OS X, Mac, and 3D gaming 2001 and after

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PowerSam MP

Registered
Anyone have an opinion as to the direction OS X will take Mac gaming, especially 3D gaming?

I understand that Carmak is behind OS X, but will he write multi-threaded games or will he simply carbonize an app and let the OS run on one G4 and the game on the other, thus not really giving the P4 much of a run for the money (key word, MONEY).

Also will we get some good optimized drivers from Nvidia and ATI soon after OS X is released or will we need to wait 6 months longer to use the capabilities of our OpenGL acceleration and effects?

I ask any and all to give their informed as well as un informed opinions.....

 
Well, Omnigroup has ported Q3 without too much trouble (read: any) to Cocoa.

Thus, it shouldn't be too hard, given the ease of Omnigroup's port to port new games within a weekend or two and thus give the Mac a very easy way to get games on the market at the same time as PC games.
 
It is kinda a big question and realy important (I think =)
Omni did a good job at no-time but Q3 was already ported for MacOS 8.x Dont this have any effect on how much there is to be optimize? I think so but I am sure to be wrong thus I am always =)
 
Originally posted by Zaphod G4
It is kinda a big question and realy important (I think =)
Omni did a good job at no-time but Q3 was already ported for MacOS 8.x Dont this have any effect on how much there is to be optimize? I think so but I am sure to be wrong thus I am always =)
Click to expand...

Actually its my understanding that the Omni group port was coded using Cocoa. This means it was written from the ground up in a matter of hours and it can use the pc versions files so this means developers can port apps to OS X fairly quickly if they use Cocoa. Also the Omni group stated that they would port any game to OS X free of charge.

I think OS X is going to be a decent gaming OS,
 
So in a nut shell, it's part cocca. I think that they are waiting on final OS X to be finalized in as much as OpenGL and other Game API's.

I figure by July or Aug 2001, we can expect to see all or most Games in stores supporting OS X as well as possibly 9.x for a year or so to come.

Sam
 
Want a name of a good game for Mac OS X? I'll give you two. Oni and Quake 3. That is only the beginning my friends. Games on Mac OS X will cain anything you can find on a PC.
 
Well, the way I see it, there is great potential to spank PC's in games on the MAC, it depends on a few things.

Will Games simply be ported from PC code to mac, or will they be written from the ground up for MAC? We need Altivec support, we need multiprocessing support (and not in the form of Unix multi tasking, but rather multi-threading). We also need games to take better advantage of the latest advancements in 3D cards found in Radion and Gforce that are not found in current games. I hear Carmak may begin to do just that, writing in native OS X cocca and possibly porting to PC form there.

All that said, we also need people to quit whining when a game requires more than 32Meg to run. Lately I found some guy on another board raising hell that OS X needed more than his 64Meg to run. For pete's sake people, you can buy 64 Meg of ram for less than the price of a pizza and beer! I got 1 Gig for $580!!! That used to cost more than $2000 only a year ago!

Powerful games require powerful computers.

Enough of my rant.
 
One big issue on the games that you have mentioned here are input devices. I play alot of Q3 etc. games and the mouse is the one most important thing. If the games like Q3 and more are to become popular on the new OS it needs to support mouses with more than one button.

(Excuse me if I am wrong on the mouse issue but I am a Ix86 person and I have only seen Mac with a single mouse button).

I think the OS could become a killer!

 
Feels great to hear some good words from a PC user!
Well the fact is that Mac can use all USB mouses with multiple buttons, all of theese works in Q3 =)
 
Originally posted by PowerSam MP
Well, the way I see it, there is great potential to spank PC's in games on the MAC, it depends on a few things.
Click to expand...

How are Macs going to be better at games than a pc then? What's wrong with PC games at the moment? Massively multiplayer, Hi res, millions of colours running at 60fps. What are Macs going to do to improve on that then? Don't get me wrong, there's no reason Macs can't match PCs but I see nothing in MacOS X that's going to make games developers go "Ahhh! Now that MAc OS X is out we can do this!"

What we'll end up with is some original software which may or may not be any good, and a load of PC ports.

This is fine by me and I guess most other Macsters who primarily use their macs for something other than games but who want decent games too but can't or won't by a PC as a second (rate!) computer.
 
Originally posted by Mr. Mysterious
Want a name of a good game for Mac OS X? I'll give you two. Oni and Quake 3. That is only the beginning my friends. Games on Mac OS X will cain anything you can find on a PC.
Click to expand...

Great!. Is Q3 better on the Mac then? Tell me more. What does it have that makes it better than the PC version? Better graphics? sound? come on, we're all dying to know! Or is it just basically the same as the PC version? I suspect the latter in which case what makes you think Mac OS X will "cain" anything the PC can do?
 
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