EA is bringing BF 2142 to Mac OSX...native widescreen?

OMAC1A · Post by **OMAC1A** » 11 Jun 2007, 18:29

EA just announced that they are bringing BF 2142 and some other EA games to the Mac platform. Since there are no 4:3 Macs in production, I wonder if this means that EA will finally bring native widescreen support to the BF series. It would be nice.

misadlouhy · Post by **misadlouhy** » 11 Jun 2007, 18:49

EA will implement widescreen resolutions there natively in vert- way :lol:

skeeder · Post by **skeeder** » 11 Jun 2007, 19:50

no. EA will do no such thing...ever.

Apple · Post by **Apple** » 12 Jun 2007, 02:02

"WHAT!!!!!!!!!!... We have to add widescreen support!.... Thats ridiculous, just make the resolutions work and thats it!"
Some EA guy.

Therefore Vert-

sixshot · Post by **sixshot** » 12 Jun 2007, 06:53

Widescreen? That's ridiculous. That gives the OS X players an unfair advantage! ;)

Yes, this does opens up the possibility of them adopting and implementing it in the game. But one thing to point out is that they (DICE/EA) may keep the codebase segregated from the Windows build. There's just too little information to go on other than speculating the possibilities. I would like to have this finally added in the Windows build. But knowing that there are vast architectural differences between the OS X and Windows API, I ain't going to hold my breath on it.

While on the subject of widescreen... my thread that I had posted up on EA's forums seem to have disappeared. I contacted a moderator to ask if it's been deleted but I have not gotten an answer. I had the thread going for a while and I'm worried that it's been deleted because they don't want to hear anything of it anymore. Yet now hearing about this, I can only speculate that they finally acknowledge this and may add in native support.

As for the game, I don't know if it'll do any good to port such a title over since it's still got several issues that they need to work out. And I have to wonder if it'll bring a small spike of new players into the franchise.

"Hi, I'm a Mac."
"And I'm a PC."
"Enemy infantry spotted!"
"Walker spotted! It's definitely hostile!"
*poof!*
"PC? PC??? Where'd you go?"
(a few minutes later...) *poof!*
"Sorry, Mac. The game crashed to desktop."

YouTube · Post by **ViciousXUSMC** » 12 Jun 2007, 11:35

"Hi, I'm a Mac."
"And I'm a PC."
"Enemy infantry spotted!"
"Walker spotted! It's definitely hostile!"
*poof!*
"PC? PC??? Where'd you go?"
(a few minutes later...) *poof!*
"Sorry, Mac. The game crashed to desktop."

hehe i almost lauged out loud, not so much from what you said but just the idea.

I imagined an in-game like voice over to bf2142 like they did with halo on some videos going

"Hi, im a mac"
"and im a pc"
"hey mac where are you"
"oh im sorry thats right you cant see me because your a pc"
"yeah you know they took the top and bottom of my screen"
"look up im up here"
"huh?"

::BOOM HEADSHOT::

"medic!"

Gabbo · Post by **Gabbo** » 12 Jun 2007, 23:30

Apparently it's all smoke and mirrors. Check out this article:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2145462,00.asp

I guess Apple and EA's idea of bringing gaming to Mac's are not writing native MAC compatible code, but using emulation. You heard that right... performance crushing emulation.

Nice job EA! I wouldn't expect anything less (or more for that matter).

sixshot · Post by **sixshot** » 13 Jun 2007, 01:24

I noticed that piece of info too after I posted my reply up. Quite disappointing. Cider isn't the solution, much like how our +szx and +szy args aren't the solution to our WS problem. It's merely working around the problem of running it. I expect there will be some performance hit and that's something I will never tolerate if I was a Mac user. That's not bringing EA back to the Mac gaming arena. It's merely spitting on our face and selling us a rebranded copy of the game.

I loathe the fact that they plan on using Cider to achieve this. A native port would have been so much better and I would like to have seen DICE be given the chance to look through their engine code and add in performance tweaks as well as general optimizations. After all, many devs probably think around the line of "if it ain't broken, don't fix it."

So much high hopes... and it all got crushed in an instant. Good job, EA. Wish I could video conference a double middle-finger salute to them.

I wonder.... what is the general opinion of the Mac gaming community in regards to using Cider/emulation to bring Windows games to Mac?

YouTube · Post by **ViciousXUSMC** » 13 Jun 2007, 06:15

Im havning fun with memory leaks I think crashing after a round is over on vista x64 ^^ BF2142 has the honor of being the only game so far to give me issues on Vista.

I decided I would go ahead and give in and play it on xp, so I swiced over to my xp install (dual boot) and wow?! what do you know BF2142 wont boot up on XP now. Apparently you can use the same install directory on a dual boot it must cause some issues with how the game runs or is protected. So I have to probably have two totally seperate installs of the game to be able to play it on both OS's... May even have to download it again to clear the EA link out because it says the game is "ready to play" aka downloaded and installed.

Apple · Post by **Apple** » 13 Jun 2007, 16:36

I decided I would go ahead and give in and play it on xp, so I swiced over to my xp install (dual boot) and wow?! what do you know BF2142 wont boot up on XP now. Apparently you can use the same install directory on a dual boot it must cause some issues with how the game runs or is protected. So I have to probably have two totally seperate installs of the game to be able to play it on both OS's... May even have to download it again to clear the EA link out because it says the game is "ready to play" aka downloaded and installed.

Never easy is it man.

sixshot · Post by **sixshot** » 14 Jun 2007, 00:54

It's a good thing I don't use EA Link for anything major... it just cannot compete with Steam.

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 15 Jun 2007, 20:52

So EA games will have even more bugs on Macs than on Windows because of the emulation layer?

...and I thought EA couldn't get any worse... :lol:

Post by **ctrlsteef** » 16 Jun 2007, 12:45

Well, the games aren't intresting anyway. NFS Carbon, C&C TW, Harry Potter :roll: :roll:

The fun thing was that dude from EA was telling the audience during the WWDC keynote that EA would be bringing new games simultaniously to the PC and Mac. 1 second after that he begins telling that these games that are allready out for the pc for ages come to the mac!!! :roll: :roll:

skeeder · Post by **skeeder** » 16 Jun 2007, 17:37

most people have already switched over to windows for that sort of thing anyway. They just reboot back into OSX when they can...

Post by **ctrlsteef** » 16 Jun 2007, 17:51

yep, like me. I only have windows installed for games and it works great. Would be cool though to play games in OSX if it runs as good as on Windows. Saves some rebooting. Yeah, I know, I'm lazy. :lol:

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 17 Jun 2007, 14:32

Tiberium Wars is, to be fair, enjoyable the first time through. Replays aren't so good. But yeah, most EA games are just... meh.

Post by **ctrlsteef** » 17 Jun 2007, 15:15

...enjoyable the first time through...

And since the game is allready out for some months everybody has allready played it, it has totally no extra value when they bring it to OSX. :wink: :lol:
Ah well, perhaps I get it after all because I did kinda like the skirmish games and the multiplayer games I did on lanpartys.

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