Porting new games to MacOS 9 and X? Would you be interested?

[kspes]

Hi Everyone,

I'm a game developer with 25 years of work behind me and my ultimate long term goal is to ensure that as much of my games get to live as long as possible. In today's world, if you don't update games or port to new platforms, they get left behind and forgotten within 5-10 years...
I'm mostly successful in this, and our games are present pretty much everywhere on today's hardware, but, a long wish of mine was to also go "back in time" and see if we can port our games to older systems such as Win9x, classic macs and PowerPC's.

In fact, back in the day, some of our games did work on PowerPC OSX 10.4-10.6, so I know it's technically possible to do so. Ultimately, I'd love to see our games work on my iMac G3

However, doing so means a lot of time and work on our side and I can't justify it to our other team members if there wouldn't be enough intereset from players.
So my idea was this, publish our games for MacOS X (PPC and i386) and if possible, MacOS9 - as full versions, free of charge, and simply ask people on the main menu to buy the game on any other platform they choose if the like the game (Mac App Store, Steam, Nintendo etc). No verification and no judgement if you don't, it's kinda like donationware.

So, my question is, if you were able to play one of our games on an old Mac, would you even be interested in playing them, and if so, would you we willing to buy the game on another platform to show appreciation and support porting further games?

• My company is called Cateia Games
• The first game I'd like to port is a point and click adventure game called Kaptain Brawe
• You can find the rest of our games on Steam

[teroyk]

It seems that successful game releases to old platforms are package releases: box, manual and media (floppy/CD/DVD).
You would impress how well new 8-bit releases sell in 8-bit platforms these days. But game has to be good. It would be nice to know how well would new 32-bit (or 128-bit Altivec PPC) game or app sell.

With CodeWarrior you can code software that compile to system 7 68k to MacOSX10.4 PPC (and also for Win98 x86!) with that you can do everything.
If you use Carbon API with Mac OS 9 program it almost automatically works with OSX10.4 too and if you recompile with Xcode it might work with small changes up to MacOSX 10.7 and some more small changes up to Mac OS X 10.12.

Also there is easier way make point & click games with Macromedia Director with that you can make games from System7 to OSX10.5 (OSX10.6 if rosetta installed) (and also from Win95 to WinXP). I have seen many Mac&Win CD-ROM releases that are made old days with that.

Btw, if your game company is rich, you can buy RAD Game tools, it support also Mac OS 9!
http://www.radgametools.com/default.htm
although in page says it's Bink video "requires x86 (no PPC support)", it actually support "This BinkBuffer API uses QuickDraw to gain direct access to the frame buffer on MacOS 8 to X. This API is compatible with the Windows version." ..so if you buy RAD Game Tools ask Mac OS 9 compatible version of it.
Example commercial 3D game Ratatouille is made with it..(no that game not work it Mac OS 9, because it has hardware requirement over almost all MacOS 9 machines)

[kspes]

What I'm proposing is strictly a digital download which you would either download directly on the target machine, or use an usb stick or burn a cd to transfer.

As for the tech part, most of our games are in C++/OpenGL and those used to work well on PPC Macs. Most of our games are 2D so I don't expect too much performance problems, although MacOS 9 would probably pose a challenge.
In any case, the "how" is something to figure out later, now I'm primarily interested if this whole thing would be interesting to enough people or not.

[ssp3]

What's the catch? 

[kspes]

What's the catch? 

Haha, No catch, I just have a strong urge to do it, as an hommage to a the G3 and PowerPC era. I'd also like to do a raspberry pi versions of our games and even PPC linux while I'm at it, why not. It's both an hommage as well as a nice technical challenge and I live for that stuff
The trick is to convince the other team members it's worthwhile endeavour
Also, could be an interesting "business model" (a mix between shareware and donationware) for the underdog platforms everyone is ignoring. For example, Steam works quite nicely on x86_64 linux, but noone cares for armhf/arm64 linux gaming at the moment.

[Mat]

So, my question is, if you were able to play one of our games on an old Mac, would you even be interested in playing them, and if so, would you we willing to buy the game on another platform to show appreciation and support porting further games?

If you would care about a good port to Mac OS 9, of your professional looking games, I wold pay anyways. 15 bucks is fine for a well done game, and the effort would definitely deserve a financial compensation. BUT only if it is cared about a good Mac OS 9 port, and not some "here is a X program - works perhaps at a OS 9 too". But I don´t fear such behaviour as you mentioned your G3.

MacOS9 - as full versions, free of charge, and simply ask people on the main menu to buy the game on any other platform they choose if the like the game (Mac App Store, Steam, Nintendo etc).

My problem would be, I have no other modern plattform in use ...

[teroyk]

As for the tech part, most of our games are in C++/OpenGL and those used to work well on PPC Macs. Most of our games are 2D so I don't expect too much performance problems, although MacOS 9 would probably pose a challenge.

