IMG Interview: TransGaming's Vikas Gupta June 22, 2007 | Tuncer Deniz

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Earlier this month Electronic Arts announced it was bringing six of their titles to the Mac with the promise of more to follow. In order to get the Mac titles out in a timely fashion, it decided to partner with TransGaming to use the later's Cider portability technology. Cider essentially also any PC game to run on an Intel Mac without the need to "port" the code from PC to Mac.

We recently sat down with TransGaming's Vikas Gupta about the deal with Electronic Arts.

IMG: Please tell us a bit about yourself and your role at TransGaming.

Gupta: I'm the CEO & President of TransGaming.

IMG: For those who might be learning about Cider, can you tell us a bit about it? How long does it typically take to bring a PC title to the Mac (from start to shipping)?

Gupta: Cider is a runtime technology that allows a PC game to be quickly deployed on the Mac platform. It's sophisticated enough that we do not make changes to source code and flexible enough that we can customize the game to give users the optimal Mac gaming experience. We have modified game interfaces to have a Mac OS user interface, we provide for a drag and drop install in the traditional Mac fashion, and for the EA Sports titles, specifically, we make extensive use of Apple's WebKit for online play. Our objective is to ensure that a game is aligned with the Mac and all the user friendliness that is an inherent part of the Mac is also provided.

Since we do not really "port" a PC title to the Mac and, instead, enhance Cider to support the various components and technologies of a PC game, for the Mac, we couldn't actually tell you how much time the process takes on a per title basis. The fact is that as Cider becomes broader, more and more games will just run and we expect that we should be able to provide the conversion in days to a few short weeks.

IMG: Yesterday's announcement from EA that they would be releasing 6 Mac titles is one of the biggest news stories to hit Mac gaming in a long time. Can you tell us a bit about your relationship with EA?

Gupta: I can tell you that we have an excellent relationship with EA and it's been an absolute pleasure working with everyone there. EA is exceptionally committed to delivering the highest quality experience to Mac gamers and they've been very supportive of TransGaming and our endeavors to make this possible. They are enthusiastic about the Mac market and we've enjoyed the partnership we have with them.

IMG: Although it took a while for ciderized games to come to market, the first few games to use Cider such as Heroes of Might & Magic V and X3 have been well received. I understand there was a bit of a learning curve with those games. Do you anticipate that development times will go dramatically down now that you have a few games under your belt? In other words, can we really begin to expect "near" simultaneous releases?

Gupta: Firstly, I appreciate the positive feedback about Heroes of Might & Magic V and X3 (let's also not forget about Myst Online: Uru Live). The learning curve really has more to do with the amazing complexity of technology we are seeing in some of these games. Titles like Heroes and definitely Battlefield 2142 make very heavy use of shaders, among other technology, and we have worked hard to deliver great performance and comparable graphics quality on the Mac. Again, all the work we perform goes to building out the underlying Cder technology so we absolutely expect that the process of enabling these titles on the Mac will continue to become faster with each title we convert. Myst Online: Uru Live was pretty much a simultaneous PC/Mac release and Mac gamers can expect more simultaneous releases in the future.

IMG: Some have criticized Cider as "middleware" and point to the slight performance penalty you get when using Cider. What are your thoughts on the criticism?

Gupta: With Cider, we are working hard to deliver the optimal experience; this is with performance, graphics, networking, overall game play, the Mac user experience, etc. There is a lot that Cider is handling and I believe our technology is doing a great job in being able to meet the demands of some of these high end games. Performance on games will vary based on the game and the specific hardware it's being played on but we're working extremely hard to ensure the best game play possible on the various Mac configurations. Beyond Cider, it's important to recognize that there are a number of factors beyond our control that will impact performance, positively or negatively. I've already mentioned hardware but that also extends to the various GPUs and the drivers those graphics cards have for the Mac, there are work-arounds we've performed relating to OpenGL, etc. so there are a variety of factors to consider. But again, we've analyzed all of these aspects in great detail and I'm certain that the overall game play will keep Mac gamers very happy.

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