so, I've decided my Mordor map is better suited to be a DM- than a BL-

also, from the screenshot you can see that
a) the inventory hasn't been given the hawtness treatment yet
b) my laptop has a crappy framerate
c) I still need to finish my integration with SAX
d) Mordor is teh sexitude

The chathud looks like a. But the map is nice, and I see no problem with the inventory, allthough I can see why you would not want to make it THAT blatantly obvious that this game is based on Blockland0002...

And is that the $2000 mac laptop you said you were getting?

Yeah, the chathud makes my eyes sad, but other than that it's excellent.

I'm gonna put more work into it once I finish the sax integration


I have the basis for a MUCH hotter looking one.


no, its the 8/9 year old Toshiba 4600 Pro that I got for free 2 years ago. the mac is being ordered on Monday when I'm home for the first time in a month and a half.

Macs really aren't great at game developing, you ever see a professional game studio running OSX? I don't think so. I think they use customized PCs with linux, but I could be mistaken. If you want the most power out of the hardware you're buying, Linux is your best bet. The next best is Win2000 (unless you can gain access to MinWin), then XP, then Mac, then Vista, in that order.

you don't actually do much programming on them, or use them at all, do you? I've been programming on Apple computers for the last 7.5 years, and have used every Apple OS since System 6, and a couple that are even older.

yes. but this isn't a professional game studio, this is my hobby. I'm buying a Mac because I want to actually enjoy my computing experience, and it will do just fine for the jobs I need it to do.

Bootcamp. but on that subject, I spent two years setting up XP machines at my highschool to run on 128MB of RAM, I know to squeeze performance out of it. I'll be running Vista Ultimate, and Mac OS X with Fink or MacPorts and KDE4.1, as well as a small Ubuntu installation for testing Torque.

Eh, even though I would agree with you there, I can't help but feel like someone is going to point out that you can't just pull ratings out of the air like that. I mean, you could certainly say "I think the best development platforms are, in order, ..." but you can't really say that you definitively get the most power for your power based on how you "feel."

Point is, even though I agree with you, it would be nice to take this opportunity to look at some benchmarks.

Also, be sure to take into account that your specific configuration is going to change a lot of that. I mean, I'm sure that a well configured windows XP install can outperform certain graphically heavy, out-of-the-box Linux distros. Although, in practice, any development studio is likely to have very well configured systems anyway.

I don't actually know what my point is, contrary to the above statement

look at the system requirements for ANY piece of software that list separate requirements for XP and Mac. That's what I based that order on (Vista usually requires more than mac, and mac requires more than XP, windows 2000 was more stable and memory friendly than XP, and Linux has always been the most stable and ram efficient OS, have you seen what ubuntu can do smoothly on 256 megs of ram?). I've still never seen a behind the scenes video of any professional game or movie studio that was running mac. Can it boot XP or 2000? I know it can boot Vista, but what would be the point? I still hate their comercials, collectively they've used less logic and statistic to back up their points than I have. Always focusing on Vista, no matter what the issue is. It's like the republicans always focusing on 9/11.

more memory friendly yes, more stable, depends on which service packs you are comparing. And the quality of the games, and the features available in the os.


no. look at OS X Panther, runs fine on 128MB of RAM,
or better yet, look at Linux back when it was getting started. stability == lol.


Pangeasoft comes to mind, EA develops for OS X, and I know Blizzard used to. Descent, one of the greatest FPS's of all time was developed for Mac OS. Myst was originally Mac only, and all of its sequels were developed for Macs.

as a side note, when you're talking about the hardware of an apple computer ("running on ____") you say "a Mac" or "Macs" but when you talk about the software ("running ___"), you should say "OS X" or "Mac OS X" or use the proper name for whatever version you're referring to (i.e. "Panther" "OS X Tiger" "Mac OS 9" "OS 8" "System 7", etc)
yes, it can boot XP, but since I want to be able to run DX10 games on my laptop I'll be running Vista. with 4GB of RAM (upgradeable to 6) it really isn't a problem. I'm looking at 180GB for OS X, 120GB for Vista, and 20 for Linux. My movie, tv, and music collection will still largely be kept on my external hd (although I might sync the music with OS X partition), as will the active development for TBG.

Look, none of us are denying that the different OSs don't all have their uses. I don't particularly consider Mac OS to be the OS of the business world, but it is certainly great for certain tasks.

Also, when Linux was "just getting started," it was the seventies! Back then, neither of these other OSs was any good either (or even around)!

I don't think the historical comparison can be made for the purposes of this discussion, anyway, since the roles of all the various OSs have changed significantly over the years. People today use them all for things that people ten or fifteen years ago would've used a different OS for.

Points taken. I still hate their commercials. And what's with Windows commercials now? they used to depict smart people like astronauts and engineers who used PCs, now it's all retarded uploaded videos that just make the overall user base look bad. No one cares that you eat pancakes. Since you can boot windows anyway (and from what I've read, Mac's boot windows better than Windows PCs) I can't really bitch about you getting a mac. I guess it would be useful for testing the compatibility of the new engine on mac computers too.

To try to get back on topic, whats the black area to the left, is that solidified lava, or burnt rock or something? I never really saw the movies or read the books.

my map isn't entirely geographically correct for mordor (by which I mean everything is basically in the wrong place), but that's the Sea of Nurn/Lake Nurnen (depending on which map you look at).