Feb 97 Viewpoint
Volume Number: 13
Issue Number: 2
Column Tag: Viewpoint
By Eric Gundrum
The Mac is a Game Machine
Back when the Mac was just starting out it was heavily derided as just a toy, a game
machine, by the business folks who didn't want to see the Mac encroach on their
control of computing power. These are the people who thought using a computer had to
be hard work if the computer was capable of working hard. The Mac, with its smiling
acceptance of a floppy disk, its high quality graphics, its ease of use, just couldn't be
anything but a game machine; it was too much fun!
Apple fought long and hard against that stigma. They ostracized games developers,
driving all but the most determined of them to other platforms. It took Apple several
years, but they were successful. Macs had made it into the big time, with full
corporate acceptance, and very few games. The Macintosh community had invented
desktop publishing.
With so many businesses soon using Macs, people began to take notice of just how much
fun it was to use this little computer. After all, what other computing platform had
flying toasters, and with Opus to shoot them down? Desktop entertainment was born,
and its mother was Macintosh. Still, Apple insisted that the Mac was not a game
machine.
Several more years passed and the Macintosh community grew larger. Many new
flavors of Macintosh were now available, each faster than its predecessor, with fancy
color screens, CD-ROM drives and video in and out. Still, it wasn't a game machine.
Sure there were a few games available, often tucked away as screen saver modules or
poorly implemented ports from another platform. Yet none of these programs really
took advantage of the unique features of the Macintosh, and features like multi-channel
stereo sound had been with the Mac for several years.
Finally, with the advent of the PowerMac, Apple started to accept that people wanted to
play games, and they wanted to do so with their Mac. A few games appeared to explore
the power of CD-ROM, stereo sound, superb graphics and PowerPC. However, the
Macintosh was still not the platform of choice for game developers.
Yet more time passed. The Mac has been pushed aside by some of the more
short-sighted business folks, but Apple - yes, Apple - has finally said that the Mac is
a game machine.
Game Sprockets, a Great Idea
With the advent of Apple's Game Sprockets, Apple provided game developers a set of
tools making programming quality games for Macintosh easy, providing access to the
Mac's powerful multimedia capabilities while helping the games become more
consistent and reliable.
As you will undoubtedly see from reading the articles in this issue, Apple's Game
Sprockets are a powerful tool. They provide simple and reliable access to double
buffered animation, multi-channel stereo sound, protocol independent network
gaming, and support for an infinite variety of input devices. Game Sprockets also
handle much of the mundane user interface to set Macintosh hardware options,
including choosing an input device, display device and network players. Add in the
many incredible multimedia technologies already available on the Mac, and the
Macintosh platform becomes one heck of a cool game machine.
But, Why Support Games?
Some people complain that Apple shouldn't waste resources on foolish things like
helping game developers. The reality is that people love playing games. People are
often so fascinated by computer games that they will play them repeatedly for several
hours and not realize where their time has gone.
Games generally demonstrate more creativity than any other software genre. Often
they push the limits of the computer's capabilities beyond where anyone thought they
could go. It is more likely that games are responsible for the existence of 10x speed
CD-ROM drive than is looking up phone numbers. The Mac has had very few new input
devices, but Apple's Input Sprocket makes the porting of innovative input hardware
from other platforms much easier, and increases the size of the potential market.
Look carefully at the technology of Game Sprockets. Is it really for use only in games?
The input devices could be used in a variety of interactive multimedia applications.
There is nothing about the platform independent, client-server network capabilities
that checks for alien invader information in the exchanged messages. Double-buffered
video has been used for years to accelerate many graphics applications; now it is more
reliable. Game Sprockets may make these and other capabilities much easier even for
non-entertainment applications.
In This Issue
In this issue we offer two new Macintosh games, complete with source code. Try ‘em; if
you don't like them, well, you have the sources, fix them to work the way you think
they should work.
This issue also includes an article suggesting how to implement serialization of your
application, making network-based product distribution more profitable. For those of
you still learning the basics, we include an article describing how to use the Resource
Manager. If you are keen on communications technologies, check out the game article
built around the use of the Communications Toolbox.
With all this cool technology, the excuses for so few Mac games are dwindling. I look
forward to many new cool apps to choose from by next holiday shopping season.