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Mac OS X: Game Developer's Playground
Mauro Notarianni writes: "In the Stepwise article, 'Mac OS X: Game Developer's Playground,' Troy Stephens writes, "Mac OS X has the potential to be a superb launching pad for doing game development.'
The author describes how 'Cocoa's developer productivity benefits, when combined with Mac OS X's strong support for technologies such as OpenGL and QuickTime, can empower game developers to create the custom production tools they often need in a fraction of the programmer hours it takes on other platforms.'"
is getting all the companies writing in DirectX to start using OpenGL more often. Get some more of those damn cool PC games ported! Especially the MMORPGs!
Objective-C would limit your platform to Mac OSX and NextStep. Not a wide market.
Games are written in C++ these days. Portability is more important than productivity only on Mac OSX.
Most development, are made just filling in already made game-templates. These templates are called "Game-Engiens", and have names such as Unread, Quake and so on. _alot_ off games are based on these. Unread engien are sold for 100'000$ to other game developer to make there games. Implementing a new game is almost just scripting the NPCs and loading some fansy GFX.
I have just started developing with Cocoa and it's really great. The "Application Builder" works flawlessly together with the "Interface Builder". It's also easy to port your *nix programs to Mac OS X. I need to take a closer look on Objective-C though, since I don't feel like using Java.
Apple is also providing excellent documentation and tutorials.
Ciryon
PS. I am actually running Mac OS X on an old iMac G3 300Mhz with 64MB RAM. And it's not that slow actually!! The 10.1 update really speeds things up! Great work, Apple!
"Mac OS X has the potential to be a superb launching pad for doing game development". It may have the potential, but is there the market? The volume of Mac games has always traditionally been of the low side, not because of the limitations of the technology, but the number of consumers to make games software profitable.
...a Game Developer's Playground
but with macs holding < 4% of the market it is not a viable playground...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
To protect my pathetic bandwidth on the local server, the article is also available here on the graphics server. That should cover off any bandwidth issues.
Troy's article really does highlight the use of these environments for tools behind the scene's.. there is an older article on this as well that is linked from Troy's document.
Scott AnguishStepwise
http://www.stepwise.com
This is great news. Games written for osX will use OpenGL instead of DirectX, this means that porting them to other operating systems won't be such a chore. With the demise of Loki, it's nice to see somthing positive on the Linux/BSD gaming frontier.
so make them!!
Thanks to SDL & OpenGL the same source code is used for all four supported platforms (Linux, Win32, MacOS9, MacOSX). There's still the odd #ifdef for things like reading directories, but that's about it.
- Andreas
Just how long DID it take?
I wouldn't count on GNUstep getting anywhere anytime soon... particularly in the area of graphics, because they are still slow as molasses.... still. That project has been in the works for the last 5+ years.
Why would a developer want to use this when they will have to develop for other platforms anyway? IMHO, using SDL is the best thing a developer can do as far as minimizing porting time goes. SDL allows programs to compile on most of the major platforms provided they don't use other external platform-dependant libraries.
It just seems useless to use a Mac only library when you'll probably do a Win32 and Linux version anyway and then the Mac one on top of that. Why not kill an entire flock of birds with one stone using SDL?
I am impressed..
Well,
at first I'd like to say that I'm a regular OS X 1.2 user (on a TI PB, that is) and
I like OS X quite much, and I make a living of coding (C and C++ mostly, Linux and other *nixes).
I tried to get used of Objective C, but i find it quite cumbersome to use,
and that's why I don't see this happen soon. To get the most
out of Carbon/Cocoa you'll have to use Objective C. That's the
reason why I never got to use it (mostly due to lack of time),
because I'd first have to learn Objective C.
I think this happens to other developers too (read: game developers).
Just my $0.02 anyway...
...that Apple can't be bothered to put decent video cards in most of their machines. They've just barely dumped the Rage 128 on the desktop - like 3 years after it was obsolete - and if you want anything more than a non-upgradeable Geeforce 2 MX, you will be forced to pay well over 2 grand.
