From: tal691@huxley.anu.edu.au (Tonio Loewald)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games
Subject: Re: What should Apple do to the Mac to make it better for games?
Date: 31 Dec 92 07:09:47 GMT
Organization: Australian National University
NNTP-Posting-Host: 150.203.2.12

an780@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Travis Grundke) writes:


> Okay, since the arguments over sprits, slow games, etc. seems to have
>taken a big presence here lately <grin>, what SHOULD Apple do in its next
>batch of Macintoshes (dream dream dream, dream a little dream) to make the
>Macintosh "More adept" to running games?  For one, I just saw a demo
>running of the new "SegaCD", and actually, the implementation is pretty
>good. The thing which cought me the most was the speed at which things run
>(I'm not talking about access time, I'm talking animation/graphics/video)
>on the Genesis/CD combination. Also looking at Amiga games (evil words,
>almost as much as the dreaded PC/Microsoft!) and doing a little research,
>some things which I've learned and picked up seem to be that Apple should
>ideally implement a GRAPHICS BLITTER co-processor. (Hell, if a $800 Amiga
>1200 at 14mhz can have one and run faster than a IIsi/IIvx, why not the
>Mac?) The blitter really takes away a lot of the graphic processing work
>from the processor (so I understand, techies can correct me) and re-directs
>it straight to the monitor ("Blitting it" so they say...). This frees up
>the CPU to handle other calls from the program such as I/O and basic frame
>direction. It also is great for when you've got lots of video on screen
>and/or animation.

> Any other ideas from others out there?


The number one thing Apple can do to make the Mac a better games machinew
is to make it faster and/or cheaper. Preferably AND.

The number two thing would be to support a brain-dead graphics mode. (Like
the Amiga's standard 320x200 which is what you're looking at most of the
time -- that plus blurry pixels takes the Amiga halfway to being the
machine it is.) The problem is, the brain dead graphics mode won't be
useful for most serious work (it might be useful for video work).

A blitter doesn't make as much sense for the Mac as it does for the Amiga
which was built around it. Consider this: I can beat egges very well with
a $20 egg-beater. Why can't my Mac do this too, it cose $X000? Well, the
Amiga, despite being a 68000-based machine, is very different from the
Mac. I think that a Mac with a blitter will cost a lot more than a Mac
without one and a Sega Megadrive/Genesis/CD/whatever-they're-calling-it-
where-you-are. And you don't have to wait to finish your report while
your friend tries to win the Atlantic Breakthrough scenario of Harpoon.

QuickDraw acceleration (which includes a faster blitter -- the Mac has
a software blitter, by the way) would be more all round useful.

Certainly, I think Apple should just concentrate on price/performance
and everything else will take care of itself. If it does try to make
the Mac a better games machine, it should only be coincidental. Thus
adding quickdraw acceleration would be nice, but probably appear on
high-end Macs first. On the other hand, cheap PowerPC-based Macs,
available in 1994???, would make the Amiga and 486 machines look pretty
pathetic AND be useful in their own right. (There'll be the Penta of
course, and MCGA still.)

Has anyone seen Alone in the Dark for the PC? I'm waiting for a real-time
ray-traced game now.

Tonio

-- 
Tonio Loewald | tal691@huxley.anu.edu.au | Life is short. Be nice.
"You can lie/You can cry/For all the good it'll do you, you can
die/But when it's done/And the police come/And they lay you down
for dead/Just remember what I said" (Paul Simon-not the senator)