what is good to play on mac?

TVG · Post by **TVG** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 10:23 pm

any shmups? doujins?
is mame for mac fine?

anyway, is there a way to convert a PC plug & play controller to use it with a mac?

the2bears · Post by **the2bears** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 11:02 pm

Well, a couple favourites of mine can be found at pompom games. Especially addicting is Mutant Storm, a great Robotron-like remake and upgrade.

I also like all offerings at puppy games.

Both sites are independant developers.

Bill

Specineff · Post by **Specineff** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 11:19 pm

Yeah, there is MacMame for those overpriced, overhyped, oh-hold-my-hand-cuz-I-can't-figure-out-how-to-handle-a-system-like-a-ma..
Erm... I mean, for those machines.

(Sorry, Mac Users. Couldn't resist. Forgive me?)

Though there are Mac ports of popular PC titles, you might as well stick to emulators. AFAIK, pretty much every popular emu out there has its Mac counterpart. Though Magic Engine for Mac is not seeing much progress until they iron out all the kinks on the most recent windows version.

TVG · Post by **TVG** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 11:26 pm

thanks for the reply guys, ill probably stick to emus, and yea, mac sucks, but thats all im stuck with ATM T_T

that is, if i can get my pad to work, wich is not a given. i hate playing on keyboard.

Neon · Post by **Neon** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 11:27 pm

http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/images/iProduct.gif

captain ahar · Post by **captain ahar** » Mon Feb 14, 2005 11:43 pm

^ hahahahaha! i like using the macs at school (because they are always open)

alpha5099 · Post by **alpha5099** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 12:23 am

http://shinh.skr.jp/osxbin/

That site contains OS X ports of Torus Trooper, Tumiki Fighters, and Parsec 47. There was a site that had ports of rRootage and Noiz2sa, but I think it may have gone the way of the dodo.

roushimsx · Post by **roushimsx** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 12:29 am

I have a powerbook and love it, but emulator support for it blows (MacMAME isn't that great; I'd go so far as to say it bites). Most emulators are just quick cross compiles from *nix sources and either very poorly optimized or not at all, which is a damn shame. Color me unimpressed that a 1ghz thunderbird can outperform a 1.33ghz G4 when it comes to MAME. Bummer.

MacMAME gets limited use because I need my Dodonpachi fix every now and then, but mostly I play RBannister's ports of various emulators. His "Emulator Enhancer" framework is most excellent for getting full screen support in the emulators he ports over (MacMAME doesn't even do full screen properly), though some of the emulators aren't exactally the best. Boycott Advance works fine for playing Advance Wars and Medal of Honor Infiltrator, but is incapable of properly doing Circle of the Moon and Fire Emblem, for instance. Plus, save game support doesn't work so you're stuck with save states only. Naturally since he's one of the only people that has been supporting the emulation community on the Mac, it's only fitting that he be driven into reclusion for a while by god knows who.. Bummer; can't wait until he comes back.

The emulators I've been using the most from him recently is Genesis Plus, as I'm slowly working my way through Phantasy Star II (while at work; work has been kinda slow and I've been meaning to play through II and IV for a while now).

There's a port of VisualBoyAdvance, but it doesn't even run full speed on my G4 1.33ghz, though you can enable frameskip and disable audio. That's a nice comprimise there.

SNES9x isn't that bad of a port, and I find myself playing various beat em ups on that frequently.

Haven't tried too many mac ports of doujin shumps mainly because I have little hope in them being anything better than run of the mill substandard ports. Seriously, the Mac needs more hobbiest developers. Maybe the recent Mac Mini frenzy will help spur some interest (it's a badass little machine if you throw some more ram into it)

For using a PnP gamepad in MacOSX, you may be able to get by using EmulatorEnhancer if you're using RBannister's ports, or you'll have to use a third party driver (since very few gamepad makers actually support the Mac). You're going to need to get Gamepad Companion or USB Overdrive X to use your gamepads (unless you have an Xbox gamepad, in which case you can get a free driver). Lame, I know.

All in all, I love my Powerbook for everything except gaming / emulators. The recent Cave Story is yet another reason i'm glad i keep my 15" dell laptop kicking around; there's no english translation for the Mac version and probably never will be.

TVG · Post by **TVG** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 12:53 am

wow, very informative post, many thanks, just one thing.

roushimsx wrote: unless you have an Xbox gamepad, in which case you can get a free driver.

i have one, can you tell me more about that?

dave4shmups · Post by **dave4shmups** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 12:58 am

Were there any shmups that came out for the old Mac Plus?

roushimsx · Post by **roushimsx** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 1:07 am

oop, sorry.. the Xbox Controller Driver is $5 shareware. Sorry for the misinformation.

