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Windows game developer about porting to and using OS X

shiningrocksoftware.com

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Re: Windows game developer about porting to and using OS X

#111

Post by et1337 »

picozeta wrote: post #82
SXX wrote: post #74

I’m not using SDL or any other library to hide those platform differences. Once start working on Linux port he'll regret about that. Every developer that start with own platform-specific code end up using SDL2 anyway. Don't do that mistake.

Furthermore SDL2 is absolutely fantastic and just works. You may say, you do not want to use it as it "just" abstracts away keyboard/mouse/controller input, window and GL context creation but these things are damn hard to get right.

As a current SDL2 user: it is not fantastic and it does not just work.

- On Windows, DPI scaling is broken (ask for a 1280x720 window, get 1600x900)

- On Mac, mouse locking is broken

- On Linux, my Xbox gamepads don't work at all

- Required several hacks before it could be used as a CMake submodule

This stuff is under active development, which is shocking for such an established and widespread library. I'm glad it exists, but it doesn't "just work".

Can't really blame it though, it has a very boring and nearly impossible task.

Re: Windows game developer about porting to and using OS X

#112

Post by Kristine1975 »

ptaipale wrote: post #107
farresito wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This always happens to me with passwords. I have trouble remembering some passwords. Yet, when I'm in front of the page and I actually need to get in, either I lose some focus and let my unconsciousness do the work or I won't get it right.

This is nice. Some criminals torture you: "Give us your password so we can take your money". "I cannot give it to you! I can only enter it in a stress-free environment when not thinking about it." (Applies also to those government warrants forcing you to divulge information.)

That doesn't sound like an advantage. I'd rather give away my money than being tortured.

Re: Windows game developer about porting to and using OS X

#113

Post by acdha »

lmolnar wrote: post #100

I recently went through a very similar process porting my screensaver [1] from Windows to Mac without using a library like SDL. Here are some additional difficulties I encountered during this process: OpenGL on multiple monitors - this was much more difficult to do on MacOS. I had to create a separate window for each monitor, create a rendering context for each window, make sure my graphics code was issuing the drawi…

> SSE intrinsics - my experience was that Microsoft's compiler was MUCH better at generating code from SSE/SSE2 intrinsics then clang

I don't know whether this is still the case – or something like tweaking the target CPUs would help – but assuming it is, did you report it to either the open-source Clang project or Apple? The developers have seemed to be quite responsive to reports like this.

Re: Windows game developer about porting to and using OS X

#114

Post by moron4hire »

archagon wrote: post #18
stinos wrote: post #2

Xcode isn’t too bad. I wish the author told me more about it than just this. Can somebody comment on how it compares to recent VS editions these days? About 5 years ago I also looked into using OSX as main OS. As I've always been using non-commandline graphic text editors and IDEs for most coding that made XCode the go-to environment but I just couldn't deal with it even though I tried. I don't remember all details b…

I don't use VS but I use Xcode every day. Downsides: incredibly laggy, buggy, can crash a lot depending on the version. Upsides: actually pretty thoughtful in terms of UI and UX, at least insofar as a fully-fledged IDE can be. I could never wrap my head around VS's stupid toolbars. Debugging, when it works, is really nice; there's more interactivity and inline code interaction than I remember VS having. (VS probably…

I run VS with all of the toolbars removed and drive it almost completely from keyboard shortcuts. Occasionally, I use the menu bar, but it's usually only for first-time-project-settings-tweaks.

Re: Windows game developer about porting to and using OS X

#115

Post by moron4hire »

sitharus wrote: post #23
archagon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't use VS but I use Xcode every day. Downsides: incredibly laggy, buggy, can crash a lot depending on the version. Upsides: actually pretty thoughtful in terms of UI and UX, at least insofar as a fully-fledged IDE can be. I could never wrap my head around VS's stupid toolbars. Debugging, when it works, is really nice; there's more interactivity and inline code interaction than I remember VS having. (VS probably…

Laggy and buggy? That sounds like Visual Studio to me and I use that 8 hours a day. However, it's a damn good environment for C# and F# development, and Intellisense is pretty awesome in 2015. In VS, Control-; is a pretty good way to navigate. I turn off all the toolbars anyway.

