9 replies to this topic

[pussyplaish]

Hi!
I'm launching a new challenge to good wrapper developers: creating a PowerPC game wrapper, so we could play older OS X games on Lion: since Rosetta is gone, many mac-only games aren't compatible and this is very frustrating.
I'm not a developer, but I think that a good start point would be incorporating Rosetta or PearPc into an app, and then our games in that app.
Tell me what you think about it.

[devilhunter]

I've done a similar thing quite a while ago here:
http://forum.porting...hp?f=231&t=6394
(working on 10.4-10.6, maybe on 10.7, not sure)

This is a CXS Wrapper which runs the PC port of Basilisk II which runs OS 7.5.5 which autostarts Deliverance 2.
An emulator running and emulator running an old game so to speak.

But you always have to listen how new ideas get to people.

Just one reply from a user means a failed experiment.
also, it was a pain to get the old game onto the virtual disk image
and lots of old mac games had PC counterparts, which were very easy to port with the standard Wrappers.
Now this was the very old stuff, were some mac games were actually better than the DOS counterparts.
Or set up a working virtual OS9 that could run a few Games like ONI which have trouble running in Wine, or some older PPC apps.
I'm sure Apple wouldn't mind, OS9 was taken to the grave (literally) 10 years ago


Also there was PowerPC OS9 and PowerPC OSX to differ.
The PPC OS9 could be done with today's tools, the OSX one however not so likely.

In the Era of PPC OSX however, 99% of the mac games have PC counterparts, which makes this idea somewhat not useful. except for old mac-only applications, which are occasionally popping up on on macupdate for example.

Also we had this idea a long time ago with a VMware Wrapper, where a slimmed down XP would be bundled in a 'Wrapper' , where you could run your Game in it, with better or worse performance than Wine Wrappers.
Never took off and was killed not later, because the VMwrapper was too big to be useful.

Still, if somebody wants to get this working, be our guest. An extra space in the Wrapper section will be reserved for you.


Edit: the best thing that can help you here is getting VMware + a Server version of Leopard.
There the classic environment still works but without graphic acceleration.
I have this on my disk for occasional testing. (10GB disk image file)

[doh123]

I think the main point is... for every old Mac game there is that needs Rosetta, its possible to get an old Windows version of the same game... which can run with Wine.

If Rosetta was open source or made available in any way that came close to a wrapper... or if PearPC was actually useful, it might be easier making a wrapper... but at the current point, your talking about HUGE project...

[cluthz]

SheepShaver runs well on both my hack and my MBA (16 and 10.7)
It runs PPC apps and can run OS 7.5 thru OS 9.1

[doh123]

I think the thread was about older PPC OSX apps.. not older PPC Mac OS games like 7.5 - 9.1 ... but you could try to throw one together using that of course.

[pussyplaish]

Yes, I was thinking of OXS games, and particularly Cro-Mag Rally and Airburst Extreme: those are not big games, but are extremely fun (especially the second one). I tried Snow Leopard Server in Parallels 7 and VMware 4, but the graphics of the two games were very slow, despite my Mac's speed. Then I tried the old Airburst Classic and Cro-Mag Rally on SheepShaver, but they didn't work (strange errors).
Both game projects are dead, according to developers answers. The other option is a 10.6 partition, but it wastes a lot of disk space and it's quite annoying.
Is there any other possibility?

[cluthz]

Cro Mag Rally came bundled with my PowerMac G4/400, and I'm pretty sure it ran OS 9.0.4. I didn't start using OSX until 10.2.
3D acceleration support is however a bit limited with sheepshaver.

[pussyplaish]

In fact, SheepShaver and os 9.0.4 are giving me 3D errors...

[Alexlawson4488]

I wish I could use these as well. Unfortunately, I upgraded (or downgraded, depending on how you look at it) to Lion, without knowing it would disable powerpc :'(

[smoketetsu]

Many of those older ports are so creaky and out of date that playing the PC version is preferable. I mean... many Unreal Engine titles on Mac did not let you manually edit their .ini files and some of the features like detail textures and even music didn't work in UT and Unreal for Mac. Also Unreal Gold never came out for Mac just standard Unreal. And there are unofficial patches that fix tons of bugs for Unreal on PC that's not available for Mac. Same thing applies to Deus Ex.. it's better to run Deus Ex GOTY editionin WINE with the patches for the renderer and new vision mod than to try to get the old creaky Mac version running via emulation. Hell with the newer unofficial renderers you can use 8x or more antialiasing if you wish.

BTW, I'd rather play Mario Kart Wii in dolphin if i wanted to play a kart racing game. I accept no substitue for Mario Kart.

Also I think Pangea has abandoned the mac in favor of iOS in general.