Mac as a Gaming Platform?

[Ashley Aitken]

Howdy All,

We've recently bought some Mac games for our children.  However, I  
have been dismayed at the (seemingly) lack of integration, and  
difficulty of configuration of controllers for use with Mac games.  I  
just posted a similar message to this on Ambrosia Software's support  
forums.  However, I think this is a more general question / comment  
so I will also post it here.

Of course, Mac games are firstly made to work with keyboard and/or  
mouse because that's what all Macs have by default.  However, if the  
Mac wants to be a real gaming platform (which I assume it does) I  
would think it needs to support a standard (or third-party) controller 
(s).  This is where we are having problems with the Mac (as a gaming  
platform).

We bought some USB controllers (which look a lot like normal gaming  
controllers - 4 way switches, a number of buttons etc.), but the  
setup and configuration of these controllers is anything but Mac- 
like.  We also bought GamePad Companion and USB overdrive shareware  
to help map controller buttons to keyboard/mouse events, but we  
aren't happy with this.

Firstly, the set-up of the controller for each game is time- 
consuming, tedious and ad-hoc (e.g. which controller event maps to  
which keyboard/mouse event).  Secondly,  the setup is difficult to do  
well, getting the right repeat rates, delays etc.  I think this is  
something that should be worked out by Apple and the game developers  
and "just work" for Mac users.

It seems to me that if the Mac really wants to be a gaming platform  
(of some kind and, of course, as well as a general computing  
platform) it needs to have these sort of facilities built-in and,  
perhaps, even a standard Mac controller (to which all games could map  
in a standard way).  I know there is some system software for this  
stuff but I don't believe it is a complete solution (since I need to  
configure/set-up/tune etc.).

Should the Mac have a standard gaming controller(s) (for which  
software developers could pre-configure their games)?

Cheers,
Ashley.


--
Ashley Aitken
Perth, Western Australia
mrhatken at mac dot com email