If you're having issues, I would suggest it's something to do with your particular setup. VS is a RAM hog, but if you have enough RAM, it is very stable. Certainly doesn't lock-up or bomb-out-to-desktop as often as Xcode, NetBeans, or Eclipse on me.

Re: Windows game developer about porting to and using OS X

#116

Post by Kristine1975 »

interpol_p wrote: post #86
lhecker wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal experience: Visual Studio feels a lot more "enterprise-y" than Xcode and offers a lot more advanced features and tools on pretty much all fronts, especially in the UI (e.g.: Xcode doesn't even have file tabs, but sth. I'd describe as big "whole-UI-tabs"). But... Xcode has llvm. This compiler and it's tools (i.e. the analyzer, debugger, etc.) just make VS' compiler look like it's from the 90s. Really. -> H…

> Xcode doesn't even have file tabs, but sth. I'd describe as big "whole-UI-tabs" I think this is an intentional interaction design. When you are always working with hundreds or thousands of source files, tabs kind of lose their meaning. The fuzzy-search quick open panel and project-wide find become your main dependency for quickly jumping around your codebase (with the benefit that you don't need to touch the mouse)…

FWIW, in VS you can switch between tabs with Ctrl-Tab (and toolbars by pressing Ctrl-Tab, holding Ctrl and navigating with the cursor keys).

Re: Windows game developer about porting to and using OS X

#117

Post by joshstrange »

Kiro wrote: post #72
anton_gogolev wrote: post #4

Tangentially related: Banished is higly recommended. Quiet room, couple glasses of whiskey and you're guaranteed to have a nice evening.

I played it a couple of years ago and enjoyed it but eventually got tired of it. Has there been a lot of new features since?

It has mods now like Colonial Charter[0] which I've never used but heard great things about it. I'm on OS X and have run in in Wine (Wineskin specifically IIRC) but I too haven't played in at least a year. If he releases an OS X version I'll be sure to buy it though. It really is a ton of fun.

[0] http://www.colonialcharter.com/

Re: Windows game developer about porting to and using OS X

#118

Post by lmolnar »

acdha wrote: post #113
lmolnar wrote: post #100

I recently went through a very similar process porting my screensaver [1] from Windows to Mac without using a library like SDL. Here are some additional difficulties I encountered during this process: OpenGL on multiple monitors - this was much more difficult to do on MacOS. I had to create a separate window for each monitor, create a rendering context for each window, make sure my graphics code was issuing the drawi…

> SSE intrinsics - my experience was that Microsoft's compiler was MUCH better at generating code from SSE/SSE2 intrinsics then clang I don't know whether this is still the case – or something like tweaking the target CPUs would help – but assuming it is, did you report it to either the open-source Clang project or Apple? The developers have seemed to be quite responsive to reports like this.

I did not, I just #ifdef-ed that code out of the Mac port. I'll review what I've done again and follow-up with the Clang people.

Re: Windows game developer about porting to and using OS X

#119

Post by knodi123 »

farresito wrote: post #88
lucozade wrote: post #80

> Apparently my vi command muscle memory hasn't faded. Back in the day I did most of my dev work on Solaris. I then spent 4 years as CTO as a startup that was pretty much only Windows. When I subsequently went back to working at a unix shop I was initially struggling with vi as I tried to read some of the C++ code. I couldn't remember commands, was having to refer to the man pages every few mins. It was torture. A co…

This always happens to me with passwords. I have trouble remembering some passwords. Yet, when I'm in front of the page and I actually need to get in, either I lose some focus and let my unconsciousness do the work or I won't get it right.

I was trying to share my banking passwords with my wife ("in case of emergency" kind of stuff), and I was forced to admit that I had no idea what my bank password was, even though I log into it several times a week. I had to open a word processor and type my username and password for her all at once. The act of typing my username allowed the password to pop into my memory.

Re: Windows game developer about porting to and using OS X

#120

Post by e28eta »

yeureka wrote: post #97
Kristine1975 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For instance if you want to do a find/replace in VS you can double click on a word do Ctrl+H and the word you selected populates the search box I'm fairly sure Xcode has a command "enter search/replace string" that puts the current selection into the search/replace box.

I would love to know how to do this.

Across all (Cocoa?) Mac apps, cmd-e should do it. It definitely works in Xcode.
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