Yes, the C4 Engine runs on the Mac, and licensees can develop Mac games at no additional cost. The engine requires MacOS X 10.5 or later and runs on both Intel and PowerPC systems.

The C4 Engine already runs on the PlayStation 3, and an Xbox 360 version is planned for the near future. At this time, there are no plans to port C4 to the Wii.

The C4 Engine runs on graphics processors from Nvidia, ATI, and Intel that meet certain requirements. For Nvidia hardware, a GeForceFX 5200 or higher is required. For ATI hardware, a Radeon 9500 or higher is required. For Intel hardware, a GMA X3000 or higher is required.

No, it doesn't work that way, and it would not be practical to modify the engine to support graphics chips that don't have programmable shaders.

The number of polygons rendered is rarely a limiting factor when it comes to an engine's performance. Many factors influence the rendering speed, and these include the complexity of the materials used, the number of shadows drawn and their types, and whether various kinds of special effects are enabled. There aren't any specific numerical limits for any of these that can be stated. Speed will generally be determined by how well levels are designed.

The C4 Engine ships with project files for Visual Studio 2008 (Windows) and Xcode 3 (Mac). Both of these development environments can be obtained for free.

Yes, the standard evaluation package is included with the demo available on our download page. It includes all of the tools that ship with C4.

You can find the complete source code for two of our tutorial projects at the following locations. These are heavily commented sample games that can give you an idea what coding for the C4 Engine is like.

SimpleBall source code

SimpleChar source code

You only need a Professional License if your publisher has ever been a member of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) or the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA). Lists of the current members of these organizations can be found at the following locations.

Members of the ESA

Members of the ELSPA

• The Standard License does not allow you to publish with a major publisher as defined in the previous question. However, standard licensees can still publish through publishers who are not members of the ESA or ELSPA.
• A separate Standard License must be purchased for each programmer. Under the Professional License, there is no limit to the number of users at a single company.
• The Professional License comes with additional support. Your company will receive a private area on our forums to which only they have access, and your feature requests have higher priority.
• The Professional License is issued for a single game title, whereas the Standard License can be used for an unlimited number of titles.
• The Professional License reverts to a Standard License after your game ships. This means that you still get updates for life, but you can't publish a second game through a major publisher without obtaining a new Professional License.

Yes, you can start with a Standard License for each of your programmers, and later upgrade to the Professional License for the difference in cost.

All licensees have access to the latest source code updates, tools, and documentation forever. There is no additional cost, and your ability to download updates never expires.

At this time, we do not offer an educational license for individual students. However, there is an academic site license for educational institutions who wish to use C4 in the classroom.

No. All licensees are required to keep the C4 Engine source code confidential. You may modify the source code for use in your own products as much as you want, but you may not redistribute your modifications to anyone who is not a licensee.