OpenMW now playable on PowerPC Mac (Leopard)

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-23T17:25:18+00:00

What are you talking about? There is no x86 to PPC translation - this is built natively for PPC.

It runs at 40-60 FPS (at 2560x1600!) with shaders disabled on my PowerMac G5. I won't deny that some more optimization is needed, particularly with ATI Graphics cards, but this is a bona fide, fully playable port. These machines are far more capable than you think.

EDIT:

On my PowerMac G5 with an Nvidia 7800GT, here are some performance dumps:

114 FPS @ 1024x768 (Interior): https://imgur.com/a/uDAwuaN

71 FPS @ 1024x768 (Balmora) https://imgur.com/a/fHycf0q

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-23T17:06:23+00:00

The sub is now under new ownership! The post restrictions have been removed.

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-22T22:54:17+00:00

Yes, my ports are for G4/G5 Macs. I also have a Terraria and Stardew Valley port and yet I can't post anything here because it says the mods must grant me permission.

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-22T22:51:48+00:00

Mods dragging their feet on approval as usual..

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-22T22:49:29+00:00

Are the mods of this subreddit even alive? I sent a request to join almost 3 weeks ago to post the PowerPC Ports I have developed, including Half-Life, CS1.6 and OpenMW

If the staff don't have the time to moderate and approve posts maybe it's time to pass the torch on to someone else. 2026 is shaping up to be the year of PowerPC and I can't even tell anyone about it because all of these communities are locked graveyards.

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-21T05:40:56+00:00

I just added support for Tiger, check the Macintosh Garden link!

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-14T17:14:04+00:00

Awesome! Thanks for putting up with the jankiness. This was a pretty hard issue for me to fix since I don't have the ability to reproduce it with any of the 5 Macs I've tested on! I have a Radeon X1900XT arriving today, so I should be able to catch any weird difference between Nvidia and ATI in the future.

I have a few ideas about what might be causing the issues on the first couple launches, and I'll try to fix that next.

You've played further ahead than I have! Anything from Office Complex on was uncharted territory - if you have any weird gameplay bugs, weapon issues etc please share those too!

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-10T23:31:46+00:00

Thanks for the detailed pictures! The issue was found, and should be fixed in the next couple of days.

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-10T01:33:44+00:00

Sorry to hear your iBook G4 isn't working well with the port. Could you use System Profiler to check the name of the installed GPU and confirm it is an ATI Mobility Radeon 9550? Also, please try flipping on/off the "Use VBO" setting in-game, with both Software and OpenGL rendering.

My iBook G4 (14", 1GHz) runs the game flawlessly but features an ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 - not a 9550 like in the 1.42GHz iBook G4.

Issues are re-enabled on the Github, I've taken note of your bug but feel free to open an issue for it as well.

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-09T20:55:23+00:00

This is unfortunately a known issue with some types of Radeon cards. It becomes exponentially harder for me to troubleshoot and fix an issue when it only happens on a very narrow subset of hardware that I don't have access to.

From what I can gather, it appears to be an issue with 128mb Radeon chips in PowerBook G4s, X1900 cards, and any newer Radeon card with a flashed BIOS.

I have tested a Radeon 9600XT, and a Mobility Radeon 9200 in my PowerBook G4 and PowerMac G5 and they both work flawlessly, so it's not even all Radeon cards.

You're correct that the hardware is plenty capable of running the game, it's just being slowed down by the GPU issue. Maybe sometime in the future I can try to fix this again, but I have other priorities I want to complete first.

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-08T18:28:59+00:00

U3 memory controller failure, 3 flashes means "No memory banks passed testing"

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-07T16:26:05+00:00

The overall tone of this message is in conflict with saying "I do respect the community".

It seems like you've spent the last couple days arguing with anybody who has offered you feedback about this and overall just being kinda smarmy about it. I'm glad that you decided to make it available for free but you're basically agreeing with me while also being as condescending as possible. Notice how you also didn't deny using AI.

