So I just tried to run this on my iMac G5 iSight (on Leopard) and it runs way better than on my PowerBook G4 but still not to the point where I would consider it playable. Nevertheless it is getting closer. I think it is safe to stay that in this state this alpha is only enjoyable (apart from the glitches and bugs) on a dual core / dual processor G5.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
GTA III on the PowerPC
- Thread starter pakra
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Agreed and even on a quad it’s pretty buggy and has lag spikes now and then. I played it a few times and haven’t been able to get through the first mission without crashing at some point. None the less though it’s very impressive they got this working at all and I’m thrilled! I hope they are able to have more sucess and I am glad they are sharing it with us. ❤️
Just a quick heads-up that version 0.2a of GTA 3 for PPC has just been released on the macgarden.
Bugfixes:
• Mouse is now captured by the game but turning counter-clockwise still doesn't work properly.
• Slight performance improvement due to updated SDL2 dylib
• All remaining graphics glitches on OS X Leopard should be resolved now
More feedback would be welcome.
Bugfixes:
• Mouse is now captured by the game but turning counter-clockwise still doesn't work properly.
• Slight performance improvement due to updated SDL2 dylib
• All remaining graphics glitches on OS X Leopard should be resolved now
More feedback would be welcome.
Hey all,
I've been pretty busy and haven't had much time improving the port, except for the points that thedoctor said above. We're also doing some work trying to port other reverse-engineered games like Xash, and I've personally been checking out other kind of software to port to PPC, like dosbox-x and others.
With re3, I've been trying to research and learn more about how opengl works and why it's particularly troublesome, and using the opengl profiler i've noticed a few selected gl functions are actually being run in software emulation - so @alex_free, you seem to have been correct about that. I've tried reading through the documentation but it's difficult to grasp - from what I understand, software emulation gets going when some features aren't accessible by the hardware. But I don't understand why the profiler marks a simple function like glDrawElements to be software rendered. That's been part of GL forever.
In other news, re3 recently got back to github as the takedown was reverted. Thus my worries are alleviated and I replayed my PPC changes on top of the new commits the re3 team made between february~today and pushed it to a public repo. @Xeno and @alex_free - feel free to check out the changes i've made here. (* note that the 0.2a build is not of this repository, it is based from the re3 code before the takedown in february)
I've been pretty busy and haven't had much time improving the port, except for the points that thedoctor said above. We're also doing some work trying to port other reverse-engineered games like Xash, and I've personally been checking out other kind of software to port to PPC, like dosbox-x and others.
With re3, I've been trying to research and learn more about how opengl works and why it's particularly troublesome, and using the opengl profiler i've noticed a few selected gl functions are actually being run in software emulation - so @alex_free, you seem to have been correct about that. I've tried reading through the documentation but it's difficult to grasp - from what I understand, software emulation gets going when some features aren't accessible by the hardware. But I don't understand why the profiler marks a simple function like glDrawElements to be software rendered. That's been part of GL forever.
In other news, re3 recently got back to github as the takedown was reverted. Thus my worries are alleviated and I replayed my PPC changes on top of the new commits the re3 team made between february~today and pushed it to a public repo. @Xeno and @alex_free - feel free to check out the changes i've made here. (* note that the 0.2a build is not of this repository, it is based from the re3 code before the takedown in february)
Last edited:
Excellent job. I think jobs like this should be rewarded, people should stop being petty and donate some money to your project to encourage and reward your good work.
I would like to donate myself, but I live in Brazil, my money is worth very little compared to the dollar, and living conditions here are not easy. But I leave all my macs at your disposal, if you need testing, or imaging, you can count on me.
I have any experience with modding in gta 3d series, does RE3 use txds? I could compress textures further, change resolutions, to make it playable on older macs. I did this once, and was able to run GTA3 on a Compaq Armada 1750 Pentium 2 notebook with an ATI 8Mb vram graphics card.
I would like to donate myself, but I live in Brazil, my money is worth very little compared to the dollar, and living conditions here are not easy. But I leave all my macs at your disposal, if you need testing, or imaging, you can count on me.
