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Some time ago IMG broke the story of the Mac version of GarageGames' engine dubbed V12 currently in the works. This is the same game engine that powers Tribes 2, and a Mac version of V12 would surely increase the chances of seeing a Mac port of this game as well. Today we got more information on the project from David Chait, the man behind the Mac version of V12. David has worked with the Mac OS for many years and is the founder of Reality Bytes.

While Mac V12 is still very early in development, is does compile and run, which is quite a feat in itself. Carbonizing the code is proving to be a challenge, but the benefits (like OS X compatibility) will be great. There are still some graphical glitches, and the sound will probably end up using Creative's OpenAL and/or EAX. Other optimizations like Altivec are further down the road, but still on his list as well. Here's a quote explaining what all of his work might mean for V12 and Tribes 2:

So yes, it means that V12 games should be able to be released
for the Mac, of course with some smaller incremental effort.
As any developer knows, having it build multi-platform is one
thing, but really testing and releasing on multiple platforms does
take some extra work. It's always been my belief that doing
simultaneous development minimizes that extra work, and as
Reality Bytes proved it is well worth the added effort.

As for Tribes 2, I can't comment much since I don't know a
great deal about the game-specific code. I'm certainly open
and interested into whether my work on V12 can be applied
to bringing T2 to the Mac, but that's up to Dynamix/Sierra.

GarageGames Web Site

IMG News: V12 Running on a Mac, Tribes 2 Soon?

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