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TransGaming announces Cider, bringing Windows games to Macs

Swad

By Swad

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Since the beginning of the Intel transition, it has been the hope of gamers everywhere that, one day, a Cedega-like solution would allow Windows games to be played on an Intel Mac. TransGaming, the company that makes Cedega, announced today that they’ve developed Cider (get it? Apple? Cider?) to allow Windows game developers port their games to Macs without changing a single line of code. (See the FAQ here)

Cider is a sophisticated portability engine that allows Windows games to be run on Intel Macs without any modifications to the original game source code. Cider works by directly loading a Windows program into memory on an Intel-Mac and linking it to an optimized version of the Win32 APIs. Games are simply wrapped up in the Cider engine and they work on the Mac. This means developers only have one code base to maintain while keeping the ability to target multiple platforms. Cider powered games use the same copy protection, lobbies, game matching and connectivity as the original. All this means less work and lower costs. Cider is targeted at game developers and publishers and, unlike Cedega, is not an end user product.

This really seems to be a multiplatform solution, allowing Cider games to even be used in Linux via Cedega.

Stemming from the same technology foundation as TransGaming’s technical sensation, Cedega, Cider empowers game developers and publishers to release Mac editions of their titles. Cider is so effective that publishers will be able to simultaneously deploy the Mac and Windows versions of their titles, even for new games already in development. With Cider, whole catalogues of games can be easily brought to a brand new audience starving for games. Another great benefit is that games migrated to Intel Mac using Cider will also run on Linux under Cedega, forging a path to another game hungry market.

What’s all the corporate jibba-jabba mean? Hopefully, it means that game developers will finally have the tools (and incentive) to bring most of their gaming library to the Mac platform. It will be interesting to see what kind of performance hit, if any, Cider games will show in relation to their Windows brethren. We hope this isn’t too good to be true.

 

It’s no secret that Macs have not traditionally been the platform of choice for gamers. However, with what seems like a renewed commitment by Apple for ease of customization (see the pull tab hard drive in the MacBook) and the possibility for a flood of new Mac-able games, that might just be changing.

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User00001
if i didnt stop peeing my pants when i was like 4...now would be the time to do it....:) (and i dont care how strange that sounds ^_^) lol

You, are very strange. :D

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dtm3dd

I wonder what this means though. How many games developers will actually take it on - sure its less effort that it used to be but they still have to package and distribute the games etc.. But still.......... how GOOD would it be!

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drcreek

I assume direct x is supported. I'd like to think Direct X X (lol 10) would be supported (i.e Halo 3) but i don't think it will. they got BF2 working on linux though so i guess it's like the WWDC we'll just have to wait. :)

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Grav3Mind
Hey. You're not cool 'til you pee your pants.

 

billy1.jpg

 

 

xD...sweet i have leadership support on peeing my pants....YES!! lol xD (and im not speaking of mash....i was speaking of mr. sandler xD)

 

well on a little more serious note. is anything going to change with the release of vista and the nex DirectX 10? i mean will the program have to be redone to add support for the new direct x??

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Mr. Bond

Yeah, Direct X support was the first thing I thought of. Although I'm interested in seeing how transgaming will handle games with OpenGL support, and whether OpenGL calls can be handled directly by the system, instead of going through a DirectX like wrapper. Or maybe I'm just blabbering, and have no clue what I'm talking about.

 

I doubt DX10 will be supported initally...it's far too new, and most current and soon to be released games are still based on DX9. Which, for the mean time, means we'd still have to reboot to enjoy all that DX10 goodness.

 

What's becoming interesting to me, is the sudden range of options for Mac users to take advantage of the windows world. You have the virtualization technology with Parallels and Vmware, Darwine, Bootcamp...it's definetly becoming dizying.

 

Edit: Hehe...post 666. /end 10-year-old giggling

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buglamp

{censored}, instead of porting Cedega thay have made a wrapper for developers. this means that I still cant play any of the old games I love on my mac as well as I'd have to by a $3000 mac to play any game which utilizes the cider engine, reason? very few new games will play on a GMA950.

 

I'd keep my eye on Crossover Office. they look like they know what there doing and all they need todo is incorperate the same *nix implimentation of DirectX that Transgaming licensed and then we'd really have a product we could rave about.

 

I remember they day I bought Cedega for linux, it was nice. To bad they didnt to it again for OSX.

 

I would like to take the time to send my utmost respect to all the people involved with the Wine project who donated there time to this cause and never received a penny.

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Pantalaimon

in the wab page of transgamig it says that directx 10 will only be able for windoze vista, and they predict that game developers will have to lauch a directx 9 version and a directx 10 version, and, according to them, the whole vista transtition will take upon 4 years or more. So will have directx 9 games for a while :)

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BRP
I wonder what this means though. How many games developers will actually take it on - sure its less effort that it used to be but they still have to package and distribute the games etc.. But still.......... how GOOD would it be!
The way I see it, the claim that TransGaming is making is that you WON'T need to repackage, just give different instructions for running it and make a little room on the disc! Sweet!

 

By being a static link instead of a end-user app, I think TransGaming's going to get more compatibility issues fixed through having professional testers who need this, heh heh heh. What's more, Cedega users probably get those fixes, too (no point in not using code you got lying around, after all).

 

Ultimately, though, GIEB WINE CODE NOW!!! is what I want to say....

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