Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: The Quake Guy Talks

Author:Yoz Grahame
Posted:1/11/1999; 3:41:55 PM
Topic:The Quake Guy Talks
Msg #:2003 (In response to 1993)
Prev/Next:2002 / 2004

Firstly, no one's saying that it's impossible to develop games on MacOS. It's just a lot worse than on other platforms. Carmack should know, he's developed on a load of different platforms using a load of different APIs. OS makers listen to him - he made a big fuss about the pain involved in coding with DirectX 3 and MS skipped version 4 as a result. Sure, you can accuse developers of being lazy, but then they just won't develop for you. If you make it easier for developers to code for your system then you make it easier to code better apps, and you'll get better apps as a result. I'm sure that Carmack could manage his memory space if he needed to, but he'd rather spend his time working on the core functionality of his app.

I keep hearing this argument from users of under-featured OSes: "Sure, my OS doesn't have this feature, but a good programmer doesn't need it." Well, how come practically every other OS has it, then? What's fundamentally "better" about Mac coders, that whoever designed the OS put a load of trust in every single coder to be good at memory management? I'd rather that my OS didn't let a single bad coder bring down my entire system whenever I run their app.

Also, Connectix's core market is MacOS - they HAVE to work around it. Perhaps if the MacOS was a better platform for games, there'd be more companies who specialise in producing for it.




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