But they don't mind making DVD burning accessable and shipping it as standard on some models. They're so intent on the user using the iApps they've lost sight of the fact that some people don't want their computing uses to be pre-determined by someone in Cupertino.
If they offered a choice between a Superdrive and a Geeforce 3 on the high end iMac the Mac gaming market would be a hell of a lot better off. Right now, it has to deal with getting cards one full generation behind the rest of the computing world and having to deal with them for ages - if you had less than 2 grand, a Rage 128 was your only option between 1999 and 2002 - now that they have the slow Geeforce 2 MX, many upcoming games are demanding Geeforce 3s.
I mean, the Mac would be so much better off if Apple could let their users forgo the DVD burning, Gigabit ethernet and other things they will most likely never use, and simply let them play games for once.
Sorry for the obvious plug but Crystal Space is an Open Source 3D Engine that runs fine on GNU/Linux, Windows, OS/2, BeOS, AND MacOS/X. The MacOS/X port is very alive and kicking. We also have support for OpenGL now (giving frame rates of 100 FPS or more).
Crystal Space is free (LGPL license) and written in C++. It is a 3D engine but more accuratelly it is a game development platform for 3D and isometric games.
Check it out at crystal.sourceforge.net.
Greetings,
Project Manager of Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org). Support CS at http://tinyurl.com/cb3x4
It was a spiffy little language but these days you can do most of the same things with C++ using templates and the STL, and the C++ code will be much more type safe at compile time.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The movie industry has almost convinced me to stop using their product. Movie prices keep rising, the quality of the theatres keep dropping. I find it unacceptable to go to a theatre and see 5 minutes of "black rain" when there's a bright white scene. I think that movies are also moving into the abyss, much like music, but at a much slower pace. There are still enough people making interesting movies to keep my interest alive. So if I shirk theatres that's no big deal; it's simple to make a home theatre these days. And then there's the whole DVD and HDTV mess ... I'm still hoping the MPAA and FCC don't manage to do to movies what the music industry has done to music.
While I gave up on network TV a long time ago, I've found that many cable/satellite channels have quality entertainment in their lineups. Because of the sheer number of available channels, I always figured that cable/satellite TV would stay relatively unscathed by all the BS that has destroyed the music industry, and is gnawing at the movie industry. Then I read articles like this, and ones that talk about the fervent attepts to destroy the ability to record television programs. I can easily see television being the next media outlet that I throw away.
If there are any music/movie/television industry workers reading this thread, I just want to make it clear that in your rabid pursuit to further unbalance the scales of product and profit you are at the very least going to lose this customer. And I can't help but think there are others who feel the same.
I guess I'm done ranting for now.
RFC2119
Games are written in C++ these days. Portability is more
This is no more an issue in the latest dev tools Apple a rereleased a functional Objective-C++ compiler. This is the tool with which abiword is being ported to macosx.
none Yet.
Game companies don't choose their development platform based on what is easiest to program, the choose it based on what is practical to sell.
It's a chicken-and-egg situation. I've used MacOS X and like it, but I won't switch at home because MacOS is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay behind on games. Game companies can't switch because so many of their customers are on PCs.
It's really a shame.
The problem is you're dealing with 2 completely different kinds of technologies. One is cross-platform and relatively "free", the other is held back by proprietary code (like most Apple "innovations"). Additionally, even with the new development tools, getting QuickTime to play nicely with OpenGL is a job within itself.
DirectX is no better in the proprietary code department, but at least you can setup a few function calls that will seemlessly pull together 3D graphics, video, sound and input routines that would work on a variety of PC hardware. I just wish that the "Direct-like" projects in Linux would be more ported to Windows, and that they supported more hardware-specific calls like pixel shaders.
Most posts here seem to comments that games on Mac OS X will never work because of lack of marketshare.
The point of the article was _not_ to develop for Mac OS X, but to use custom tools to aid in developing for other platforms (PlayStation in the case of the article). Since vi on the playstation works rather lousy, you need another platform to develop for it...
The point of the article was that a custom tool (for managing VRAM on the PS) could be written in a few days, saving many hours when debugging. The claim in the article is that writing such tools on other platforms is not cost-effective, while with OpenStep/Cocoa it is.
