The Macintosh has always been lacking in the shoot-em-up department. Now Apple Computer Inc is trying to tempt the games developers onto the system with a brand new set of fast multimedia application programming interfaces. The ‘Game Sprockets’ software development kit includes everything from application programming interfaces for graphics acceleration, to three-dimensional sound drivers, digital joystick support and the code needed to write multiplayer networked games. The company claims that the free code, available from its http://www.apple.com Web site, profoundly simplifies the authoring and creation of entertainment and edutainment titles, while at the same time providing powerful access to the hardware. At least, that’s the theory. In a nutshell, the software development kit includes NetSprocket – an Internet communications and multi-player gaming application programming interface; the SoundSprocket three-dimensional sound and Sound Manager application programming interface; the Speech-Sprocket-speech recognition programming interface; InputSprocket for digital joystick control and input device programming interface; the DrawSprocket multiple buffering-display control programming interface and QuickDraw 3D RAVE – which gives multisystem access to hardware three-dimensional graphics accelerators. The programming interfaces work with Apple’s QuickTime and QuickDraw suites. The company says that a number of leading Mac and Windows authors, including Bungie Software Inc, Interplay Productions Inc, LucasArts Entertainment Comp?any, PF Magic Inc, and Reality Bytes Inc are already evaluating sprockets – although there are no guarantees that they will be using it. QuickDraw 3D RAVE is already written for multisystem use, but there is no indication that Apple intends to make the effort to implement the rest of Sprockets for Windows. Looking at the technology in more detail, NetSprocket is said to provide standard user interface dialogues for configuration, log-in, and hosting a game across the network. It is possible for gamers to use multiple protocols in a single session and messages can be point-to-point, multi- cast or broadcast. The new three-dimensional sound technologies accessible via SoundSprockets assign specific velocities and positions to the listener and each sound channel. As game play progresses, position and movement changes. Apple says that the technology simulates sound effects such as the Doppler Effect, distance attenuation, environmental reverberation and spatial positioning and can be linked to location data such as the camera position used in QuickDraw 3D. DrawSprocket enables developers to use either double or triple display buffering on the Macintosh system. The application programming interface is designed to optimize use for the best option available on the user’s system – be it true double buffering in hardware, page-flipping, efficient memory copies or the standard CopyBits function call.
