Heart of Darkness on OS X : What's the word on the street ?

[Niptium]

I know Paradox Development Studios have been handling OS X versions of their games since Crusader Kings II but the OS X development for Victoria II and A House Divided were farmed out to Virtual Programming. So will we, OS X Paradoxians, get Heart of Darkness in the coming months either from PDS or Virtual Programming ?

 

[LarryLeica]

I know Paradox Development Studios have been handling OS X versions of their games since Crusader Kings II but the OS X development for Victoria II and A House Divided were farmed out to Virtual Programming. So will we, OS X Paradoxians, get Heart of Darkness in the coming months either from PDS or Virtual Programming ?

Given how horrible HOI3+expansions was, I've been playing the windows version(s) in a virtual machine. CK2 works well for OSX though, but that was a PDX in-house job IIRC. I would imagine HoD will be along eventually, although I doubt it will release for OSX on the same day.

 

[unmerged(218540)]

Vicky II on OS X plays not worse than the Windows version. In fact, I haven't noticed any considerable slow down but that might well be due to AHD. Even with APD on top it's rather a good conversion by VP.

Yep, having splashed out money twice over the past years in order to be able to play Vicky where ever, when ever.

Will have to try playing it in a virtual machine though but for that I'd have to upgrade RAM considerably.

Having said that, I think HoD will be handled once more by VP and their content delivery method. No issues with that but the price they keep asking for Mac conversions. But then again, VP is going to be history soon for Paradox games it seems. Do it like Sports Interactive/SEGA: one license for both OSes.

 

[LarryLeica]

Vicky II on OS X plays not worse than the Windows version. In fact, I haven't noticed any considerable slow down but that might well be due to AHD. Even with APD on top it's rather a good conversion by VP.

Yep, having splashed out money twice over the past years in order to be able to play Vicky where ever, when ever.

Will have to try playing it in a virtual machine though but for that I'd have to upgrade RAM considerably.

Having said that, I think HoD will be handled once more by VP and their content delivery method. No issues with that but the price they keep asking for Mac conversions. But then again, VP is going to be history soon for Paradox games it seems. Do it like Sports Interactive/SEGA: one license for both OSes.

I splashed out on the mac version of HOI3 + expansions stupidly, I had the PC version via steam, and a tantalising mac version of vanilla HOI3 but unable to buy the mac expansions on steam so bought the WHOLE lot AGAIN and was disappointed... After that, decided to just use a VM if there isn't a mac native version or I already have a PC version and the mac requires another purchase. I had V2 since release for the PC but barely played until AHD arrived having finally decided to just stick with macs for RL simplicity.

OS independent games are the future I hope...

 

[DominusNovus]

I've found CK2 to run quite well on my OSX partition, particularly once I actually bothered to update to 10.8. I'm glad that all future games (to the best of my knowledge) will be developed in-house, since I never was a fan of VP. They took far far too long to port, and were always stupidly tight lipped about whether they even were working on games (got Windows bootcamped in large part due to that, so I could play P'dox games). I'm going to go and re-install windows on my computer next week, just to be able to play HoD, which will be somewhat inconvenient, but hey, ya gotta do what ya gotta do. By the time we get to Vicky3, it won't be a problem anymore.

 

[Niptium]

I wrote to VP and I didn't get any answer. And we have no answer from Paradox either. :unsure:

 

[DominusNovus]

I wrote to VP and I didn't get any answer. And we have no answer from Paradox either. :unsure:

VP made it their policy to be tight lipped. It really is too bad; there's people out there who want to be able to plan their recreational purchases ahead of time.

It'd be nice if P'dox could re-port Vicky 2 to Mac, but I'm certain that it wouldn't happen (for both legal and technical reasons).

 

[jp78]

Does anyone remember how long was the mac version of AHD released after the windows one ?

This might be a good start to know when we can expect HOD on mac.

 

[Niptium]

Original release of Victoria II, according to the Victoria 2 Wiki (http://en.victoria2.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Victoria_II) was about a month later : August 13th to September 17th. Then, for Victoria II: A House Divided (http://en.victoria2.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Victoria_II_:_A_House_Divided), the release took nearly two months : 2 February 2012 to March 30th 2012.

I was the one who updated the Wiki with the OS X informations.

 

[James The 1st]

Silly Mac users.

I splashed out on the mac version of HOI3 + expansions stupidly, I had the PC version via steam, and a tantalising mac version of vanilla HOI3 but unable to buy the mac expansions on steam so bought the WHOLE lot AGAIN and was disappointed... After that, decided to just use a VM if there isn't a mac native version or I already have a PC version and the mac requires another purchase. I had V2 since release for the PC but barely played until AHD arrived having finally decided to just stick with macs for RL simplicity.

Doesn't Steam give you the game for PC, Mac and Linux?

 

[Niptium]

When it is available from the same publisher. In the case of Victoria II, since the port is handled by VP, the money doesn't follow the same route. VP doesn't publish on Steam. I have Victoria II on Steam, but it's only the Windows version. So, it's useless. I have to fire Deliver2Mac to play the game.

