From: cshotton@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu (Chuck Shotton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games
Subject: Re: Street Fighter
Date: 25 Jan 1993 19:12:52 GMT
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac.games
Organization: Academic Computing

In article <1993Jan25.113208.10547@ac.dal.ca>, seanmcd@ac.dal.ca wrote:
> 
> Not a hardware problem? Then explain how such games can be done on the genesis
> when it has the identical processor to a mac plus. There are certain 
> dedicated hardware features in such game consoles that allow you to do fast
> rotation, scaling, and scrolling. How much do you know about Mac programming?
> I'm not an expert, but I know that page flipping ability is limited, you can't
> change the pointer to video memory to get fast scrolling and there's no
> hardware support for special effects like on a SNES for example. One thing that
> is useful is the palette animation ability.
> 

I would suggest that you spend some time learning about the Mac hardware
and operating system before you make such broad, generalized statements. In
the meantime, if you want all of the features of a SNES or Genesis, then go
buy one. If you want a general purpose desktop computing system, then buy
something like a Mac.

Let's look at this from another point of view. How come my SNES (or
Genesis) doesn't have a SCSI port or NuBus slots? Why can't it accept
inputs from my cool optical mouse? How come it can't run Excel? Why doesn't
it have custom support for digital sound input or 24 bit color? Why can't I
save my games to a floppy disk? Why can't I run Think C on it and write my
own games? blah blah blah blah.

Get my point?

> Publishers can have the best of intentions, but that doesn't mean that they
> can overcome the inherent speed limitations of hardware. It's not a question
> of mind over matter...
> 

You have an overly simplistic view of what makes a video game work. Innate
processor speed has little to do with the performance or realism or
playability of the game. It may have something to do with the ease with
which a game is implemented, but certainly doesn't preclude the
implementation using software-based methods. FYI, the whole full-motion
simulator used to train astronauts on the space shuttle uses an amount of
processor power equivalent to only a couple of old '286 PCs. (without any
custom graphics hardware, etc.) That is certainly a more complicated "video
game" than anything you've played before.

> As I said before, the non-existence of a 320 x 200 graphics mode on the mac
> limits the ability of pc ports for games like ultima underworld. I'm not
> saying that it couldn't be done, but that programmers who would like to port
> it would have extra challenges that *might* not be surmountable.
> 

How about if you explain to me what the dimensions of the screen have to do
with porting a game? I'll grant you that the 2 options of running in a
320x200 window or doubling the size of the bitmaps are less than optimal.
But, I submit to you that the real reason that DOS ports aren't easy isn't
because the artwork looks ugly, but because the PC weenies that wrote the
game do all sorts of direct nasties with the video hardware because the PC
(DOS) lacks a standard set of graphics primatives for doing
device-independent graphics. 

While you're at it, how about explaining why the Mac game world should be
limited to the lame resolution of PCs in the first place?

I'm sorry if this sounds flamish, but your intolerance of Mac
hardware/software appears to be based on a lack of understanding and you
really should learn a little bit more about it.