Apple and Leadwerks
Entry posted by Josh ·
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I was thinking this morning how Apple has influenced my life and the company Leadwerks. You might ask why I am talking about this, since we are only now coming out with our first product for any Apple operating system. Well, before Windows existed, back in the 1980's, this was my first computer:
The first "game" I ever made was in Macintosh Paint. I drew a road from a top-down view, with barriers randomly placed on either side. I drew a race car, zoomed in the image, and used the selection lasso to cut it from the page. By dragging the selected pixels to the top of the screen, I could make the image scroll, causing the road to move beneath my car, and I had to move the mouse left and right to avoid the barriers. (I tried to forget the order I had placed them in.)
I also used this machine to paint my first textures, before texture mapping was invented. I drew sides of buildings with variations with windows and doors. Although the monitor displayed only two colors, black and white, you could approximate gray by stippling pixels. There was also the option to use colored pencils once you printed out the images. I would print these on paper and then construct buildings out of paper with them, a precursor to the work we would do later with CSG modeling.
My uncle also wrote some of the early Mac games, including "Save the Farm", and "Hot Air Balloon". I actually have the original apps and amazingly they run on my 2010 iMac with an emulator.
Last year, as we began development of Leadwerks3D, I bought my first Apple products in my adult life, including a 27" iMac, iPhone 4, and iPad 2. I've been really impressed with the quality and design of these products, and although I am not quite sure their OpenGL 3.2 drivers are there yet, I think high-end graphics on Mac has a good future. (I had it confirmed from another developer that OpenGL 3.2 MRTs do work on Mac, so I still have some experimentation to do. I suspect the multisampled texture format I am using may be causing a problem...) Ever since I started putting out videos of our new engine running on mobile devices, there has been a tremendous response from developers, both inside the Leadwerks community and beyond.
I think the rise of the iPhone as a gaming device was sort of accidental. They had a device that could run apps, then they discovered people were playing games more and more on them. However, all indie game developers should be grateful Apple developed a thriving ecosystem for third party developers, because without them I don't think we would see the resurgence of indie game development like we have. Even if you are developing primarily for Android, you have to admit that platform would not be as good as it is without the influence of iOS.
In a sea of mediocrity, one man cared about his work enough to make sure that everything his company put out was a cohesive reflection of his tastes and standards. I don't agree with every decision Apple has made, but I have a great deal of respect for the way Steve Jobs had a coherent vision and brought it to life, instead of just blindly reacting to what he thought would make money. He rejected the "low quality, low confidence, low price, low effort" approach the rest of the tech industry has taken, and won. Without him I think Leadwerks would be without what I think will be our most successful platforms, and indie game developers would not have the same opportunities that are present today. We should all be grateful for that.
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