I have any experience with modding in gta 3d series, does RE3 use txds? I could compress textures further, change resolutions, to make it playable on older macs. I did this once, and was able to run GTA3 on a Compaq Armada 1750 Pentium 2 notebook with an ATI 8Mb vram graphics card.
A friend of mine had (or still has) a powermac g5 that was an xbox 360 development station, or something like that. I don't know much about it, but I can say that I saw with my own eyes, a powermac G5 running Halo from xbox 1, and some xbox 360 games. There was no console connected to the machine, it had a microsoft SDK, and even a graphical video game interface.
It wasn't just any game that would run on it. Some games were slow, or simply crashed, were incompatible, etc... I believe the console is more powerful than that G5 (I don't know the configuration).
I haven’t gotten around to trying this game yet but for something that has these requirements on PC should be able to run on anything on the higher end of thr G3 spectrum.
The problem is definitely software related probably due to using things like OpenGL 2.x which wasn’t even a thing when the game came out.
I believe that a hd image of one of these G5 devkits would suffice for anyone to run xbox games, maybe someone who understands a little programming, can fix some things, so we would have an xbox emulator for g5 powermacs.
But that would be a subject for a new topic...
But that would be a subject for a new topic...
Yup. I was referring to the leaked version which apparently requires a X800XT (https://www.journaldulapin.com/2019/01/21/power-mac-g5-sdk/)
Never tried it myself though. When reports of the leak surfaced prices skyrocketed - if you could/can (still the case) find one. So off to ebay it went
Mine really was in like new condition. Not sure (its been a while) but I believe someone offered 250 bucks for it. Seemed like a good deal at the time. Today … not so much.
Bought it myself off ebay around 2014, when a company specialized in repairing Macs apparently flushed their inventory selling off in excess of 100 cards for maye 60 apiece (bulk packaging)
I tried to compile it on Debian Sid PowerPC today.
There are many compiling errors.
SDL_window does not name a type SDL_Window* window;
I added <#include /usr/include/SDL2/SDL.h> to crossplatform.h. After that it builds up to 76%.
Then next compiling errors. Cannot convert 'SDL_Window' to 'GLFwindow' and dirent has no member named 'd_namlen'.
I tried the version from this git: git clone --recursive https://github.com/GTAmodding/re3.git
It compiled but re3 can't load TXD files.
Code:
git clone --recursive https://github.com/parulina/re3.git -b ppc
conan export vendor/librw librw/master@
mkdir build
cd build
conan install .. re3/master@ -if build -o re3:audio=openal -o librw:platform=gl3 -o librw:gl3_gfxlib=glfw --build missing -s re3:build_type=RelWithDebInfo -s librw:build_type=RelWithDebInfo
conan build .. -if build -bf build -pf packageThere are many compiling errors.
SDL_window does not name a type SDL_Window* window;
I added <#include /usr/include/SDL2/SDL.h> to crossplatform.h. After that it builds up to 76%.
Then next compiling errors. Cannot convert 'SDL_Window' to 'GLFwindow' and dirent has no member named 'd_namlen'.
I tried the version from this git: git clone --recursive https://github.com/GTAmodding/re3.git
It compiled but re3 can't load TXD files.
Last edited:
Long time ago I ran GTA3 on Pentium1 225 Mhz, RAM 192 MB, GeForce 2 128 MB. On the second island there were places with lags, but in common it fast.
Before that I had 160 MB of RAM and RivaTNT2 video. It is already slow, sometimes a slide show, but not everywhere, in some places it was fast. But.. the graphics are excellent and despite the speed it was playable. More precisely, it was playable for its time. Comparing with the work on the Powerbook G4 is not even appropriate.
Conclusion: GTA3 practically does not require any processor performance or RAM. It's just that the alpha version for PowerPC uses software emulation video. It is the main reason for the low speed of work and graphic artifacts.
Yes.
I think the problem is the game was originally DirectX on PC, and didn’t get an OpenGL port to other platforms until recently and because of that was unfortunately ported to a version of OpenGL newer than the game.
