🚀 go-pugleaf

english@primenet.com (Lawson English) wrote:



>The word that *I* have gotten is that games programmers now consider the
>PowerMacs to be the premier desktop games machines.

I believe a Mac-game developer stated this.  And not surprising,
considering the Macs take care of a lot of the hassle that DOS
provides- and Win95 elimantes as well.  Game developers have had very
enthusiastic responses to Microsoft's Win95 Game SDK.

>Since a $2000 complete 100Mhz 604-based multi-media system should be
>available from Power Computing by Christmas (if not by next month), this
>perception can only be reinforced. I'd guess that a 132Mhz System would 
>cost about $600 more.

Nice price.  But even a 604 couldn't hold a candle to custom 3D and 2D
accelerator cards.  The 95 game SDK taps into this, as does Quickdraw
3D's acceleration API.  Nvidia, Yamaha, and Creative Labs have all
announced 3D acceleration products, and can also accelerate 2D games
through the DirectDraw API.  A 604 Power Mac without one of these
looks very woefull as an entertainment platform in comparison to the
newer consoles.  It will likely get them with PCI, although I haven't
heard of a company announcing a low-end, games oriented 3D accelerator
for the Mac yet.

Not to mention, the 95 games SDK handles many aspects of game
creation.  Sound channel mixing with low latency, directInput API to
open up a wide area of multi-button joysticks (even providing
_feedback_), a 3D API tailored for Games (Reality Lab), a standard
network scheme for multiplayer games (DirectPlay), yadda yadda yadda.