The two points you made, "parts of the game are broken" and "reps are saying a patch is forthcoming" are highly relevant and should've been mentioned by the story's author. Those two items greatly change my opinion of what is happening.
How is running the server in it's current state "getting on toward fraudulent"? Sony isn't doing *further* development work on the Mac version of EQ that's a far cry from shutting the game down without telling anyone. That the boxes are still on the shelves is an irrelevant point in this less than relevant story submission. The server is up and running, therefore people can buy and play the game without any problems.
Did it ever occur to this bleeding-heart Mac user that maybe the fact that the boxes are still available is a *good* thing? Chances are the Mac server was put in code freeze due to lack of users/revenue. If more Mac users buy the box and play the game that decision could easily be reversed.
Sony made a financially based business decision. That decision didn't affect the current status of the game---the game that people bought. Unless there was something in the EULA that specifically held SOE to telling Mac users about *every* business decision surrounding MacEQ then they were under no obligation to disclose their business direction.
The author installed a bunch of 30 day trial software that borked his system. He then chose a registry cleaner without doing much research on them and ended up using a pretty poor one. Then he complains because his machine got fuggered when he had to reinstall the OS.
Cry me a river. A tool like Norton System Works that has both an installation watcher and a great Windows configuration diagnostic/repair tool would've solved his problems. Grabbing the first tool listed on Download.com when you type in "Registry Cleaner" is not the inteligent way to go about system maintenance.
Just because the article says "more powerful" that doesn't mean you can imply "3D". There is no hardware comparison so there is no way to discern if the DS even has a 3D processor in it.
The statement could just be stating that the DS's CPU is more complex, faster, etc... than the N64's CPU. If so, that doesn't necessarily mean that hardware accelerated 3D is a given.
Not really. Dual Layer is nice, but, from what I've heard, it's slow. A fast 4.7GB single layer DVD burner can be useful to a large number of people who aren't, "It's new therefore I must have it and deride everything else and the people that buy those lesser devices" geeks.
You say to stop using buffer-over-run prone languages but then turn around and harp on.NET. Isn't the point of.NET and a managed language like C# to prevent things like buffer over-runs?
That is, if true, patently ludicrous. Why would the speed of the CPU matter when even that lowly GF4MX has a decent GPU on it. If the Mac handles graphics on the CPU, therefore not needing as much of a video card as a PC then it is doing things incorrectly.
There is no way that a Mac of a given MHz can outperform a PC of the same speed with an equal or better card.
That card, whether it is in a Mac or a PC understands textures and vertices -nothing more. there is no way a Mac can make better use of it, as it has to give it the same data as a PC does.
It's playability was stronger due to a typical Mac's better-than-standard-issue video card (in my case, initially a GeForce 4MX 32MB).
I can't tell if you are being funny or if that is some misguided Mac zealotry.
A GeForce 4MX 32MB as standard issue? Such a card is standard issue on a Mac? That somehow qualifies as a way to make the playability of DSI on a Mac better than on a PC?
A GeForce 4MX (64Mb, as the 32s aren't available any more) goes for a paltry $40.00. It's not even a GF4 level card as it lacks pixel and and vertex shaders. It's a renamed GF2 card.
It was behind the curve when it came out 2+ years ago. It was strictly a budget card. If that is "better-than-standard-issue" for a Mac I'd hate to know what you consider to be standard issue.
Yeah, and that whole holding a weapon while running around in 1st person mode while shooting things is just a major fad.
Don't even get me started on the hackneyed "top down, resource management, build a building to build a unit type, mass them and attack your enemies" game type. Man is that worn out!
not take some ancient script as fact, but as interpration of events through the eyes of highly religious and uneducated peoples?
If one believes in God, Christ, and The Holy Spirit then one has to believe that The Bible is the Word of God. As such it can not be refered to as "interpretation" or as being written by "uneducated people".
"Pluggable Look and Feel" is not the same thing as "native widgets". Re-implementing a look in yet another tool set isn't the way to go. Any time you do that you end up with HIG rules for the new toolset that don't map exactly to the HIG design for the native toolset.
"Like many Sun and Apple products, they are consciously ignored until Microsoft "invents" them and the fanboys come running into my office to show this "new" technology on MSDN."
It's called advertising and evangelism. Two things that Microsoft has always been better at then Sun, IBM, Apple, et. al...
Because those expansions a)aren't necessary to play the game you bought and b)cost a lot of money to design, develop, market, and distribute.
It'll be interesting to see if Lineage II expanions are of equal quality to DAoC and/or EQ expansions or if they are more like the old monthly updates for Asheron's Call.
