- This topic has 12 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 15 years, 8 months ago by
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Hi all,
Just a quick question.
Has anyone developed any PC / C++ / PhysX / DirectX9 / DirectX10 games using an Apple Mac?
I’m only asking as there are *rumblings* here that it "should be simple and straight forward…"
I would imagine that there are a host of issues, so I thought I would ask.
Same question applies for running Maya/ZBrush, etc.
B.
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Will have to be PC/C++/OpenGL to work unless you are not using MacOS (booting into XP on Mac which sort of works).
Maya will work fine on Mac, as will Zbrush.
Dunno about PhysX for Mac, prob not. (Havok is available to licensees for Mac)
The dev env is just GCC / Xcode etc (http://developer.apple.com/tools/xcode/), very straightforward.
— Chris
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As Chris mentioned, Macs are OpenGL only under OS/X.
One other consideration – a lot of macs ( all MacBooks and MacBook Air, but not the MacBook Pro ) ship with an integrated Intel graphics chipset, which of course are fairly slow compared to ATI/nVidia ones.
Hey Chris, whassap – I only recently figured out where Louth was, when knocking this quick prototype up of a 3D Ireland County Thingie…
Here’s the link – http://www.cando3d.com/test_lab/ireland
( drag the county names to the correct locations )Of course we have to be PC – press the / Slash key to switch between Derry slash LondonDerry :)
Will add a timer to this soon, to see who gets the quickest times :)
Mal -
I’ve been looking into this a little bit more, and recently found out that its not (TOO) difficult to get MAC OS to run on a PC.
Which may make things easier…
http://dailyapps.net/2007/10/hack-attack-install-leopard-on-your-pc-in-3-easy-steps/
Will keep you guys posted…
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If it is just for kicks then fine, but the it will not be stable and not supported (at least install it on a PC that has similar chipsets to a current mac so you don’t get driver issues). Any auto updates from Apple with break the patch normally I would imagine.
If you plan to use it to run a proper game dev env then you are just asking for trouble (more trouble than it is worth if you are paying for all Maya/Zbrush/etc lics just not the mac h/w).
— Chris
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I think some parts of WINE or WINElib will let you run DirectX 9 on a Mac.
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If you want to write a game that other people can run on Mac, then it has to be OpenGL based. Installing any lib (such as parts of Wine say) that will allow you to use the DirectX api on top of the OpenGL driver is buggy at best, and will always be slower than just writing an OpenGL version. Any proper use of DirectX (such as non trivial shaders) will never run properly (artifact free) on top of an OpenGL.
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Well obviously it would be slower and not an ideal solution, but the poster asked how to get DirectX running on a Mac and that is one way.
I think WINE’s re-implementation of DirectX 9 is actually pretty stable, considering that it can run a lot of well known Windows games pretty well on most UNIX based OSes.
Just a suggestion here, I’m not trying to start Mac vs Linux vs Windows or DirectX vs OpenGL, flame wars or anything of the sort…
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The core issue is really not how much like a PC you can make a Mac if you install X Y or Z, but if you want to write a game that will run as you intended it to run, at the proper speed, with the proper support, on Mac HW with MacOS.
If you just want to allow someone to run your game on Mac, then just let them install Wine themeselves (/ test your game so that it works around Wine issues etc). The orginal post was wanting to develop for Mac, not just run on Mac.
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Of course the simple solution is to use a cross platform graphics Engine that supports both DirectX and OpenGL. :)
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Hi all,
My original post was really asking, if a "studio" decided they wanted everyone to use Apple Mac’s as their development platform, what issues are they likely to face.
At the moment, I’m working in C++/DirectX for Windows and hopefully XBLA, and was looking for input on how much of a mission it would be to get a similar tool-chain like Visual Studio/DirectX up and running on a MAC.
The target platform would be PC/DirectX, the development platform could be MAC.
Also, the idea of developing iPhone apps has been raised a few times.
Anyway, thanks for the input, and yeah, I forgot Ogre3D (and similar) is cross-platform (Torque also…), so its not impossible.
I’d still prefer to stay with XP, VS and DX, as it works.
B.
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You could always use Boot Camp :P….
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Hi,
We have a single code base we compile for PC/Mac – VS2005 and XCode 3, with a mix of PC’s and Mac’s in the office. If you have good middleware or abstraction layer, it’s fine.
You won’t be compiling windows binaries on the mac though, or vice versa.
Developing on both XP/32 and OSX/64 helps catch a few subtle bugs, assumptions about int’s, drawing orders, stuff like that.
F
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