For any technically inclined gamers out there, I've got a few naïve questions about UT for the mac:

Don't Macs lack glide and rave APIs? How does UT render graphics for a mac? UT says it doesn't need a specialized video card, so does this mean that a RADEON won't improve frame rates for UT? Why is UT such a memory hog?

Just curious about what's up with this game.


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[Leonard]

RAVE IS a Macintosh standard API. Glide is also available on the Macintosh with a Voodoo graphics card.

UT does need and will use a specialized video card. Running in software rendering mode is too slow. UT can use any ATI Rage 128 card, ATI Radeon, 3dfx Voodoo 3, 4, 5, or Proformac video card.

UT is a memmory hog most likely because it stores alot in RAM. The whole program, textures, the current map, and a lot of other data as well as the rendering engine software in the case of RAVE rendering.

[blizzard]

I recall that when Unreal was released, the Mac gaming community suffered collective shell-shock regarding its memory requirements (which, ironically, seem pretty low now). Westlake explained that yes, Unreal took a lot of memory, but in fact, on a PC it required between three and four times MORE than it did on a Mac, because Westlake had done so much in the way of optimizing it. It's just that on a PC, the memory allocation - how much RAM is given to which application - is all done automatically, whereas on a Mac it has to be manually set, which brings the memory use to the user's attention. Aside from that, the memory is put to use holding all of those textures you see flying around on your screen. RAVE also works for UT on Rage Pro cards, as well as some Rage II's with maxed out VRAM (video memory). Glide works with Voodoo 1 and 2 cards on Macs too; I have a Voodoo 2 as I am writing this. But all of these cards are older than what Leonard has listed, and so will not play games as fast as his cards.

Something I've always found interesting is the fact that when you compare Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament, UT seems so inferior technically. For example, UT requires around 175000 megs of RAM, if I recall correctly. Quake 3, with its more advanced graphics engine and all, only requires 75000. Quake 3 seems to get more frames per second on my (admittedly old) Power Mac G3/266, even though again its graphics are more 'advanced'. And Quake 3 even uses OpenGL, which is currently quite poor in implementation on the Mac platform. UT eschewed OpenGL for that reason and used RAVE, which is more mature and much faster than OpenGL currently is. Just a couple of interesting points.

Thanks, your posts were very informative. How much RAM should I allocate to UT? Will UT use everything you give it for storing textures and whatnot? I've got 256MB RAM, so should I give UT something like 200MB?



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[blizzard]

Yes, give it as much as you possibly can and you will be rewarded.

Blizzard.

[imacman11]

Yeah...I have 256MB also. After the system sucks up about 40 megs, I end up with something like 217 or thereabouts. I give UT a min of 150 and a preferred size of about 190....that way I can also have ICQ run in the background...but if you don't have anything like that or don't want to, give it about 5 more megs...but don't suck up all the ram, it could cause weird system things if you toggle between full screen and window...

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Thou shalt go forth and spread the iWord.
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imacman11@bigfoot.com
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www.themacgod.com