Mac Source Ports

Developer: K-D Lab
Release Date: May 21, 2004
Source Code Release Date: June 4, 2021

Perimeter is a mid-2000's RTS game set in a science fiction universe in the distant future. The game has a focus on terraforming, energy production, and the ability to protect your installations with an energy barrier, the namesake Perimeter.

The original game Perimeter was released in 2004 and an expansion pack, Emperor's Testament, was released in 2005. The developer released the source code to the game in 2021 and released a version on Steam in 2024 called Perimeter: Legate Edition. All three are compatible with the source port.

Note that at this time the Mac support from the source port is considered experimental so I'm labeling this one Early Access. It runs on Apple Silicon Macs with the latest macOS but I have had limited ability to test it elsewhere so your mileage may vary. If you can't get it to launch you can report a bug to me. If the game runs but something in it doesn't function correctly, the developer's GitHub repo might be a more useful spot to report it.

  Buy Perimeter on GOG.com

  Buy Perimeter on the Humble Store

Developer: Bullfrog Productions
Release Date: March 28, 1997

Famed Amiga developer Bullfrog released this second entry in the "Theme" series (following Theme Park) which allowed players to design and run a hospital. The name Theme Hospital may not make a ton of sense but the game was ridiculously popular. The CorsixTH project is one of the more thorough and well organized source port projects active today, and Mac Source Ports is handling the Mac build.

  Buy Theme Hospital on GOG.com

Developer: Epic Games
Release Date: November 22, 1999

Continuing our tour of why 1999 was the best year ever for gaming, we now have Unreal Tournament on Apple Silicon. This is the original 1999 version, not the sequels and not the attempted-but-abandoned 2014 effort, this is the game that went head-to-head with Quake III: Arena from an era when the multiplayer-only FPS was still a novel concept.

Similar to the Daikatana situation, Epic has not released the source code for this game (which uses what we'd now probably retronym Unreal Engine 1) but a group of individuals online entered into an agreement with them to take over maintenance and future development. They've been releasing new builds for a few years now and now the game runs natively on Apple Silicon.

So break out the Mountain Dew and party like it's 1999 again. For extra fun fire up Quake III: Arena as well and experience a rivalry that continues between old fart gamers to this very day.

NOTE: The build of 469e added a preview version of the team's new Apple Metal renderer. For more information, see the installation instructions below.

Developer: id Software
Release Date: June 22, 1996
Source Code Release Date: December 21, 1999

Quake is a first-person shooter, the first in the Quake series, which added polygonal enemies, advanced geometry, and a soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails. A fascinating example of grappling with technology changes in parallel to gameplay, it spawned entire industries of modders and mutiplayer gaming.

The vkQuake port was derived from the QuakeSpasm Spiked port and uses Vulkan on macOS by way of MoltenVK. In addition, vkQuake recently added support for the remastered version of Quake from Night Dive Studios.

And because I've had a few requests for it, we are now hosting a build of DarkPlaces as an alternative port.

  Buy Quake on GOG.com

  Buy Quake on the Humble Store

Developer: New World Computing
Release Date: October 1, 1996

Heroes of Might and Magic II is a 4X turn-based strategy game. Ranked once by PC Gamer as the sixth-best game of all time it features resource building, new factions, skills, and a single-player campaign.

  Buy Heroes of Might and Magic II on GOG.com

Developer: Midway Games
Release Date: April 4, 1997

OK, now we have all the DOOM games (pre-2016 anyway).

The port of DOOM to the original PlayStation, handled by Midway Games, was such a hit that when it came time to port the game to the Nintendo 64, Midway wanted to do something other than just port the same game again, and wanted to take advantage of the features of the hardware. The result is the most bizarrely unique entry in the series.

DOOM 64 does use the DOOM engine, or at least it started with it, but they took a hard left. The game does use the original game's enemies with reworked assets from the original game, but the levels are new and the engine takes place of the then-novel idea of hardware accelerated graphics. Notably, the N64 could do colored lighting and they use that all throughout the game.

Reactions were mixed. Gamers wanting the original game were disappointed, gamers wanting something new were intrigued, and the critics were mostly just confused. Until recently, it was an obscure anomaly entry in the series with a cult following.

A source port project called Doom64 EX came out, whose goal was to recreate the game using the N64 ROM image for data. In the runup to DOOM Eternal, id and Zenimax decided to resurrect the game and the creator of the source port worked with Nightdive Studios to make a version that ran on PC as well as consoles. In the years since, the Doom 64 EX+ project came out which enhances the original source port as well as gives it the ability to use the data from the PC port of the game. The commercial release did not come to the Mac, but working with the author we're able to offer a Mac release here.

So fire it up and pretend like you're playing on your big CRT having just rented it from Blockbuster Video. It's definitely a unique experience.

