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              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC">volume 
                1, issue 4</font></b></font></p>
              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC"> 
                </font></b></font></p>
              <p>  <p><font face="Courier New, Courier, mono"><b><font color="#339900" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Today 
                in loonygames:</font></b></font></p>

<P><font color="#000000" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">New!!</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> The Archives have been cleaned up, fead links fixed, and printable versions restored! Also, don't miss the new comments <a href="../../../index.html">on the front page</a>!</font></p>
              
<P><font color="#000000" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1"><a href="../../2.15/feat/index.html" target="">Livin' 
  With The Sims</a></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">: 
  theAntiELVIS explores the wild and wacky world that is Will Wright's <b>The Sims</b>, 
  asking the inevitable quesiton, &quot;is <b>The Sims</b> the first step toward a virtual 
  life where everyone is Swedish?&quot;</font></p>
<P><font color="#000000" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1"><a href="../../2.15/pixel/index.html" target="">Pixel 
  Obscura</a></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">: Josh 
  Vasquez on <b>Omikron: The Nomad Soul</b>.</font></p>
<P><font color="#000000" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1"><a href="../../rl/index.html" target="">Real 
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              <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1"><a href="../../1.14/feat">NT 
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        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+3" color="#0022A8"> 
          Play Where You Like!</font></p>
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          <font color="#804000"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">By 
          Jeff &quot;<a target="" href="mailto:jeff@solomania.com">nonick</a>&quot; 
          Solomon</font></b></font></p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br>
          </font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">In addition, 
          DirectX allowed programmers to take advantage of the fact that all Windows 
          programs shared a single system driver for each hardware device - as 
          opposed to each program supplying its own driver - so each game didn't 
          need to worry about supporting all of the different kinds of hardware. 
          All programmers needed to do was write to the DirectX API and make sure 
          their programs properly installed the DirectX drivers on the client 
          system.</font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Initially, DirectX 
          met with opposition from many developers who saw it as a feeble and 
          hackneyed attempt to patch together many of Windows' most glaring flaws. 
          Over time, DirectX evolved to provide better performance and easier 
          access to valuable system resources. In addition, Microsoft added to 
          Windows 95 support for the OpenGL graphics library, which is a set of 
          standard graphics routines that are used to produce high quality 3D 
          rendering, and can be used in games to generate superior graphics.</font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Windows NT, 
          Microsoft's high-end version of Windows, has supported OpenGL from its 
          initiation in 1993, but Win95 brought that functionality to home users. 
          There has been widespread debate in the gaming industry about the merits 
          of using Direct3D (the 3D graphics component of DirectX) versus OpenGL 
          for gaming. DirectX was designed from the outset to support games, but 
          has often been criticized for offering performance and features that 
          can't compete with OpenGL. John Carmack has addressed this issue extensively, 
          and often mentions it in his <a href="http://finger.planetquake.com/plan.asp?userid=johnc&amp;id=9801">.plan</a> 
          file.</font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Regardless, 
          Windows now supports both DirectX and OpenGL, and Microsoft has publicly 
          stated its intention to marry the two in a future version of DirectX 
          (most likely version 8.0, which might ship next year - the current version 
          is <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/content/cgi/displayStory.pl?980714.ehdirectx.htm">6.0</a>). 
          The bottom line: Windows is more game-friendly than ever before.</font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Finally, with 
          a reliable set of gaming services available on the most popular consumer 
          operating system, gaming companies began to embrace Windows as a platform 
          standard. This was a very significant event, because it allowed a large 
          portion of the industry to shift its resources from specialized platforms 
          to the PC market in general. The dominance of the Windows platform promised 
          a large audience for each game, which was a welcome change from the 
          limited market share of competing systems that offered proprietary designs 
          and were in no way guaranteed to be around in the future. This is not 
          to say that Windows offered the best gaming environment- far from it. 
          Rather, it offered a massive, untapped audience for developers to market 
          games to, and at this point was finally able to satisfy most of the 
          basic requirements that developers needed in a gaming platform.</font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">With these developments, 
          the gaming industry was becoming more PC-centric than ever. The PC boom 
          was in full tilt, with sales breaking records on a monthly basis, prices 
          plummeting, and power increasing so fast that people began to protest 
          the almost immediate obsolescence of their purchases. And the gaming 
          industry was finally along for the ride, in many respects actually dictating 
          the flow of technology by forcing companies to provide faster CD-ROM 
          drives, more powerful graphics cards, and superior sound systems to 
          fuel their software's insatiable appetite for system resources.</font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">This is basically 
          where we are today. There are several key trends that are currently 
          influencing the industry that will surely continue to shape it into 
          the future. For one, the fact that a large portion of the gaming industry 
          is now directly married to the PC industry has allowed it to grow and 
          mature at an expanded rate. This concept is essential to the dynamics 
          of the contemporary gaming industry. Companies no longer have to write 
          for specific hardware platform generations that remain at set technology 
          levels for a few years and then leap forward. Now, games can take advantage 
          of new technology as it's released, and with the PC industry, that happens 
          every day.</font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Second, the 
          prevalence and popularity of the Internet has allowed for a new level 
          of communication, collaboration, news, and PR to envelop the industry. 
          Everyone involved with gaming, from players to designers to manufacturers 
          to potential customers, can easily get in on the action, stay up to 
          date with the latest information and software releases, and help contribute 
          personally to the expanding industry.</font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> </font></p>
        <p>&nbsp;</p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+1">(<a href="index4.php" target="">continued 
          on next page</a>)</font></p>
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    <td><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"><b>Credits:</b> 
      Illustration &copy; 1998 Mike Sanzone. Play Where You Like! is &copy; 1998 
      Jeff Solomon. All other content is &copy; 1998 <a target="_self" href="http://www.loonyboi.com">loonyboi 
      productions</a>. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited, so don't 
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