City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Who do we even talk to?

Crysys

By Crysys,
Posted on: 2011-03-01 15:11 in Mac Users

 

Posted

What redname is responsible for communication with the mac folks? I ask because we really, really need some sort of contact with Paragon Studios as far as the current state of the mac client.

I know it's transgaming, I know it's not directly PStudios, but dammit, the mac client is a piece of crap. Memory leaks, assertion failures, lockups, black screens, constant use of /unloadgfx...

Are we just left behind? CuppaManga, do you know who we talk to? I'm this close to letting my account deactivate because A) I refuse to waste 30GB of my hard drive just to dual boot for one game and B) it feels like the devs/community managers just don't give a crap about mac users. And for all we know, they don't.

My guides:Dark Melee/Dark Armor/Soul Mastery, Illusion Control/Kinetics/Primal Forces Mastery, Electric Armor
"Dark Armor is a complete waste as a tanking set."

 

Posted

Try PMing Ghost Falcon.

 

Posted

And let us know how it goes. =)

"Hmm, I guess I'm not as omniscient as I thought" -Gavin Runeblade.
I can be found, outside of paragon city here.
Thank you everyone at Paragon and on Virtue. When the lights go out in November, you'll find me on Razor Bunny.

 

Posted

Before you go off on some half-cocked tizzy, just remember they bothered creating the Mac client at all. As much as we love our platform, it is a miniscule market share. They didn't need to bother with the Mac, just like most major games.

So while we have issues and need to push to get them fixed, you should also be thankful we can even get to play the game at all on our Macs.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim View Post
I know it's transgaming, I know it's not directly PStudios, but dammit, the mac client is a piece of crap. Memory leaks, assertion failures, lockups, black screens, constant use of /unloadgfx...
I'm going to give the short version as I know it. This may or may not be entirely accurate.

Transgaming derives Cider from Cedega. Major upgrades and improvements to Cider arrive after, and ONLY after, those changes have been fielded in the Cedega engines and are stabilized.

About 2 years ago Transgaming started a complete overhaul on the Cedega engine with the code-named Maudite Series. The Maudite Engines replaced several segments of legacy code from the WINEX days with new code. In some games Maudite was delivering 4x the performance over the older 7.x Unibroue engine.

However, CoH support only stabilized under Maudite against a couple different engine releases. Maudite 14, for example, was stable with CoH and Ultra Mode graphics. Maudite 15 promptly introduced a regression that broke compatibility.

As I understand it, these regressions, changes, and other problems resulted in Transgaming being able to provide a stable Cider engine based on Maudite for / to Paragon Studios.

The problem was further complicated by a change in Transgaming's strategy which came down the pipeline earlier this year: http://gametreelinux.com/

What we don't know is whether or not this change on Transgaming's part will have an effect on the Cider engines. It is presumed that Cider / Cedega will remain linked. Transgaming does their development on Cedega, stabilizes, then produces a Cider client based on that stabilized code.

If this order has changed, or if Cider is now to be developed separately of Cedega development, Transgaming has yet to clarify. Nor has it been clarified if this change in strategy means that game developers themselves will be able to work on the Cedega engines directly, and merge their own changes through the GameTree development network.

Given the rhetoric delivered by NCSoft's public relations staff, I believe that Paragon Studios is serious about trying to maintain a client for OSX users. Whether or not a compatibility layer such as Cedega / Cider is really the best path to take... well... that's unknown as well.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by PumBumbler View Post
Try PMing Ghost Falcon.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GavinRuneblade View Post
And let us know how it goes. =)
I distinctly remember something about Ghost Falcon not being able to handle our mac issues any more, but I'm probably wrong. I'll send him a PM and see how it goes.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Davpa_CoX View Post
Before you go off on some half-cocked tizzy, just remember they bothered creating the Mac client at all. As much as we love our platform, it is a miniscule market share. They didn't need to bother with the Mac, just like most major games.

So while we have issues and need to push to get them fixed, you should also be thankful we can even get to play the game at all on our Macs.
I am thankful. I really am. But it's hard to remain thankful when the client itself is incredibly unstable. I crash 4-5 times per play session regardless of /unloadgfx use.

Quote:
Originally Posted by CuppaManga View Post
I have not given up on getting an improved Mac client for CoH. Keep posting to the "Crashing Often?" thread, it's our best chance by keeping the Mac related problems in a nice, convenient place.
Cuppa, I'd be posting the same thing over and over. But then again, if I posted every time I'd crash that thread would be 9 pages long by now.

I'll PM Ghost Falcon.

My guides:Dark Melee/Dark Armor/Soul Mastery, Illusion Control/Kinetics/Primal Forces Mastery, Electric Armor
"Dark Armor is a complete waste as a tanking set."

 

Posted

Hey folks,

As most of you probably know, I'm still a bit new around here. I'll poke around and see if I can find out if there is anyone internally who can answer some questions regarding the Mac client and issues related to it.

AFAIK, there are no current plans to upgrade the mac client to a newer version of Cider, however I could be wrong.

As a recent Mac convert (well, at least for my laptop needs) I understand your frustration and will see if I can help to at least get you some info.

Thanks!

- Z

Andy Belford
Community Manager
Paragon Studios

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
Hey folks,

As most of you probably know, I'm still a bit new around here. I'll poke around and see if I can find out if there is anyone internally who can answer some questions regarding the Mac client and issues related to it.

AFAIK, there are no current plans to upgrade the mac client to a newer version of Cider, however I could be wrong.

As a recent Mac convert (well, at least for my laptop needs) I understand your frustration and will see if I can help to at least get you some info.

Thanks!

