If only it was that simple. None of the consoles use GL in reality. Yes I know the PS3 supports OpenGL but there is a chasm between supporting OpenGL and having the features and performance required to use it in a game. I don't know of any PS3 games that use GL.
It would be much better everyone having one standard, although I guess no one can corner the market that way. Still it would make things a lot better in the gaming world
Not that much but as most of a game's point is drawing things that is already a fair bit of work.
Yeah I just imagine, I love coding but i'd never have the skill of your team. I'm so glad you guys do what you do!
Getting code to compile on a different compiler on a different platform is tricky, getting rid of compiler errors making sure all the base classes are hooked up to Mac versions. Remember everything like file access through to USB access need fixing to work on the Mac as all these APIs are different.
That part I was assuming would be easy. Although I don't know enough about high end 3D games, ahhh sounds awful, i'd happily pay double for a "Feral quality" mac game, with all you do.
The HD3000 is designed to run Excel, iTunes and playback videos it is not really designed for gaming. In fact on the PC no games (complex 3D) support the card and it is pot luck if any will work. As lots of lower end Mac's have the HD3000 we do our best to get games running on the HD3000 but for anything new you will be playing on the lower to lowest end of the graphics settings.
However if we say it is supported we mean you should be able to play the game at a reasonable frame rate all the way through. We judge it by looking at how it plays pretending we are a customer buying the game. If it is not fast enough we either optimise some more or not support the card.
If only Apple would put better graphics cards in there machines. Even for the average user they could use a little more "omph" in the graphics department. With pretty much every other component Apple's done fine, I guess gaming really isn't on Apple's radar. But it should be! That's my single issue with OS X. Although I guess your stopping that, although no one could ever do it for every game and no big developers are going to delay releases so the Mac version come out same day. Oh well, Mac gamers are lucky we have you!
Supporting DirectX will not ever happen it is not a matter of money or anything else it is just like putting petrol in a diesel engine no matter the mechanic it will never work.
If you look at OpenGL a few years ago and now you should see that it is constantly improving all the time but being who we are it's never fast enough there is always something else you can do faster or better.
From what i'd read Direct X was very similar to Open GL in terms of code etc. Just "wrapped" differently. Although that's probably not true.
I read a story about 2 years ago about Apple and gaming. I haven't been able to find it since. To sum it up, Apple would go to developers and say "we wanna support games, can you make them mac friendly, how can we help" etc. Or the developers or whoever would go to Apple can't remember which. The developers would start working with Apple and then Apple would just stop helping, returning calls or whatever. Somehow the plans would fall through on Apple's end. Apparently this repeated itself every few years just with different Apple suits. It may have been Steam who approached Apple? I don't remember but it was something like that and I thought it was interesting. Sorry that story was kinda sketchy that's what I remember of it, still I thought it was worth sharing
Thanks a bunch!
Simon