 

[jp78]

Original release of Victoria II, according to the Victoria 2 Wiki (http://en.victoria2.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Victoria_II) was about a month later : August 13th to September 17th. Then, for Victoria II: A House Divided (http://en.victoria2.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Victoria_II_:_A_House_Divided), the release took nearly two months : 2 February 2012 to March 30th 2012.

I was the one who updated the Wiki with the OS X informations.

Obviously I got excited too early about this game. At least we can hope it will be well patched and the new PDM for HOD will already be there when we finally get HOD on our macs.

 

[LarryLeica]

Silly Mac users.

Doesn't Steam give you the game for PC, Mac and Linux?

No. For CK2, which was a PDOX in-house multi-platform release, you get a version for each platform. I play that natively on mac.

For releases before that you get whatever VP decided would go in whatever web-shops they felt like supporting, so for HOI3 you got the vanilla mac game on steam alongside the PC version, but no expansions for mac. Of course, you can't use the expansions purchased elsewhere on the steam version (no fault of steam).

 

[Illanair]

Of course, you can't use the expansions purchased elsewhere on the steam version (no fault of steam).

Well actually that is entirely on Steam. Valve has decided that you cannot buy single expansion packs unless you own the prerequisites as well. In practice, none of the Paradox games are reliant on Steam in any way so you could in theory simply apply an expansion from one provider onto another.

 

[DominusNovus]

No. For CK2, which was a PDOX in-house multi-platform release, you get a version for each platform. I play that natively on mac.

For releases before that you get whatever VP decided would go in whatever web-shops they felt like supporting, so for HOI3 you got the vanilla mac game on steam alongside the PC version, but no expansions for mac. Of course, you can't use the expansions purchased elsewhere on the steam version (no fault of steam).

And I have to say, I love the idea of platform-independent releases. I've played Civ5, Endless Space, and CK2 on both Mac and (bootcamped) Win7, all to my satisfaction, and each with only one (platform independent) copy purchased. Its so refreshing to be able to have that flexibility.

 

[Niptium]

I don't want to buy Windows, let alone install it on my computers, hogging my precious Macbook Pro Retina SDD space.

I'm a bit put off by the way things are handled right now. Paradox commented saying they didn't know if HoD for OS X will happen and VP is playing dead in the water on this topic. Things might be happening behind closed doors (or not) but OS X players want in !

 

[DominusNovus]

I don't want to buy Windows, let alone install it on my computers, hogging my precious Macbook Pro Retina SDD space.

I'm a bit put off by the way things are handled right now. Paradox commented saying they didn't know if HoD for OS X will happen and VP is playing dead in the water on this topic. Things might be happening behind closed doors (or not) but OS X players want in !

I feel for you. And, I think, so does P'dox. There is a reason, after all, that they started doing Mac Ports in-house, starting with CK2. VP is just not that good of a company; hell, the shut down their forums, rather than take the time to keep their customers in the loop.

Of course, I'm not privy to the goings on in P'dox's offices, but thats how I see it. So, we'll just have to wait for Vicky3 to be able to play it on a Mac.

 

[jp78]

I don't want to buy Windows, let alone install it on my computers, hogging my precious Macbook Pro Retina SDD space.

I'm a bit put off by the way things are handled right now. Paradox commented saying they didn't know if HoD for OS X will happen and VP is playing dead in the water on this topic. Things might be happening behind closed doors (or not) but OS X players want in !

I don't understand why they can't clear up the situation and tell us if there is gonna be a mac version or not. Do they wait for the sale results of the first month to decide whether they'll port it or not ?
How was the mac release of AHD handled by PDX and VP in terms of communication ? Was it the same mess ?
Anyway, I think, whatever good or bad the expansion performs on PC or whatever reason they would have not to port it, it would be unfair for us mac players.
When they made this game, they decided it would be ported on mac, same goes for the 1st expansion, so when I bought the game everything was available on mac. They didn't give us a notice when we bought it that we may not be treated in the future as equals to windows players. We spent 50 euros on that game ( I did at least), so I believe we're entitled to acquire the new expansion just like the others.
If they don't want to port their games to mac, they have the right not to do it, but when they start to then they should do it entirely and not suddenly stop and deprive us of the best...

I'm digressing a bit now cause we still don't know if there will be HOD on mac, but all I mean is that now they ported vanilla and AHD to mac and made us pay for it they should finish the job...

 

[sayagh]

It would be great to have some indication of what to expect.

I have the PC version of the vanilla game and the mac version of the first expansion (I switched from a PC to a Mac for work purposes). I know they are incompatible, but I never had the time to play the expansion anyway.

But now that HoD is out, I would very much want to know what to do. Either buy both expansions for PC and configure a dual boot, or just wait a little bit for the Mac version to come out.

Even a "we don't know yet" answer would be helpful.

Hopefully, all the new games will follow the exemple of CK2 and will be platform independent.

 

[Emperorheinrich]

I would really appreciate some feedback on this issue as well. It's been a bit nerve-racking to have to wait to find out if HoD will ever make it to Mac. I've always been more than happy to give Paradox my money, but I can only really do so if there's a port to Mac.