Since Electronic Arts specified that they wanted PGA Tour Golf to be compatible all the way back to system 6.0.3, we know we couldn't rely on the availability of the wonderful GWorld routines provided by 32-bit QuickDraw. All of our off-screen drawing environments were set up using a library of routines we developed before GWorlds became available.
As an independent developer, we were not able to test Golf thoroughly on more than a few machines, so Electronic Arts' beta-testing resources were invaluable in making sure that the code was stable across the entire Macintosh line. They also took advantage of Apple's compatibility testing lab and so were able to try out the program on numerous Macintosh configurations.
Screen Size Issues. To maximize its potential market, we decided to design PGA Tour Golf to run on the "least common denominator" Macintosh screen, which is black-and-white with 512x342 pixels. Since we knew it would need to run in color as well, we decided to have two sets of artwork: one for black-and-white monitors and one for 8-bit color. If the user starts up the application with the monitor set to some other bit depth besides 1 or 8, a dialog informs them that they need to change their monitor setting.
Since Golf relies heavily on bitmapped artwork of a fixed size, we decided that supporting arbitrary screen sizes was not a practical option. For programmatic simplicity and future compatibility, we also decided that the set of color artwork would be the same size as the black-and-white set.
Although we wanted the user to be able to switch out of Golf and into other running applications under MultiFinder, we decided that the user would have some responsibility for maintaining the correct graphics environment while Golf was running. That is, if they started mucking with the monitor depth or ran another program that also took over the color environment, we wouldn't be responsible for the consequences besides making sure our program didn't crash.
For additional information on how to contact Robert McNally of The Dreamers Guild, please see the "Macintosh Game Developer Talent" listing in the Developer Tools, Talent and Training section.
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