Just my thoughts (Maarten Sneep)
The more I use OS X, the more I like it, even though my exposure to it is rather limited.
The point of this article really is that you should use the tools you feel comfortable with to do the job. All you people who are saying stuff about the mac not having enough market share to justify it obviously haven't read the article.
Being a person who likes low-level stuff, I rather hate using API's and stuff that make all this stuff easy. I prefer to write my own loaders, blitters and stuff... I've developed my own game tool library over the years and use it for all sorts of things because it's what i'm most comfortable with and can get things done more quickly.
But I feel my view is similar to that of many other game developers (ones who are truly passionate about it) and we are a stubborn bunch (is this just coders in general?) and once set in our ways, tend not change them, even if another way is better.
Sadly, in my view, game development is less of an art and more of a process now. Remember the days of DOS where you had direct access to the hardware and wrote your own graphics, input and sound routines? You really couldn't use a 3rd party library because it would conflict with your code or other libraries. Besides, that was just a lame thing to do.
Anyways, less chat, less shovelware, more coding, more polishing.
$1599 - 800Mhz G4, 40GB, CD-RW, Radeon 7500, 256MB
$2299 - 933Mhz G4, 60GB, SuperDrive, GeForce4 MX, 256MB
$2999 - Dual 1Ghz, 80GB, SuperDrive, GeForce 4 MX, 512MB
$3649 - Dual 1Ghz, 80GBx2, SuperDrive, GeForce 4 MX, 1.5GB
No gaming platforms use OpenGL. Windows uses Direct3D, XBox uses Direct3D. Nintendo & Sony have their own APIs. What's the point?
I'm working in the games development industry, both console development and PC -- the article is talking about a platform for _development_, not for running the final product. In a typical game development environment, you spend half your time writing tools to create content -- if you can write tools faster on OS X with Cocoa, you'll save time and money. I found this article very interesting and I've already invested in an iBook to do some homework and try out Cocoa...
The interactive way to Go -- http://www.playgo.to/iwtg/en/
All of this is true, but as of today the G4's come with Geforce4's - the best there is and before you can even buy them seperately...
What's the difference between Cocoa and Carbon? I got incredibly ticked off at my PC and sold it and went ahead and purchased the new iMac. I have every intention of programming on it and have mainly a Java background but can do C/++ if needed. Hopefully my iMac will get here soon...
Neat article, but the conclusion is badly flawed. The main thrust seems to be "Cocoa/OpenGL doesn't require you to map out your VRAM like Playstation 1 did, so that makes it easy to write games!"
Does it hell. It removes one obstacle, but it's not going to write the game for you, nor is it going to make the Mac a more attractive proposition - technically or as a market - than DirectX, either XBox or generic PC Windoze versions. Hobbyists take note, but commercial developers, don't get too excited.
OpenGL is a fine API, and I'll happily accept that Cocoa is nice too, but the whole DirectX SDK really has matured into something usable. Many AAA Windows games now ship with only D3D (no OpenGL) 3D support (Max Payne, Operation:Flashpoint spring immediately to mind) and it doesn't hurt them. The big downside to using DirectX is cross platform portability (porting the app, and the DirectPlay network component), but commercialism comes into play again: it's better for a game to work really well under DirectX only than to work fairly well under DirectX and on Macs (or Linux for that matter).
If this means anything to anyone, I used to work for a company that was writing native D3D Retained Mode games, back in the DirectX 3/5 days. It was a suicidally stupid thing to do, and the games side of that company did indeed collapse under the weight of ripping the thing apart and starting over with D3DIM / OpenGL / glide support. I've no historical reason to love DirectX, or to think that apps hardwired to a specific API are a good idea. But even given that, I still think that a native DirectX 8 game makes a lot more sense, both technically and commercially, than OpenGL/Cocoa on a Mac platform.
Sorry guys, but this reads like another "I love Macs, so here comes the cognitive dissonance," article designed to get people on board the Macwagon. The only thing I can completely agree with is that developing for the Playstation 1 was like trying to teach a chimp to recite Shakespeare translated into Latin.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Newly announced PowerMacs use the GeForce 4
It seems that few of you read the article its self. The article suggests that Cocoa is ideal for designing custom tools since it is easier to make iterative changes to the tool. It is not saying that it is the best target platform to develop games for.
