Worried there won't be a mac port of Doom3...

Fahrvergnuugen

Fahrvergnuugen

I am the law!
I read somewhere that Doom 3 uses DirectX...doesn't that mean there won't be a mac port? So sad if true... quake3 had linux & mac ports.
 
A lot of games use DirectX. Many use OpenGL as well, so you can switch. Besides, they can port DirectX games to OpenGL for Mac.

id hasn't let us down thus far. What makes you think they will now?
 
I didn't know that as well. I remember some games taking ages for this port. Now don't ask me for any examples. I really don'T know anymore.
 
Doom 3 may use parts of DirectX like maybe device input, but I believe the renderer is completely OpenGL based.
It's not necessarily easy to port Direct3D to OpenGL, but over the years, the porting companies have been developing their own libraries to aid in the process. But there are still issues with how Direct3D does things and how OpenGL does things. And then there's feature parity. Direct3D does some things which OpenGL doesn't do or handle so well.
 
I think there will be a similar driver setup as for Quake 3. Software rendering might fall out, or be abondend. But I'm sure there will be OpenGL support in the Windwos as well the Mac-Version.

I would not worry to much, like someone stated before me: ID has not let us mac gamers down, and why should they now?
 
I would not worry to much, like someone stated before me: ID has not let us mac gamers down, and why should they now?
Click to expand...

simple: poor sales performance of quake3. I'm not sure how well Q3A did on the mac side as far as sales go, but if it did poorly, why would they develop another game for us?

On the other hand, if they stick to the structure of Q3A, porting to other OSes is a piece of cake. You can take any quake 3 CD (windows or mac) and copy the baseq3 folder to the hard drive, download the 3MB executable for your OS from ftp.idsoftware.com (linux, OS9, OSX or windows) and you're good to go. They use PAK files which are just ZIP files containing the game data (you can decompress a .PAK file with any zip program. just rename it to .zip and it will open).

Hopefully they've stuck to this design, but the talk about DirectX scared me.
 
Doom 3 looks incredible. I believe the pc version comes out april 1st, or thats what best buy says anyways. Also, I think Doom 3 was announced at Macworld 2001, along with Halo. doom 3 was supposed to come out in like 2002, but then they developed this new graphics engine, and theyve been rebuilding everything. Also I've read there will definately be a mac and linux port, so don't worry. Also theres been much discussion about the xbox version. My worries are what specs will we need to get the kind of graphics theyre showing....... I think to even achieve close to this you'd need 1.A Powermac G5 for the mac, Alienware for the pc 2. Loads of ram 3. a high end graphics card (too bad the mac doesnt have ANY cards with 256 mb ram, only 128 :( ) But I think we will see those sorts of graphics being shown on the xbox, but even that they say will push the xboxs processor the most of any game yet. Also, right now i have a stupid 1 ghz imac 512 mb ram, but i am soon getting a dual 1.25 ghz powermac g4, 2 gb of ram, and the 20" cinema display ( id get a g5, but alas id not be able to get ANY display if i did, and would have to use my old emachines piece of crap monitor) I believe I will be able to run doom 3, without too much lag, but I bet the graphics wont look half as good as the xbox version will probably. Oh well, I'll still love beating both the mac version and the xbox version :p
 
Ive played the leaked alpha :D when I used a PC a lot...its really fun and I would be severely dissapointed if it wasnt ported to mac.
 
I thought that ID has said that Doom 3 was definately being developed for OSX? I can't remember where I read it but I'm sure there will be something on here or on the interweb somewhere.
 
Fahrvergnuugen said:
I read somewhere that Doom 3 uses DirectX...doesn't that mean there won't be a mac port? So sad if true... quake3 had linux & mac ports.
Click to expand...

Considering that both DOOM/DOOM II and Quake were made using NeXT computers, and that there was a port of Quake II and Quake III for Rhapsody (the Quake III port was done before the final version was released), and the fact that John Carmack has been a NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Rhapsody/Mac OS X user for a long time, I would say there is a strong chance that there is going to be a Mac port.

And considering the fact that Quake III was available as a preview for Macs before Windows would sure seem to be another strong indicator. Id released Quake III on the Mac first because they said that the Mac platform was easier to test on because they had fewer variables to worry about than Wintel PCs.

So, unless John Carmack has left Id, I would say that we have very little to worry about.
 
Fahrvergnuugen said:
simple: poor sales performance of quake3. I'm not sure how well Q3A did on the mac side as far as sales go, but if it did poorly, why would they develop another game for us?

On the other hand, if they stick to the structure of Q3A, porting to other OSes is a piece of cake. You can take any quake 3 CD (windows or mac) and copy the baseq3 folder to the hard drive, download the 3MB executable for your OS from ftp.idsoftware.com (linux, OS9, OSX or windows) and you're good to go. They use PAK files which are just ZIP files containing the game data (you can decompress a .PAK file with any zip program. just rename it to .zip and it will open).

Hopefully they've stuck to this design, but the talk about DirectX scared me.
Click to expand...

Q3a a small part of id's mac sells. They make a large sums of money each time some one license their engine. They also get a cretin percentage off of each copy sold. I can think of at least 6 mac game that license id's 3d engine technology. And in the case of wolfinstine they also own the rights to the tittle.
 
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