Mac Source Ports features native app builds of source ports of your favorite games for both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, signed and notarized whenever possible.
Developer: 2015, Inc.
Release Date: January 22, 2002
Source Code Release Date: Not formally released
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.
Developer: Bullfrog Productions
Release Date: March 28, 1997
Source Code Release Date: Not formally released
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.
Note that for various reasons I was not able to get a Universal 2 port of CorsixTH working but I decided not to let that be a show stopper. Intel users must run the Intel build, Apple Silicon users can run either but the native Apple Silicon version is preferred for performance and battery reasons.
Developer: id Software
Release Date: December 2, 1999
Source Code Release Date: August 9, 2005
Quake III Arena is a first-person shooter, the first in the Quake series to focus on multiplayer. The ioquake3 source port has been maintained since the original source code release in 2005, featuring a Universal 2 app that supports Intel 64-bit and Apple Silicon as well as a Universal 1 app that can support Intel and PowerPC Macs going back to Mac OS X 10.6
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.
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. The vkQuake port was derived from the QuakeSpasm Spiked port and uses Vulkan on macOS by way of MoltenVK.
Developer: New World Computing
Release Date: October 1, 1996
Source Code Release Date: Not formally released
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.
Developer: Relic Entertainment
Release Date: September 28, 1999
Source Code Release Date: September 2003
I have some games on this site with lots of fans, but I feel like Homeworld has a particularly special cultlike following. Released in 1999 (aka The Best Year For Gaming, Ever) it is a RTS game set in a 3-D space, a novel concept for the time and one that's hard to match even to this day. It spawned a sequel and a pair of spinoff games, and a third game in the main series has been in the works for several years and should be delivered in 2024.
Relic released the source code for the original game in 2003 under the now defunct Relic Developer Network and it's been the basis of several source ports with a history more complicated than Dune lore.
NOTE: In 2013, Gearbox releaed the Homeworld Remastered Collection which featured enhanced versions of the first two mainline games as well as the original, and these are likely the only versions being sold today. If you use the data from these versions you will want to use the files from the "Homeworld1Classic" folder in the instructions below.
Developer: Stainless Games
Release Date: June 13, 1997
Source Code Release Date: Not formally released
An example of controversy for controversy's sake, Carmageddon basically took what people wanted to do in other racing games - crash into other cars and run over pedestrians - and turned it into the primary gameplay loop. They took the macabre joke about getting points for hitting people in your car and made it a gameplay mechanic. The game was successful both from a critical and commercial perspective, as well as its goal as a controversy magnet.
The dethrace project is a source port where in lieu of source code they're reverse engineering it, and according to their Twitter account they're approximately 70% of the way there. The game is very playable but may crash in some places, so I'm introducing a new tag: Early Access. This probably could use a better name but I'm using it to convey the notion that the project doesn't consider itself completely finished (though there are reports of people making it through the entire game), but it's still pretty awesome so I figured if nothing else it's worth putting up a quick build.
Developer: Chris Sawyer
Release Date: October 15, 2002
Source Code Release Date: Not released
Another game from the mind of Chris Sawyer, RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 shares the same pixel art style and hardcore interface as his other games.
Developer: Pumpkin Studios
Release Date: April 10, 1999
Source Code Release Date: December 6, 2004
Warzone 2100 is a post-apocalyptic real-time strategy game from 1999 whose source was released in 2004 and whose content was released as freeware in 2008.
Although my aim is to host signed and notarized game bundles on Mac Source Ports, the Warzone 2100 Project has done incredible work on this port and has logistical reasons for not being notarized yet. While they work through that process, I decided it was worth making an exception to the site's policy so that Apple Silicon gamers looking for a full, free and polished RTS would be able to find it.
Because the app bundle is not notarized, on first run you may run into issues. The shortest answer is to right-click on the app bundle (wz2100.app) and select Open. The long answer is here.
Developer: Tom Kidd / Mac Source Ports
Release Date: February 23, 2022
Extractor is an app from Mac Source Ports that extracts files from GOG Windows-based installers. Think of it as a GUI version of innoextract.
Right now, Extractor does exactly two things: lists the files in an installer, and extracts the files from an installer. We hope to expand it in the future but for now it's a simple application.
Developer: Hard Light Productions
Release Date: February 11, 2024
Knossos.NET is a utility that aids in downloading and configuring the FreeSpace 2 Open Source Project, aids in configuring the content from a GOG installer or other location, and can even help with mod management and multiplayer support. Check it out if you want to play FreeSpace 2 with as little hassle as possible.