Games & MacOS X artikel

Bij Gamers Depot heeft men een artikel geschreven over de toekomst van spellen onder MacOS X. Er wordt onder anderen gesproken over de nieuwe API's van Apple:

Within the architecture of Mac OS X, graphics are addressed as one of the basic blocks of the structure. Apple has dropped their own in-house developed 3D graphics API, QuickDraw 3D RAVE, in favor of the more universally supported OpenGL. The adoption of this standard is one of the reasons John Carmack of ID is now a supporter of Mac OS X. OpenGL, being built into the operating system instead of being an add-on as it is in the current Mac OS, provides solid support for future 3D gaming and gives credence to the Mac OS as a viable gaming platform.

The new way of displaying 2D graphics in Mac OS is called "Quartz". This is based on Display PDF, changed from Display PostScript in earlier developer's releases. Display PDF is an open, unlicensed standard with better benefits than Display PostScript, and does without the licensing payments to Adobe Systems. Display PDF allows 2D graphics to be infinitely scalable, without getting the "jaggies" like current bitmap graphics do. You will be able to magnify a graphic element as much as you want without losing the image quality of the original, rotate an element freely, and change it's transparency level. By making all 2D graphic elements based on vectors instead of bitmaps, Mac OS X will make 2D animation more versatile and esthetically pleasing inside a game that doesn't use 3D graphics.[break]Verder wordt het gerucht gelanceerd dat John Carmack bezig is aan een eigen versie van het nieuwe MacOS, speciaal voor games:[/break]Even the core of the OS itself (called Darwin) is available through open-source agreements for use in the development of other operating systems. Again, John Carmack is all over this as well: he has licensed Darwin from Apple and is developing his own operating system around it, rumored to be one especially for gamers.