Mac OS 9 has good OpenGL and old fashion C++ support.
And even iMac G3 233 Mhz is fast enough for everything 2D if screen resolution drops down to 640x480 and almost everything at 1024x768.
Read books at least check these:
Beginning Mac Programming 2001.pdf
Mac Game Programming 2002.pdf
Black Art of Macintosh Game Programming 1996.pdf
you can found them bottom of this page:
https://vintageapple.org/macprogramming/index_year.html

[kspes]

If you would care about a good port to Mac OS 9, of your professional looking games, I wold pay anyways. 15 bucks is fine for a well done game, and the effort would definitely deserve a financial compensation. BUT only if it is cared about a good Mac OS 9 port, and not some "here is a X program - works perhaps at a OS 9 too". But I don´t fear such behaviour as you mentioned your G3.

Fair enough, thanks for the input! I'd definetly try hard to get MacOS 9 working properly, as a native MacOS app.

My problem would be, I have no other modern plattform in use ...

No iPhone or Android phone? I can set up a paypal or patreon for support as well I suppose

[kspes]

Mac OS 9 has good OpenGL and old fashion C++ support.
And even iMac G3 233 Mhz is fast enough for everything 2D if screen resolution drops down to 640x480 and almost everything at 1024x768.

Thanks for the links, I'll check them out!

I figure anything above 200Mhz and 128mb ram should be able to run our games. Do you by any chance know if MacOS9 toolchain supports C++ templates and c++ STL?

[teroyk]

Mac OS 9 has good OpenGL and old fashion C++ support.
And even iMac G3 233 Mhz is fast enough for everything 2D if screen resolution drops down to 640x480 and almost everything at 1024x768.

Do you by any chance know if MacOS9 toolchain supports C++ templates and c++ STL?

I don't know, but this forum has programmers that should know that.

EDIT: It would be good start to new topic about it here: http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/board,177.0.html

[IIO]

now I'm primarily interested if this whole thing would be interesting to enough people or not.

any new executable for MacOS9 will get you a few <3 <3 <3, but really only inside the smaller MacOS9 nerd party.

and priority is things which did not exist before, like the torrent client, jabber client, chatGTP proxy client, generic PC SATA card drivers, that kind of thing.

i personally play games, too, but of course i would never admit that in a public forum.
 

i like your philosophy. warcraft III was built with the same idea in mind. which is why it took 9 years to develop it.

unfortunately it runs much better in OSX, but the OS9 version is it also a great piece of work.

while most pro audio software is full of bugs, warcraft III was a true quality product on the level of photoshop.

[Mat]

No iPhone or Android phone? :) I can set up a paypal or patreon for support as well I suppose

No. And also I never used any online-payment service. In Europe (I suspect you to be form Europe because of the name, what reminds me that any info of your company is missing at the website), the most easy way, and also the cheapest, would be to publish a IBAN to enable everybody to make a SEPA transfer.

BTW, thinking about it reminds me to the good old "Kagi-days", where you could even send cash in an envelope to pay the software! ;)

[IIO]

back in the days, when people payed for software and when artists had income.

[ssp3]

back in the days, when people payed for software and when artists had income.

Someone prominent from the music industry once said, "You can't compete with FREE".
Applies to both cases today.

[kspes]

back in the days, when people payed for software and when artists had income.

I dunno, comparing to 20 years ago, with steam and all the app stores, software piracy is much less of an issue.
However, compared to then, competition is HUGE and getting any visibility to actually make a sale is the real challenge today.

[teroyk]

What's the catch? 

It looks like catch is get visibility and promotion to games to another platform...it seems even work..

[teroyk]

back in the days, when people payed for software and when artists had income.

However, compared to then, competition is HUGE and getting any visibility to actually make a sale is the real challenge today.

But competition is not huge for older platforms, so that is why some new games for older platforms sell well these days. Example new games for C64, MSX and even for TI-99 sold out guite easily if they have box, manual, and physical media. With these kind of releases you get easily visibility in retro magazines and forums.
If you release CD-ROM for crt-tube iMacs and if game starts just clicking icon after installing CD-ROM to CD-ROM slot, then it might sell it to people that not buy games for modern platforms, they buy because good memories of they was young when first iMac was new. But game has to be good.

EDIT:I add two words.

[ssp3]

Gaming on a relatively primitive (by todays standards) OSes seems to be the current hype. But it will fade away as soon as new toys are discovered by the generation with disposable income. If you want to make some money in this field, hurry up.

And yes, packaging and harware, CDs or DVDs , seems to be the requirement to generate the interest, especially among kiddies. It has to be something "collectible". 
Throwing a pile of (buggy) code at users as downloads in a hope that they will buy it won't get you very far.