Hello,

Sorry if there is already a topic on this but the search function keeps giving me zero results!

Does anyone know if gog are going to port over many more games for osx? I really want to play arcanum and a few others again on my laptop when I'm away with work.

Thanks

I don't think its up to them to port games to mac i believe that falls on the developer i think

GOG doesn't do ports, they can only sell ports that already exist. I suggest you check on Wikipedia or something, and see if the games you want have Mac ports. If they do, you have to wait and see if GOG can bring them. If not, you can always use that Wine thing.

Yeah I managed to do that but the loading screen and menu is all messed up and it takes a random amount of time for the mouse to become active within the games window; It can take anywhere between 5 seconds to 5 minutes!

Not ideal :D

that sucks maybe you can fix it somehow hmm Doom 3 has a mac port as do many of ids games

It's not entirely true that GoG doesn't port games themselves, all of the DOS games are ported by GoG using a standalone version of . There is also the <i>possibility</i> that they might port Windows games as well that don't have any official Mac ports using [url=http://wineskin.urgesoftware.com/tiki-index.php]Wineskin. The Witcher is a Wineskin port, but that one was made by CD Projekt even before GoG was selling Mac games. It's a possibilty but I wouldn't count on it.

As for Arcanum, that game works very well for me with Wineskin. I have a over at the [url=http://portingteam.com/frontpage]Porting Team, you should try it out.

Oh cool, well ill see if your wrapper works better than my attempt (I'm sure it will). Hopefully that will get rid of the mouse activation issues.

So from what you say it does sound like gog may indeed port more games over to mac. Im going to keep my fingers crossed, even just for some kind of news on this from the gog people themselves.

Your terminology is wrong. GOG does not port games. Never have, never will. Making a game run on a different platform by running it in a virtual environment or an emulator is not the same as porting it.

Porting a game means rewriting the source code and compiling it for a different platform so it will run there natively. GOG doesn't get the source code for the games it sells (in many cases it would also be impossible, as the source code no longer exists), so there is no question of rewriting or recompiling the code in any way.

It depends on how exactly one defines porting. Personally, if Sega wraps up their Megadrive games into a standalone emulator that runs out of the box on a PC, that's already a port in my book. Not a native port, but still a port. Of course by your definition it wouldn't count as a port. So who is right? I don't know and personally I don't really care as long as the game runs properly :P It would certainly help to specify what type of porting one means when talking about ports (native, Wine, emulated, etc.) Well, you shouldn't count on it. What I meant is that the technology is there, however the question is if they can do it in a way that would be feasible. They would have to be able to test such a port on many systems and they would have to be able to provide proper support. What works for one person does not have to work for another. You can count on seeing the DOS games ported, but for Windows games your best chance is if there is an official Mac version by the developer. On the other hand, GoG have already annouced that they will bring over all of the remaining Interplay titles in time, so I'm not ruling Wine ports out completely. We'll see what happens.

In everybody else's book it would be an emulation. Maybe a good idea to use the same book as the rest of us? might save us all a little bother.

Oh awesome, I can get Sacrifice and Giants then. I just hope they are as fantastic as I remember!

They're probably going to stick with creating Boxer versions of DOSBox games for awhile for the classic games and get ports done by the developer for newer games when they exist (either native or emulated - as the discussion between Wishbone and HiPhish shows there is a difference as say the Witcher 1 is a emulated port to the Mac using Wineskin and The Witcher 2 is a native port).

According to Rampancy - arcanum works in WIne for Mac.

http://www.gog.com/mix/mac_friendly_gog_games_4

Pall the Tall has made a wrapper already for it if you still have trouble making your own:

http://www.paulthetall.com/page39/page535/page129/index.html

Well, then what would you call a Wineskin "port" like The Witcher? It's neither native nor is it emulated, but it's still a port. Thu it would make more sense to make the term "port" a superset of native and Wine and by extension emulated. An emulation would only count as a port if it works out of the box, i. e. the user is not aware that there is an emulation running. Getting a Megadrive ROM off the internet and running it in an emulator on your own wouldn't be a port snce it would require you to do work.

Now you might say that Wine does not count as a port, but there are companies for Linux marketing their products as ports. Even Wine calls Windows the prcess of running Windows apps on non-Windows OSes "porting". Also, what about Java which runs in a virtual machine? If I have a multiplatform java application, do the individual versions of it count as ports or not?

My point it that the term is way too loose and has too many cases to draw a clear line on the fly. just say what type of port you mean and everyone will understand what you mean.

it is simple:

If the source code is the same, but you have other software "translating", then it is an emulation.

If you change source code, then it is a port.