Now on Mac! - Day of Defeat: Source

[rudedog]

Now you can enjoy Day of Defeat: Source (http://store.steampowered.com/app/300/), the WWII mulitplayer classic from Valve, on your Mac! Assume the role of infantry, sniper or machine-gunner classes and experience the intense online action set in Europe during WWII.

http://storefront.steampowered.com/v/gfx/apps/300/capsule_467x181.jpg (http://store.steampowered.com/app/300/)

[Herr Klugscheisser]

This is one game I wish they would have developed other gametypes for. I haven't played it in about 3 years I think .....

That and the fact they removed the maps with the Brits for the Source release.

[FightingScallion]

This would be a decent opportunity to look at "cross-platform" play. I know it's not as dramatic as, say, PC-Console, but it's something.

Basically, we'd have some players on one set of code and others on a different set. In this case, we're just talking OpenGL versus DirectX, but I'd still be curious. Is it like having some people with low-end graphics versus high-end? Or is it more substantial?

I think Rude said he had a Mac that he wanted to game on. What do you say, Rude? Have you tried it? How's it work?

[Pendragon]

Day of Defeat:S is one of the game I play from time to time. I started playing it before the source version came out and have always liked it. I think it was an opportunity missed, that my clan never took it up. A few months back there were a lot of storys about Valve making a Linux version of Steam. So I would be very interested in Mac performance as it may give pointers to Linux performance.

Not that DoD:S would stretch any computer built in the last five years. Other than may be some of the very slow netbooks. I have been trying to remember the spec of my PC when DoD:S first came out, that can't be higher than a modern Mac?!?

[FightingScallion]

I don't remember the specs or how it would compare. I know the reviews of Portal and HL2 on Mac's have been showing a fairly significant difference in FPS and picture quality (on Hackintoshes, so they were comparing apples to apples as much as possible).

Mac apologists are putting that up to lack of optimization by ATI and nVidia, since the use of OpenGL has been so light that no one has needed to update the drivers for it. Some people, however, are willing to suggest the possibile superiority of DirectX.

Still, I do wonder how it would play out. It's a more significant difference than some people playing BC2 on DX9 while others play on DX11. In some ways, it seems more like if some were playing on DX7 while others play on DX11. The difference between what they see could become significant at some point.

[Pendragon]

A thing to remember about any direct comparison is that DoD:S is now quite an old game.

I have run Heaven benchmark in both Windows and Linux on the same hardware. Testing OpenGL, DX9,10 and 11 on Windows 7 64bit and OpenGL on Ubuntu 64bit.

Visually the biggest jump is on the DX11 test. There is little or no difference between OpenGL and DX9 or 10. For performance Windows out performs Ubuntu by may be 20% on fps but look the same. The drop in performance is almost certainly down to my using an ATI card. ATI do not do as good a job with it's Linux drivers as nvidia does with theirs.

Running Valve games on Ubuntu using wine (sort of windows emulation) the games run reasonably well but not as smoothly as natively on Windows. That is to be expected, running software from one environment on another...

Anyway we can now welcome the Mac brethren to the fold, Fresh meat!

[rudedog]

I'm leaning on driver support or lack of it from nV and ATI. Its really a chicken and egg thing. Now that games are being released or in Valves case, rereleased on the Mac, lets hope we start to see better driver support.

This could also get Microsoft Games for Windows (See Microsoft use to support PC gaming on their PC platform, many many years ago - no I really mean that, it's true) ass in gear.

[lacisghost]

I'm leaning on driver support or lack of it from nV and ATI. Its really a chicken and egg thing. Now that games are being released or in Valves case, rereleased on the Mac, lets hope we start to see better driver support.

This could also get Microsoft Games for Windows (See Microsoft use to support PC gaming on their PC platform, many many years ago - no I really mean that, it's true) ass in gear.

Very true RudeDog. I never bought a Mac before simply because it doesn't run the software I wish to run while Windows does. The software in question being video games. Sure I could edit photos, surf the net and do word processing but I couldn't play Civ5 this fall on a Mac. If that dissapears, then the entire market opens up to me and I am not locked into Windows. We'll have to see if this (and hopefully some other games coming to Mac in the near future) gives them a nice kick in the pants to step it up.