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Aspyr On Porting Games to the Mac
jvm writes "This in-depth interview with Aspyr's Glenda Adams over at Curmudgeon Gamer discusses in detail the issues of porting games to the Mac. Starting with Civilization on the Mac LC up through today's Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4, Glenda takes on PC vs. Mac system requirements, how games are selected for porting, patching Mac games, and some thoughts on the future." A notable quote from the interview: "The PC often lets you [code/architect] things in a sloppy manner with little penalty, but then when it gets on the Mac it drags the game down."
The most interesting answer to me that I got from Glenda was with respect to crossplatform technologies. I'd recalled that she'd used OpenAL a number of times. And of course Apple created a decent OpenGL implementation thanks in part to John Carmack's influence. The DirectX to OpenXL porting route is right common nowadays. Wouldn't it be great if it were easier for programmers to *start* with these xplat techs and make ports trivial processes, like Quake 3 was?
But Glenda didn't put much stock in xplat techs becoming easier to use than M$ sellout techs, nor did she see Apple throwing more weight behind their use a solution.
But in true "forest for the trees" fashion, she pointed out the one potential savior for people gaming on "second tier" platforms, let us say, that I'd completely missed.
ruffin: Who else could run with the ball to get mature, cross platform game programming APIs written?
GA: Microsoft, but I don't see why they would want to.
It's sad that the M$ monopoly in the desktop OS market is so, "That's just the way it is," that I would have completely overlooked the answer. That's great insight -- though awfully obvious -- and the perfect "hit-home" reason for us gamers to be pretty angry with the folks in Redmond the way AOL/Netscape, Apple, Sun, and friends are.
I'm hoping to get a editorial based on the interview up soon, but at the same time to keep out the bile and trying to stay relatively objective and fair. That's proving tough.
And at the same time, the porting system is awfully broken. As games get larger and larger, who knows, perhaps taking multiple DVDs instead of multiple CDs (or obscenely long download times via the net), porting all that code isn't going to get any easier.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
Ah. unrealistic minimum requirements are distinct from too high a requirement. Thanks for clarifying that.
Well, just to clarify, they are.
Unrealistic minimum system requirements would mean the publisher was requiring Aspyr get the game working on machine X that marketing had determined would cover enough of the population that the game would sell amount Y.
Requiring too high end of a machine means that the developer doesn't feel the port is viable from a technology perspective.
In terms of who holds the power and makes the decision, thats a HUGE difference.