versions: the basic XBOX 2 w/no HD, an XBOX 2 w/a HD and then the XBOX 2 PC or something like that. They'd be released (I think) a year apart apiece.

Gatekeeper

Do you happen to know where that thread is? Don't want to do too much threadjacking here.

[Gatekeeper]

Hmm ... it's probably on page three or four of the OTF by now.

Gatekeeper

[FlameFlash]

Typical... oh well.

[Agathon]

They started out saying they would have crossplatform playing, however, Agathon, which just shows how little effort developers are putting into these games

It's not that. IIRC it involves proprietary M$ technology that is built into Windows. Mac games would become more expensive if this had to be ported.

Plus, would you really want more stuff from Windows on your mac?

The long term trends do not look good for mac gaming, but they don't for PC gaming either. Most people I know play on consoles, so the idea of a console PC is probably going to take over.

Having said that, Windows is in trouble. I don't know how much longer M$ can go on milking their desktop monopoly before people get fed up.

[FlameFlash]

Don't turn it into a Mac v Windows war, Agathon. I want my games to work, period. I want them to work as they were originally advertised to work while they were on development.

Mac gaming has been screwed enough that, as I have said, I am not buying another Mac game, period. I may go out and buy a windows laptop to game on, as well as perform my work, simply because, to me, that would be more cost effective than buying Mac games, which are overpriced anyway.

Let's look at Neverwinter Nights, for instance.

Great game, you can buy the PC versions of the expansion packs thanks to some work in the open-source community, but the Mac version of the game itself is only $10 less than that of the NWN DVD with all the expansion packs and the core game.

Is this right? I don't think so.

Does it make sense for me to game on my Mac? Not economic sense.

So I quit. I'm done. When I do finally get a PC I will track down versions of CtP, SMAX, and C3C and install and play them how they were intended.

So to answer your Windows v Mac question, yes, I would be fine with more Windows on my Mac. If VirtualPC was actually a viable option I would simply do that to play C3C among other games, but it is not.

When/if the Xbox 2-PC comes out, it will most certainly be on my "must have" list.

[Asher]

The Xbox 2-PC would be interesting.

The Xbox 2 has 3 PowerPC CPUs on a single core, supposedly at 3GHz, based on a chip that may become known later as the G6 to Apple (but as a dual-core, not tri-core).

MS owns VirtualPC, so one expects that aside from the PowerPC version of Windows, which already works, and DirectX/XNA, which already works, the x86 game code for PC games will be run through VirtualPC. It'll be interesting to see PC game performance, if the Xbox2-PC will exist at all.