It would take a very large amount of work to make BYOND work on Mac like it works on Windows. Not only does the interface stuff require replication, the drawing and all of that would also require major reworking. It's been said before, a native graphical client for Mac or Linux simply isn't feasible.
As for Falacy's reply about the text-only version of BYOND, the DreamSeeker program had to be removed when 4.0 was released. It became impossible to build. The text-only versions of BYOND can only host (and download).
There seems to be a lot of Mac hatred here so let me clear a few things up.
If you want to create graphics, Mac is the best machine you can get to do this. The reason why? It's monitor and the visual performance. The monitor of a Macintosh has a major advantage over that of any other: it displays colors properly, brightly, as they're meant to be seen. So if you create artwork on a Mac, especially if you need to print it out later, the artwork will likely be of better quality because you'll be using the right colors. Monitors that perform under that level are CRT en TFT respectively. Apparently those LCD screens aren't quite as good with displaying colors properly. The visual performance is another thing. A Mac can run properly, display things properly, and have cool animations, without using 1 GB of RAM like Vista does. If you're into that sort of thing, you can be rest assured your Mac will not have problems with those things. The difficulties with using a Mac operating system is the same as with using Linux: it isn't Windows. There's a circular loop going on whereby developers don't make their applications work on all operating systems, the reason being that it's too much work and wouldn't be worth it because less people use those other systems. On the other hand, the reason why people use those platforms less is primarily because of the lack of application support. The only way for Mac and Linux to get proper recognition is if they either find a way to run Windows applications natively on their machines without infringing on any copyrights by Microsoft, or if they design an API which is easy to use for developers so they have less work to do when porting over their software. For BYOND to switch over to the Mac either one of those two things listed above will have to happen, with a third optional being that BYOND suddenly gets a large cash deposit that can be used to hire a full-time programmer that ports it over to the Mac. Since none of these is likely to happen in the near future, you're stuck with a text-only version and you'll have to emulate Windows somehow to get a better one. | |
I still don't know where you people are getting these ideas of OS specific hardware. Does anybody have a link to something about them? Because I can't remember ever seen a piece of hardware that was only compatible with a certain OS. The whole point of an OS is to make hardware work together, and to work as the go-between from the hardware to the software. If its true that there's mac/linux specific hardware, then that's just yet another reason for them to fail.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/ olspage.jsp?skuId=8496086&type=product&id=1188438413340 ? I'm pretty sure that's not mac-specific, and for the price its a piece of junk. Actually for any price it pretty much sucks, 700:1 contrast ratio? 16 ms response time? Aside from the screen size and max resolution; I could get a better monitor for 1/4th the cost. | |
Android Data wrote:
If you want to create graphics, Mac is the best machine you can get to do this. The reason why? It's monitor and the visual performance. You can just buy another monitor. The monitot isn't that much of a deal. Every type of monitor has its drawbacks. CRTs are prone to distortion and high energy usage. LCDs have a terrible viewing angle color problems. Plasma displays are just terrible. If you really want a good monitor though, keep your eye out for OLED. They'll be around soon. The visual performance is another thing. A Mac can run properly, display things properly, and have cool animations, without using 1 GB of RAM like Vista does. If you're into that sort of thing, you can be rest assured your Mac will not have problems with those things. Visually, Mac exceeds Vista in RAM usage, but in either system, I turn off the visual crap anyways. In either system it takes up some amount of RAM that I want. The difficulties with using a Mac operating system is the same as with using Linux: it isn't Windows. The API license is the biggest problem for most developers. HL2 and Portal will never make to Macs for this reason. The second is the work that is involved in porting over to a system that doesn't handle games the same way or nearly as well. | |
Falacy wrote:
I still don't know where you people are getting these ideas of OS specific hardware. Read 2.-A. Apple just needs to grow the hell up and realize that they are killing their own user base with their fear of cooties. | |
Hiro the Dragon King wrote:
Read 2.-A. "2. Permitted License Uses and Restrictions. A. Single Use. This License allows you to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time. You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-labeled computer, or to enable others to do so. This License does not allow the Apple Software to exist on more than one computer at a time, and you may not make the Apple Software available over a network where it could be used by multiple computers at the same time." ? Just because a computer has an apple label on it doesn't mean every part in it was custom built by/for them. I have a gateway and an old emachine, both with windows stickers on them, doesn't mean any or all of the parts in them were made by either of those companies, just means those companies stuck them all together. And all those parts are interchangeable/compatible with any other hardware. | |
Falacy wrote:
Just because a computer has an apple label on it doesn't mean every part in it was custom built by/for them. I have a gateway and an old emachine, both with windows stickers on them, doesn't mean any or all of the parts in them were made by either of those companies, just means those companies stuck them all together. And all those parts are interchangeable/compatible with any other hardware. Most of the parts in a Mac are integrated, designed to be interchanged by "Mac Professionals," or designed only to be changed with Mac parts. Hard drives, I believe, are an exception. When you can put new parts in, you will generally need to find drivers for them. Generally "they" don't make Mac drivers for non-Mac hardware. For example, my graphics card, sound card, and card reader are all without Mac drivers. EDIT: Clarification. The company that makes my graphics card, sound card, and card reader, don't create drivers for Macs. | |
I don't have a Mac to test on, but I hear Darwine works well.
http://members.byond.com/linuxguild /shameless plug. Many of the Linux tutorials on here work on Mac, and has a lot of Wine (Darwine is Wine for OSX) information. | |
While this has been addressed before, I can answer some of your questions here.