Mac's are also a good possiblity for console development (PS2, Gamecube). Especially since the compiler used is frequently based on GCC. OS-X's BSD core makes it easy enough to port the tools, and provides another alternative for those who are not intrested in using Linux or Cygwin based tools. However, since most of the art tools are used on NT/W2k boxes (Such as 3ds Max), it is probably simpler for the time being to stick to Windows based environments.
END COMMUNICATION
...Mac OS X's strong support for technologies such as OpenGL and QuickTime
As opposed to the DirectX 8.1 and media filter (codec) matrices of Windows? Well, at least OpenGL is a good thing, but it's available on Windows and Linux too (among other OSes). QuickTime is largely dependant on the horrible patented sorenson codecs... Yuck. Sometimes I really wonder why such blatent flamebait makes the front page.
This is just the next logical step in form of a set of more powerful technologies (some of which have been around for a while... QuickTime is traditionally solid). The Macintosh has always been a terrific game development platform (well, except in the really early days when it only had black and white ;). The software and the hardware are remarkably consistent and homogenous respectively. How could develops expect MacOS X to be any different? Developing games for the Mac is almost as smooth as developing games for a console.
Why bother.
I'll admit I didn't read more than the Slashdot headlines, but didn't MS just buy a bunch of OpenGL stuff from SGI?
If they decide not to license or to restrict the use of the technology, wouldn't that begin to cripple the use of OpenGL as a development environment?
I can't believe they would, but then again this IS MS we're talking about.
Am I the only one who thinks this particular quote stinks of AppleSpeak? You know it wasn't written by a programmer if they use the term empower. I'll leave the details of the analysis of this particular platform to a game programmer and stick to fiddling with the linux kernel for now, thanks very much (a platform which is also supported on apple hardware <w>).
:wq
Most game devs release their tools along with the game to make scenerios, etc. Again, why would we want Mac only ones when they've gotta be ported to Windows in the end? Please play again. tnxu.
to some wierd and wonderful language on a wierd and wonderful platform...
sounds good enough to me.. more like one generation ahead than one behind.
I got an iBook a month ago and in this time have 1)connected a C nueral network face recognition package to my digital video camera inside of Project Builder 2) happily and seemlessly streamed music from countless sites like shoutcast.com 3) been overjoyed by the level of consideration and conciousness displayed by apple engineers, designers, and whoever else they have 4) opened up those pesky word document attachments in the included Apple Works software 5) checked my stocks in a browser that has all the modern browser goodies like shockwave 6) watched some porn on the movie enabled browser 7) ftped and httped files of and onto my computer (1 button in network settings enabled or disables) 8) showed off my iBook with its setting and background and neat dock and neat zoom features to many people 9) watched dvds on my tv because all you ahve to do is plug it in 10) played music on my stereo 11) sent apple emails for making the greatst thing ever 12) Installed countless linux tools (apt-get install vim, apt-get install
I will stop this list because I don't see where I would stop. It's the best. Clearly no one that knows anything about computers runs windows. Really that's the only operating system people in the know don't run. Now with Apple having added sensibility to a unix experience there is little reason to run anything other than mac x in your house and unix at work for industrial stuff.
If you're a video game kiddy, then sure have a windows machine as a toy. Heck it doubles as a large blue light bulb!
Oh yes one more: All this without a single crash. I have yet to put it in maintanance mode! I don't expect this machine to be down. Ever.
Many good points here, especially the fact that Apple is typically shipping with video cards that are one or two generations behind the PC, and the pains of using things like QuickTime and OpenGL together.
Actually, thing brings up my beef with OpenGL in general: our game title on OS X using OpenGL runs at about 25% of the speed of the same title on the PC using DirectX. The reason? Not video hardware, not CPU, etc. but the fact that OpenGL has no direct access to the frame buffer! Yes, you have simple pixel read/write routines, but reading/writing one pixel at a time with call overhead through an intermediate layer just isn't going to cut it when you are having to do large 2D overlays.
