N2 for Macintosh?

Why has there been no version of N2 for Macintosh as of yet, and does anyone know if there are any plans to make one? Thanks for all of your help in advane. Jason Ford

Jason, >Why has there been no version of N2 for Macintosh as of yet, and does >anyone know if there are any plans to make one? Papyrus seemd to have dropped Mac support totally. The only things you will get is ICR2 and NASCAR1. And they don't even sell the hybrid ICR2 (repackaged as CART) anymore. It would have cost them NOTHING to leave this CD hybrid. Sad but true. There is support on the internet for both games. Have a look at my site http://www.pf-roio.de/racing for a start. There are two racing leagues and a lot of converted tracks/carsets etc.. We have everything the winDOS community has. But not NASCAR2. And if we don't cry out VERY loud, we won't get GPL. Herwig -- ECCE TERRAM GmbH Dipl.-Inform. Herwig Henseler Heinrichstrasse 18d Tel. 0441 / 500 12-0 26131 Oldenburg Fax. 0441 / 500 12-29

> Papyrus seemd to have dropped Mac support totally. The only things you > will get is ICR2 and NASCAR1. And they don't even sell the hybrid ICR2 > (repackaged as CART) anymore. It would have cost them NOTHING to leave > this CD hybrid. Sad but true. Nothing in "parts" costs. But, presumably the decision was that marginal tech support costs would exceed the marginal profits from the Mac crowd. And if you DO cry out very loud, you won't get GPL for the Cupertino machines. The market size just isn't there to make it profitable. ---Jim

> And if you DO cry out very loud, you won't get GPL for the Cupertino > machines. The market size just isn't there to make it profitable. > ---Jim If Papy can't make something profitable from a 30+ million installed base than they better go back to business school and figure out how to. If anything Papy should contract out with any of the developers who convert PC games to Mac and take a percent of every sale from these boxes. Heck I bet Mac people will actually pay $2 more to make up for the lost volume per box!! I know I'd pay $5 or $10 more to get Mac software. Mac users more than make up for this in time not fiddling around with your system to get the game to run! There must be money to be made in porting PC games to Mac since there are a few companies who are stricktly in the buiness of doing this. The support is handled by the porting Developer, not Papy. How about it any of you Mac DOS converter game developers. Want to make some more money. As we can see from the current version of Mac NASCAR and MAC ICRII, the effort to get this to run on the Mac from the Intel/Windoze software is NOT hard. If you build it they will buy it and you will make money!

> > And if you DO cry out very loud, you won't get GPL for the Cupertino > > machines. The market size just isn't there to make it profitable. > > ---Jim > If Papy can't make something profitable from a 30+ million installed base > than they better go back to business school and figure out how to. Not true; the fact that a profitable market might exist doesn't mean that market will be addressed if a *more* profitable market exists and that more profitable market can occupy their resources. Papyrus has to optimize its total profit, not serve every market that's profitable. As an example, their new office is down by the Charles River Park; in the summertime there's tons of inline skaters and bikers there, I'm sure they could get a license to have their employees operate a lemonade stand down by the river. And I'm sure they could make a profit in that market (much less that 30mm people on the river), but it's still not the optimal use of their resources. :-) Besides, is there really one Mac for about every ten Americans? That seems high to me. Regardless, the useful question to ask is "What's the installed base of Macs with "kick-ass" CPUs and FPUs available to play GPL?" The whole line of Motorola-based Macs certainly aren't going to cut it, so why include them in the count of installed base? I suspect Papy would listen if a qualified DOS->Mac porter approached them. From a technical standpoint, owing to the differences in FPUs from Intel to Mac (GPL compiles and executes native FPU instructions), I don't expect that GPL would be the most profitable project such a developer would have available to them. ---Jim

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>> > And if you DO cry out very loud, you won't get GPL for the Cupertino >> > machines. The market size just isn't there to make it profitable. >> > ---Jim >> If Papy can't make something profitable from a 30+ million installed base >> than they better go back to business school and figure out how to. >Not true; the fact that a profitable market might exist doesn't mean >that market will be addressed if a *more* profitable market exists and >that more profitable market can occupy their resources. Papyrus has to >optimize

Here's the thing, you produce ANYTHING if it produces ANY profit! You occupy as much of a market as possible. It builds a base for the company-customer relationship and it makes someone buy your product as opposed to someone elses. I think they are not making the game for Mac because it doesn't make a profit for NASCAR, which was the last release for Papy on the Mac! The port would be so easy though, it's only a change in the exe file, so time isn't the issue, or resources. What it is, is packaging. That is the bulk of the cost and it's not worth it to Papy. ----- G3's will fly through the game according to Papyrus' claims of P100 doing 30fps and if it has 3Dfx it will be 60fps! A 266 G3 with 3Dfx should be able to accomplish as much as a P2 300 MMX with 3Dfx! I know I won't buy the G3 because Papy won't release anything else on Mac, but I'd rather have a G3 266 than a P2 333, which I'm getting around May. Jon Van Ginneken

> >Not true; the fact that a profitable market might exist doesn't mean > >that market will be addressed if a *more* profitable market exists and > >that more profitable market can occupy their resources. Papyrus has to > >optimize > Here's the thing, you produce ANYTHING if it produces ANY profit! OK, why doesn't Papy run a profitable lemonade stand down by the river. That's an ANYTHING that would produce ANY profit. :-) (Hint: because there's a more profitable market that their developers can be addressing.) And exactly which resources do you propose that they should produce this magical "extra" product with? If Papyrus can 100% utilize the available resources on projects they judge more profitable than the Mac product, shouldn't they do that? And, last I checked, they don't have much to worry about; don't they have a 100% Mac market share with their existing Mac products? IOW, is there a competitive product that threatens Papy's "***" in the Mac market? :-) Well, hell if it's *just* an .exe file, those don't take but a minute or two to whip up. I thought it might actually be something that's complicated to develop and engineer. Yessiree, the packaging is the real rocket science of the deal; fire all the engineers, anyone can make an .exe, what we need is a kick-ass box designer! I suspect they've backed away from these claims. :-) ---Jim

>If Papy can't make something profitable from a 30+ million installed base >than they better go back to business school and figure out how to. How many of those 30 million are gamers and how many are business based? -- Nos send all flames to: http://www.cris.com/~nosfer/index.html ICQ:#8844008