🚀 go-pugleaf

George Daswani, gdaswani@silicon.csci.csusb.edu writes:
 > A game developers dream is the integration of all sound drivers, video
 > drivers, input drivers, 3d drivers, network drivers into one Standard
 > gaming API..  The answer to this question is Windows 95's gaming API's..
 > A powermac is probably the farthest thing from PC game manufacturers
 > minds right now..  They now have access to wonderfull hardware acceleration
 > from video cards (direct draw), standard 3D interface (direct 3D), standard
 > network interface (direct play) and more..

The Macs integrate all of the above, and each is optimized fairly well for 
the hardware/software configuration. Not only that, but direct access to the
hardware is a standard operation on many popular Mac games: Marathon, 
Maelstrom, and Bolo. Just because Quickdraw provides many high level routines
for doing cool things, Apple supports many robust ways of bypassing them
and writing your own blitters, sound output, and networking -- as well 
as system level support for Quicktime, Sprite-based, and 3D- graphics --
which are *freely* licensable from Apple.

The conventional rumors about Apple's programmer interfaces are WRONG.


 > The macintosh will just be brushed aside this year..  THE PC gaming industry
 > should make record profits this year and next.  This is due to less
 > tech support, less money for development of drivers, more customers 
 > to these games..

I don't have the numbers, but from what I hear the number of people who
returned Myst was significantly higher on the PC platform than the Mac (in
the range of a 30% to 3% ratio). In fact, most PC support issues stemmed
from hardware configuration problems.

Plug-n-play hardware support is an integral part of an OS -- it can't be
tacked on 15 years after the platform has debuted.

 > A multimedia powermac with PCi video cards sure do sounds nice, but I doubt
 > they will even take a look at it.  The point it mute, they need time to
 > learn Microsoft's new toy and they will be releasing wonderfuly games for
 > this new / widespread operating system.
 > 
 > The question I would be asking if I was a game developer - Macintosh?
 > does that use the directdraw interface? NO , how big is the market share?
 > 10 percent.  The answer seems to be a clear and resounding no for the
 > macintosh gaming market..

The Macintosh has a consistent and well-documented programmer interface to
all of the points you have listed. Not only that, but the hardware and software
interfaces are standardized... you don't have to deal with different display
modes, sound devices, and numerous operating systems.

Whether PC game developers will migrate to the Mac, I doubt it... but the 
Mac market is wide open for "killer" games, and the system is quite ready for
it.

Matt

BTW, if anyone has missed the Marathon 2.0 previews floating out there... 
it puts just about any Doom-style game to shame, regardless of platform.