Mission Impossible : Porting to Mac, without owning a Mac ?

[ManuTOO]

Hello,

I'm thinking about converting my tennis game to Mac.
On the same effort, I'd like to use 3D engine, to easily allow different screen resolutions. (but it'll be still a 2D game, I'll use 3D only for streching and nice alpha blending)
So I'm thinking about using Ogre 3D.

But I don't own any Mac, and I wonder if I have a chance to do a port without never running my game on Mac.
There's a Mac emulator for PC, but I don't know if it'll be enough to do the trick.

Any leading advices will be greatly welcome ! :)

[Nemesis]

Red Marble Games is offering Mac Porting services. See following link:
http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=101

Perhaps you might consider that as an option.

[patrox]

the answer in 3 letters: PTK (http://www.phelios.com/ptk)

pat.

[Red Marble Games]

Not to tout using a porting service, but you really can't seriously consider porting your game to the Mac (or to any other platform, for that matter) without a test machine. You're guaranteed to have problems. And if you do release the game on the Mac without testing, how are you going to handle support for Mac users when they email you -- and they will -- saying that something doesn't work properly?

[Jack Norton]

Check my games. All, except USM, are made in PTK: I don't own a mac either, but using PTK you don't need to change anything (well maybe 2 lines for the endian thing).

My next soccer game is already in alpha stage, and I started it in middle July. I believe I can finish that one in 2 months, and the mac port will take 1 hour maybe...or even less ;)

I never tried Ogre, I'm just a beginner C/C++... PTK is perfect for me :)

[Nemesis]

you really can't seriously consider porting your game to the Mac (or to any other platform, for that matter) without a test machine.
On top of that I think you need to have some basic technical know-how of the Mac OS, or at least access to someone who does.

P.S. If Mac users get stumped using a 2- or 3-button mouse, let alone what happens if the game crashes for some reason ;)

[EpicBoy]

PTK looks interesting and looks to have rudimentary 3D capabilities added now ... is it worth trying to do anything in 3D with it? I see the K3D class but the function list is so limited it looks like an experiment more than anything usable.

[ggambett]

There's always PearPC (http://pearpc.sourceforge.net) ;)

No, seriously, give it 6 months and it will be very useful (it is now, if you don't mind it being slow)

[patrox]

PTK looks interesting and looks to have rudimentary 3D capabilities added now ... is it worth trying to do anything in 3D with it? I see the K3D class but the function list is so limited it looks like an experiment more than anything usable.


His game is in 2D he just wants to do glViewPort to stretch the display and have alpha blending for sprites.

pat.

[EpicBoy]

I know, but I'm still curious about the 3D aspect of PTK. Is it purely a 2D library with 3D aspirations, or is it possible to use 3D right now?

[Mark Fassett]

You can do Open GL on top of it, since it's based on Open GL. That's how I did the shadows in Derelict.

[tentons]

There's a "3d Space Invaders" demo that uses 3d models, so it can at least render in 3d. I think it's probably very limited, though. There doesn't seem to be any kind of animation support, etc.

I'm using the free version for now, and if it works out well, I'll buy it for the release of my game. A Mac version is very important to me, as well.

[Jack Norton]

There's a "3d Space Invaders" demo that uses 3d models, so it can at least render in 3d. I think it's probably very limited, though. There doesn't seem to be any kind of animation support, etc.
PTK3d uses 3ds files and convert them into a proprietary format (m3k or something like that). It does support 3d keyframe animations, even if I didn't try them at all because I do only 2d games :rolleyes:

[ManuTOO]

@Red Marble Games :
yup, it sounds a bit crazy, but I might try to do porting just using an emulator, if that's possible ... :)
If I can't, maybe I'll consider buying a Mac on eBay ...

@Jack Norton :
That's encouraging ! :)
how did u manage to test the Mac version of ur games ..?
did u have any trouble for the support ..?

@Patrox :
it won't be just a screen stretch, else, there's almost no interest. It'll be a rectangle strech by rectangle stretch building, allowing precise alpha blending and a very spherical ball... :p
And actually, in a near future, I'm planning to add 3d, for the whole game or just for replay (like on TV), so Ogre 3D seems a good choice to do that.


.................. But I wonder how I'll compile the project for Mac.
Is there any Mac compiler on PC ? Or will I have to use the emulator ..?

[Greg Squire]

I agree with Mark Batten (Red Marble Games); it’s not a good idea to develop and then support a game on the Mac when you don’t even have a test machine. If you create a Mac game using a cross compiler, how can you be sure it really works on a Mac? If a user had a problem with the Mac version, how would you help them? You could use a Mac emulator, but it’s possible that it might work fine in an emulator, but not on a real Mac or vice-versa. I’m planning on using Torque for my current game (Windows based), which would open the door for a Mac version. However I know I would need to get a basic Mac laptop or desktop before I’d even think of entering that market. The same goes for Linux. I’d need to install that on a PC before even thinking of entering that market as well.

Java development is a bit different as you have an underlying tried and tested JVM to rely on. Sometimes there still might be differences though, so having a Mac would still be a good idea, but maybe not as much a necessity. On the other hand Java and 3D still don’t mix well, so your most likely be limited to doing “platform specific” versions.

[gmcbay]

I bought a refurbished G4 from PowerMax (http://www.powermax.com/). Perfect machine to use as a development & testbed for my casual games, and the prices there are really good. Plus you have a real company backing up the purchase, so it removes some of the uncertainty that comes with ebay (I use ebay for some things, but the idea of buying hardware off some random Joe, even if he has a good ebay rating, still gives me the creeps).

[Sillysoft]

I would definitely buy an old mac to test on. I develop in Java on a Mac computer, but I still got ahold of a Windows computer to test with, and it has been very useful.

[Nikster]

I agree with most people, I would use someone who deals with the conversions specifically (mentioned above) or I would use some profit from my original platform to invest in extra hardware to port the thing to more machines, be it a PDA, Mac, mobile etc.

[Mark Fassett]

I agree with everyone else. It's hard enough to support a game on the PC with all the possible configurations. Not having the target platform at all is just a nightmare waiting to happen.

[super_e]

Not to tout using a porting service, but you really can't seriously consider porting your game to the Mac (or to any other platform, for that matter) without a test machine. You're guaranteed to have problems. And if you do release the game on the Mac without testing, how are you going to handle support for Mac users when they email you -- and they will -- saying that something doesn't work properly?

Can you send me more info about your MAC porting services? I have an upcoming game which I would like to work on the MAC as well and I'm interested. Thanks!

[Jack Norton]

To Manutoo: I didn't tested the game on Mac, patrox tested it for me (we made a special agreement). But the good thing is that if you use a reliable library, like PTK (which has been used in more than 15 games now) you're almost sure that you won't have any kind of problem on Mac (if you game already run well on PC of course! :D)