Mac mini requirements for torque development?

#1 Theres already a number of people using mac mini's to dev on...

www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=24838

#2 A Mac mini is a great development platform for TGE as long as you keep a few things in mind. My experience so far is extremely limited due to time constraints because of work work, so I can only give an "out of the box" summary.

You can use a standard USB keyboard and mouse with no problems whatsoever. Tiger (10.4+) even makes it easy to swap the keys around to emulate the Mac key configurations (so the CMD key is where you expect it to be). If you don't like the single mouse button, a USB mouse is great and AFAIK are all supported by default (can't speak for buttons 4+ from my own experience).

When I say "performance is adequate", I mean it. I've seen some threads on Mac-specific optimizations, but I haven't had the time to test them out yet. The performance when you download and build vanilla torque is OK, but definitely not stellar. The biggest problems seem to be around portals - severe framerate dips around interior/exterior transitions or looking from an interior out to terrain. If you're developing a fairly "open" game with mostly terrain and very few DIFs, you'd be able to develop and optimize pretty well. I don't know how much the optimizations posted on GG will help, but I seem to remember reading that some of them are significant. I also don't know if any of these optimizations have been merged in to HEAD/1.4, or if they are still only resources at this point.

With 256MB of RAM, you are going to be limited. With XCode and a couple of apps running (Safari, terminal, etc), you will be swapping like hell, and you'll feel it. I would guess that with 512MB it would be survivable, and if money is a prime factor, you could probably make do with this (but I would only plan to stay that way for as long as it takes you to save up for 1GB). With 1GB, you're doing pretty well, and you won't be swapping unless you really load up on running apps. I noticed marked performance increases when I went from 512 to 1GB. You'd probably be best to get the 256MB and get 3rd party memory upgrades and DIY (google for that, and take their recommendations for using a *narrow-edged* paint-scraper seriously. It will save your mini's case).

Now that I've written that, I should add that the assumption is that you're doing C++ mods and using XCode as a primary part of your dev environment, debugger and all. If you are just getting started, and doing most of your work in script, 512 might be more than adequate (as long as you carefully choose your text editor to minimize the memory footprint.

(continued)

#3 Sound issues. If you are working in Tiger, the default OpenAL libs don't work at all. I don't remember enough about how I solved that to give a step-by-step, but I will say that the threads posted here give mixed results. I've been meaning to pull together a beginning-to-end tutorial on how to get this working, but the simplest additional advice I can give is to remember that Mac OS X has at least 2 places you should keep your eye on when adding/replacing system libraries: /System/Library/Frameworks/OpenAL.framework/ and /Library/Frameworks/OpenAL.framework/. I believe most of the problems people have been having, where they say they did everything and it doesn't work is probably related to that (I think I went through a few hours of re-installing drivers before I realized that I wasn't even looking at the right ones when removing the newer drivers). If I ever manage to get some time back for game development, I definitely plan to look in to upgrading Torque to use the newer OpenAL drivers, if there is no issue that prevents it from being possible (and if the local geniuses haven't already done so!).

I have built Joshua Dallman's Shelled! on a Mac mini, and the game is definitely playable (and enjoyable!) with no performance optimizations implemented. There are no DIF models, and DTS models are fairly minimal, but Josh Moore has implemented some pretty dense particle clouds and they don't destroy performance (though the framerates can dip). This with a game in the midst of deep development, where there has been absolutely no performance-tuning yet. I'd be quite confident to say that by the time its finished, Shelled! will run great on a mini.

With a little bit of care, optimization and good level design, I think the Mac Mini is a wonderful target platform for TGE. I would also say that for a developer on a budget, especially one that doesn't mind getting their hands a little dirty, it can be a wonderful development platform too. Just don't expect blistering compile times, smooth debugger performance and 60+ framerates. In my opinion, the developer tools and OS environment more than make up for it, and having access to a (real enough) Unix command line with all the standard tools can provide a wonderful learning environment as well. Having said all that, I wouldn't say its best price/performance ratio by any means, but if you have a thing for OS X, its good.

If you plan to do T2D development, the story gets even better - performance is great.

I've tried not to advocate too much, just relate my own experience, as I haven't yet seen too much in-depth summary of what its actually like to develop/run Torque stuff on a Mini. Remember also that a lot of development performance is subjective (something I might find unbearable, someone else might see as "just a little more patience is needed"), but I think I'm fairly middle of the road with that kind of stuff. Hope it helps!

Russ

#4 Russ, I will be your friend forever if you post a step by step.

Can you email me? Seriously? We have a production issue with Lore and can use some expert help. Since you don't have an email listed, I'm left to begging :)

edgardner@maxgaming.net

Thanks in advance, I return you to your Mini discussion.

#5 Thanks a lot guys, that really helped.

Especially to Russ for his excellent posting.
There is still one question, that came to my mind:

New Mini Mac's are coming with OSX 10.4 Tiger, which should have all needed development tools included. Is this really so, or do you have to update/upgrade or buy anthing to really get started with torque dev?

-- Markus

#6 I feel more comfy now with my operational plan to rely on an uprated iMac for fairly inexpensive development for OS X. Thanks for the appraisal of the mini!

tone

#7 You will be able to start right out of the box with the mini as long as you have a usb mouse keyboard and a display...(you may have to install the included developer tools or better yet dl the latest from apple's site). Xcode 2 is bad-ass!

#8 I guess this means, Xcode 2 is not part of OSX 10.4, right?

Will have to check the specs on the apple site.

Thanks, again guys.
-- Markus

#9 Still free, but not part of the base install.

I think it was on my iBook disks though, and pretty sure it's available on the Apple site.

#10 Xcode 2 comes with Tiger. You should get them on the CD/DVD combo with the mini.

If you have broadband (who doesn't, any more?) then you can easily download the 750 MB disk image.

EDIT: I didn't buy anything additional to work with TGE on my PowerBook. It already comes with everything.

#11 @Scott: What are you using for your development tools for shapes, animation, interiors, etc?

#12 Considering I want to mostly work on a T2D project for now, I'll be using Poser and Blender (along with PhotoShop CS and Illustrator CS).

When I get the notion to work on a 3D app, I'll probably use Maya or Blender, since I don't really care for LightWave (I have both).

For the interiors, I'll probably use Quark under Virtual PC (ugh) or just use my wife's laptop.

I haven't had much time to do anything productive, since I'm in the middle of moving houses. At least I have my computers here. YAY!

#13 Sounds about right. Hey, maybe when I'm ready to dive into shape building Constructor will be out...

One can hope, at least...