So yea, the PC is the place to be for indy dev and free games and shit, and the Mac is the place to be if you just want to use a computer to do normal stuff (as in ...you know...use a computer to not game on).

I'm also a little bit biased when it comes to video encoding, because I adore VirtualDub on PC and haven't seen anything for free on the Mac that begins to compare to it.

It's as if developers somehow assume that because you have a Mac, you're down for blowing money on every god damn little application that comes out.

Some of 'em are worth it.. I bought Ircle a while back, and Unison is an awesome usenet reader, but holy hell, I'll never spend money for Transmit as long as there's Cyberduck and Fetch, and DiskInventoryX is the pimp shizzle (nearly on par with SequoiaView).

...and cross compiles of *nix software = teh suckage. I love XnView on my PC, but the Mac version is a mess because it requires the backwards ass clunky X11 system to be installed...meh. If someone could properly port that sucker over, i'd be a happy happy panda.

fenrirwolf · Post by **fenrirwolf** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 2:11 am

Well, I recented ported my R-Type-like shmup Adagio over to OSX. Though I'm made a lot of tweaks to the game, so version 2.00 is already outdated compared to what's on my development system. But not quite ready to release it yet...

Anyway, v2.00 is available here: Adagio downloads

Stormwatch · Post by **Stormwatch** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 4:49 am

Fenrir, I believe the system requirements are wrong. G4/700? Adagio runs fine on my old G3/500.

fenrirwolf · Post by **fenrirwolf** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 5:15 am

Stormwatch, yes I just made that lower boundary number up, as the slowest Mac I have been able to test with is a 1.2Ghz G4.

I am glad to know it works good on a 500Mhz system... I will update that info soon!

BiQ · Post by **BiQ** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 8:28 am

Talking about shmups on mac, Mars Rising (older, requires Classic mode) and Deimos Rising (newer, runs natively on OS X) absolutely need to be mentioned. Gameplay-wise, they are somewhat straightforward Xevious clones, and graphics/sound-wise they aren't too shabby, especially Deimos Rising. Although I'm not too big of a fan of Deimos' graphic designs, I have to admit they are rendered beautifully. Absolutely nothing to write home about after Ikaruga/Gradius V, though.

Both are shareware, demo versions here:
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/arcade.html

Most USB HID-compliant devices should work in a mac with relatively ease, given that the game/emulator supports joysticks... Even then, I could not get my PSX-USB adapter to work with Deimos Rising while SNES9x works well with it. Bummer.

stoneroses · Post by **stoneroses** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 5:22 pm

As a "Mac guy" I just downloaded the Active Lancer Demo which is pretty fun. Noiz2sa rocks pretty hard. Everyone needs to try this trippy Rez meets Raiden shoot-fest which is also on the PC I think. I use MacMAME every now and then and it is fine for what I want it to do - playing some arcade titles that were never released on consoles or had horrid ports.

I am no IT guy or anything, but if you need help on the Mac, PM me and I can try to help.

fenrirwolf · Post by **fenrirwolf** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 9:48 pm

BiQ, also if a game doesn't support a joystick out of the box, you can use Gamepad Companion to remap a HID-type USB joystick into keystrokes.

japtor · Post by **japtor** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 8:48 am

main problem i have with gamepad companion is that theres a little lag, at least the last time i tried it, which was around last may or so. its small enough that stuff is playable, but compare it with native controller support and its pretty bad.

most newer/updated stuff seems to have gamepad support. as long as the controller is hid compliant and isnt funky (like dpads seen as buttons or hatswitches and stuff), it should be fine.

the noiz2sa and rrootage ports are here:
http://victoly.com/~lucas/
used to be at ~adam...long story short, he doesnt want his real life friends to know his 'internet life'. no real point mentioning it, but i make fun of him for it when i get the chance, and its been a while. hes also the one that ported visualboy advance i think, or one of the other gba emus. also some other stuff. he didnt port the later kenta cho games cause he didnt want to figure out how to port D. that other guy (in alpha5099s post) picked up the torch for kenta cho games more or less.

as for macmame, the official build is usually behind. a lot. the guy is a full time programmer for some porting house, so macmame has been put off quite a number of times. if you want a current build you can compile it yourself, or find 'unofficial' builds.

MacMAME doesn't even do full screen properly

whats messed up about it specifically? just wondering cause it works fine here (1.07ghz g4 ibook and dual 2.0 g5).

