Game Programming on Mac OS X

o-mac · June 23, 2003 10:56AM

Does anyone think gaming on the Mac will be as huge and popular as it is on the PC?

What are the limitations?

What are the technical obstacles keeping game programmers from developing more games for the Mac?

I'd like to see the Mac version of a popoular game come out the same time it comes out for the PC.

I'm looking to get into Mac Game Development. Where do I start?? Is there any reading material I could look through??

ghost_user_name · June 23, 2003 11:45AM

I pretty clearly remember John Carmack (of id fame) saying that Mac OS X was the best platform for writing games. I think the only problem is that developers haven't seen the incentive to actually do it for some reason.

Also remember that he developed the original Doom and part of Quake on NeXTSTEP, the precursor to Mac OS X.

grad student · June 23, 2003 5:15PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Brad

I pretty clearly remember John Carmack (of id fame) saying that Mac OS X was the best platform for writing games. I think the only problem is that developers haven't seen the incentive to actually do it for some reason.

Also remember that he developed the original Doom and part of Quake on NeXTSTEP, the precursor to Mac OS X.

MacOS X is a good development platform in general - however it breaks down like this (in my opinion):

pluses:

cocoa is a great (the best) UI development enviornment

UNIX underneath is major plus

stable

some good available software: lightwave (my personal favorite), Maya, others

minuses:

small market

added dev expense

SLOW SLOW SLOW compile times...

not very mature developer tools (not including interface builder); Project builder is good, but lots of important niceities are missing or poorly implemented, and it is just plain slow

no direct X (for many titles, this is a major drawback)

slower uptake of technology (slower graphics cards, later to market..., slow OS support of latest 3d tech)

expensive hardware vs PC

now, this is off the top of my head, and its not set in stone: a lot of this is changing. Xcode and the G5 are a major start.

alcimedes · June 23, 2003 5:49PM

Quote:

I think the only problem is that developers haven't seen the incentive to actually do it for some reason

there aren't that many Mac users?

airsluf · June 23, 2003 7:26PM

ghost_user_name · June 23, 2003 11:02PM

Quote:

Originally posted by alcimedes

there aren't that many Mac users?

That could be the one.

o-mac · June 24, 2003 9:17AM

I'm playing Jedi Knight Outcast on the Mac now.

I also have it for the PC.

Can I use the skins some of those sites have to download on the Mac version?

serrano · June 24, 2003 10:31AM

Quote:

Originally posted by O-Mac

I'm playing Jedi Knight Outcast on the Mac now.

I also have it for the PC.

Can I use the skins some of those sites have to download on the Mac version?

Yes.

gizzmonic · June 24, 2003 12:17PM

I'm happy that the Mac gets games, but that's really not what I bought a computer for.

If you want to play games, get a console. The most innovative and spectacular games are console games, this isn't gonna change any time soon.

o-mac · June 24, 2003 12:52PM

True True...and I do have a PS2...

So, can I learn write games for a console on a Mac?

I guess I don't understand the process of writing a game for whatever platform...

Can anyone fill me in on this information?

grad student · June 24, 2003 12:52PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Gizzmonic

The most innovative and spectacular games are console games, this isn't gonna change any time soon.

don't know that I agree with that...

amorph · June 25, 2003 2:18AM

Quote:

Originally posted by O-Mac

True True...and I do have a PS2...

So, can I learn write games for a console on a Mac?

The console development tools are famously weird and finicky things, with a hair-raising price tag attached. I think MetroWerks makes a CodeWarrior for at least one console.

Mac programming it ain't, though.

Check out iDevGames.com for some information on Mac game programming.

Quote:

I guess I don't understand the process of writing a game for whatever platform...

Well, the hardest part would probably be coming up with the game itself! Once that's done, you implement it, paying close attention to potential bottlenecks, overhead, and resource management. You profile it and tweak it and debug it and massage the gameplay for balance and playability, and then it's ready to go. The issues you run into depend on the nature of the game; real-time vs. turn-based, 2D vs. 3D vs. text; scrolling vs. static; etc.

Most of the problems you'll run into can be solved by general-purpose texts and a lot of elbow grease. The Nieder/Davis/Woo book on OpenGL programming is definitive, there is no shortage of books and resources on algorithms and data structures, the advanced books on programming Cocoa go into optimization issues specific to Cocoa and Objective-C (which you should only consider once you've ruled out improving your algorithms and/or data structures!). There are a few good tutorials on AltiVec kicking around; I don't have links right now. Apple has decent documentation on the HID libraries and other platform-specific resources you'll probably need to use in your game.