Our product uses both QuickTime and very large amounts of 2D artwork blit on top of a 3D environment. Before you point out the fact that we could upload the 2D art as 3D textures and avoid the direct frame buffer access, this isn't realistic in our case because we have anywhere from 10-32MB of 2D art at any given time, and almost a full 32MB of 3D art at any given time, and to run successfully on non-AGP equipped machines we can't afford taking texture slots for our 2D art. We have implemented a QuickTime texturing system to upload frames as textures, but sadly many 3D cards choke pretty bad when you are uploading textures on a per-frame basis. For whatever reason, the OpenGL committee seems to be skewed to the mindset that everyone is trying to write the next Quake 3, instead of considering that some products may actually have a real need to directly access the underlying video hardware. I mean, how hard is it to provide us the address of the frame buffer and info on the pixel format and row span?
Oh, and on the point about developers using OpenGL to ease their ports to other platforms? I think this will become more likely, but not because of OpenGL. Now that the new wave of consoles is becoming the primary focus for game development and each one has it's own proprietary graphics API, about the best a developer can do is write their own API layer. This should allow the developer to substitute in the lower libraries to whatever final API they want to use, without affecting their app (of course, the PS2 is so radically different with its packet system, it might not fit so well).
I'm sorry. I just checked the PowerMac page. I guess Apples get GF4 class cards early while us poor PC users have to wait a bit longer.
We recently rewrote our game tranquility, originally for SGI, to run on OS X (100% rewrite, not a port). We selected OS X over MS because of two major reasons... (1) we hate MS and (2) we love UNIX. OS X gave us the ability to completely work around a shifting (and shifty) MS playing ground... and because OS X is based on a UNIX kernel, we felt that stability and capability were superior.
We were not wrong. OS X is a blast to write games for. While our game servers are SUN (though they could be MACs)... the client internet code was written on a SUN and compiled straight away, with no errors, on the MAC. This type of simplicity and uniformaty indeed make OS X a beauty to write for.
However... we also selected OpenGL as the clients drawing system, simply because it matched the needs of the game (which was originally written in SGI GL). Apple has yet to release its version of OpenGL in source form to developers. Releasing it would help developers to support it, increase its efficiency, as well as remove a couple of the remaining problems (it IS open source, after all, but Apple has made some changes within the code). Instead, Apple seems to prefer its game developers to use its alternative (and prop. platform)... which immediatly removes porting possibilities.
Furthermore, and sadly... Apple enjoys Objective C... which quite frankly I've never been able to properly sink my teeth into. Bastardizations of a standard language such as C, into deviants such as C++ and Objective C, do nothing good for anyone. It makes porting or even rewriting difficult... and obscures readability of the code. It also wastes development time in learning a new language.
My upshot? OS X is a WONDERFUL game platform, if you ignore Apples desires and stick to the UNIX layer and standard C, as much as possible, for your designs. Specialized tools, libraries and langauge only serve to make programming more difficult.
Actually this is a bad thing for trolls, cause pages are unreadable if you don't filter out -1 posts.
If computer costs really factor into your decision, you don't make a living coding.
My PC environment was easily over 5K when including a laptop (bought 3 months used to save $800 off the costs), a docking station at home and the office, Win2K, Off2K Pro, Visio Enterprise Edition, Text Editors that don't suck, etc.
We may switch the office over to Macs. The OS X experiment was promissing, but the platform isn't there yet. 6 Months? Hell yeah. We do PHP/Java development. The cost of the Windows machines don't even account for the hardware to have a Unix development environment to actually work in.
Alex
Bite me, moderator.
Until his mommy told him it was past his bedtime, most likely.
The point of the article was not to compare OS X to PSX, you vomitous mass!
The point was that Cocoa, and it's tools, allowed the developer in question to quickly write a utility that would have taken weeks in another environment.
It is not a comparision of OpenGL to DirectX, it is not a 'jump to game-development on the Mac' article.
For the love of Christ.
