From: jmunkki@vipunen.hut.fi (Juri Munkki)
Subject: Re: Mac Game Programming Secrets?
Reply-To: jmunkki@vipunen.hut.fi (Juri Munkki)
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 23:18:56 GMT

In article <1992Dec21.140134.13241@nuscc.nus.sg> taihou@suliman.iss.nus.sg (Tng Tai Hou) writes:
>The reason is simple: Mac Game programming is a very black art.

Oh? You can find everything you need from Inside Macintosh. If you
only do graphics, parts I and VI are sufficient for someone who
wants to write a color game.

>It took two years for Spectre to be perfected before being
>published.

It takes years when you are unsure that you will ever make money
with the thing. I bet this was the problem with Spectre. A weird
looking game like Spectre is very hard to market. Splashy graphics
are much easier to sell.

>Hellcats and others probably took as long.

John Calhoun wrote most of his games in very quick succession while
he was still learning to do animation on the Mac. I think the important
thing was that he was enthusiastic about writing the games.

>Folks who
>have discovered how to write fast games aren't too free with
>their technique beyond a few good-intentioned pointers to queries.

I guess Ingemar's sprite kit and my vector animation kit don't count.

>I am not faulting them - they have to make a living too.

There are more and more Mac games out there. It seems to me that
every week I can bring a new game or game demo to our meeting at
the office.

>While there are many good Mac programming books out there, they deal
>with the general stuff. For every Mac book on graphics programming
>(about 1 !!!) there are easily 100 on the PC world for all kinds of
>languages.

Most of those PC books are probably full of fluff.

Face it, the Mac grahics architecture is really very simple. It's
just a rectangular frame buffer. Most screens come with a very
simple color lookup table as well, although you can never count on
it. (The PowerBooks don't have color lookup tables)

Most basic graphics and animation texts give algorithms that work
as they are with the Mac architecture.

You should be good at writing code for the 68K. This is probably
much easier than writing code for the Intel processors. Even if
you can't write a single line of assembly language code, you can
write games if you just don't try to do too much.

>What can we do about it? I don't know. All I know is that we will always
>be drooling for more Mac games while the PC world eventually takes over
>our sole advantage (at least, that's the way I see it) - 640x480x256 
>color resolution.

First of all, although many Macs now come with 640x480x256 resolution, you
should also design for other sizes and other screen depths. The machine
I use most has a 640x400x16 screen with no color lookup table.

Even so, QuickDraw is very good at giving you information on what kind of
frame buffers you have available. On the PC's, you have to be a real hardware
hacker to find out what kind of video you have available. Most standard
PC graphics libraries are either slow trash or they lack something you
really need. On the Mac, you can always use QuickDraw for non-critical
parts.

>Forget sound!!! No sound on the Mac can ever beat the Amiga or Sound Blaster,
>or even the Apple IIgs, in terms of price/performance/features. And the
>"thing" about hard to maintain/install/put together is disappearing
>altogether.

If I want background music, I'll play a nice CD on my stereo. The Spaceballs
soundtrack (cost me $2) goes nicely with Maelstrom.

Sound effects are totally within the capabilities of the Mac. On the Mac,
you are almost guaranteed to have sampled sound output.

The Macintosh isn't any harder to program than the other machines.
There are fewer capable Mac programmers who are interested in doing
games. With the gaming generation kids gravitating towards Amigas and
PCs, it's no wonder.

If the Macintosh becomes increasingly popular in homes and schools,
we'll see more quality games on the Macintosh.

-- 
  Juri Munkki					       Windsurf: fast sailing
 jmunkki@hut.fi					      Macintosh: fast software