The lack of multiple UV channels per vertex makes.3ds quite useless for any modern 3D work.
You obviously never played a DOS game, did you?
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OS Independent Games?
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· Score: 3, Informative
I remember when SVGA Air Warrior shipped, circa 1992 or 1993--first game I ever worked on. It was one of the very first SVGA games to come out. It shipped on quite a few 3.5" floppies. A lot of that space was eaten up by close to forty (40!) different video drivers and an equal number of sound card drivers. There was no auto-detection, so if you didn't know the exact hardware configuration of your machine you could easily screw up the install and end up with a game that either worked poorly or not at all. It was the Dark Ages of PC gaming. The Amiga was a far superior gaming platform because it was closed hardware and therefore developers could concentrate on the game and not on the spit and bailing wire to make the game work.
DirectX is extremely relevant. It puts a nice abstraction layer out there so that game developers no longer have to worry about supporting every freaking darned obscure piece of PC hardware that might exist. I honestly believe that if DirectX hadn't come along the driver situation would've spiraled out of control and PC gaming would've died a long long time ago. It'd be console gaming or nothing right now.
No user in there right mind wants to reboot their machine all of the time to play a game. Developer's don't want to be hamstrung with driver nightmare and only 650MBs (minus space for an OS and drivers) of space.
Yes, you are.
The point being that there are single solution packages for Windows that encapsulate all of that functionality. They are cheap, reliable, easy to install, easy to use, and can be purchased at the local BestBuy.
Given the choice the majority of consumers would rather pay a little $ for a single easy to install and use program than to download 3-4 free ones and have to learn how to use all of them.
What a stupid thing to say.
GNOME 2 apps require libs that might not be on every installation. Java 2 apps require a runtime that might not be on an end user's machine, and the list goes on and on.
You're essentially advocating recreating the wheel every time an app is made. Why in the heck would someone do that when there are shared libraries that provide robust, mature, and stable implementations of the functions they need.
And crap, it requires Windows, which will easily add a gig or more to the actual app!
DirectX is a platform that a developer can safely assume exists on a Windows box. Why shouldn't the developer take advantage of the capabilities offered by the OS?
How large is the typical GNOME app if you include all of the GNOME libraries in the size calculation? Should a GNOME developer recreate the functionality of those libraries just for some misplaced sense of truth-in-advertising? No. So why shouldn't these guys make use of DirectX? That's what it is there for.
In a word, "no".
If I write a small tight efficient graphical effect routine (e.g. a glow effect) that runs on the CPU it is still going to be slower than a glow pixel shader that runs on the GPU. The GPU code doesn't even need to be as small and efficient in order to run faster. The GPU is a better solution to use in that instance.
High performance games rely on proper use of machine resources; graphic effects and polygon T&L on the GPU, sound processing on the DSP on the sound card, etc.... Those decisions are equally, if not more, important than a highly optimized routine to accomplish something.
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one interesting thing to notice is that OS X, though it is not spyware, does not follow these suggestions.
Yeah, that works...
one interesting thing to notice is that Linux, though it is not spyware, does not follow these suggestions.
Hmm, so does that one...
one interesting thing to notice is that BeOS, though it is not spyware, does not follow these suggestions.
Wow, I'm 3 for 3!
one interesting thing to notice is that AmigaOS, though it is not spyware, does not follow these suggestions.
I could do this all day long...
The two points you made, "parts of the game are broken" and "reps are saying a patch is forthcoming" are highly relevant and should've been mentioned by the story's author. Those two items greatly change my opinion of what is happening.
Did it ever occur to this bleeding-heart Mac user that maybe the fact that the boxes are still available is a *good* thing? Chances are the Mac server was put in code freeze due to lack of users/revenue. If more Mac users buy the box and play the game that decision could easily be reversed.
Sony made a financially based business decision. That decision didn't affect the current status of the game---the game that people bought. Unless there was something in the EULA that specifically held SOE to telling Mac users about *every* business decision surrounding MacEQ then they were under no obligation to disclose their business direction.
This is such a non-story it's not funny....
Cry me a river. A tool like Norton System Works that has both an installation watcher and a great Windows configuration diagnostic/repair tool would've solved his problems. Grabbing the first tool listed on Download.com when you type in "Registry Cleaner" is not the inteligent way to go about system maintenance.
Just because the article says "more powerful" that doesn't mean you can imply "3D". There is no hardware comparison so there is no way to discern if the DS even has a 3D processor in it. The statement could just be stating that the DS's CPU is more complex, faster, etc... than the N64's CPU. If so, that doesn't necessarily mean that hardware accelerated 3D is a given.