  Buy DOOM 64 on GOG.com

Developer: 2015, Inc.
Release Date: January 22, 2002

This is a neat little surprise. The Medal of Honor series started out its life as a first person shooter for the original PlayStation, a console not known for FPS titles, and whose game concept and story came from Steven Spielberg of all people. The series has seen over a dozen games including a reboot but in 2002 they released the third game, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, for the PC on the engine we would now call id Tech 3, with some help from the ÜberTools enhancements made by Ritual Entertainment.

While the source code was never released, the OpenMoHAA project appears to have taken ioquake3 as well as the Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2 SDK (which used ÜberTools) and managed to make the game playable on modern systems. The result is not entirely unlike the Xash3D FWGS project.

The game supports multiplayer as well as the expansion packs, though the options for video configuration are limited at this time and the expansion packs need to be launched from the command line. If you're familiar with editing the configuration files for Quake III: Arena however, it's not much different than that. For rhese reasons though, we're labeling this Early Access. Later on we may add a launcher menu to simplify things.

NOTE: if you downloaded an earlier version there is a chance your save file might not work with this newer version. If that is the case and you want to continue from your saved game you can download the previous version here.

  Buy Medal of Honor: Allied Assault on GOG.com

Developer: id Software
Release Date: December 9, 1997
Source Code Release Date: December 22, 2001

Quake II is a first-person shooter, the second in the Quake series. Yamagi Quake2 is the most mature and advanced port actively being maintained.

  Buy Quake II on GOG.com

  Buy Quake II on the Humble Store

Developer: Valve Software
Release Date: November 19, 1998

For the 100th game on Mac Source Ports, I wanted it to be something special. It turned out to be a quite a doozy as well.

It's not an overstatement to say Half-Life changed everything. It challenged what we thought first person shooters, narrative content, and gaming atmosphere in general were capable of. It spawned spinoffs, sequels, and launched Valve software into the massive force it is today. It says something that in a world filled with tons of games to choose from, everyone is still begging Valve to make another entry in this series to tie off the now fifteen-year cliffhanger of Half-Life 2: Episode Two.

Half-Life and the Mac have an interesting history, as well. Long before Steam was even a thought in their head, Valve announced and began work on porting the game to Mac OS 9, but it was eventually canceled. Then in 2013, Valve decided to release Steam for the Mac, the first non-Windows computer platform for it, and ported their games to Steam in the process, so now finally Half-Life was available on the Mac. However, the releases were 32-bit apps so when macOS 10.15 Catalina cut off support for 32-bit apps, Half-Life became unavailable to anyone who upgraded, and Apple Silicon Macs never had a chance to play it.

Meanwhile, a project arose called Xash3D. Since the engine for Half-Life, now retronymed GoldSrc for various reasons, was derived from Quake and Quake II, and the SDK for mods was also available, theoretically someone could reverse engineer the game with a lot of effort. The Xash3D project and the later successor project, Xash3D FWGS, appear to have done exactly that over the course of many years now. The result is a fascinating Frankenstein project meshing various id Tech engines and source ports together, the net effect of which is Half-Life can be played on everything from an Android phone to a Raspberry Pi.

In 2019, the Xash3D FWGS project dropped any official support for macOS and iOS due to Apple's deprecation of OpenGL and decision to move towards signed and notarized code (they have since restored support). As a result, I've had many people ask me to build this project so I figured I'd eventually do it and the one year anniversary of the site and the 100th game seemed appropriate to me. However the one year anniversary of the site was a month ago, but if there's an appropriate project for Valve Time to affect, it would be this one.

They're waiting for you. In the test chamber...

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you used one of the previous builds of Xash3D FWGS that we hosted here on Mac Source Ports, note that the location of the data has changed from ~/Library/Application Support/Xash3D to ~/Library/Application Support/Xash3D FWGS. If you get an error about how the engine could not find the "valve" folder, this is why.

Developer: Gearbox Software
Release Date: November 19, 1999

Half-Life: Opposing Force is the first expansion pack for Half-Life. It takes place during the events of the original game, but instead of playing as Gordon Freeman having a bad day at work you play from the perspective of one of the Marines sent into the complex. It was definitely an interesting maneuver, and one that avoided having to explain what happened after the end of the first game, they wouldn't go there until the sequel.

NOTE: the support for Opposing Force as a Xash3D FWGS mod is still in development. You may notice quirks like glitches with weapon animations. For this reason I have labeled the game as "Early Access". If you're willing to ignore the issues you can go ahead and experience the expansion pack on your Mac again.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you used one of the previous builds of Xash3D FWGS that we hosted here on Mac Source Ports, note that the location of the data has changed from ~/Library/Application Support/Xash3D to ~/Library/Application Support/Xash3D FWGS. If you get an error about how the engine could not find the "valve" folder, this is why.