This is very experimental work, to figure out the possibilities for games of the future, designed for G4's from the ground up. As such, it's very preliminary. The art and sound fx are placeholders. The engine has some leading edge features and is a work in progress.This is pre-alpha software, so has bugs. Play at your own risk!
Currently, we are using the application as a time demo, to compare how fast different machines are. It works on 604's, G3's, and G4's. It should be a lot faster on a G4!! Note - this is a real world application, so gives real world performance. The demo does everything a full game does - plays sound effects, allows you to navigate and shoot, alter your preferences, show pictures, run AI + physics, draw 3D. It runs for a fixed period of 1000 frames, and then shows the average speed (frames per second) over that time. Currently, we don't know of any other game engine designed ground up for the G4, so G4TimeDemo should really show how much faster games can be on a G4 vs G3 or 604/603 machines.
System requirements
200 MHz or faster Power Macintosh™,
640x480 screen in thousands of colors,
24 Megabytes or more of free RAM,
15 Megabytes hard disk space.
3D hardware card with at least 6 Megabytes of VRAM - we recommend ATI RagePro and Rage128 cards.
The 3D in iMacs rev B, C, & D are fine. Beige G3's may not have enough built in memory, so please use a second ATI card. Blue and White G3's and Graphite G4's should be excellent!
The software requires System 8.1 or better.
The demo requires QD3D 1.5 or greater, DrawSprocket 1.1.4, and SoundSprocket 1.0. All of these are available from the Apple web site.
How to use the TimeDemo
Double click on the application.
When the 'Play Blobz' screen appears, you may need to set the preferences if you have a an iMac or a 3D card with less than 16 Megabytes of VRAM. Select the Preferences menu item, and set QUALITY to MEDIUM, or LOW, and set COLORS to THOUSANDS. This will allow the demo to run in less Video RAM. Click OK to set the preferences. (If you have a Rage128, keep settings at EXCELLENT or AMAZING, as these use much higher detail textures).
Next, click in the middle of the screen or press a key. The demo will run. At the lower left the current average frame rate will be shown. If the engine auto detects a G4, G4 will be printed. For example, if the frame rate reached 20.1, a G3 or 603/604 would show the text '20.1', while a G4 would show the text 'G4 20.1'.
Note that you can shoot (with the TAB key) or move around (by pointing and clicking) while the demo is running, but doing so will change your frame rate.
After the demo has gone through 1000 frames, the game will stop, and a dialog will appear saying "Overall speed XX.X frames per second". This shows the average frames per second for the whole TimeDemo. A larger number means a faster gaming experience. When you click OK the demo will end.
Comparing frame rates
We are trying to build up a table of how future games will compare on G4's vs older machines. We are also looking at what tweaks can be done to G4's to make them go even faster (e.g. turn off all but a few extensions, use THOUSANDS instead of MILLIONS of colors....). You can take an important role in this, by gathering figures on how fast your machine performs.
To measure a good frame rate, run the demo but don't move or fire any shots while it is going. Then, make a note of what the overall frames per second value was on the final dialog. Send the info the comp.sys.mac.action newsgroup. Please do not send any email to Altor - we are very busy with Nightfall and have no means to deal with the emails. Someone will look in on the newsgroup, and put the results as they appear at our web site (http://www.altorsys.com) in the Project B section, and post summaries to comp.sys.mac.action. Then we will have a real figure on how much faster G4 gaming can be!
Guidelines - when posting please include what preferences you were using (number of colors and quality level) and what machine/3D card you were using. Also, if you manage to tweak it to go faster, please let everyone know what you did.
Known Bugs
If the TimeDemo does not find a video card which it can use (e.g. not enough VRAM for all those juicy textures) the 3D world will be drawn as black. It will still run the TimeDemo, but you won't see anything, and any results will be invalid. To fix, try reducing the Quality and Colors in the Preferences.
On some 3Dfx cards, the world will be drawn, but the figures showing the frame rate won't. Sorry - please use ATI cards for now. n.b. Just because it does not work on some current 3D cards does not mean it won't work on future cards ;-)!
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Read Me for G4TimeDemo v0.3.2, by Altor Systems Inc.
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