Game Maker on Mac OS X..

[savage]

The guys who I'm doing some game development work for, Sumo Digital (http://www.sumo-digital.com/), have finally released a teaser ( and allowed me to talk about it ) of the stuff I've been porting over to Mac OS X since last November.

It can be seen here...
<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Z91lNPW2G9U&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Z91lNPW2G9U&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>

Apparently with these 2 there was an error with capturing or uploading so it looks very choppy as frames were skipped.

<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/jSGd8ru-Dzs&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/jSGd8ru-Dzs&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>

<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/MufJZeDWH8I&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/MufJZeDWH8I&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>

They are much smoother on my Mac Book Pro.

An accompanying blog entry can be found here ( http://glog.yoyogames.com/?p=60 )

The games are not the things are being ported, but the IDE and engine are. The IDE creates the game files these are then fed into the engine. The same game files works on both Win32 and Mac OS X ( native Carbon apps ), and last weekend I got the engine and IDE working on Linux, all from the same code-base with 1 or 2 IFDEFs.

There is still some work to be done, but at least it shows that it is basically working.

It makes use of FreePascal (http://www.freepascal.org) and JEDI-SDL (http://jedi-sdl.pascalgamedevelopment.com).

[technomage]

Well done Dom

Looks like all that hard work is paying off :)

Keep it up.

Dean

[chronozphere]

Awesome :D GM7 's gonna be multi-platform. 8)

Does it still use DirectX when a game is ran on windows, or is it all OpenGL now?

[savage]

Still DirectX at the moment.
OpenGL support will be added later on.

[De-Panther]

GM is written with FPC?
COOL!

nice thing to know that

[WILL]

Silly question.... you can get DirectX on a Mac?

[chronozphere]

Nope... i assume it uses SDL and/or OpenGL on Mac. :)

That's the reason for my first question. I thought they had converted the whole engine to OpenGL so it would be cross-platform. I assume it works with modules for different OSses

[savage]

It is pure SDL at the moment, there is no DirectX on Mac.

[wodzu]

Excellent job :)

[Diaboli]

GM is written with FPC?
COOL!

nice thing to know that

The last version of GM tha Mark Overmars made was written in Delphi 7, as far as i know (from the old GM-pages)...

[VilleK]

I missed this thread the first time. Looking good! Any news on progress of the port?

[savage]

Hi all,
I've reached the point in my project where I don't think I can get any further with my limited knowledge of both Lazarus and Mac OS X. I believe the project to be about 85-90% done.

So I need help, more from a consultant than a developer, with the final push.
What I require :
* Information on how much experience you have with FreePascal, Lazarus, Mac OS X, SDL and OpenGL.

* Ideally you will be located in the UK, preferably London, but if not we can talk about that.

* What your daily/weekly contract rates are.

* When ( both date and time ) you are available to work. I tend to work in the evenings ( GMT ) and on the week-ends, so would need someone available around then.

Make no mistake, this is a port of commercial product, please only apply if you are serious about the job and have time and expertise to offer, for your paid services.

Please email me directly to discuss things further, as it would be unfair to spam this thread with that info.

[Stoney]

I didn't find any newer thread about this (and I don't know if opening a new thread would be appropriate), so I'm just gonna reply here:
Now that GameMaker for Mac OS X is released, I just wanna say: Awesome work. I would love to see GameMaker 8 ported to Mac OS X.
I probably just gonna buy this to support you guys.

[WILL]

Hmm... I assume that you got past your roadblock then Dom? Obviously if it was eventually released. I'm a little Mac OS X starved for games development since Lazarus and Delphi are both just getting up to par on the Mac. I might look into getting a copy if it does what I'll need. Where can I look up more about it and get a copy myself?

EDIT: Nevermind found it! :P http://www.yoyogames.com/ And it's only $20 USD to buy (before Sept 1st)

[dazappa]

I've been following the progress on this since its inception. Currently, gm4mac seems to be a gm7 mac port, and requires you to have a mac to create games that run on macs (which is foolish IMO, I'm sure they'll change this eventually). Anyway, gm4mac has not really been fully released. It's classified as in its last release candidate before they nix the beta keys and require you to buy it. I've tested it out, and it seems to work rather nicely at its job, but I find some areas funny because of current lazarus limitations. IE: Lazarus doesn't have a solid docking/child window/whatsitcalled system to embed forms inside of forms like delphi can on Windows, so they had to resort to popping open another window which can get lost if you click on the main GM window after editing an objects properties, etc.

But anyway. It's interpreted. AFAIK the runner isn't made in pascal, but the ide is at the very least. I'm sure this will spur a lot more development for macs, but there'll only be a few quality GM games per year available. (Seems to be the general trend.) Anyway, doesn't really help the pascal community much aside from showing a company that decided to use lazarus/fpc in one of their main product lines. I'd like to see them put up a bounty for a very solid docking system.

Anyway. GM is nice to use, but nowhere near the efficiency I desire. (Pascal/C++ code were 40x + faster in my tests, because they're actually compiled). But yeah. So many of my ideas would be disgustingly hampered if I chose GM as my main development environment for games. My 3ghz geforce 7600 machine can barely push 100-200 particles in GM, much less drawing hundreds or thousands of sprites simultaneously. The same machine could render colorized particles bursting 10k/s at 60fps from Andorra 2d in FPC.

But I digress. Programs like GM which don't offer true compilation are my only option for mac development and deployment. I don't own a mac, and don't have the money to get one, so I can't compile natively on the machine.

@Will: Go here: http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=483217&pid=3581469&st=0&#38;#entry3581469 for more information. Presumably, you already found this topic or the same info on their blog. I didn't realize this had been released; 2 days ago I downloaded the release candidate with their beta key ;) Time to go get my mac buddy to see if the RC got shot. They've tested a remote disabler before, so it's very possible.

[savage]

Hi Matt,
As I worked on 95% of the port, I can tell you that currently both IDE and Runner are written in Object Pascal. The PSP version of the Runner, is written in C++. I made the Object Pascal code base portable, so YoYoGames could decide to release a Linux version, if they tweaked the code a little, down the line, if they so desire.

[WILL]

I like the concept of it, much like I liked the old RPG Maker tools. When prototyping, it could be a useful concept design tool.

I do wonder though, how much like a 'Game Maker game' does Game Maker make their games look like when 'compiled' with the tool? Is it very or slightly obvious? Or would you have to know about Game Maker and be CS savvy enough to discover that the games were made with Game Maker?

[savage]

I like the concept of it, much like I liked the old RPG Maker tools. When prototyping, it could be a useful concept design tool.

I do wonder though, how much like a 'Game Maker game' does Game Maker make their games look like when 'compiled' with the tool? Is it very or slightly obvious? Or would you have to know about Game Maker and be CS savvy enough to discover that the games were made with Game Maker?


Have a look at and play some of the games at YoYoGames.com ( some can be played from within a browser, as that plugin was written using C++ ) that will give you an idea if games made with the tool all look the same, or can be customised to look the way you like.

[dazappa]

Hi Matt,
As I worked on 95% of the port, I can tell you that currently both IDE and Runner are written in Object Pascal. The PSP version of the Runner, is written in C++. I made the Object Pascal code base portable, so YoYoGames could decide to release a Linux version, if they tweaked the code a little, down the line, if they so desire.

That is very interesting to hear.


I like the concept of it, much like I liked the old RPG Maker tools. When prototyping, it could be a useful concept design tool.

I do wonder though, how much like a 'Game Maker game' does Game Maker make their games look like when 'compiled' with the tool? Is it very or slightly obvious? Or would you have to know about Game Maker and be CS savvy enough to discover that the games were made with Game Maker?

If you buy the pro version of Game Maker, the only thing that might really stick out as being a Game Maker game is the nearly mandatory splash screen. Of course you can change the splash image and loading bar, but still this little loading splash is what usually gives away GM games for me. That, or if you're really interested you can tell by opening the exe in a text editor.

At best, I would classify it as nearly indistinguishable, tbh. Slow speeds might be apparent as well, but really, no one without experience with GM would know you made the game with GM.