Game Maker 7.x for MacOS X enters private beta...

[savage]

After nearly a year of porting, on a part-time basis, the MacOS X ( Intel ) version of Game Maker 7.x, has officially entered private beta.

Some info about the private beta can be read here...
http://glog.yoyogames.com/?p=445

ScreenShots
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Game Maker IDE :



2D Game - FrozzD :



3D Game - TwoDase :


Savage Software Solutions, me , did the initial port of the IDE and Runner and I was helped my Dean "Technomage" Ellis to sort out the OpenGL rendering side of things ( it used to use Direct3D ). Thanks to Ramin, an ex Sumo Digital employee, for helping me narrow down certain GamerMaker and Runner bugs. Many thanks also go out to the Lazarus team who helped sort out a few IDE bugs I posted on their bug-tracker. Without all of the above, this would not be possible.

There is still some work to do, but basically the IDE and Runner are working.

Technology used :
FreePascal Compiler
Lazarus IDE running natively on MacOS X ( v10.4.11 Intel )
JEDI-SDL so therefore SDL, SDL_Mixer for sound

Same codebase compiles and runs on Win32 ( needs tweaking ), MacOS X ( stable ), Linux ( needs tweaking ). As MacOS X was the main priority, that is why it is the most stable version.

[czar]

That looks super.

I will now nip off and read your linked pages.

[VilleK]

Great work! Good proof that the FP/Lazarus-combination works for porting Win-applications.

Is there an FAQ about this project anywhere? I have a list of questions directly:

Will the next release of GM will be OpenGL based also for Windows?

Are the GM-project files portable so that you can take a GM-file from the Windows-version of GM 7 and run it unchanged in GM Mac?

Will the Mac IDE also be able to generate exe-files for Windows? And vice-versa, i.e. the Win-version generate mac-binaries?

[chronozphere]

That's fantastic!

I think I really should take some time to get to know lazarus. This port clearly proves that lazarus is a reliable enviroment and supports alot of visual components.

[savage]

Will the next release of GM will be OpenGL based also for Windows?

I don't believe so, but then I'm not privvy to what the future plans of YoYoGames are. The engine uses JEDI-SDL so theoretically should compile on anything that supports SDL, OpenGL and FreePascal compilers. Additionally I also have a basic 2D only mode which theoretically could compile on Nintendo DS or similar for example.

Are the GM-project files portable so that you can take a GM-file from the Windows-version of GM 7 and run it unchanged in GM Mac?

They are slightly different format to the current GM 7 format as that embeds an EXE with the data, but the Engine ( also known as the Runner ), will accept game files created on either Windows or Mac ( Intel ). The same should apply to Intel Linux. Actually I may try and compile the latest version of the Runner code on Linux tonight and if all goes well, as it should, I'll upload some screenshots of that.
I don't have a PowerPC Mac to test things on, but the binaries we are deploying are Universal Binaries, to they should just work. I suppose that side of things will come out in the beta.

Will the Mac IDE also be able to generate exe-files for Windows? And vice-versa, i.e. the Win-version generate mac-binaries?

Again that is not currently on the books, but that does not mean it would not be possible in future. Again I would need to defer that sort of thing to YoYoGames for clarification.

[savage]

I'm not sure I made this clear, but just to clarify. Game Maker Project files ( *.gmk) can be open and edited on either OS, Win32 or MacOS X. So you can copy to new machine open, compile and run you GM game.

[paul_nicholls]

Awesome! Kudos savage

A most excellent effort

Long live Lazarus/FPC!

cheers,
Paul

[De-Panther]

sweet. very sweet.

when people could use this candy?

[pstudio]

Congratulation with the succesful port. I'm sure there are many happy Mac users around who have waited for this for a long time.

I'm curious if there where any difficulties going from Directx to openGL? As I remember GM's 3D functions where strongly linked with DirectX and I could imagine that it may have caused some problems.

[savage]

A slight update. Getting things to work under PowerPC, proved a little trickier as initially we tried to support 10.3.9 of Mac OS and the LCL officially only supports 10.4.11. After some hacking and slashing I did get the basics working, but certain 3D things did not work. In the end we decided to stick with 10.4.11 on both Intel and Power PC and this eased things a little. It turns out that the graphics cards in the Mac Mini and ATI Radeon ( I think it was ), did not support FrameBuffers and RenderTargets, which are used for things like transitions. Anyway doing some OpenGL check for these things allowed the engine to still work on Intel and PowerPC boxes even if the graphics card does not support FBs and RTs.

Anyway here is a screen shot of things working on a Mac Mini G4, PowerPC.