Quality games for Mac OS X are beginning to
show up in force. One of the recent ones is called Giants
by game developer Planet
Moon Studio and released for the Mac by game publisher
MacPlay. It is an innovative
game, not only in looks, theme, gameplay and temperament,
but also technologically. Underneath the hood it takes, shall
we say, giant steps forward.
Giants is an OS X native application, and for
those of you keeping score, this native don't do OS 9. That's
right it is OS X only software. Not only that, but it is written
to take full advantage of Apple's top of the line hardware,
namely the dual processor G4 Gigahertz Power Mac. If you have
a dual processor machine the game will utilize both processors
and turn in about a 50% performance improvement over a single
processor machine of the same speed. This is courtesy of the
folks at The
Omni Group who added the multi-CPU support to Giants...
the Intel version doesn't have it. According to Wil Shipley
President, The Omni Group, to his knowledge this is the first
time a game port has also added multi-processing ability to
the game being ported.
The game is very resource intensive, and even
on the Dual processor machine frame rates for the most part
are not through the roof. But it ran well on the two new Tower
Macs listed below. Both the Dual Gigahertz machine and 933
MHz one have the exact same graphics card with the same amount
of video memory.
Without further ado we give you the Giants slayer.....
Difference and similarities in processor and
memory systems of each machine
We ran three sets of tests on these two machines.
The three games settings were High Quality (all the goodies
turned on ... which is the default setting of the game), Medium
Quality (we dialed down about half of the settings), and Low
Quality (almost everything we either turned off or put on
the lowest setting possible). There was actually not a dramatic
amount of difference in frame rates between these three settings.
Once the game was running we obtained frame rates in three
ways. The Average Frame Rate was determined by starting the
default game and having the character "Baz" stand
there just looking out over the ocean for a minute or so.
This is a semi complex scene but probably a tad low to call
it the Average frame rate ... but it was the best way we could
think of to get comparative numbers.
Then we took the fellow out for a jog around
the scene, using the same route each time, and recorded both
the highest and lowest frame rates. The highest frame rate
number is pretty much for fun. You are not going to get this
number very often, unless your idea of great game play is
running around in a circle looking at the same patch of grass!
You will run into the lowest frame rate more often, as scenes
and action becomes more complex.
Though the relative scores paint a good comparative
picture, the frame rate numbers you will get will vary, but
should fall between the numbers listed below.
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