The main reason BYOND has not been ported to Linux or Mac is largely one of manpower, complexity, and high cost/benefit ratio. Porting something as complex as BYOND is not a trivial task. While the backend code is pretty portable--we have Linux and Mac versions for hosting games--interface stuff is much harder. Tom knows Linux way better than I do, but I don't know if he's ever done much with GUIs in X-windows or GTK or whatever soup of the month is in favor these days. For myself, I loathe UNIX, so it goes without saying I've never developed for it with a GUI. And since neither of us uses a Mac, we can't develop for the Mac directly. Contrary to your assertion though, we could not double our numbers with Linux or Mac support--we should be so lucky. Linux is actually more popular overall, I think, than the Mac, but the Mac is still very much a niche market. (Quite honestly it will always be that way. While Macs go up and down in popularity and right now they're on an uptick, they're more expensive than comparable PCs and support less mainstream software.) In the latter case gamers make up a smaller percentage of their audience, so we're talking about an absolute maximum of maybe 40% of a 5% market; realistically we'd pull in maybe a handful of people. This is the same reason Mac commercials can talk about how you don't have virus issues with Macs--it's strictly because virus authors don't target the platform. So by developing for the Mac or Linux, we'd spend tons of money chasing a minority audience. That said, one of our long-term goals is to look into documenting the BYOND API so that independent developers could work on developing interfaces of their own. This is itself still a very complex task, made more complex by the fact that the UI is in significant flux. However it would at least enable people to take a shot at porting BYOND for us, which would solve their problems and ours. I suspect we wouldn't gain many users that way, as much as we'd gain committed developers, but the latter are quite valuable. But don't think we underestimate either platform or their users. Macs in particular tend to attract the more artistic audience, and users of that stripe could develop high-quality graphics and music as community resources, greatly improving games all across the board. As far as your inability to download games, that's something I think we could address, but I'm not sure they'd download or launch correctly for you if you're running from outside of your Windows emulator. Game downloads are not direct files--they always route through the BYOND pager. If you download from within the emulator, I believe everything should work as expected. The same would apply to joining live games. Lummox JR | |
The reason is Byond is incompatible with everything else.
Windows being the market leader does not mean that every other OS has to be compatible with windows, and they really can't considering the whole windows = closed source. | |
Lummox JR wrote:
As far as your inability to download games, that's something I think we could address, but I'm not sure they'd download or launch correctly for you if you're running from outside of your Windows emulator. Game downloads are not direct files--they always route through the BYOND pager. If you download from within the emulator, I believe everything should work as expected. The same would apply to joining live games. Would it be possible to have a website option to provide .dmb/.dms files rather than byond:// links? | |
No,
Macs are a brand of PC, the fact that they bundle their own OS (which used to be commonplace, to my understanding) is just apart of their business, same reason the iphone doesn't run windows mobile, on one hand, bundling your own OS is a smart business move, because if its a good OS and product, people will buy apple, apple controls the hardware end because they probably see it as easier to just control hardware so they can be less picky about designing the software, because if you have a large library of hardware in mind in designing the OS, it probably makes it far more difficult or costly, its also probably a QA move, because they can purposely avoid hardware that has faults with Macintosh. the bad side of them bundling, is the fact that secluding the OS from other manufacturers, makes it less commonplace, and therefor, less likely to be designed for, because windows is the major OS being shipped, partly due to possibly seedy deals Microsoft has been said to have made. | |
Use parallels with Windows XP.
| |
Flame Sage wrote:
I don't have a Mac to test on, but I hear Darwine works well. That's a good idea, especially considering OS X is a Unix variant ans, IIRC, Linux is compatible with Unix. | |
Wine (and the Mac variant Darwine) are good solutions if you want to try and go 'native'. the aforemetioned BYOND linux guild is the place to be to support BYOND in that way.
But since neither are working 100% with BYOND just yet, I've succumbed to using virtual machines/emulators. I use a MacBook and a MacMini. To use BYOND I installed VirtualBox, and a copy of TinyXP (a stripped down version of WinXP). I also work with Ubuntu/Crunch Bang Linux, and use VirtualBox on those, too, with good success. So my BYOND experience is seemless with the host OS, allowing me to finally work on my game ideas. (as soon as I get time, and a whip so that I can beat Alathon to my whim) | |
I don't Macs, I hate Apple and I hate the people who promote Macs as being better. Sure it may be a little more stable, but I can't feasibly play games on a Mac, I can't home build it with my own parts, or upgrade it (legally, apparently), I can't do half of the crap I generally do for graphic design, the mouses are built by someone who has never used a computer for anything other than typing, nothing is made to use it, and their advertising department thinks that their own user based is a bunch of morons. The only upside of getting one would be so that I can... I haven't got a clue. Honestly, as bad as Microsoft is, I would rather use Windows than Mac. Mac has a nice operating system, I'll give them that, but until they learn to grow up, I will not buy one.