Will Wright, creater of Sim...well...Simeverything, has done an
interview with
Feed. Great interview - Wright gives away a lot of info about Sims Online, which will be (duh) the Sims in a giant contiguous online world. He also talks about adaptive software and other goodies.
SimSurvivor. Put a bunch of Sims on an island and have them vote to eliminate one another until only one's left. Who goes on to star in SimProductEndorsement. It'd be kind of funny if the sims would use more inventive methods of eliminating one another, too. Whoops. SimCannabalism has broken out on the island...
SimTireMaker. Vie for contracts from Ford. May end up being popular with soon to be unemployed Firestone execs.
SimRealWorld. Simulate 5 college students living together on a bus. Include the hand from Dungeon Keeper so you can smack them on a regular basis.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The oversimplified version of what's up is this:
Windows to Mac ports often have to reinvent a decent amount of the wheel, since they will typically use the MS DirectX API's (DirectSound, DirectX, etc.). This can result in some inefficiency in the port.
Also, Windows does a somewhat better job of swapping out RAM as needed - the kernel has a smaller footprint, despite the OS' bloat overall. Apple's monolithic MacOS needs about 32MB of RAM just to boot nowadays - all their newer systems ship with 64MB or more in the base config. My iBook, with VM off, uses 42.2MB of RAM for the OS! Thank heavens I have 160MB in it! With VM on, the RAM usage drops to 27MB for the OS, but performance drops noticeably. The MacOS VM model is fundamentally broken, and will remain so until the end of time (at least in the Classic OS). OS X will reduce memory needs, though Classic apps will continue to be pigs.
They also copy a ton o' stuff off the CD - but I think you can skip a lot of it and run a lite install.
It plays quite nicely on our iMac DV-450, and pretty well, though occasionally a little sluggish on my iBook-300. The gameplay is actually a little snappier on the iMac than it is on my Athlon 700 - indicating to me that the folks who ported it did a really nice job, and concentrated on speed over size.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Making an online version of The Sims. This is MUDding at it's finest. MUDding with much, much better graphics. Thank god I'm out of school...
--trb