1. General Questions
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| 1.1. |
Why is 3DOSX so slow?
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Contrary to popular belief, 3DOSX
requires very little CPU usage and uses relatively little RAM.
The primary factor in determining the speed at which 3DOSX runs
is your graphics card. If you have a nice GeForce2MX or a Radeon,
the entire application will run very smoothly. If you have a Rage
128 Mobility with 8MB of VRAM, it's not going to run as well. The
best solution is to upgrade your graphics card, however that may
not be an option for laptop users. The other thing you can do is
to either decrease the screen size (in preferences), or decrease
your color depth.
As far as guidlines go for choosing a screen size, start small
and move up. There's usually a very clear threshold as far as having
fair performance and really bad performance.
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| 1.2. |
Won't altivec enhancing your code
make it a lot faster?
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The majority of the slow code takes
place through different subroutines provided by Apple. Apple's
OpenGL code is already vectorized for the G4, so if you're using
a G4, the program is running faster already.
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| 1.3. |
What's the deal with the pool theme?
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Because the OS X interface is Aqua.
So you're basically in an aqua pool.
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| 1.4. |
Why is fog so ugly?
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Get an NVidia card. We're not here
to endorse specific cards, but quite frankly, the fog on NVidia
card is far better looking.
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2. Themes
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| 2.1. |
How do I make my own themes?
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First off, you'll need the Developer
Tools. This shouldn't be a problem since it should come with your
copy of OS X, and it can be downloaded for free off of Apple's
site. Now, step by step:
- Create a folder to hold your theme stuff.
- Go and view the innards of the 3DOSX package. You'll need
to copy Theme.plist to the directory you just created.
- Now, you can use Apple's Property List editor (comes with
the devtools) and edit Theme.plist. The plist itself is pretty
self explainatory, it's just the names of the different graphic
files that you want to use for each wall. Don't change the
version number unless you know what you're doing.
- Copy all of your graphic files into the directory you created.
- You're basically done at this point. But 3DOSX won't read
your themes unless you call your folder .bundle, or follow
the next step so that you can still have a bundle without the
.bundle extension.
- You'll need to use the command line utility SetFile, included
with the devtools, probably at /Developer/Tools/SetFile.
You want to set the bundle attribute, so do something like /Developer/Tools/SetFile
-a B MyThemeFolder, and you're all set! It should get
recognized by 3DOSX and allow you to load your theme.
Note that there is supposed to be a theme editor under development.
No guarantees, though.
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| 2.2. |
Why do my images look all messed up?
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Currently you need to make sure your
images are a power of two, and completely square. The current implementation
also tiles images, so you probably want your stuff to be tileable.
We're going to stretch images in the next release. If you can't
view your images properly, chances are your video card either doesn't
have enough memory to store all of the textures, or your video
card can't handle that texture size. Try a smaller texture.
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3. Random Questions That Deserve
an Answer
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| 3.1. |
Why doesn't OS X support OS 9 labels?
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That's a good question. The best we
can figure out is that label support was not included in OS X due
to several bugs having to do with network mounts. For example,
if you mount something over the network -- more specifically NFS
mounts, and then take a look at it in the 3DOSX browser, you'll
notice that the volume is actually labelled with some sort of color
(probably red or orange), and that you can't really change the
label. Go figure.
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3DOSX 