Zaarock · Post by **Zaarock** » Tue Nov 29, 2005 6:33 pm

Fenriwolf, you getting your downloads back up anytime soon? adagio looks sweet!

edit: found a beta build of cloudburst somewhere, great! cant wait for more levels

AWJ · Post by **AWJ** » Tue Nov 29, 2005 10:12 pm

roushimsx wrote:I have a powerbook and love it, but emulator support for it blows (MacMAME isn't that great; I'd go so far as to say it bites). Most emulators are just quick cross compiles from *nix sources and either very poorly optimized or not at all, which is a damn shame. Color me unimpressed that a 1ghz thunderbird can outperform a 1.33ghz G4 when it comes to MAME. Bummer.

A 1 GHz Thunderbird and a 1.33 GHz G4 have about the same amount of raw processing power. Steve Jobs lies to you--PowerPC CPUs don't do dramatically more work per clock cycle than modern x86 CPUs do. That may have been true in the era of the original Pentium, but hasn't been for quite a few years.

Turrican · Post by **Turrican** » Tue Nov 29, 2005 11:14 pm

roushimsx wrote:All in all, I love my Powerbook for everything except gaming / emulators. The recent Cave Story is yet another reason i'm glad i keep my 15" dell laptop kicking around; there's no english translation for the Mac version and probably never will be.

I'm playing it in English, a patch is available.

By the way, SCUMMVM for Mac is awesome

diOdesu · Post by **diOdesu** » Wed Nov 30, 2005 12:44 am

whats SCUMMVM?

macmame seems to work fine on my 12" powerbook 1.5 GHz. i also bought a saturn usb controller from lik-sang and an adapter to connect the laptop to my tv. i only play progear, esprade and guwange, maybe other games would give me problems. oh well, i only wanted to try them out.

p.s. mac has better audio software, ie bias peak.

superhitachi4 · Post by **superhitachi4** » Wed Nov 30, 2005 1:39 am

AWJ wrote:PowerPC CPUs don't do dramatically more work per clock cycle than modern x86 CPUs do.

*nods*

karasuman · Post by **karasuman** » Wed Nov 30, 2005 4:00 am

MacMAME works fine, I play a lot of Psikyo and Neo Geo stuff no problem on a 2GHz G5. Most older consoles (pre-1995) work fine as well, but that goes for just about anything.

Does anyone know where to get a good gamepad for Mac? The only one at most computer stores is a Logitech one with a lame d-pad. (It's like the PSX dual shock, but the d-pad is just like a circle).

highlandcattle · Post by **highlandcattle** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 9:11 am

Here are four or five vert/horis for the mac haven't played them they are from a recent coding comp the winner got it's game published!

http://www.idevgames.com/contest/downloads/

diOdesu · Post by **diOdesu** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 5:55 pm

karasuman wrote: Does anyone know where to get a good gamepad for Mac?

http://www.lik-sang.com/info.php?catego ... ts_id=6509&

this pad works great on my mac and i ordered mine from that site.

AWJ · Post by **AWJ** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 6:54 pm

karasuman wrote:MacMAME works fine, I play a lot of Psikyo and Neo Geo stuff no problem on a 2GHz G5.

Yes, but that's a G5

The problems arise when Mac zealots expect MAME to work as well on their four-year-old G4 as it does on their neighbour's brand-new Athlon64. Old Macs only seem to be as fast as new PCs because they aren't bogged down with Windows spyware or crippled by Windows glitches (for example I've seen lots of Windows boxes with disks running in PIO mode due to Windows' habit of cannibalizing its configuration settings--this really slows everything down and the average end user has no idea what the problem is let alone how to fix it)

japtor · Post by **japtor** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 7:12 pm

diOdesu wrote:
karasuman wrote: Does anyone know where to get a good gamepad for Mac?
http://www.lik-sang.com/info.php?catego ... ts_id=6509&

this pad works great on my mac and i ordered mine from that site.

you have ps2 ports? should link whatever ps2 adapter you used if you meant to link that.

theres a native usb version of the saturn pad as well that should work fine as well.

and congratulations to zaarock for bumping a 9 month old thread!

Turrican · Post by **Turrican** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 8:19 pm

diOdesu wrote:whats SCUMMVM?

http://www.scummvm.org/

Remember Lucasfilm Games? Maniac Mansion, Zak, The Secret of Monkey Island?

Lucasfilm was the absolute king in graphic adventures, and SCUMM VM is a sort of miracle: an emulator to run many versions of these games, including the ones which never saw a Mac port before!

SCUMM = SCript Utility for Maniac Mansion, was the code and the interface used in the abovementioned masterworks.

VM = Virtual Machine

highlandcattle · Post by **highlandcattle** » Thu Dec 01, 2005 9:04 pm

apperently
Playptus is avail as well heard great things about this
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/g ... typus.html