Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!ted
From: ted@cs.utexas.edu (Ted Woodward)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games
Subject: Re: Ultima series
Message-ID: <87@syrian.cs.utexas.edu>
Date: 19 Nov 90 19:58:58 GMT
References: <1990Nov8.215859.19374@isis.cs.du.edu> <1990Nov10.190258.22843@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> <84@sahara.cs.utexas.edu> <10205@helios.TAMU.EDU>
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Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
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In article <10205@helios.TAMU.EDU> n074ez@tamuts.tamu.edu (Joe Bezdek) writes:
>Oddly enough, I was looking at the IBM box of Ultima VI, and on the
>back it includes among its disclaimers: Macintosh and Apple II are 
>registered trademarks of Apple Computer.

>I don't know what this means, if anything.  But it may be a ray of
>hope.  I myself can see no reason why a game that can run on an
>IBM with VGA can't run on a Mac II with very few changes (cosmetic).

Actually, if you are smart when you 1st write the program, you can.  What you
need to do is come up with your own set of screen libraries and only use those,
not machine dependent stuff.  Then you write the libraries for each machine
using the machine dependent stuff only in the library code.  So, if you wanted
to draw a bitmap, you call your bitmap drawing routine.  The calls are the same
in your source, but the libraries do things differently inside.
Of course, you have to add menus for the mac, and change the input to event
driven, but you can write the original so that is not very difficult.

It's still not easy, per se, but if you write the original to be machine
independent it's a lot easier than what we have been lead to believe.

And once you do this, all subsequent programs can use this library so port of
those programs are much easier too.


-- 
Ted Woodward (ted@cs.utexas.edu)

Mad scientists HATE shopping for shoes -- Peaches