That said, we’re also a house that likes to game.  I’ve got a big gaming PC rig that I use for TF2 et al (well, really, is there another game other than TF2?).  The Wii gets used mostly by the kids.  But over the last few years we’ve all started to play more games on our Mac’s.  Granted they’re all portable systems, but they have competent video cards.  In theory the Mac makes a great gaming platform with it’s advanced hardware, solid OS, and great reliability.  But go to the Apple Store and try to buy the latest and greatest AAA title for the Mac.  Good luck.  So how is the Mac for a gaming platform?  Is it a viable alternative for the hardcore (or even casual) gamer, or are we just hitting our heads on the wall?

Hardware

First, looking at the hardware, the current generation of Mac’s should be able to handle most modern gaming titles.  The bigger MBP’s have an NVidia 9600M GT, while the previous generation sports an 8600M GT.  While not the greatest card ever made, they certainly can play nearly every game out there with reasonable settings.

Apple makes a big deal out of the quality of the rest of the hardware in these boxes, including using the latest chips from Intel, DDR3 memory, and (usually) fast disk IO.  Any number of sites have run tests against the MBP’s and declared them one of the fastest laptops available on the market today.  So, love the Mac or hate it, the hardware is solid.  And a solid hardware foundation should lay the groundwork for a good gaming experience.

Verdict: Come on now.  The Mac hardware is a fully functional piece of gaming iron.

Operating System and Core Software

Apple computers have been synonymous with graphics workstations for years.  Even when the Mac OS wasn’t known for cutting edge capability and performance, it was at least a great platform for graphics works.  Stable graphics drivers, well supported applications, optimized floating point operations, and access to higher speed IO than a PC made Macs the obvious choice for graphic artists.

As OS X has evolved, its core graphic capabilities as evolved as well.  Coco intensive  a provides a common framework for the UI, and the native OpenGL support makes moregraphics applications perform well.  Apple historically has had a stranglehold on the hardware that will work on the Mac platform.  While it makes for poor diversity in hardware options, it means they can pour their efforts into the handful of supported devices and make stable drivers for them.  Honestly I hate keeping up with all the latest NVidia and ATI drivers on my PC and rather enjoy just having graphics that “just work” with the OS in OS X.

And obviously OS X can make use of multiple cores.  The Mach microkernel and the surrounding architecture is highly efficient and lends to an OS that can be very fast on the right hardware. Verdict: the OS is up to the task of gaming… maybe even a better platform than a PC because of the lack of hardware diversity.  Dare I say that the Mac is somewhere in between the chaos of PC gaming and the homogeneity of console gaming. As a publisher, that’s got to be a good thing, right?

Current Games – Casual

For casual gaming, Mac’s seem a reasonable platform.  The vast majority of the flash and web based games work fine under Safari.  There are a few hold out sites of interest, including Adult Swim, which until recently shut out Mac users.  And publishers such as PopCap have a large library of games available for casual Mac gamers.  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t addicted to Peggle for a while.  But I’m better now… for the most part.

Beyond the Mac itself, the iPhone has been a boon to casual game development.  iTunes and the online store serves as a focal point for distribution while XCode, Apple’s development environment is the focal point for application creation.  XCode is basically the same animal whether you’re developing for a Mac or an iPhone, and arguably the flood of developers of casual iPhone games is increasing the number of developers at least capable of developing casual games on the Mac.

The verdict?  If you’re a casual gamer, the Mac is a fine choice.  Large diversity in the available titles, stable gaming experience, and good performance.  Simple.

Current Games – Hardcore Gaming

The landscape changes dramatically when you look at hardcore/AAA gaming.  Note: I’m defining this category as “games that cost ~$50″. Some of the games that fall in to that space are hardcore-casual like the Sims.  While maybe not a first person shooter, games like the Sims are still a big production to make and release.

There are very few titles available when compared to the PC or console space.  It seems that AAA games that are released on the Mac through two different processes.  Some developers will release on the Mac concurrently with their release on other platforms.  The big daddy for this type of release is Maxis.  Games such as the Sims and Spore are big money winners for them and these games had the same release date on the PC as they did on the Mac.

