Armyops 2.2.1 (Vangaurd) for Mac?

[.vooDoo.]

As most of you Americas Army Gamers already know there has been a problem with the licensing for AA with Gamespy, bad news for us, here is a brief description of the problem and a link to a petition if you care to sign it. Petition

A game developer has alerted the Mac gaming community to the possibility its computing platform may no longer be supported by GameSpy SDK.

According to InsideMacGames today, America?s Army game developer Ryan Gordon said that they no longer have a license to the GameSpy SDK. GameSpy, which is the most popular player matching service on the PC, allows gamers to join into thousands of games online. Unfortunately the GameSpy problem facing America's Army Mac will affect other Macintosh games such as Aspyr's Men of Valor as well.

InsideMacGames says that according to one industry source, GameSpy recently significantly increased the licensing fees for Mac gaming companies. According to the source, this may be a squeeze play on GameSpy part to "get out of the Mac business all together. This is basically GameSpy's way of dropping Mac support".

The only way around this is to do what I did and buy a PC.  

I would infact like to know who out there from the Gameranger community has a PC and plays AA. Myself, Sar and SilentJudge are the only ones that play AA from the Mac community as of now that I know about. If you want post your AIM screen name below and Ill add you to my buddylist.

Voods

edit: Fixed link

[Toxic::Joka]

The link dosen't work.. .

[SanitarySal]

There are alot of gameranger (and former gameranger) people who play AA.   In fact I would say AA is what lead to a sharp decline in GameRanger use, despite the growing number of Mac Games.   For example when Ghost Recon was at it's heights you could find 10 - 15 servers for Ghost Recon, that doesnt include the GhR Demo.   Shortly after GhR AA got popular and many mac users like myself saw an opportunity to play with a large community of gamers and more importantly tell Scott Kevill to stick it with his childish bans.   One of the many great things about AA is, they dont ban!

Now if you question was who in the GR community has PCs that play AA, good question.   I have access to PCs but have never played a game on them because my mac has the best graphics card.

This whole AA/Gamespy issue goes back to the gameranger alternative.   The fact remains, that some big software company is going to have to come in and organize mac gamers and put some money behind the chat and game servers.   Actually if AOL was smart (the start of joke) they would build gaming and gaming plugins into their Instant Messenger, partner with Mac and Aspyr (and do the same on the PC side) and you got a community to rival gamespy and roll completely over the obsolete gameranger.

[.vooDoo.]

This whole AA/Gamespy issue goes back to the gameranger alternative.   The fact remains, that some big software company is going to have to come in and organize mac gamers and put some money behind the chat and game servers.   Actually if AOL was smart (the start of joke) they would build gaming and gaming plugins into their Instant Messenger, partner with Mac and Aspyr (and do the same on the PC side) and you got a community to rival gamespy and roll completely over the obsolete gameranger.

Thats a great idea but there are way to many problems with that. One of the biggest ones that comes to mind first is the platform compatibility issue. 90% of all games get released about a year before getting ported to Mac and not all ports like "Raven Shield" will be compatible.

[SanitarySal]

So has anyone here played AA 2.2.1 on a PC?   What's new with it?

[BTs_GhostSniper]

So has anyone here played AA 2.2.1 on a PC?   What's new with it?

I've played it a few times on my PC at work.  Mainly it's just two new maps--one with snow and one in a desert with a stream running through it.

[SanitarySal]

That's it?   and they can't release a mac version (with or without Gamespy).   How sad.

[BTs_GhostSniper]

That's it?   and they can't release a mac version (with or without Gamespy).   How sad.

Yes, very sad.[/size]

[l ! l Ross]

If anyone is wondering why you can just rip gamespy out of the mac version of aa then take a look at this link:
http://icculus.org/cgi-bin/finger/finger.pl?user=icculus&date=2004-12-20&time=22-53-51

Go to the bottom.

[SanitarySal]

interesting article.  especially the second to last paragraph.   The key is to get AOL involved, and add game plugins to IM, or to a lesser degree Apple's iChat.

THe thing is, the incompatibility issue with AA and macs at the moment is actually kind of cool, because it is bringing together a very large mac community in AA.   I had over 2100 players (average of 2.3 connections each)  connect to my AA server last week, and from the random polling I would say 90% or more of them are mac users.