🚀 go-pugleaf

>> >Something tells me Rhapsody is going to change a lot of developer
thinking
>> >when it becomes possible to write code once and easily recompile it for
>> >almost any platform.
>> 
>> Ah, but that requires the PC owner to actually _have_ Rhapsody (or the
>> multi-hued box under Windows) which isn't likely to take a large enough
>> percentage of the market to convince game companies (IMHO).

>Developers do need to have Rhapsody (at least for now), but end users can
>run "Yellow Box" applications on Windows 95/NT. 

While I think the yellow box will provide a good base for cross-platform
development
for "grown up" applications, I think game developers might want to focus
their attenon 
more on what they can get out of QuickTime 3 (assuming the licensing madness
is 
ever straightened out). Since game programming is very performance and
graphics
oriented, there's usually some really unportable code in the guts of games.
There is a lot of the mac toolbox available in QT3, you can develop on win
or mac, and it
some apparently fast blitting routines (faster than copy bits, plus
supporting alpha
channel transparency, rotation, etc.). This stuff works on the mac
obviously, and works
on windows, and takes advantage of DirectX if it is installed, but still
works if DirectX
is not there. And of course you have all the "normal" QT stuff -- movies,
midi, support
of all major graphics file formats built in...

If possible, perhaps the yellow box could provide a nice cross-platform
shell, and
QT 3 take care of  a lot of the sound and graphics inside. You still
couldn't get 
Quake II to work, but I imagine you could get 2D and 2.5D type games to work

fine this way.

Just my 2 yen,

Colin.
------------------------
T. Colin Mack
Satelight, Inc.
Sapporo, Japan
colin@satelight.co.jp
www.satelight.co.jp
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