My personal experience with the games that have concurrent development and release schedules as their PC brethren is that the end result can vary wildly in quality from the PC to the Mac.  For instance, the Sims has been stable on a number of Macs in the household.  Spore, on the other hand, has been a mess.  3 different systems have had 3 totally different sets of problems.  A fresh install of Spore over the weekend resulted in a game that would only run for 5 minutes and then die repeatedly.  So, at least from my view, concurrent development does not necessarily yield a high quality product.

The other type of release is through a third party development shop that ports existing titles to the Mac.  Companies like FreeVerse and Aspyr can take another developer’s title, use their secret sauce, and release it on the Mac.  Games from CivIV to CoD 2 have arrived on the Mac thanks to the efforts of these third party development houses.

Again, like the natively developed games, the quality of the port can vary wildly.  As an example, HeroesV has solid game play, but there’s a common bug in it that effects many users of the game.  Unfortunately, the developer doesn’t seem to be interested in creating a patch and many have simply abandoned the game (or not bought it at all) because of this problem.  This underscores a problem with third party porting.  Not only are you at the mercy of the original developer for patches and upgrades, those changes must now flow through a third party.  And if that third party loses interest in a title due to lack of sales or other reasons, patches will never make it to your Mac.

On the other hand, I’ve played CoD Modern Warfare on several different Macs and the experience was nearly identical to the PC experience.  Multiplayer gaming is seamless; I’m able to play in games with PC users without an issue.  COD:MW seems to be a great Mac game for the hardcore gamer.

Verdict: Meh.  Very limited selection of titles, even more limited support and questionable quality of code.  For some titles the Mac is a great option… for others it’s a waste of time and money.

Parting Shots

By all accounts the Mac should be a great gaming platform.  With the vast majority of Macs sold in the last 3 years having good gaming internals, the “chicken and egg” problem of getting good hardware in users hands has been solved.  All that’s needed is developers to step up build high quality AAA titles for the Mac just as they would for other platforms.  Unfortunately the user base doesn’t seem to be large enough for the mainline developers to make the jump… or if they do jump the quality can be terrible.

Ultimately I didn’t buy my Mac to game… most people don’t.  However it’s nice to be able to play the titles you enjoy without having to go boot a PC or jump on your console.  In the market today that’s a hit and miss proposition, with more misses than hits.

It’s been a while since I bought a new PC FPS, mostly because its hard to top the greatest FPS ever… TF2.  I’ve purchased a few titles in the last 2 years that I hoped would pull me away from TF2 including Farcry 2 and Fallout, but sadly neither title held my interest.  So, does Wolfenstein fare any better?  Let’s see.

First off, the installer was simple.  Not surprising, but many of us have become spoiled by Steam over the last few years.  Click a button, walk away, and *poof* a game is installed.  So any installer that requires a bunch of babysitting puts the game off on a bad foot.  The installer installed Punkbusters and the latest DX9 by default, FYI.

The rig I installed it on is an i7 920 oc’d to 3.4GHz with 3 GB of 1066 RAM, ATI 4870 1GB, SSD for the OS, and a 500GB drive for data.  When I started the game, I dialed everything up to the highest setting at 1920×1200 and let it rip.  Reviews had said that Wolfenstein didn’t push the hardware too hard, and I found that to be the case.  The game is limited to 60FPS by default; it can be overridden, but with v-sync on it doesn’t matter anyway.  The game and quicktime events played smoothy and without problem.

The game starts a little slow.  I’m not much on cinematic, and the first 2 or 3 minutes are just a quicktime event setting everything up.  The general premise is this:  It’s Indiana Jones vs. the Nazis, but in this case the guys name is BJ and he has no problem using guns.. big guns.

