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macOS Will my macbook suffice for a basic 3d game?

S

soiheardyoulike

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 16, 2008
4
0
A while ago I made a game that used opengl, textures, and sdl. This game was a flight game and I dont think it was that advanced graphically. I currently own a macbook with 4 gb of ram, a dual core processor, and a intel 900 series integrated chip. I know this isnt that great for a 3d game, but is it possible for me to make a slightly more complex game on this mac? I looked at the mac app store and almost every game says that, this chip is not supported.

I guess my question in short is , will the macbook i have suffice for making and learning about the OSX way of making 3d games?

Thanks

PS:The previous project was made on windows
 
robvas

robvas

macrumors 68040
Mar 29, 2009
3,240
629
USA
Build it and find out. You can always reduce textures, scene depth, and number of polygons to make it run on your hardware.
 
S

soiheardyoulike

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 16, 2008
4
0
Good advice. After trying it out and downloading some games like KoTOR (Which is way more advanced than what i am doing), it does seem like a good platform to start with.
 
KnightWRX

KnightWRX

macrumors Pentium
Jan 28, 2009
15,046
4
Quebec, Canada
I think the best way to forever answer this question these days is to think back to this screenshot :

Unreal+OST+Unreal0051.jpg


Anytime you wonder if your MacBook can run "3D this or that", think to that screenshot, realise it ran on a GPU with about 8 MB of memory, on computers barely reaching 350 mhz.

This should answer your question most everytime.
 
robvas

robvas

macrumors 68040
Mar 29, 2009
3,240
629
USA
KnightWRX said:
I think the best way to forever answer this question these days is to think back to this screenshot :

Unreal+OST+Unreal0051.jpg


Anytime you wonder if your MacBook can run "3D this or that", think to that screenshot, realise it ran on a GPU with about 8 MB of memory, on computers barely reaching 350 mhz.

This should answer your question most everytime.
Click to expand...

Don't forget that in those days, Unreal ran at 'only' 30fps and 'only' 640x480 - which is about 1/4 the resolution of a 13" Macbook
 
J

jonnymo5

macrumors 6502
Jan 21, 2008
279
0
Texas
For learning it will have plenty of power. You will be working with pretty small scenes while you are getting down the concepts. The Macbook can even handle very advanced graphics on a small scale. Start with what you got, upgrade as needed.
 
KnightWRX

KnightWRX

macrumors Pentium
Jan 28, 2009
15,046
4
Quebec, Canada
robvas said:
Don't forget that in those days, Unreal ran at 'only' 30fps and 'only' 640x480 - which is about 1/4 the resolution of a 13" Macbook
Click to expand...

Oh noes. :rolleyes:

Actually, it ran at 60 fps on my Voodoo 2, in 800x600. The GMA 910 is quite overpowered enough to run Unreal engine these days and if your game reaches those levels of graphics, well, you probably don't even have to ask this question to begin with as you probably already know the answer. ;)
 
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