This post is more related to how games are ported and how performance works than Bioshock, I just don't think it warrants a new thread. Anyway, how much do drivers matter to games?
It depends on the situation but we have had a game speed up 40% to 50% with a driver update without updating one line of code! Sometimes you need to alter your code to work with the driver update or sometimes your code is not taking best advantage of the driver and you need to alter the way you do something. Often their are many ways of making an effect but only one of them is the "fast path", keeping on the fast path is key to getting good performance.
Because drivers in Windows are generally better correct?
I would not go that far the Mac driver teams work very hard with us on gaming performance. I will say PC drivers have a lot more time and effort put into them as Windows is a much bigger platform so cards are designed for Windows first then moved over to Mac and drivers written using a smaller team.
Is this why games almost always peform better in Windows?
A mixture of the drivers and the 3D libraries. Remember one of the biggest consoles of this generation is the XBox 360 which uses DirectX and other Windows based technologies. This means 3D libraries by Microsoft have a lot more gaming specific development compared to Apple's OpenGL implementation.
What matters more Open GL drivers or the graphics card drivers?
Impossible to say depends on the graphics feature used and the specific game. It varies from game to game.
From what i've read 's had better Intel (HD 300) drivers than in Windows.
Perhaps (I don't know how good/bad they are on Windows), in our recent games like BioShock 2 and DeusEx we have started getting close to the HD3000's theoretical performance maximum so soon it will not longer be able to run modern Mac games.
I understand Open GL libraries are also important. How does that work?
The GL libraries give you features you can use to make different effects, one of the challenges is making the same effect work in GL that worked in DX.
Apple updates them every OS don't they? So Mountain Lion would have the latest and greatest? Would this improve performance on it's own or would games require rebuilding?
Yes for graphics, being on the latest OS is often well worth it. Snow Leopard is not supported for BioShock 2 (it will run just unsupported) the reason for this is the OpenGL features and the graphics drivers are so much better in Lion compared to Snow Leopard. The HD3000 will not run the game at all on Snow Leopard due to driver crashes and bugs but the same machine will load the game in Lion. The only difference is the software.
From what I gather when you (Feral) port your games to OS X you actually optimize them for OS X.
A large part of the port is making sure the game can be played on the largest number of Mac's possible. As Mac's usually come with lower end cards compared to the PC gaming machines a lot of effort is spent in optimising the game for low end machines like the HD3000.
If I got a MBA with a hd 4000 would gaming performance for Bioshock (or any future games) be better on OS X or Windows?
No clue, the hardware is only just final and no drivers have been finished. It depends on how good the card really is once it is in the real world with real drivers.
I personally would not buy a Mac with an integrated card if you want your Mac to play modern games for more than 18 months after purchase as integrated cards will start out as being medium or even low spec from day one compared to a dedicated card like one from AMD.
This means they have a shorter gaming lifespan. If you just have the casual game then an integrated card will be OK as long as you understand the limitations.
You may remember me posting before, I get far FAR FAR better peformance of Mafia 2 in Windows than OS X. Basically playable vs not. The patch which from what I understand is coming soon will the bring performance to the same as Windows? If a game was developed in house would it perform better?
The slowdown especially on NV Cards is a mixture of a driver optimisation bug and Feral's port jumping off the "fast path" on NV cards in certain situations. The patch will should bring the performance with our normal PC/Mac margins on those machines effected.
In house development could be a little better but it also can be a little worse. We have had well over 10 years experience of making Mac games and the issues you get on the Mac and PC platform when porting. That can be learnt but it is getting more and more complex to do not less as games grow.
10 years ago we had games with 500MB of source code and data assets and 8 shaders. Recently we got a game with 1.5TB (1,500,000MB) of data and almost infinite shader generation which is about 3000 times more complex!
Considering the time of porting a game, I find myself not gaming much in OS X if I want to play the latest and greatest. Will this improve?
Yes, just look back to the number of Mac games 5 to 10 years ago and look now, we have more and more games closer to the PC release. It will take time but the aim is always to decrease the gap.
Also it seems the majority of games i'm keen to play are never ported (with the exception of a few). I would love GTA V, Max Payne 3 and Hitman absolution ported.
Sorry for all the questions this to me is just very interesting
Simon
Porting games costs serious money so you can only choose games that will make your money back. Licensing costs, porting costs and potential audience have to be taken into account when porting.
You also need to have a company agree to you making the port, you cannot just port a game you need to get the original developers/publisher to agree. When you start digging it gets more and more complex. I cannot go into exact details in some areas but I hope my answers help explain a few things.
Cheers,
Edwin