Controls are intuitive, though I’m used to the TF2 layout and inadvertently through a grenade a few times when I was trying to do other things.  There’s support for a joystick or hand controller but on a PC, what’s the point.  The weapons you get at the start have the accuracy of a blind, drunk person throwing darts.  It’s actually a bit frustrating at first, but after the first level you find out you can upgrade your weapons as you collect money.  This is a relief because over time the weapon upgrades cause your shooting to actually result in hitting your target as opposed to making patterns on the wall behind him.

Probably the best part of the game is the old-school Wolfenstein secrets are still in play.  Each level has various amounts of gold, intel, and other secrets you can find if you want.  Just like the original W3D, you can complete each level without finding all the secrets.  However you can poke around and find them all and be rewarded for your efforts.  Behind rubble, hidden passages, and alternate routes you’ll find secrets.  It’s really shocking how well that mechanic has translated from the original 2d shooter to this game.

You also get some pendant thing that gives you various powers including seeing in to a different dimension and slowing down time.  Using the pendant is required to finish most levels, and you get skilled at using it very quickly.  I was really expecting this mechanic to be a gimmick that would make me want to hurt small animals, but honestly it’s fun… very unexpectedly so.  It has been integrated into the gameplay effectively and becomes second nature in no time.

A quick note about the enemy AI.  On the default difficulty, they’re dumber than a bag of rocks.  On more than a few occasions I watched an enemy throw a grenade only to have it bounce off a wall back at them and blow them to bits.  It’s worth playing the game at that difficulty just to watch the keystone cop-ness of it all.

I’m about 25% through the single player campaign and have no plans of letting up.  I find myself still lusting for TF2 after I’ve played Wolfenstein, but more because I want something more fast paced that requires less thought than Wolfenstein.  I’m enjoying the challenge Wolf is providing.

As far as the multiplayer experience is concerned, I’m not nearly as impressed.  First, I’ve had a number of technical difficulties.  Mostly after some period of time the game will freeze.  Once I kill it I can’t get it to restart… further it seems to anger Windows Explorer and requires me to reboot.  Strange, and I hope future patches address the issue.

For multiplayer you can choose either Nazi’s or Resistance and then have the choice of several classes including soldier, medic, and engineer.  These roles are poorly documented, and I can barely figure out what makes the medic and engineer useful.  Full Disclosure: I haven’t played RTCW:ET so maybe if I had these classes would make sense to me.  But as a newbie, not having _any_ explanation of the classes, how to use them, etc, is inexcusable.  For instance, when you pick engineer you get a little splash screen that says the engie can build and lay mines and do other cool things.  But there is no explanation of how to do it.

Overall the gameplay feels basically like CounterStrike:Source with respawning.  You can get money and upgrade weapons, there’s a rough sense of tactics, but you get mowed down really quickly when you round a corner and someone gets the jump on you. Without upgrades you’re sitting ducks for more veteran players.  Their are definitely better weapons available than in CS:S, but still…  I’d rather play TF2 or Q3A or even UT, frankly.  The levels so far are uninspiring but adequate.

Overall, the game is worth the investment.  I imagine the single player mode will have some replayability once I finish the campaign, but I really hope the multiplayer becomes more refined as Rare releases patches and upgrades.

…I’m off to kill me some Nazis…

Front (over pocket area):

Back (full):

This will be a two color imprint on a black tshirt (SHOCKER!).  If you’re interested, please let me know the number and sizes you want.  We’ll be selling these at cost (which is probably about $10-$12 per depending on how many we order).  Cut off for the orders is July 12.  There will not be any spares for sale at DefCon.

Here’s the code for the TF2 scoreboard we used at ShmooCon.  Features include:

• Player stat tracking
• Per match scoring
• Sexy flex floating widgets full of various stats
• Support for real time flash video streaming of the match (this was really hokey to get working.  We used an audio cable from line out to line in, and used a software screen cap driver to present valid interfaces to VLC.  VLC then streamed those two devices to the linux server as MP4 which then transcoded it all to FLV with VLC on the Linux side.  Crazy)
• See http://www.nomoose.org/wiki/index.php/ShmooConPlanning

You can sort of see the scoreboard in action here.  Anyhoo, we’ll have a new update of it all for DefCon.  Stay tuned.