He actually talked about using Cocoa / OpenStep to rapidly develop a program so he could quickly and easily map the VRAM for the PSX game he was working on, instead of having to use paper and pencil. He talks about rapid application development, that leaves one with a complete program, not a hobbled together mess of copied code. He then goes on to talk about how he loaded in some of the C++ based graphics code related to the game they were using, so he could load the textures and arrange them as if his application was a PSX.
What the article is talking about is how to use OS X / cocoa to develop back end applications for game development. OS X can also run maya and lightwave, so you got 3D rendering stuff down also. One can also spend more time using OS X to get the over all look of a game finished (UI, networking, etc.) a lot faster (and cheaper) because of Cocoa, and then after finalizing the game behavior, porting it to the more expensive and timely operating systems, such as windows.
Here you will find this lovely quote:
If I can convince apple to do a good hardware accelerated OpenGL in rhapsody, I would be very likely to give my win NT machine the cold shoulder and do future development on rhapsody.
More Carmack-style old pro-OS X ranting can be found here. There's a lot more around, but I gotta run. Google reveals all.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Aren't GeForce and RADEON use [DDR] SD/GRAM? Nobody used VRAM anymore because it was too expensive to manufacture. Besides, it was replaced by WRAM when Matrox Millennium came out a long time ago.
How much Cocoa/Objective C/InterfaceBuilder development have you done?
This is not a wise-ass question. I want to know which is easier/better but want to hear the opinions of people that have used both - not just people that having used one *imagine* that it is easier than the other.
Who the fuck uses Qt?
Sadly I must say I beleive most people posting here have not understood anything about the article. The article is not about making games for MacOSX but making the tools to make the games. Like map editors, texture encoders, character editors and other authoring... And also tools to manage the actual flow of development or help with managing ressources. The PlayStation VRAM map tool is exactly that. think of it as tool to help the team manage the VRAM on the playstation.
That doesn't mean the game is on OS X, just that OSX is nice to build support tools for game development.
It shouldn't come as a surprise. I remember Id made a map editor on NeXTSTEP a while back in the Doom days if I remember well... anyway... NeXTSTEP is one of the ancestors to OS X.
I must say prototyping is indeed much much faster on OS X. And I don't feel like I am a super pro in it yet. It pays to develop the concept on OSX before developing the actual app on whatever platform you need it on.
The article is talking about development of console games. How many console game releases include development tools?
The article is not a testimonial about OpenGL performance on the Mac, nor is it a crisicism of OpenGL performance on the Mac. :-) Neither is it an endorsement of Objective-C as the best language in which to write a performance-critical game engine. (For that purpose I would personally choose either a tight subset of C++ or an OO approach to structuring C code.)
The article is about the production process, and developing tools to aid in that process -- a domain in which I can say from experience that developer productivity is far more of a priority than getting every last drop of execution speed -- particularly if you can develop tools that will make a process more efficient for several artists/programmers: the efficiency of the development process then goes up in proportion to the number of people on the team who benefit. That's where Cocoa provides much needed leverage. Objective-C contributes to the efficiency of the development environment by being an appropriately flexible OO language for RAD. IMHO, as the article states & illustrates, it's very appropriate technology for the domain of custom application development. :-)
CousinChimpy
(Troy Stephens)
To quote Tim: "I wrote the program using a NeXT computer. This had the advantage that there were some great tools available -it was a great computing environment in general. In fact, I could do in a couple of months what would take more like a year on other platforms, because on the NeXT, a lot of it was done for me already. There was an application builder to make all the menus as quickly as you could dream them up. there were all the software parts to make a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get - in other words direct manipulation of text on screen as on the printed - or browsed page) word processor. I just had to add hypertext, (by subclassing the Text object)"
His observations regarding the productivity of NeXTSTEP development ring true for MacOSX today...
CousinChimpy
(Troy Stephens)
codewarrior is certainly available for cross-platform development, although a bit pricey.
Does anyone know here I can find a MacOS X programming job in the SF area? I'm very interested in getting one, but the regular job boards I look at never have any. Is there some place on the net where such things are posted? Or are there just not any such jobs??
My email address is in my profile.