- Z
While you are poking around, don't forget to ask some of the older guys about the sudden influx of Windows 98 users a few years back that occurred after an update to CoH broke Cedega's Win2k compatibility mode.

Basically, don't forget that there are several players that count on the Transgaming connection for "un"-official Linux support, and have done so long before the OSX client was ever announced or arranged. We wouldn't mind having a bone tossed our way as well one of these days.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
Hey folks,

As most of you probably know, I'm still a bit new around here. I'll poke around and see if I can find out if there is anyone internally who can answer some questions regarding the Mac client and issues related to it.

AFAIK, there are no current plans to upgrade the mac client to a newer version of Cider, however I could be wrong.

As a recent Mac convert (well, at least for my laptop needs) I understand your frustration and will see if I can help to at least get you some info.

Thanks!

- Z

Thanks for poking your head in here and giving us hope.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
Hey folks,

As most of you probably know, I'm still a bit new around here. I'll poke around and see if I can find out if there is anyone internally who can answer some questions regarding the Mac client and issues related to it.

AFAIK, there are no current plans to upgrade the mac client to a newer version of Cider, however I could be wrong.

As a recent Mac convert (well, at least for my laptop needs) I understand your frustration and will see if I can help to at least get you some info.

Thanks!

- Z
Zwillinger?

I love you. In a bromance way. Thank you for hearing us and thank you for poking around. It's a relief to finally see someone address the mac community. It's been a LONG time.

Mad respect, Z.

My guides:Dark Melee/Dark Armor/Soul Mastery, Illusion Control/Kinetics/Primal Forces Mastery, Electric Armor
"Dark Armor is a complete waste as a tanking set."

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
Hey folks,

As most of you probably know, I'm still a bit new around here. I'll poke around and see if I can find out if there is anyone internally who can answer some questions regarding the Mac client and issues related to it.

AFAIK, there are no current plans to upgrade the mac client to a newer version of Cider, however I could be wrong.

As a recent Mac convert (well, at least for my laptop needs) I understand your frustration and will see if I can help to at least get you some info.

Thanks!

- Z
Thank you!

"Hmm, I guess I'm not as omniscient as I thought" -Gavin Runeblade.
I can be found, outside of paragon city here.
Thank you everyone at Paragon and on Virtue. When the lights go out in November, you'll find me on Razor Bunny.

 

Posted

Hey guys,

Sent the email awhile back and got sidetracked on the follow up.

I'll see if I can't dig a bit more this week.

Thanks!

Andy Belford
Community Manager
Paragon Studios

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
Hey guys,

Sent the email awhile back and got sidetracked on the follow up.

I'll see if I can't dig a bit more this week.

Thanks!
Crashes are feeling more frequent after I20. I can barely get through a Trial without crashing to the desktop. It's either a full on client crash or an Assertion Failure (omfg am I sick of those two words).

My guides:Dark Melee/Dark Armor/Soul Mastery, Illusion Control/Kinetics/Primal Forces Mastery, Electric Armor
"Dark Armor is a complete waste as a tanking set."

 

Posted

I recently switched to an entirely mac setup, too. Partially cuz I could use CoX on it. However, if the client is going to be abandoned...

I could use BootCamp, but that defeats the purpose of owning a Mac to begin with.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by seamer View Post
I recently switched to an entirely mac setup, too. Partially cuz I could use CoX on it. However, if the client is going to be abandoned...

I could use BootCamp, but that defeats the purpose of owning a Mac to begin with.
As far as I know, the Mac client is NOT being abandoned.

Manga @ Triumph
"Meanwhile In The Halls Of Titan"...Titan Network Working To Save City Of Heroes
Save Paragon City! Efforts Coordination

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by CuppaManga View Post
As far as I know, the Mac client is NOT being abandoned.
To speak for the people in my position, it doesn't feel like it's being tended to either. Sure, they fixed the Radeon issue, but that's it.

Cuppa: What exactly is the gal in your icon doing? Is she skydiving?

My guides:Dark Melee/Dark Armor/Soul Mastery, Illusion Control/Kinetics/Primal Forces Mastery, Electric Armor
"Dark Armor is a complete waste as a tanking set."

 

Posted

I believe she's super-jumping from one rooftop to another.

And I asked a while back, and now know they're looking into the Mac client issues, but don't know exactly what they're doing or what the ETA is. I haven't asked since, but if it's a Transgaming/Cider issue the only answer I'll probably get is "we're working on it" (pretty much what TG would be telling Paragon).

I do know from keeping an eye on Crossover that the WINE project, the heart of both that and Cider, suffered a major compatibility setback in the latest release. While we weren't hit by it (Crossover was, and it wasn't good), I could venture an educated guess that TG may be waiting for or tied up with fixes for those problems before they can make any new major releases of Cider.

So if we get a fix very soon, it would most likely be a patched-up version of the same client we use at this time - in other words not a major leap, but hopefully better behaved.

Manga @ Triumph
"Meanwhile In The Halls Of Titan"...Titan Network Working To Save City Of Heroes
Save Paragon City! Efforts Coordination

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim View Post
Cuppa: What exactly is the gal in your icon doing? Is she skydiving?
That's Birdy the Mighty. She's an alien Superhero.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

 

Posted

I heard on the Ustream the other day that a) Zuwiller knows the Mac client is borked and b) they have to find a way to address it. Meaning its not yet being addressed and, based on what I've seen posted here, likely won't be any time soon.

Just bootcamp it. Sucks but really no way we have any power over getting the Mac issues addressed anyways. I've tried everything and short of running it in super-low-res mode with absolutely everything turned off (which looks like crap) the thing just crashes constantly.