eabu111@orion.oac.uci.edu (Steven Luh) (05/14/91)
1. Why aren't there more games for the Mac? Raul Rockwell writes that he believes there are "too many different _kinds_ of macs, and not enough of a market to write games that would work on all of them" . Christopher Kempke believes there the mac interface is much harder to program. (From experience)". Jerry agrees with Christopher and also notes that the Mac is hard to program relative to PC's. Also, there are "no hacks with the hardware to speed up the graphics/make sound effects better because there are too many Mac models with different hardware". Eric Glover, on the other hand, believes that "Languages Suck" on the Mac. John F. Duggan believes there is a bias of programmers against Macs: "The reason there are not more games for the Mac is the Macs intended audience is not for the programmer as such. Therefore, since programmers do not buy and tend to have a bias against the Mac no programs are developed. Or the quality of the games is low-end." John also believes that multitasking is also an influence. David Fotland, the author of GO for the IBM PC also states that the market is too small and the sales would only be 1/10 copies sold on macs. 2. Do you think this is financially influenceive the games players bought mostly cheap MS-DOS clones, ataris, and Amigas". David believes there is too much work required "buy and learn 5 thick manuals before starting your port". 3. Do you think this is because there are not more programmers for macs? The majority of the people polled do not believe there is a lack of programmers for the Mac platform. John disagrees because of the cost of Macs is not attractive to programmers. Dave states that the event driven programming style delays production. 4. With the graphics on the mac, why are the ported games so bad? Raul believes that the OS "macintosh interface concept" is the limit to games on the macintosh and "what you need for games is a clean interface that can run fast, not 20 million options and huge interfaces. Christopher states "Because the machines they are ported from don't have good graphics. It's easier to leave things as-is than to change." Jerry believes that speed is a problem too and game programmers usually program to the lowest comon denominator [rest of message was lost]. Eric blieves the Mac is "too hard to code" and agrees with Jerry that speed is a major factor. John blieves that programmers usually do not put as much effort into porting into a second platform and therefore the quality is usually lower. David believes the software tools required is too expensive. 5. What games existing do you believe could be ported to the mac (name them)? Christopher believes that most games except arcade games could port well because "Quickdraw (needed for compatibility) is relatively slow". 6. Why do you think they were not ported? Eric stated that the "Cost. Time. Market" is not worth the effort. John states that there is not enough programmers to port them (see above). David believes the graphic environment is too poor. Again, he states he must assume a black and white environment instead of VGA on PC's. 7. Do you believe that games that were developed only for the mac could be better than other platforms (also why)? Christopher believes that developing for a Mac only platform is not financially sound, unless it was something very popular and original. 8. Finally, how do you feel about the situation of lack of games for the mac? Christopher thought that the new sale of the 150,000 classics in the past months could change the situation in the near future. John, who is has not worked on Macs before, believes that the situation will not get any better and suggests to petition Apple to make a better environment to allow games to prosper. SUMMERY: Almost everyone who write believes that the market for games on the Mac is just too small. Financially, there is not enough money being earned on the Macintosh platform to write original games to maximize the Mac hardware. The problem with the "common denominator" is also a problem. In order to maximize the number of sales in the Mac market, the programmer must write a black and white version or must make two versions for the Black & White and Color Macs. Almost everyone believes the Mac is too hard to program and the cost to startup is too much (going through 6 Inside Macs to learn the environment). Most believes ported games to the mac are bad also because of financial problems and easier to just port the graphics instead of trying to custumize them to the Mac. The majority believe just about every game except arcade games can be ported to the Mac. They state that the reason arcade games are not ported is due to the speed of Quickdraw and OS environment. There is some optimism on future games being written for the Mac from the sales of 150,000 classics although some believes that this may not help. Thanks to all those who took the time to answer my questions, please address future questions, feeback on this sub - my account is expiring... (uggg) Steven