Ahem. Now then. After we’ve made this issue clear, I’ll discuss what I was thinking.
Personally, if the iPad might prove to have a strong enough of an architecture to be able to run GSB fluently, I think it might be a whole lotta fun playing it on a keyboard-less, touch-sensitive, large screen. Plus, the target audience of the game will grow to Mac users.
But this is just an idea.
Yes, I’m aware there are effort/profit considerations, and I know the game isn’t compatible with Mac now, and importing it to Mac will take a lot of time.
But this is just an idea.
Also, this product can actually give the opportunity to many developers to import their games to Mac, thus enlarging their audience. I think the iPad has the potential to become a great living-room gaming platform. I can see myself playing strategy games (e.g. Solium Infernum, and other turn based games) on this platform, if they were available.
I will admit based on the teeny bit of info I have on the iPad that it sounds like GSB would be pretty slick on that interface.
Not that this benefits me in any way, since there’s no place in my life for an iPad. But I have a pretty good imagination and I can see where a lot of people would be very into it.
The idea hadn’t even entered my head. Until you put it there anyway.
Damage_13, I have to disagree. My old laptop was barely 1.4Ghz with a slow FSB and 1GB of ram, but it still plays Age of Kings just fine and does everything it should. The difference between that old thing and the iPad is that the iPad is optimized for graphics and processing, and has a GPU in the A4 chipset. My old laptop barely has any graphics capabilities, but I bet you I can run GSB on it! GSB does a lot of decorative stuff with graphics that could be easily down-scaled onto the iPad.
And I did hobby game design for ~8 years or so, and have programmed for as many, &c. There is no technical reason that GSB cannot be redesigned to work on the iPad. I’m not some ignorant guy saying this.
how is that possible? i tried it on my 1.8 GHz computer with 512 Mb RAM and it didnt work … are you sure that you dont just have multiple processors? (because mine was a single core and a dual core of 1.4 or even 1.0 GHz is better than what i have)
It’s safe to say that you don’t have enough RAM. 512Mb RAM will barely contain XP plus a browser, let alone a video game like GSB. My old laptop is a 1.4Ghz celeron single-core, but it has 1Gb of ram.
If you mean that it has little graphics capabilities, that’s due to its graphics chipset. GSB is really light on the graphics effects when on high, so if I cut out half the effects I’m sure it’d run just fine. However I don’t know how I’d download a full install of the latest version and update it on that system, because it is a dedicated offline system.
I’ve got a 500mhz machine, with 384 mb of RAM. Maybe the game is running terribly slow, and i don’t know any better.
What’s odd is that; a few days ago; the game totally sped up; as though some great optimization had been slipstreamed in.
The next day, after downloading the 1.31, it was slow again.
When it’s slow (most all of the time), the sliders in the deployment screen have a real ‘lag’ about them. Dropping ships has a lag-time as well.
For that one moment the other day - and for whatever reason - all of the sliders and ship-dropping in the deployment screen were totally ‘crisp,’ and the game was running about 3 times as fast in the actual battle, as i’d ever seen it before. The next day, the speed increase was gone.
So, I don’t know what’s up with this machine. Apparently it doesn’t have nearly the minimum specs for running the game, but manages to do so anyway. And one time, it ran the game great…
Could possibly be RAM related. GSB uses more RAM than I would have guessed it using. Maybe something I should look into one day.
Is the deployment screen only slow AFTER you have already played a battle? The battle screen is where all the CPU and RAM kicks in. If you just fire up GSB and go to the deployment screen, it should run quite fast even on an old CPU.
Maybe
I’ve just made some changes, for 1.32 that may speed up things for you. That screen had a lot of texture swaps, and it has quite a few less now, so you may notice a speedup in future.
I’m reactivating this thread. By now we know that the iPad (and iPad gaming too) is a huge success.
This game would have a GIGANTIC potential on the ipad and since there is now a mac-version… to get to the point: I’d love to see an iPad version and would be glad to spend some dollars on it!
