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

Re: The Quake Guy Talks

Author:Chuck Shotton
Posted:1/11/1999; 11:48:10 AM
Topic:The Quake Guy Talks
Msg #:1993 (In response to 1990)
Prev/Next:1992 / 1994

Well, we're veering a bit off topic. Memory allocated to an application has little in common with a shared resource like the screen, network, or mouse. The application is the sole owner and arbiter of that memory and to force the O/S to manage sloppy allocation/deallocation is always more inefficient than managing your own free memory pool. We are not talking about the same thing. You are talking about managing access to memory chips. I am talking about managing memory space within the application.

My point was that to pick on an O/S because it doesn't make up for your own coding flaws is a bit like blaming your inability to get a date on your ugly sister. It's not your sister's fault. The issue is that Carmack is picking on elements of the O/S that aren't the problem. They are the typical dogmatic issues that WinTel and Unix zealots toss up in the face of any O/S other than the one(s) that they have a giant intellectual investment in.

The fact is that the Mac's VM scheme is poor. Apple has made lame excuses over the years, but there really isn't any reason they couldn't have implemented protected memory spaces if they'd wanted to and done so 10 years ago. But blaming the O/S because you cannot manage the behavior of your own application is a red herring, too.

The bottom line is that Carmack has made a big issue out of the Mac as a game machine (or not). For the life of me, I cannot find any substance in the complaints he makes that cannot be accomodated at the application level. Sure, the Mac OS needs a new tasking/threading model, a modern VM system, an upgraded, debugged file system, and some enhanced network services. But to say that the current suite of O/S services is not sufficient to write a reasonable game application is absurd. Look at what Connectix just did. They EMULATED the top console gaming system on a Mac and from all accounts, it is quite playable. I didn't hear them whining about problems with the Mac O/S as part of their press release or demonstrations with Apple. So what's Carmack's excuse? Sounds like the Connectix guys are just better developers...

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