Game Sprockets

Game Sprockets is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) supporting gaming on the classic Mac OS. It consisted of four main parts, DrawSprocket, InputSprocket, SoundSprocket and NetSprocket, each providing a library of pre-rolled routines for common gaming tasks. SpeechSprocket was a relabelled version of the Speech Recognition Manager that provided speech recognition support, and QuickDraw 3D RAVE provided 3D hardware acceleration.

Game Sprockets was first released in 1996, and saw only minor use before development was cancelled in 1997. OS X included many of the same features in the built-in libraries, while OpenGL replaced RAVE as the 3D acceleration layer. NetSprocket lives on as OpenPlay, although adoption is limited.

Early in its history, the Macintosh computer was a strong gaming platform due to its high-resolution screen, digital sound hardware and the fact that every Mac came equipped with a reasonable gaming controller, the mouse. However, gaming was never supported in any strong way within Apple, and in some cases actively discouraged. By the 1990s the Mac platform had greatly increased in complexity through a profusion of models with different features. Supporting a game across the entire lineup required the programmer to learn the intricacies of different models at a time when even figuring out which machine the program was installed on had no standard solution.

By the mid-90s, PC gaming had evolved into a powerful market of its own, one of the drivers for new computer purchases. During the move from MS-DOS to Microsoft Windows, several Microsoft staffers noticed that game developers were generally ignoring Windows due to the better performance available under DOS. They decided that Windows needed to support first-class gaming, and set about ensuring that Windows would become the preferred gaming platform in the future. The result was the introduction of the DirectX libraries, which greatly reduced complexity and addressed many of the performance concerns. As 3D games became widespread, the library's Direct3D became a decisive advantage, and DirectX grew to become almost universal for PC gaming.

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