This makes me wonder what rendering engine the OS on the PS2 uses.. It obviously wasn’t DX. GTA was never an XBOX exclusive. And for those that don’t know a PS2 is a 333MHz MIPS CPU with 32MB of RAM. I don’t know anything about it’s OS or other software though. I assume it’s closed source unlike the PS4 and PS5 (those run FreeBSD).
RenderWare is a game engine not a graphics API. API might not be the correct term, but I mean it is a game engine similarly to how Unreal or IDtech is a game engine. OpenGL, DirectX, Metal, are what I mean by "graphics APIs".
I'm fairly certain OG GTA III used DirectX, as DX 8.1 is listed in it's original system requirements.
Non-native byte ordering, and unaligned data access, is usually replaced by copying, with post-conversion.
It's not pretty in the source code, but it doesn't almost slow down the performance.
I think the work with TXD that was done well, and what is more, it was done completely well, otherwise there would be crashes during loading, or incomplete loading. And this is not observed.
Theoretically, possible to rebuild TXT for the desired architecture, but I would not do that. Loading is not a frequent operation, and if they take a few percent more time, then this does not bother anyone.
It's not pretty in the source code, but it doesn't almost slow down the performance.
I think the work with TXD that was done well, and what is more, it was done completely well, otherwise there would be crashes during loading, or incomplete loading. And this is not observed.
Theoretically, possible to rebuild TXT for the desired architecture, but I would not do that. Loading is not a frequent operation, and if they take a few percent more time, then this does not bother anyone.
Last edited:
Thank you for your answer.
The version from https://github.com/GTAmodding/re3.git compiled but it doesn't load the TXD files. The version from the ppc branch (https://github.com/parulina/re3.git -b ppc) doesn't compile. How can I rebuild the TXD files or is it possible to use the TXD code from the ppc branch? Which files are responsible for TXD loading in the ppc branch?
Now to stress my G3..... it’s essentially an equivalent of a 450 Pentium 3 and has a 16 MB Rage 128 Ultra (500 MHz iMac).
About the incompatibility of TXD files.
1. Textures in TXD can be of different formats, with different compression algorithms, or without compression.
2. In Android versions, the names of some textures are case sensitive. Possibly the same on PPC.
(It happens that I installed a version of the mod on a working TXD from Android, checked it on a PC, everything works fine, downloaded it on Android, but TXD is already corrupted and does not load anymore.)
Conclusion: Incompatible version of TXD file.
Not all TXDs are suitable for Android versions of GTA, but they often load successfully on PC versions.
PS: For some reason I completely missed the re3 project. Interesting, watching it ...
1. Textures in TXD can be of different formats, with different compression algorithms, or without compression.
2. In Android versions, the names of some textures are case sensitive. Possibly the same on PPC.
(It happens that I installed a version of the mod on a working TXD from Android, checked it on a PC, everything works fine, downloaded it on Android, but TXD is already corrupted and does not load anymore.)
Conclusion: Incompatible version of TXD file.
Not all TXDs are suitable for Android versions of GTA, but they often load successfully on PC versions.
PS: For some reason I completely missed the re3 project. Interesting, watching it ...
Last edited:
Apologies for late reply. But the fix should be simple. Loading resources requires the endianess to be converted for correct data. Please look carefully through my PPC branch commits to see the usage of those functions: memLittle, BSWAP, floatswap and apply them to the latest commit. As someone already said, the code isn't pretty, so I struggled making mine pretty as well.
It seems right now the issue is the game is rendering with software which is why it's been so unplayable. Should hardware acceleration be fixed and full support running on Tiger, a 500MHz G3 should suffice.
hey will you code also gta san andreas for ppc and SAMP? there are a lot of server still for samp online would be nice if you coukld code this. i would pay for it xD
g5it is great seeing this. as for the comment on the alpha 2 version getting rid of artifacting. im still getting a wobbly car and artifacting trails from newspapers and lights etc, only within a certain perimiter of the character or vehicle. other than that the game runs great. yes i have crashed and yet to really get thru the first mission but i will try now and up some screens or video with my specs. both versions seem to run the same on my 2.0ghx pcix2 g5