Eh, no sweat off of my back. I was going for the funny mod anyway.
That's a great argument as long as the statement "The US invented the English system of measurement" is true.
Not really. Dual Layer is nice, but, from what I've heard, it's slow. A fast 4.7GB single layer DVD burner can be useful to a large number of people who aren't, "It's new therefore I must have it and deride everything else and the people that buy those lesser devices" geeks.
You say to stop using buffer-over-run prone languages but then turn around and harp on .NET. Isn't the point of .NET and a managed language like C# to prevent things like buffer over-runs?
That was a brilliant move by the DiCE guys, as EA has shown that it *always* committee's the purchased studios to death and then axes them.
There is no way that a Mac of a given MHz can outperform a PC of the same speed with an equal or better card.
That card, whether it is in a Mac or a PC understands textures and vertices -nothing more. there is no way a Mac can make better use of it, as it has to give it the same data as a PC does.
I can't tell if you are being funny or if that is some misguided Mac zealotry. A GeForce 4MX 32MB as standard issue? Such a card is standard issue on a Mac? That somehow qualifies as a way to make the playability of DSI on a Mac better than on a PC?
A GeForce 4MX (64Mb, as the 32s aren't available any more) goes for a paltry $40.00. It's not even a GF4 level card as it lacks pixel and and vertex shaders. It's a renamed GF2 card.
It was behind the curve when it came out 2+ years ago. It was strictly a budget card. If that is "better-than-standard-issue" for a Mac I'd hate to know what you consider to be standard issue.
Don't even get me started on the hackneyed "top down, resource management, build a building to build a unit type, mass them and attack your enemies" game type. Man is that worn out!
Geez, just go download any one of the myriad C64 emulators available.
Christians are promised an enternal life in Heaven. We are not promised omniscience or omnipotence.
If one believes in God, Christ, and The Holy Spirit then one has to believe that The Bible is the Word of God. As such it can not be refered to as "interpretation" or as being written by "uneducated people".
"Like many Sun and Apple products, they are consciously ignored until Microsoft "invents" them and the fanboys come running into my office to show this "new" technology on MSDN."
It's called advertising and evangelism. Two things that Microsoft has always been better at then Sun, IBM, Apple, et. al...
It'll be interesting to see if Lineage II expanions are of equal quality to DAoC and/or EQ expansions or if they are more like the old monthly updates for Asheron's Call.
The lack of multiple UV channels per vertex makes .3ds quite useless for any modern 3D work.
DirectX is extremely relevant. It puts a nice abstraction layer out there so that game developers no longer have to worry about supporting every freaking darned obscure piece of PC hardware that might exist. I honestly believe that if DirectX hadn't come along the driver situation would've spiraled out of control and PC gaming would've died a long long time ago. It'd be console gaming or nothing right now.
No user in there right mind wants to reboot their machine all of the time to play a game. Developer's don't want to be hamstrung with driver nightmare and only 650MBs (minus space for an OS and drivers) of space.
BiMonSciFiCon?
Yes, you are. The point being that there are single solution packages for Windows that encapsulate all of that functionality. They are cheap, reliable, easy to install, easy to use, and can be purchased at the local BestBuy. Given the choice the majority of consumers would rather pay a little $ for a single easy to install and use program than to download 3-4 free ones and have to learn how to use all of them.
What a stupid thing to say. GNOME 2 apps require libs that might not be on every installation. Java 2 apps require a runtime that might not be on an end user's machine, and the list goes on and on. You're essentially advocating recreating the wheel every time an app is made. Why in the heck would someone do that when there are shared libraries that provide robust, mature, and stable implementations of the functions they need.
DirectX is a platform that a developer can safely assume exists on a Windows box. Why shouldn't the developer take advantage of the capabilities offered by the OS?
How large is the typical GNOME app if you include all of the GNOME libraries in the size calculation? Should a GNOME developer recreate the functionality of those libraries just for some misplaced sense of truth-in-advertising? No. So why shouldn't these guys make use of DirectX? That's what it is there for.
In a word, "no". If I write a small tight efficient graphical effect routine (e.g. a glow effect) that runs on the CPU it is still going to be slower than a glow pixel shader that runs on the GPU. The GPU code doesn't even need to be as small and efficient in order to run faster. The GPU is a better solution to use in that instance. High performance games rely on proper use of machine resources; graphic effects and polygon T&L on the GPU, sound processing on the DSP on the sound card, etc.... Those decisions are equally, if not more, important than a highly optimized routine to accomplish something.