FYI: How to become an independent programmer in just 1068 days

[whisperstorm]

This is a great article about "becoming independent" as a programmer selling you own software. It seems relevant to game programmers as well.

http://www.gusmueller.com/blog/archives/2005/12/25.html

Apologies if this has already been posted - I did search for duplicates before posting.

[oNyx]

A bit short on the details, but its an interesting read nonetheless.

"Sure, you could write it in java, but you're going to be spending a lot of time making it a mac application."

I just don't get that bit. I made a mac application myself with java and I dont even have a mac. *shrug*

[Vorax]

A bit short on the details, but its an interesting read nonetheless.

"Sure, you could write it in java, but you're going to be spending a lot of time making it a mac application."

I just don't get that bit. I made a mac application myself with java and I dont even have a mac. *shrug*

Me to - After more then a year of developing without a Mac, my game was up and running on a Mac in under a half hour. It kinda blew my mind, actually :)

[Sillysoft]

Apple's look and feel is pretty good in general. However, there are a lot of Java apps on the mac that stick out like a sore thumb. Things like using a menubar in each window instead of one at the top of the screen (apple provides a setting to switch this). Or having control-X keyboard shortcuts instead of command-X. Etc. You probably won't be aware of this stuff if you don't normally use a mac, but most mac users will notice it.

This might not really apply for fullscreen games though. It's more for windowed applications. Even there it's not hard to get all these things right if you take a little time though. Do a beta test with a few mac users and they will report if anything is amiss.

[Bad Sector]

I'm developing an application these days in Java and, even if i don't own or even have access in a Mac, i want to be sure that my Java application will work in a Mac as seamlessly as possible... to do that, all i had to do was to go over Apple's Java developer network (http://developer.apple.com/java/) and read a nice guide for Java developers to Mac OS X (http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Java/Conceptual/Java14Development/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30001142). It describes how to make your application not look that "alien" in the Mac OS X world :-).

(including this menubar thing)

Although, i've still haven't figured out what they mean with
When using the AWT FileDialog, you may want a user to select a directory instead of a file. In this case, use the apple.awt.fileDialogForDirectories property with the setProperty.invoke() method on your FileDialog instance.

I need to do that and currently i'm using Swing's JFileChooser for selecting a directory (i use JFileChooser everywhere, except when my app realises that it runs under a Mac... in that case i use a FileDialog, but only for opening/saving files).

I think i'll try to gather some money in order to get a Mac Mini... :-P

EDIT: That Mac Mini will have to wait, i've found the solution (http://developer.apple.com/samplecode/FunWithFileDialogs/FunWithFileDialogs.html), hehehe :-)

[dmikesell]

Not exactly Steve Pavlina, eh? Interesting read, but it was pretty much a diary of his willy-nilly approach to how he quit his day job and is now scraping by. Hopefully.