Part 3 - The Future of Gaming in OS/2

by The Blue Beetle

Hello Everyone!

It has been quite a while, and I must apologise...no, I do not! The last few weeks has been really exciting for me and for OS/2. Just as I was about to start writing this article, Creative Technology dangled an enticing offer, and I took it. The result is an exclusive review of the Sound Blaster AWE32 in GameBytes Issue 18 and 19 together with Sir Launcelot du Lake.

I also signed in for the wide beta test of Galactic Civilisations, and after getting the game, well, you know what happens when you get a hot game. Boy! Time really flies! But I'm back so let's get down to this article.

The Story So Far...
In part 1, I gave everyone a tour of the OS/2 famliy, discussed a little of the family history, and presented the ground work towards understanding why OS/2 is the premier 32-bit operating system for IBM PCs.

For Part 2, we went into the depths of multimedia capabilities in OS/2, the Virtual DOS Machines (VDMs) and the Win-OS/2 subsystem (Windows in OS/2). We had a look at the intricasies of DOS emulation and support in OS/2, and why some games work well in OS/2 and why some don't. Finally, we dug into the multimedia innards of OS/2. Clearly, OS/2 is an impressive platform for multimedia development, but does that necessarily hold true for games? Afterall, games too contain high quality graphics, music, animation, and the key X-factor, a challenging objective or an intriguing puzzle to solve, all mixed in with a fitting storyline.

So, for Part 3, we should ask ourselves the question: Is OS/2 the gaming platform for the present and future? What additional benefits does the OS/2 platform give to game makers, and to YOU, the game player?

As I mulled over these questions while playing Galactive Civilisations (GalCiv), I thought the best way to illustrate the points would be to anchor it to an existing OS/2 game that takes the operating system to the limits. So, let's explore the future of computer gaming in OS/2, through the eyes of the developers of Galciv.

(** All references to Galactic Civilisations are based on Beta 2 Release 4)

Galactic Civilisations: The Game

GalCiv is developed by Stardock Systems (SDS), and marketed by Advanced Idea Machines (AIMS, who is also marketing SimCitu for OS/2). GalCiv is more than just a game developed to exploit the wide-open OS/2 games market, it is also a mission: to test the capabilities of OS/2, and to show the rest of the orld that OS/2 is an excellent platform, ripe for the development of games never before seen in the PC industry. Those are the aspirations of Brad Wardell, the person responsible for this game's being.

The system minimum requirements for GalCiv is a typical OS/2 setup; a PC with 8MB of RAM, OS/2 version 2.x, MMPM/2 1.1 and a mouse. The game itself installs in 15MB of harddisk space, but I recommend you leave aside at least 10MB extra for disk swap space. Video should be at least VGA, but SDS (and I) recommend at least SVGA 640x480x256. I've found this resolution to be quite restrictive and 800x600x256 is just about right. If you have a 24-bit video board, do try it. GalCiv graphics are 24-bit depth and scales up to whatever resolution you run. Anyone seen a 24-bit (16.7 million) color depth game for a PC yet? Try Galciv, the graphics for the quadrant map backgrounds are rich, and detailed.

OS/2's 32-bit Graphics Engine

So, what's so great about this? DOS and Windows can also handle 24-bit graphics, but not at the speed that OS/2 does it. OS/2's 32-bit architecture allows quick crunching of large bitmaps through the system never before seen on a PC. Before you start warming your flamethrowers, let me just say that to expect a fast moving game at 24-bit color depth is not realistic, and even with OS/2's capabilities, it can be a real hog. Besides, such a game would fill several CD-ROMs. What OS/2 can deliver at its current incarnation is high detail at a high resolution, and I believe a maximum of 65,000 colors is more than sufficient for realism at tolerable performance.

Games like Maxis' range of simulations, Civilisations, Master of Orion and not least, Galactic Civlisations would benefit greatly with increased detail at a high resolution. Hands up for all of you who played SimCity 2000 for Windows at resolutions higher than 640x480x256. You'd all agree that the game got horribly slow, and to no fault of the developers. I played GalCiv at 800x600x256, and the speed was phenomenal! The screen redraws and updates was snap, snap, snap, and I'm only using an ISA Tseng Labs ET4000 video board.

The key element at work is the full 32-bit graphics engine in OS/2, which wields the muscle to push high resolution graphics quick enough to provide high performance graphics. However, there is one caveat; the benefits of this engine is dependant on the video drivers and video board you use. A well support video board with optimised drivers reduces bottlenecks. To reap the full benefits, I recommend a VLB or PCI bus video board. The S3 chipset is very well supported in OS/2, as is the Tseng Labs ET4000/W32p.

Holding everything equal, playing a high detail, high resolution game is, and will be a lot faster in OS/2 than in Windows or DOS. Speed, for high oc-tane action games like Wing Commander, is not really possible as far as I can see. The reason is that the GUI, incurs an overhead that such games cannot afford. What is possible is for game developers to make OS/2- friendly action games, which can be played in a Virtual DOS Machine. Apogee's Raptor and Id's DOOM are excellent examples of such games, other game companies should follow suit.

Multithreading: Behind-the-scenes Magic

I remember fondly playing Empire Deluxe with Sir Launcelot du Lake and Flash. One of the parts I hate about the game is when you sit and watch the computer compute and resolve the game and the computer moves. In most other strategy and compute-intensive games, there is that phase of game play and the round-robin mechanism. The main reason for this is that until now, these games are all hampered by a single-tasking and single-threaded DOS.

In GalCiv, the concept of turns and a resolution phase is obsolete! Each computer player and major components of the game (like the game AI and compu-tations) all run in separate concurrent threads. While you are playing your "turn", GalCiv computes and plays the computer players and other computations like loading and screen redraws, in the background. There is a TURN button in the user interface, but it is there only to demarcate the passing of each game year. You click that button, and continue playing immediately! No pause, no resolution phase, no computer player turns!! This feature can even be dis-abled for an uninterrupted game.

Everything in Galciv moves like in Real Time, and concurrently. Thus, there is a very high sense of realism about the game, which enhances overall game play. Stardock Systems also stress that because of multithreading, the game AI does not cheat like other DOS games, and all players play by the same set of rules. This allows the game developers at SDS to inject a high level of realism in the game, especially with the political, economic and diplomatic relations one can play with alien races and even with your own star systems. The GalCiv developers have provided a huge amount of game data, which the player can call up in the form of graphs and tables. You can micro-manage the entire game (right down to resource allocations for each planet!), or you can play at the high level like a Galactic Emperor. Finally, one can begin to experience what it is like to rule a galactic empire, as so vivdly told in Asimov's Foundation series.

Folks, this is the future of what gaming can be like, and it exist now in OS/2. Multiple player, strategy, simulation gaming on a PC platform. Picture this: mainframe multi-user games with high resolution, high detail graphics, and high degree of realism, right here in your PC. Think about it.

Powerful Multimedia

Those of us who played Critical Path or Iron Helix can agree that Windows- based multimedia gaming can be a less than enlightening experience. The small window for video images doesn't really inspire great game play and to no fault of the developers.

The Windows multimedia engine is really not robust enough for high performance multimedia that we gamers demand. And DOS isn't any better either; if you played 7th Guest you'd know what I mean. The ability of DOS in handling multiple data sources is less than encouraging.

The handling, control and interleaving of inputs from multiple sources is best left for an operating system with a robust multitasking and multithread-ing engine, with a closely integrated multimedia engine. OS/2 is one such powerful operating system for the PC (some would say the only).

Multimedia Presentation Manager/2 (MMPM/2) provides the robust device independent service extensions for OS/2. Galactic Civilisations is a full multimedia gamem, which employs sounds and images from multiple sources. The final release of GalCiv will have AVI video clips, animations, WAVs and MIDI sounds and music.

However, such wonderful capabilities do incur a cost - RAM. Playing in my 8MB OS/2 system is really stretching it, and I've encountered several parts where the sound did not sunchronise with the event (like the sound for an explosion occured after, not together). I really do recommend anyone planning to do serious multimedia in OS/2 to have at least 16MB of RAM. For developers, the benefits of device independence is important, as they only have to write for a single unified API, and leave the low-level specifics to the operating system.

OS/2 also supports yet another important aspect of powerful multimedia: multiple instance of a media type. Ever try to play 2 or more video files in Windows? I have successfully played 4 AVI clips (320x200x256), at 15 frames per second with full sound synchronisation. This is nothing short of impress-ive, and it is happening now in OS/2. This example is a little extreme, but it serves to show that truly powerful multimedia only exist in OS/2 for the PC platform.

The Not so Far Future

Even for non-OS/2 users, Galactic Civilisations will be the game to watch closely in 1994. Although, it isn't the first commercial game to be produced for OS/2 (the credit goes to MicroLearn Nordic for their GamePack Vol.1), it is a landmark product which fully uses the multimedia capabiities in OS/2. It presents new challenges and new possibilities in the computer gaming world. Not only is OS/2 a virgin area for high quality computer games, but the capabilities of OS/2 itself opens up a whole cornucopia of new gaming experiences.

As we speak, Microsoft has annouced that they will be releasing a 32-bit API specially for games and high performance graphics in Chicago (Windows 4.0). IBM isn't sitting still either, they will be presenting OS/2 at the Annual Gaming Convention, and rumour has it that an optimised API for high resolution and high performance graphics is in the works for OS/2.

1994 will be the year when computer gaming will enter a new era. It has been fun doing this set of articles for GameBytes. I thank Ross Erickson for the idea of doing this feature. I also thank Flash for his solid help and guidance in the murky world of MIDI and multimedia, and also to Sir Launcelot du Lake for being such a sporting moving target .

This review is Copyright (C) 1994 by Blue Beetle for Game Bytes Magazine. All rights reserved.