Hello all. I am looking at buying an Intel iMac at some point, and have read pretty much all the info on how to install Myst V, IV, etc. on Intel Macs, but I haven't seen much on how they actually play once installed. Frame rates, smoothness, graphic quality - not too much there. I'm now on an older G4 with a 1.5 Ghz processor in OS 10.4.8, and I'd really like to know if it'll be worth it to go Intel, or if Myst IV and V play any smoother on the Intel machines. Any comments would be appreciated.

Because Myst IV and Myst V are written for the PowerPC architecture and have not been updated by UbiSoft to a Universal Binary (ensuring the game runs natively on both PPC and Intel machines), the games must be run through the Rosetta interpreter on Intel Macs, which will cause slow-downs compared to natively-running games. It's not quite as bad as trying to play games through Virtual PC, but it's not terribly stellar, as I understand it.

Also, Myst and Riven will [b]not/b] run on Intel-based Macs (unless you do so in Windows though Boot Camp) because Intel Macs do not support the Classic environment for OS 9 and earlier applications. Exile might fare better, but the Bink library for OS X that it uses is horrible with multi-processor machines (including dual-core machines), and causes severe audio skipping and video playback issues when running natively in OS X.

The best news, though, is that UbiSoft has absolutely no plans whatsoever to support any of the games on Intel-based machines! Ever! So until 2008, your best bet for running the games is to probably keep that G4 around or install Boot Camp. After that, the rights revert back to Cyan, so hopefully after that, something will be done about it.

quote:

Originally posted by Alahmnat:
...So until 2008, your best bet for running the games is to probably keep that G4 around or install Boot Camp. After that, the rights revert back to Cyan, so hopefully after that, something will be done about it.

Hmmm. Interesting. Sounds like good advice to me. Once word gets around in '08 (and it will), Cyan will probably have more than a few requests to update the series. Thanx! I guess I'll wait.