Basically, you can look forward to a lot of work. But if you really want to get into games, it'll all be worth it.

placebo · June 25, 2003 11:59AM

is there an application that I can make 3D environments (not necessarily interactive ones) with? For example, a forest or something that you can 'walk' around in with you arrow keys? the dissipointing think about QTVR is that the camera is fixed in a central place, and it isn't technically 3d.

1337_5l4xx0r · June 26, 2003 4:53AM

It runs fairly slow (interpreted language and all that), but Director can do that. It has hardware 3d acceleration. The only hitch is I don't know of any 3d apps for the mac that export director's file format. Which isn't to say there aren't any, just that I don't know of any.

frawgz · June 26, 2003 8:32AM

Quote:

Originally posted by alcimedes

there aren't that many Mac users?

Chicken and egg. More developers means more apps means more users. And we know from Steve's keynote that the number of Mac developers has gone up by a lot. The number of apps has also gone up by a lot.

Heck, just compare Versiontracker nowadays to Versiontracker a few years ago (OS 9). The trickle of daily updates has turned into a veritable flood.

I think game developers will get the same benefits as developers in general, though there are important differences, as has been noted.

gizzmonic · June 26, 2003 9:45AM

Quote:

Originally posted by O-Mac

True True...and I do have a PS2...

So, can I learn write games for a console on a Mac?

I guess I don't understand the process of writing a game for whatever platform...

Can anyone fill me in on this information?

The Dreamcast is (supposedly) the best console for homebrew developers. There's a version of SDL for Dreamcast, and lots of other development tools at http://boob.co.uk . Some tools are Windows/Linux specific, but it shouldn't stop you from writing basic code on the Mac.

Anyway, if you're just getting started programming, and you want to write a simple game, I recommend using Real Basic or even Flash. Coding video games, even simple ones, is one of the most complex and time-consuming programming tasks out there.

There's also a cool thing called "The Green Machine" at www.sawbladesoftware.com that will let you create a game by editing sprites in Photoshop. Fun stuff...

johan · July 23, 2003 1:45PM

perhaps the following article is of interest to you:

http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/Tec...-01-21.01.html

sad but true, pc's rule the game development industry (and, of course, consoles), thats where the cash and marketshare is for the publishers so thats the platform they pay developers to develop for...

...I know at my place most of the programmers hardly even know that osx is unix/bsd based, they where surprised when I told one of them that I installed GCC and compiled mozilla the other day..

let's hope that the big fat pipes on the G5 and osx's continous attention willl bring more people over.

someone mentioned directx, most programmers love directx for some reason (I'm not a programmer, I do gfx) and I think that thats reason (duh!) why a shitload of titles get ported to the xbox; it takes little to none rewrite of your pc game app, so we save some dev on tht one, with the cube and ps2 things are different of course.

I try to spread some mac propaganda at least every day here in our office so maybe we'll get there someday!

airsluf · July 23, 2003 8:50PM

Kickaha and Amorph couldn't moderate themselves out of a paper bag. Abdicate responsibility and succumb to idiocy. Two years of letting a member make personal attacks against others, then stepping aside when someone won't put up with it. Not only that but go ahead and shut down my posting priviledges but not the one making the attacks. Not even the common decency to abide by their warning (afer three days of absorbing personal attacks with no mods in sight), just shut my posting down and then say it might happen later if a certian line is crossed. Bullshit flag is flying, I won't abide by lying and coddling of liars who go off-site, create accounts differing in a single letter from my handle with the express purpose to decieve and then claim here that I did it. Everyone be warned, kim kap sol is a lying, deceitful poster.

Now I guess they should have banned me rather than just shut off posting priviledges, because kickaha and Amorph definitely aren't going to like being called to task when they thought they had it all ignored *cough* *cough* I mean under control. Just a couple o' tools.

Don't worry, as soon as my work resetting my posts is done I'll disappear forever.

mello · July 24, 2003 5:16PM

I wanted Apple to Buy Bungie before Microsoft got their hands on it. They could have tweaked Halo for dual processors & altivec. Could've made it crazy fast & then get another company to port it to the consoles. Even if it just broke even, it would have been worth it. The framerates for most 1st person shooters on PC's usually just creamed macs. Mostly because the mac version wasn't optimized to take advantage of altivec & duals. Having a game that was specifically designed to be great on a mac would be great ammo against pc gamers. I remembered seeing some sweet pics of Halo on the Mac about 1 1/2 years before going to the Xbox. It's just a shame.

Game Programming on Mac OS X

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