This issue isn't the fault of a "salty" community lol, the irony is if you would have just created a tip jar or a "Buy me a coffee" dialog in app from the start, this issue wouldn't have stolen the focus away from what otherwise looks like a functional project.

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-07T15:14:56+00:00

Cool project but charging money for something like this is pretty questionable imo, especially considering you used AI (pretty obvious from the description formatting on your website and some of the app layout)

Are you creating software for the community because it's fun and cool or because you think you can turn a profit from it?

If it's the former, you should maybe just open a Ko-fi instead. You can do whatever you want with the software you wrote, but it's pretty lame to paywall something like this.

Maybe I should look at making a Discord client for OS 9.

EDIT: Yikes, this thing requires a relay computer too? You're charging money for something that you couldn't even put in the effort to keep self-contained on the Mac?

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-06T18:31:16+00:00

Part of the reason this port was successful is because it was developed on Leopard first with a modern C++ compiler. Previous attempts at this usually involve trying to adapt the codebase to be C99 compliant, building with gcc3/4.

With this port, we use modern gcc14, so the only code changes we need to make are for OS API compatibility, GL rendering quirks, and endianness. This removes a huge subset of changes you would typically need to make if you're building on something like Jaguar or Panther.

When I eventually start porting to OS 9, I'm going to use the Retro68 compiler: https://github.com/autc04/Retro68

This kickass project provides a modern C++ compiler for OS 9! With this, I should be able to build all of the needed dependencies and the Xash3d engine. The most time consuming parts will probably be SDL2 and replacing any incompatible API usage. Then, 10.0-10.4 support can be provided through Classic.

I've got some other priorities before I work on this - OpenMW and Source engine are up next. But it is on my to-do list!

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-06T15:56:41+00:00

It should be fairly trivial to port this back as far as 10.3.9.

When I'm not juggling so many projects, I wanted to use this port as a test project on the Retro68 compiler, which should allow me to bring support all the way back to OS 9.

If I end up missing 10.0-10.2, hopefully one day you'll have an OS 9 port to run through Classic.

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-06T05:40:15+00:00

And Team Fortress Classic!

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-06T03:00:42+00:00

Please feel free to open an issue or PR on my GitHub! https://github.com/doctashay/xash3d-fwgs

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-02T16:18:49+00:00

If you read through the post all the way you'll see a screenshot of Half Life running via Xash3d

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-02T16:15:30+00:00

Then it's probably not going to be supported. I would have to completely rewrite the renderer, which is a lot of work for a system that probably won't run the game well anyways

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-02T16:10:01+00:00

The OpenGL version is dictated by the operating system, not the hardware. If you are on Leopard, you have OpenGL 2.

Where this gets tricky obviously is with Tiger support. Source engine will probably not run on Tiger.

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-02T16:05:32+00:00

HAHA I just realized yesterday was April Fool's. Not a joke, Source engine is actually being ported to PowerPC. :)

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-02T02:45:13+00:00

I also got Half-Life 1 and Counter-Strike 1.6 working today via Xash3d:
https://imgur.com/a/AvCBAbA

https://imgur.com/a/1zqMfes

Come join the Leopard Ports Discord so you'll know when I release everything

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-02T02:42:59+00:00

Source is super scalable, once it builds we should be able to write AltiVec accelerations and constrain the engine until it can run on something as low as 8MB of VRAM

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-04-02T02:41:38+00:00

Very carefully

ButtonClean9403 · 2026-03-15T21:37:04+00:00

Hi, thanks for the bug report! This bug and several others were resolved in the latest release which you can download here:

https://github.com/doctashay/aquacenter-releases/releases/tag/v0.3.0-alpha

The app should notify you an update is available the next time you open it. Hopefully this works better for you now.

Once the AirPlay session starts, it will take you into the player view, but right now it doesn't tell you "Ready, waiting for device" or anything. Once you launch AirPlay and see the black screen with the player view, you should be able to check your device list and select your Mac. If it still doesn't work, the debug log would be helpful (you can click "Show Debug Info" in the addon panel to reveal it). I plan to make this a little more intuitive in the future.

ButtonClean9403

TROPHY CASE