Mac OS / OS X and SDL

SDL Development
1

Hello!

I’ve just seen all the great news about the MacOS X
stuff on this list - and I think this is really
awesome work guys! :slight_smile:

And right now it also seems like perfect timing -
because as of today I seem to have become entangled in
a game project (ok not 100% sure yet but almost it seems…)
which has to run on Mac OS (as well as Windows…).

So I would very much like to know what
the status is with SDL on Mac OS / Mac OS X is?

The SDL FAQs says that MacOS audio might be flaky,
and it doesn’t mention Mac OS X at all - so I’m
sure things are much better now - right? :slight_smile:

Also, I have to make a decision about whether to
develop for Mac OS X or the earlier Mac OS versions -
so with you guys being the experts - what would
you suggest? With respect to the following:

  • Current state of SDL for Mac OS vs. Mac OS X
  • How many people is believed to have upgraded to OS X
  • How the performance of an older Mac OS game would be
    when running on Mac OS X (I understand that OS X is
    emulating the old OS…).

Also - if anybody knows anything about cross-compiling apps
(and SDL?) from Linux to Mac OS with gcc I would love to
hear about it :slight_smile:

And other spontaneous links sent to me in private about
Mac OS development ressources, POSIX devevelopment on
Mac OS etc. are most welcome too :slight_smile:

Cheers–
http://www.HardcoreProcessing.com

2

I’ve just seen all the great news about the MacOS X
stuff on this list - and I think this is really
awesome work guys! :slight_smile:

Thanks :slight_smile:

And right now it also seems like perfect timing -
because as of today I seem to have become entangled in
a game project (ok not 100% sure yet but almost it seems…)
which has to run on Mac OS (as well as Windows…).

So I would very much like to know what
the status is with SDL on Mac OS / Mac OS X is?

The SDL FAQs says that MacOS audio might be flaky,
and it doesn’t mention Mac OS X at all - so I’m
sure things are much better now - right? :slight_smile:

Yes. The audio code has been in used for more than a year now, and has
undergone tuning for MacOSX too, BTW.

The only thing not supported audio-wise is that On OS 9 we don’t support
locking the mix buffers. There may be a way to implement this, we
discussed it a while back on this list.

Also, I have to make a decision about whether to
develop for Mac OS X or the earlier Mac OS versions -

Why? With SDL you can support both with the same codebase. You can use SDL
in a Carbon application to run the exact same binary on both OS’s with
decent speed on OS X. You can also have native binaries for both
platforms, which is what I would recommend.

so with you guys being the experts - what would
you suggest? With respect to the following:

  • Current state of SDL for Mac OS vs. Mac OS X

OS X needs 2 key improvements to get on-par with OS 9. They are CDROM
support and joystick support. Joystick support should be a breeze to
implement, CDROM audio might be a bit trickier.

  • How many people is believed to have upgraded to OS X

Now, not very many. There are some statistics out there on this you can
find if you dig a little bit.

In the future, tons. Why? Because Apple is shipping OS X preinstalled on
all new Macs. And OS X continues to become faster and more stable after
every update. Also, IMHO, once person gets used to OS X, they can’t stand
to use OS 9 anymore.

  • How the performance of an older Mac OS game would be
    when running on Mac OS X (I understand that OS X is
    emulating the old OS…).

The problem with the Classic VM is that it hogs memory. A lot of memory.
Users hate this. But if you have 256MB or more of RAM, Classic is pretty
speedy.

Also - if anybody knows anything about cross-compiling apps
(and SDL?) from Linux to Mac OS with gcc I would love to
hear about it :slight_smile:

Hrm, this has been asked many times before, and no one seems to know how
to do it. Keep in mind that you could, without too much trouble, create a
configure script to build on both OS’s, since OS X comes with gcc and
make.)

And other spontaneous links sent to me in private about
Mac OS development ressources, POSIX devevelopment on
Mac OS etc. are most welcome too :slight_smile:

www.idevgames.com is a nice place for Mac gaming reading.

POSIX on OS X is usually exactly like BSD 4.4, which has tons of
documentation out there.

There is also www.apple.com/developer for lots of reading on OS 9 and OS
X.On Fri, 29 Jun 2001, Anoq of the Sun wrote:

3

Darrell Walisser wrote:

Yes. The audio code has been in used for more than a year now, and has
undergone tuning for MacOSX too, BTW.

Great! This is getting better and better :wink:

The only thing not supported audio-wise is that On OS 9 we don’t support
locking the mix buffers. There may be a way to implement this, we
discussed it a while back on this list.

OK - this might be the only thing I would need for OS 9…
Maybe I could work on this (no promises yet though…).

Also, I have to make a decision about whether to
develop for Mac OS X or the earlier Mac OS versions -

Why? With SDL you can support both with the same codebase. You can use SDL
in a Carbon application to run the exact same binary on both OS’s with
decent speed on OS X. You can also have native binaries for both
platforms, which is what I would recommend.

I need to port my favorite ML compiler to Mac OS / OS X - and
it uses POSIX - but if I can use POSIX too on both platforms
with the same binaries - that would be perfect! :slight_smile:

OS X needs 2 key improvements to get on-par with OS 9. They are CDROM
support and joystick support. Joystick support should be a breeze to
implement, CDROM audio might be a bit trickier.

Fortunatly I don’t need this for the particular project at hand -
so this would be no problem :slight_smile:

Also - if anybody knows anything about cross-compiling apps
(and SDL?) from Linux to Mac OS with gcc I would love to
hear about it :slight_smile:

Hrm, this has been asked many times before, and no one seems to know how
to do it. Keep in mind that you could, without too much trouble, create a
configure script to build on both OS’s, since OS X comes with gcc and
make.)

Well, what I need is to bootstrap a POSIX-based ML compiler from
Linux to Mac OS or to cross-compile the apps or something :slight_smile:
But it generates C-code for gcc, so I guess I could just compile
to C - and compile that file natively on Mac OS to get a working
compiler…

POSIX on OS X is usually exactly like BSD 4.4, which has tons of
documentation out there.

What about POSIX for the earlier OS’es? :slight_smile:

Thanks a lot for all your info and links!

Cheers–
http://www.HardcoreProcessing.com

4

Darrell Walisser wrote:

Also - if anybody knows anything about cross-compiling apps
(and SDL?) from Linux to Mac OS with gcc I would love to
hear about it :slight_smile:

Hrm, this has been asked many times before, and no one seems to know how
to do it. Keep in mind that you could, without too much trouble, create a
configure script to build on both OS’s, since OS X comes with gcc and
make.)

Good, that is what I was just at the apple site trying to find out. I
figured being BSD based it would have GCC but I couldn’t find
confirmation of that on the site (just that it came with a compiler
whose IDE is called Project Builder).
With MacOS X out I am wanting a mac pretty badly, I’ll probably end up
getting an iBook when I get a spare $1800 (gotta have DVD and CD-RW), so
if I do and learn my way around maybe I can help out a little. Assuming
of course I don’t get rich and buy that PowerMac G4 with the DVD burner
and 60gig hard drive, I would be WAY to busy pretending to be George
Lucas or Steven Speiberg to get anything else productive done! ;-)> On Fri, 29 Jun 2001, Anoq of the Sun wrote: