is there a future in gamedev for MacOS ?

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Original post by a2ps hi there, Ive been developing games as a hobby for same years now, but only for the windows platform (i love directx). Recently i bought a powerbook G4 mainly for work purposes, but being a gamedev lover as i am, i soon started to learn the ways to gamedev for the macos. but the question is, is there a future in gamedev for macos? Ive read some time ago, that since the doom 3 benchmarks for macos were not users expected, that apple was about to create a new opengl implementation, and its expected, or so they say, to be a better one. but, resources and documentation are few, glsl isn't supported yet, ui programming is done on objective c (a not so used language) or java (a not so good language in terms of performance), etc. do any of you guys do game development for macos? tell us your experiences. i do not intend to quit gamedev on windows, but since Ive been using so much a mac machine, ide like to do same game development for it too. thanks :)

It's not going anywhere, but you'll never see a huge following. Macs in general are just too expensive. They don't carry a large enough market share to have large budget games ported to it. It's in the same boat as Linux in that respect.

I don't see a huge commercial gaming market on OSX, but I'm no expert. It's still nice to develop cross-platform, though, and if you make an especially good game, you may be noticed and appreciated more.

You could just use SDL and OpenGL and develop for multiple OSes. If you do it right, you should be able to use the same source code on Mac and Windows. Even if the performance isn't as good on OSX, it'll still be nice to have it available. The lack of shaders isn't that big of a problem; you should have a way to work without shaders anyways because not everyone's cards supports shaders.

Macs have a fundamentally different market than PCers. Mac users tend to not upgrade nearly as often, and obviously don't care about having the absolute latest and greatest graphics cards and such, and thus games that require top-of-the-line hardware won't be all that successful. On the other hand, shareware developers with good ideas have a much better chance.

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but, resources and documentation are few, glsl isn't supported yet, ui programming is done on objective c (a not so used language) or java (a not so good language in terms of performance), etc.

Apple's documentation is good, and there are plenty of third-party resources. In most games, the platform-specific UI layer is fairly thin, and MacOS supports a lot of cross-platform APIs.

Since a decent chunk of the Mac market is in high-end graphics and audio, you can expect that any problems in those areas will be addressed quickly, and gamers can reap the benefits.

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The lack of shaders isn't that big of a problem; you should have a way to work without shaders anyways because not everyone's cards supports shaders.

MacOS supports shaders. I don't think any Cg compilers have been ported to MacOS, if that's what you mean.

Games that do get released for the Mac tend to have longer shelf life becasue of the lower amount of games released for the platform, and a good indie game would have the potential to do very well. For the big publishers there isn't that much money in it.

Using Objective C for Cocoa code isn't such a big deal. Your game code will still be in C++, you will just have to include a small amount of OC code to create a window and setup OpenGL, then enter back into your main engine code. Using Objective C++ files you can easily mix C++ and OC code making this proccess easier.

Dont focus in specific OSes. Go multiplatform always and you wont have to worry about future.

I program exclusively for the Mac.

Apple is always improving their OpenGL implementation, and they are in fact hiring new people to work with nVidia and ATI. Several underlying technologies on Mac OS X use OpenGL extensively, so Apple has a vested interest in making their implementation of OGL the best it can be.

ARB_VERTEX_PROGRAM and ARB_FRAGMENT_PROGRAM both work just fine on the Mac, as does Cg (the compiler and library has been ported over). GLSL *is* supported on X.4 Tiger, but only in the software renderer. Hardware support is coming. CoreImage and CoreVideo filters are in fact written in GLSL and compiled down to ARB_FRAGMENT_PROGRAM with a JIT compiler which will later use ARB_FRAGMENT_SHADER/etc when it becomes available.

There isn't a huge difference in speed. Yea, Doom 3 seems to run a tad slower, but it isn't some huge dog. It runs just fine on my 1.8GHz G5 with a FX5200, and that's hardly the best Mac around. And the Mac isn't inherently slower, it's just a matter of how much time is spent in porting the game over. For instance, Quake 3 runs *faster* on the Mac than it does on the PC side.

Obj-C and Java aren't the only game in town. C and C++ can be used just fine. There are a ton of cross-platform APIs like SDL and OpenAL that work great on the Mac. Apple's development tools are 100% free, and are quite good. The documentation is pretty good. Apple's mailing lists are active. There are lots of web-sites out there for development (both game and non-game related).

The Mac now gets almost every big name game. The few that we do miss usually have a technological reason instead of a business one. For instance, no game that uses Havok has been released for the Mac due to Havok being asshats about the Mac version. The indie shareware market is quite healthy on the Mac. In fact, quite a few indie game makers report that the Mac version outsells their Windows version.

The market isn't huge, but it's here and it ain't going away anytime soon. In fact, it's actually growing.

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Original post by igni ferroque Quote: The lack of shaders isn't that big of a problem; you should have a way to work without shaders anyways because not everyone's cards supports shaders. MacOS supports shaders. I don't think any Cg compilers have been ported to MacOS, if that's what you mean.

They have. Where you two got those ideas from, I have no idea.

thanks for your answers :)

so, the CG compiler has been ported to MacOS , and GLSL is supported (Tiger) but only in software rendering, is that correct? any expectations when will it be supported by hardware?

i just have a few questions about the CG compiler, will it work on ATI cards? fortunatly i have a nvidia card, so thats not a problem for me.

Does CG support SM 2.0? and what about SM 3.0?

What about the MacOS (Tiger) OpenGL version? is it 1.5? 2.0? does it support GLSL nativaly or by extentions?

offtopic: im sorry to ask, but anyone here know what shader model version does the nvidia fx 5200go support? SM 2.0?

again thanks, and sorry the mispelling as im writting this in a hurry.

Doesent garagegames report that MAC users account for a large percentage of their sales? so much so that without a MAC port they would turn down publicaiton i believe.

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For instance, no game that uses Havok has been released for the Mac due to Havok being asshats about the Mac version.

Not to mention Half-Life, which was cancelled just before it hit beta. Valve & Sierra == Douchebags.

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They have. Where you two got those ideas from, I have no idea.

Not sure either ;). Thanks for clearing that up.

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Original post by Roboguy Quote: Original post by igni ferroque Quote: The lack of shaders isn't that big of a problem; you should have a way to work without shaders anyways because not everyone's cards supports shaders. MacOS supports shaders. I don't think any Cg compilers have been ported to MacOS, if that's what you mean. They have. Where you two got those ideas from, I have no idea.

The OP said "glsl isn't supported yet," and I was responding to that. I also stupidly equated glsl=shaders, which isn't true. Sorry.