If you haven’t signed up, please do so sooner rather than later. NOTE you don’t need a full team to sign up a team. If you’ve got 4 or 5 friends you want to play with, register a team and we’ll fill the blanks up with individual reg’s later.

http://www.nomoose.org/dctf2/

http://www.nomoose.org/dctf2/

Also, we will have one of the Capri rooms for the entire weekend. This means we can support more teams and have open play throughout the weekend as well. 

As far as signup goes, we think it will fill up pretty quickly, so get your teams together now and head on over. We’ll be having qualifiers in late June/early July to set team rankings. The qualifiers are not required, but if you don’t participate, you will be ranked lower than any team that does participate. That means in the first round you’ll be up against the better teams to start. So if you don’t want to face the pain, you should play in the quals.

The PowerPoint can be found here.  And if you’d like to actually watch the talk, you can get that here.  Thanks to Media Archives for once again making the trek across the country to film an East Coast con.  Ted, you’re a rockstar.  Please support Ted and buy some DVD’s.

Still not exactly sure on the final format of the tourney and the location at the con.  We’re still working the details out and it may depend a bit on how many folks we get signed up.  Stay tuned for more info.

That said, I luffs me some Zero Punctuation.  It’s a video… thing that’s a bit of a combination of Bobcat Goldthwait and the entirety of IGN’s review history.  Yahtzee Croshaw is an Australian who apparently has done auction calling in the past.  He talks a mile a minute, has a fantastic wit, and shockingly amusing stick figure animations.  He releases a new one each Wednesday… Its worth checking out.  And if you’ve not seen them before, watch the whole archive… great way to spend an afternoon.

First, to be clear, the moose watched us always.

We started out with a metric boatload of parts.  We had to build 13 machines (12 tf2 clients and one server) I got the server parts a few days in advance and assembled that first.  i7 920 with 3GB triple channel memory and a 64GB SSD.  ”Fast” starts to describe it.  The box is just unreal.  

For the workstations, AMD donated Phenom II’s and 4850’s to the cause, leaving us to buy the stuff to wrap around all the horsepower.  Newegg was the source of most of the parts (cases, mobo’s, disks, RAM, mice, keyboards) with Microcenter filling in the blanks (heatsinks, mousepads, molex -> 6pin PCIE power cables (!), etc).  AMD send their stuff OEM, so we had to get heatsinks and cables for everything.  Not biggie, but still required an extra trip to Microcenter.  God I wish there was one closer to my house.  

There were giant piles of gear everywhere:

Nothing quite as satisfying as 12 cases just waiting to be filled.  Or something.  I’ll spare you the pics of monitors, disks, and everything.  There’s 12 of each.  It’s easy to visualize.

Cases out of the box.  They had 480W PSU’s in them already which is sufficient for our needs.  For the money, they’re pretty nice cases. 

Everything went together pretty well.  We had to do a BIOS upgrade on the FOXCONN boards we bought (A7GM-S).  It’s AM2+ out of the box, but it didn’t recognize the Phenom II’s.  The box would still boot… well, after it got power cycled once it would boot.  But the BIOS and OS wouldn’t properly identify the chip.  So we had to break out floppies and upgrade via a USB connected floppy.  Scary stuff, those floppies.  But it worked.  

We only had a handful of PCIE/molex power connectors so we had to move them around between boxes as we configured things.  Hell, we only had 2 processors the first day so we were moving procs around too.  It took the better part of a day with 6 folks working to get 12 systems up and running right.  We ghosted the OS onto all the drives which worked like a charm.  In hindsight we should have installed TF2 and done a bit more configuration on each system before we ghosted, but we fought through it.  

This was clearly exhausting work….

Though it turns out they were faking it.

Anyhoo, it all worked out.  The tourney went very well, the machines held up great, and I think I had the most headshots by sunday afternoon.  The moose is loose (with Mr. Blurrycam apparently).  w00t!