MAC version of AA? Maybe not that far away...

[Niklas]

Our external Mac coder "Tompen" has once again contacted us asking if we are still interested in a Mac version. As soon as AA V1.0 is done and ready we will with his help start on a Mac version which hopefully will be available shortly after the PC version has been released.

[DevL]

Yay! Hopefully I won't have to play AA in Virtualbox anymore then.

[alex3337]

I hate to be a bugger ... but is a Linux version even considered?

I can have one of my students do the port as a graduate project

[Niklas]

Linux version not planned. Sorry.

[Xselthor]

This is funny, under wine I have less TDSH 1.0 crash then under Windows however it will be great to see Linux port. Maybe this is not so hard if AA is based on the allegro library which is cross-platform.

[Niklas]

The crashes in TDSH V1.0 was due to some nasty memory leaks. Maybe Wine allows for more leaks than Windows does.

[alex3337]

Originally Posted by Niklas

Linux version not planned. Sorry.

Ok ... let's keep pushing it: how about a Windows mobile version? I would *love* to play TDAA on my smartphone ...

[the_Fifth_Horseman]

Current hardware requirements of TDAA make it very unlikely to port it onto mobile devices.
You may not be aware of it, but all graphics is rendered via software.
We'd have to recode the engine to use hardware rendering first, and that... just isn't happening.

[alex3337]

Originally Posted by the_Fifth_Horseman

Current hardware requirements of TDAA make it very unlikely to port it onto mobile devices.
You may not be aware of it, but all graphics is rendered via software.
We'd have to recode the engine to use hardware rendering first, and that... just isn't happening.

No, I wasn't ... but it only makes it easier to do the port, right? Maybe it will be slow, but I remember watching real-time DivX movies on my 200MHz Pentium. My current phone has a 300MHz processor, with a better pipeline design than the old Pentium had.

As usual, this is just asking "for the sake of it". You all have done already more than enough (and better than most).

[the_Fifth_Horseman]

Originally Posted by alex3337

No, I wasn't ... but it only makes it easier to do the port, right?

No. Software rendering = slower than hardware rendering. MUCH slower. If we were able to use hardware rendering, the game's CPU requirements would plummet down by somewhere between half and three fourth.

Maybe it will be slow, but I remember watching real-time DivX movies on my 200MHz Pentium. My current phone has a 300MHz processor, with a better pipeline design than the old Pentium had.

Read above. AA tends to cough up - severely - on CPUs with less than 1 gHz clock speed. On lowest settings.

[XJ220]

Originally Posted by the_Fifth_Horseman

AA tends to cough up - severely - on CPUs with less than 1 gHz clock speed. On lowest settings.

Ouch...my current computer is a crappy 1ghz pentium III and it suffered a lot on SH 1.0,but you guys said that performance has been improved since that version,will it be enough?...I hate having to use my flamer only after I've made all my moves,but if I don't do it like that my pc slows down dramatically...

Also,out of pure curiosity,why wasn't the game made in the first place with hardware acceleration instead of software accel.? (no,I don't know anything about coding game engines,but still,I'm curious :P)

[mr curtis]

You should be fine, XJ220.
My testing PC is an 800MHz Mobile Pentium III, and it works fine with a few minor tweaks to the settings.

As for why the game was never coded with hardware acceleration from the outset, Niklas would have to answer that one (although it probably has something to do with the fact that Allegro does not natively support hardware acceleration).

[XJ220]

Originally Posted by mr curtis

You should be fine, XJ220.
My testing PC is an 800MHz Mobile Pentium III, and it works fine with a few minor tweaks to the settings.

Great!,I feel relieved,my computer hated large numbers of blips and flames in 1.0...

And yes,I guess that remaking an entire engine to support hardware acceleration would be too much work.

[mr curtis]

The slow down from flames is one of the first things that got fixed in v1.1.
Huge numbers of blips are still a bit of a problem, but Niklas has managed to make the AI phase a lot more efficient in v1.1, so it's a hell of a lot quicker and definitely nowhere near as bad as it used to be.

[Niklas]

Curtis: Thanks for those words, Captain Slow.

[XJ220]

Nice,nice ^^,thanks Niklas!,my computer won't explode!

[the_Fifth_Horseman]

Originally Posted by XJ220

Also,out of pure curiosity,why wasn't the game made in the first place with hardware acceleration instead of software accel.? (no,I don't know anything about coding game engines,but still,I'm curious :P)

It takes specialized knowledge to program an engine that uses hardware acceleration. Niklas had to make do with what he knew or could learn on the fly.

[mostlydave]

Is there still a mac version planned? It would be kick ass to be able to play without rebooting!! I'm also more than willing to do any mac testing!

[Jorgen]

Although I have not discussed this deeply with Niklas the last week I still think there is a mac-version coming somewhere down the line. However I also believe that Niklas will wait with such a version until we have sorted out the most common bugs and maybe added some new content as a mac-version will not be supported like the PC version, mainly because none of us own a mac so we want it to be near flawless from the start to avoid supporting two "different games" at the same time.

[Niklas]

The person in charge of porting the game to Mac has not got time to do it at the moment. He will probably use V1.01 so no Mac version until after V1.01.

And as Jorgen said, the Mac version will not be supported with future updates. It will be that version and nothing more.