Forums | MacLife

VegasACF wrote:

You might find this link useful for games that are Universal Binary format.

Why do you think Doom 3 doesn't run well?  It runs like a champ on my MacBook Pro (2 GHz, 512 MB VRAM, 1 GB RAM).  And it's beautiful, to boot!

You've obviously never seen any of the discussions regarding the integrated graphics. Shortly put: integrated graphics is not for games. (least of all nex-gen games) BTW, I find it somewhat hard to believe that your MacBook Pro has 512 MB of VRAM.

I was actually mildly interested if you had the older one with 256 MB or the newer one with 128 MB.

I actually will likely make my living based on 3D graphics, since I'm doing stuff with OpenGL and plan on continuing to do so when I start my career. And it will likely be in the area of games. In that case, having a capable video card is important to me.

Are you using any sort of standard settings for games testing? My idea of "plays well" and somebody elses is probably different. Instead of saying "plays well", why not benchmark the game at different resolutions/quality settings, and let people decide on their own?

akb825, you might want to look at learning the DirectX API

OGL sees ever-diminishing use in games, tho, if that what you're looking to do- even on Windows. Even Carmack/Id's primary dev platform these days is the 360.

akb825 wrote:

...In that case, OpenGL is the only option for me. Since I don't plan on developing for any consoles, I have that choice. It would be really nice if there would be a move to OpenGL in the near future, though, for the community in general.

If I work for a company and must use DirectX, I will grudgingly use it. However, for things I develop on my own, I have the choice to use OpenGL.

IIRC the nightmare known as PS3 uses OpenGL as its graphics API (and I think Wii also for that matter; not sure). You could show your chops meeting the challenge of making games fast and smooth on it (/them).

Consoles are different- (usually) minimal OS and some variety of UMA (unified memory architecture)- it's how they get away with far less in the way of resources than PCs for a given level of results. Any additional OS services needed can be bundled as libraries with the game. PS3 seems halfway between; not a PC arch, nor yet a UMA- probably the result of using the NV graphics chip with its dedicated memory, a (nearly) off the shelf part. Neither fish nor fowl, and devs really don't seem to like it.

In 2 years, tho, maybe the docs and tools will be there for it. Apparently they aren't now; the other two are far better that way.

Bat wrote:

Consoles are different-

I know that the architecture is different, but I meant the rendering path. (in this case, mainly the CPU needing to read from the GPU's memory, where the only time I have seen is necessary is saving a screenshot, everything else can be rendered or copied to the texture (without the CPU's involvement))

reefdog wrote:

AKB, with the Wii dev kits running for $2000, it might be worth it to target that platform.

I doubt I'd start development for the Wii (or any other console) on my own. The cost of entry is just too high, since there's not just the SDK (which I will admit is actually somewhat affordable for the Wii), but there's also physical disks to produce, and sell in stores etc. For now, my main interest is in Mac and PC. I already know the APIs I need to produce games for those platforms (I can even have the same codebase with OpenGL for graphics, OpenAL for audio, and SDL for setting up the OpenGL context, changing the resolution, etc.), and it's cheaper and easier to get the games to people, since all I need is a website and a registration system.

Don't apologize for being new here.  Apologize for not clicking the link in the second post of this thread.

Rosetta is to Intel-based Macs what Classic is to Mac OS X.  Sort of.  It basically runs non-UB software via emulation.  And it does a very good job of it. 

It's your call as to whether or not to install Windows on your Intel-based Mac.  I did, but solely because the software that my law school uses for final exams is not available for Mac OS.  Well, that and there are some really cool WWII flight sims available for Windows that never made the leap to the better platform ().

BootCamp works flawlessly, as far as I can tell.  I've now got the fastest Mac and the fastest Windows machine in my office.  All in once computer.  Makes the paralegals green with envy, I tell you.

VegasACF wrote:

Don't apologize for being new here.  Apologize for not clicking the link in the second post of this thread.

And, that link says how well games run on MacBooks, where?

As far I can see, it says which ones run OK under Rosetta, which ones have Universal Binaries, but none of them really go into how well it runs on the integrated video.

VegasACF wrote:

Rosetta is to Intel-based Macs what Classic is to Mac OS X.  Sort of.  It basically runs non-UB software via emulation.  And it does a very good job of it. 

It's your call as to whether or not to install Windows on your Intel-based Mac.  I did, but solely because the software that my law school uses for final exams is not available for Mac OS.  Well, that and there are some really cool WWII flight sims available for Windows that never made the leap to the better platform ().

BootCamp works flawlessly, as far as I can tell.  I've now got the fastest Mac and the fastest Windows machine in my office.  All in once computer.  Makes the paralegals green with envy, I tell you.

ah ok.  thanks.  ill google it and download rosetta.  When a game says it requires ATI Radeon 7500/nVidia GeForce 2 or better, 32MB of VRAM) or anything along thoes lines, would it still run on the macbook since it doesnt have a dedicated graphics card (i think)  Even if it was installed on windows.

Rosetta is not something you download.  It's part of the OS on an Intel-based Mac. 

You can find a description of the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 here.  I'm not the best person to ask when comparing benchmarks is on the menu.