AGS engine Mac OS X port

vga256 · Tue 02/01/2018 02:38:06

@Radiant: I'm away from my workstation right now, but have you tried to build Janet's 'osx-nick' branch? It built fine for me on Sierra with the latest Xcode. The trick for me was building the libraries using Terminal properly. If you can get it to build, it might help narrow down your header/search path issues.

Radiant · Tue 02/01/2018 07:39:33

I was using the main AGS branch so far, I'll give Janet's branch a shot. What do you mean by "using Terminal properly"?

vga256 · Tue 02/01/2018 22:35:22

Gah, sorry. Back at my workstation now.

To clarify, I meant that I needed to build the libraries properly in the /buildlibs folder, and I had to do it from within the Terminal.
In the osx-nick branch, the /ags/OSX/buildlibs folder has a README.md file that details how to build the libraries from scratch:
1. install homebrew
2. brew install pkg-config autoconf automake libtool cmake curl
3. install xcode *and* the command line tools
4. sudo xcode-select --reset
5. build the libraries with: make install

I initially missed those steps the first time I checked out the osx-nick branch and could not build.. hence why I meant 'using Terminal properly'

vga256 · Thu 25/01/2018 22:44:33

Quick update: I have AGS 3.4.1.11 working successfully. I had to modify a few of Edmundo's steps to get it working on my machine. There are many issues with getting it working, thankfully there are workarounds.

Radiant · Sun 28/01/2018 21:38:39

Ok, I'm trying this out now. But neither the AGS repo nor Janet's has a branch named osx-nick...

Crimson Wizard · Sun 28/01/2018 21:41:02

Quote from: Radiant on Sun 28/01/2018 21:38:39
Ok, I'm trying this out now. But neither the AGS repo nor Janet's has a branch named osx-nick...

https://github.com/JanetGilbert/ags/tree/osx-nick

Radiant · Sun 28/01/2018 21:42:59

Thanks. Looks like I missed the 'next page' button on the GitHub site

Radiant · Sun 28/01/2018 21:48:20

Ok, so far so good. Brew install etc etc reported nothing new was required. Xcode reset gave no response, which I take to mean 'no errors' Linux-style. Now running make install.

(edit) Ok, that generated a bunch of warnings but appears to work. Thanks for the tip. Now let's see about Xcode...

(edit) Success! Ok, I had to google some odd stuff like 'how to switch xcode to release mode' and 'where on earth does Xcode place my executable' but it seems to work fine

Radiant · Sun 28/01/2018 22:32:22

Great, thanks everyone for your help.

I have a few questions though. If a game has a (filename).001 file with extra rooms and such, can I just add this to the ags/Resources folder within Xcode? What about .TRA translation files? The OSX version doesn't appear to have acsetup so how do I set a translation? Finally, does this support the AGSteam plugin and if so, how? Currently running an AGSteam game aborts with an unresolved import.

eri0o · Sat 05/05/2018 03:37:04

Hey Radiant! Did things eventually worked out for you?

Radiant · Sat 05/05/2018 07:47:12

We've got a Discord group that's working on it. I'll have to test the current build this weekend.

eri0o · Sat 05/05/2018 13:39:16

Did you had to fork and do new stuff to get it working? Are your modifications public? I am.going to start messing with OSX build soon. Can it run plug-ins? I was interested into trying to add joystick support.

Radiant · Mon 07/05/2018 23:39:19

So far I'm running off a clone, not a fork. I haven't figured out how to use plugins yet. It would be easiest if you PM Edmundito and ask him to add you to the Discord channel, we're discussing it there. HTH!

tzachs · Tue 05/06/2018 16:12:45

Heads up: Apple is deprecating OpenGL for macos: https://developer.apple.com/macos/whats-new/

Seems as the 2 possible options for supporting mac long term are either metal or vulcan using moltenvk (and of course supporting vulkan should give performance benefits on all platforms whereas metal is apple platforms only).

Crimson Wizard · Tue 05/06/2018 16:37:27

Quote from: tzachs on Tue 05/06/2018 16:12:45
Seems as the 2 possible options for supporting mac long term are either metal or vulcan using moltenvk (and of course supporting vulcan should give performance benefits on all platforms whereas metal is apple platforms only).

Hopefully we won't have to do that ourselves; when we switch to SDL we just use whatever it supports.

tzachs · Tue 05/06/2018 18:16:08

Ah, right, forgot about the SDL effort, yeah, they seem to have vulkan support for mac: https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/sdl-2-0-8-released/23957

monkey0506 · Thu 07/06/2018 01:59:42

It's still a bit of a mess, but I got a working build of a game project (not a real game) running on OS X High Sierra with Steam achievements.

I cloned Janet's osx-nick branch and reused the WEG Xcode workspace files (and the Shivah project files). I tried to figure out how to embed a binary version of AGSteam into the app, but I kept getting an error that the library didn't exist in the final executable. So instead I followed the approach that was already partially implemented by WEG (judging by the project files and the lack of an existing port of AGSteam to Mac), and built the AGSteam source directly as part of the project files. Took a bit of knackering about as I've never used Xcode (or even OS X) before, but it definitely is working.

I will try to make a more detailed post of what I did after I try to abstract it out of the WEG files.

Radiant · Sun 24/06/2018 16:38:45

That's great news, Monkey! Thank you for doing that!

rmonic79 · Sat 11/08/2018 18:49:50

Hi guys i was able to start my game on ios with janet branch on 3.3.3, any news about 3.4 or 3.4.1, it was a mess to downgrade my game.

edit: i know that the post is for mac but i read some interesting things.

Blackthorne · Wed 29/08/2018 15:40:54

Hey, if anyone out there is interested, I'd really love to port our games (Quest for Infamy, Order of the Thorne and our upcoming QFI:Roehm to Ruin) to Mac. Get in touch with me if you're interested. I could use the help with this kind of thing.

Bt