If Apple would *really* like to woo game developers, they should bring Input/GameSprockets to OS X. QuickTime and OpenGL are nice, but using a mouse/keyboard for game input is jsut plain unacceptable to most gamers.
How will I get my Money Puzzle Exchanger fix?!?!
- Brad Carps Just Another Mac Perl Hacker #!/usr/bin/l33t
A recent (and enormous) reason for this is the release of the X-Box. Being similar to the PC, and using DirectX-derived technologies, it is quite easy to port between X-Box and the PC, which are 2 huge markets now.
Economically, DirectX is hard to beat.
The main reason why Apple lost game support is because they refused to support developers.
Anyone remember Game Sprockets? They had potential, directx style, until Apple canned them and quit supporting developers.
Mac OS X is only a potential gaming platform if apple gets their ass in gear.
But its a Geforce 4 MX. Emphasis on the MX. That means it uses the old NV17 graphics core, not the fast NV25 in the upcoming full versions of the Geforce 4 cards.
From what I understand, Apple is working on a language called Objective C++. Basically, Objective C is C with some object oriented extensions, right? Well, Objective C++ will be, if I understand correctly, C++ with dynamic typing that will make it compatible with Objective C. Once they have that...
BlackGriffen
This guy should've looked into bin packing. It would've practically automated his tedious chores to a point where he would've have to even click and drag. At least reduce it.
The other XP APIs people posted, Crystal Space and SDL, are written in C++. Now I have nothing against C++, but if Apple wants native OS X games it would be very useful to have a native, cross-platform, game API.
I have heard of Apple's Game Sprockets project, but AFAIK this is a proprietary Mac API.
Anyone have a suggestion for an XP Objective C game API?
Macs aren't made of alien hardware. Its the same RAM, Hard drives and video cards that are used in PC's. If you want to try different ram THEN DO SO. The BIOS on a Mac is called the OF (OpenFirmware) although I doubt thats where your problems lie. Did you even try formatting the disk and re-installing the OS? In short did you try *thinking*?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
This sounds like a racist comment about masturbation.
Yes it is true that game development has been gravitating towards licensed engines because the cost of developing from scratch a AAA engine has been steadily increasing. What is NOT true is that games based on licensed engines involves "just scripting the NPCs and loading some fansy GFX" This is complete BS. Do you think that RTCW is just "some fansy GFX" slapped on the Quake 3 engine? Beyond the back-end (rendering, sound, input) everything content wise had to be created, and anyone creating a game will confirm for you that generating the content for a game is one of the most involved aspects. Did ST:Voyager Elite Forces just drop in some new models? No! The enhanced the rendering engine, implemented pretty decently intelligent bots for the single player campaign and scripted tons of events (ala Half-Life) that made the game so much more than "just" Q3 with new models and levels. This is NOT just filling in a "template" it involves editing the engine's source code to get it to do what you want. Because you do get the full source to the engine you can extend it in any way you see fit, this hardly fits with any definition of a "template" that I know of.
Now for just a little nit-picking. It's the Unreal engine, there is no such thing as the Unread engine, you can at least get the names of your examples correct. Secondly, it's a lot not alot (2 words not one), you emphasise this but you spell it incorrectly! Third, if you're going to make sweeping generalizations about licensed engines with incorrect facts and assumptions you could at least let us know who you are. Of course I'm probably guilty now of feeding the trolls but I just wanted to sweep away a little bit of the FUD that was floating under the bridge.
man RTFM
No manual entry for RTFM.
actually, they're all on Hotline and Carracho weeks before they hit store shelves . . .
Though many have noted that the article was aimed at developers, I should note that the 4% marketshare is nearly meaningless. Consider that a huge percentage of the other 96% consist of things like server farms and office computers. No one plays games on server farms. Only fools play games at the office.
Apple gets a much larger chunk of the home market and the educational market, which is the reason there is still any game development going on for the Mac at all.
Incidentally, I still get upwards of 20% of visits to my websites from Mac users.
Visit sunny Knowumsayin.com, home of the pork shirt.
You talk about that like its a good thing.
Cool game - Any connection between you and the people who made Alpha Waves back in 1990?