OS/2 e-Zine! - Games, Lies, and OS/2

Games, Lies, and OS/2

- by Jim Thomas

Games...

S/2 is a wonderful platform for developing games and multimedia applications, despite some (rather blatant) limitations in the design and implementation of the multimedia and direct to video (DIVE) interfaces. Once overcome, these problems fade away and a fairly solid platform for games emerges.

The history of games on OS/2 is interesting...

First came the standard games like solitaire (klondike) and chess. Then came the third party games. SimCity Classic was the first of these, but had horrible performance problems because it used the OS/2 GPI (DIVE construction had not started yet). Galactic Civilizations, which used the standard OS/2 multimedia interface, got hit for its quirky interface and memory problems.

DOOM for OS/2 was also being worked on during this period, and was the first game that really stressed the components of OS/2. It soon became clear that the multimedia subsystem of OS/2 had some major problems and that all of these problems would have to be addressed and either fixed or worked around if DOOM/2 was ever going to get released by IBM.

Since then, more (and better) games have appeared such as Galactic Civilizations 2 from Stardock and SimCity 2000, SimTown, and Widget Workshop from MAXIS. These games are more performance oriented, and have their own direct screen and sound mixing interfaces. And there are more games in the works, both new development and ports (are there any golfers out there?).

Lies and OS/2...

First, they said games were the consumer focus... Now, the rumors are flying about the future of games on OS/2. IBM's recent announcements have put into question the future of OS/2 as a gaming platform. It is now very clear that if there is to be a future for games on OS/2, it will have to be resurrected by the game consumers, and the developers that believe in OS/2.

So have fun and support games on OS/2!

Jim Thomas is President of SoftPort (formerly WinWare Corporation), which ports games and multimedia applications from/to most platforms and set top boxes. SoftPort ported the MAXIS games mentioned above to OS/2. Jim also ported DOOM and DOOMII.

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