Software, cider, gaming, mac, os x, transgaming, windows

TransGaming's Cider Lets Enhanced Windows Games Run On Mac

No rebooting with Boot Camp and no Parallels software required to make these Cider-enhanced Windows games run on Mac. The only requirement is for game developers to include the Cider software in their game-builds for Windows, and Cider will handle all the translation between Windows and OS X. No major rebuild and development required on the game-developer's part.

One thing that makes Cider different is that the game is effectively "wrapped" with TransGaming's technology. Users pop in a disc, install the game, and run it just as they would a standard Mac OS X application. But instead of Mac OS X, the game remains a Windows application. Cider, meanwhile, translates on the fly the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that the game needs to call in order to work.

Interesting, but Mac games are already slower than their windows counterparts (Like World of Warcraft for example), and if there's going to be interpreting between the two APIs that may slow it down even more. Cider's people say that users may see "10 to 15 percent lower frame rates" compared to native OS X games. We'll wait and see whether Cider will be more practical than just rebooting into Windows via Boot Camp. – Jason Chen

[Yahoo News via Kotaku]

4:58 PM on Fri Aug 4 2006
By Jason Chen
1,487 views
7 comments

Comments

jYopp at 04:14 PM on 08/04/06
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I thought most of the present slowness of Mac games was a direct result of less time / money / effort in hand-optimizing critical code sections for the PowerPC processors, not because of some inherent problem with the MacOS. Sure, the wrapper adds some overhead.

Core graphics may or may not be slower than DirectX, but I personally doubt that a little bit. I would imagine that new OSX games optimized exclusively for Intel would perform comparably with their Windows-only counterparts, and the difference you'll see here is because it is running BOTH DirectX AND Core graphics in layers, not because Core graphics is so much slower.
buzaw0nk at 04:38 PM on 08/04/06
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You should have totally used this pic for this post...
http://img.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/imgs/051111/12847__trans...
Monty at 04:49 PM on 08/04/06
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For games that are not entirely speed dependent, this is excellent. Sims games come to mind, as well as a quality version of Tetris. It may be a fabulous option for a company to release a Mac version without having to release a Mac version. However, for those playing CPU/GPU intensive titles, there is no substitute for Borgsoft.
t3knomanser at 05:35 PM on 08/04/06
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I won't reboot using bootcamp because I don't want to OSes to manage, one is plenty. So if this means that some games can get ported in a non-buggy fashion (love Kotor, hate the port), that'd be awesome.
froggy at 11:36 PM on 08/04/06
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I wonder how much Cider is charging game developers for the software. Depending on the cost, developers might feel that the extra 15% of the market that's opened up is worth it. I mean, after all, I guess Mac users are generally the 18-49 demographic -- the most sought after. It might still be something to keep an eye out for... I guess I'll start tracking the stock.
froggy at 12:13 AM on 08/05/06
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BTW .... wouldn't someone be able to wrap this soft around a virus and send it marrily along the way for all those smug Mac users to enjoy?

PS. they also have a Linux version of the software.
timbobsteve at 01:50 AM on 09/27/06
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OK... alot of FUD on the internet about Cider.

I am going to try and debunk some of it:

Firstly... IT IS NOT CEDEGA. It uses the Win32 wrapper library and some of Transgamings DirectX wrapper libraries from Cedega, but thats it. This will in no way run like Cedega does on Linux computers... simple because it is NOT user space software. This is software that the Developers use before they box the software up. Basically it looks like this

(WARNING: Completely dumbed down code coming up)

1. Developer hits Compile to make the game
2. Compiler asks DirectX how to Draw a Square on the screen.
3. Cider tricks the compiler and gives it the OpenGL equivalent instructions to draw a Square on the screen.
4. Compiler+Cider continue in this fashion replacing all windows instructions with the equivalent mac instructions.
5. Compiler finishes and developer can now run the entire program without any additional software on an Intel Mac

This method of wrapping API calls is very efficient if done correctly and shouldn't force too much extra overhead onto already top-heavy programs like games. So it will not require more RAM than its windows equivalents.

Once again... this software does not get run by the user AT ALL. The developer simply add a single line to their makefiles for building the application that says "use Cider.dll instead of Win32.dll and DX3D.dll".... and the user is never any wiser.

The main difference between Cider (mac) and Cedega (linux), is that Cider does the conversions at compile time (so it does not chew memory when the game is run), Cedega does all this when the game is running, that is why it runs like a dog. It has to do this conversion every time it asks for instructions when the game is running... Also Cedega sometimes gets the instructions wrong and that is why games crash or don't work. With Cider the developer will be able to MAKE sure that it all happens as planned before they ship it.

This is a great step forward for mac users. I am a recent PC->Mac convert and the one thing I do miss is games.

I guess the benefit is that developers who don't want to learn carbon/opengl combo to make games for OS X, can now continue using Win32 and DirectX to make their games like normal and still make a little extra money from the mac users.

Please, no more comparisons to Cedega. It just isn't clever to compare the two. They do the same thing... but they do it differently!

-Timbobsteve