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This is just... WOW.

I'm toying with a short-ish MAGS game at some stage, Sci-Fi focussed. To have a ship-flying section with this (starfields streaking by with planets as large pixelated objects) could work, perhaps! Keen to give this a go right now, but can't see it fitting into my current project!

Keep up the great work!

Wow - this is looking absolutely phenomenal!! Getting very strong Broken Sword-esque vibes from the art and animation style. Would be curious how long a single background takes in this resolution compared to the lower-res stuff. Unavowed was already a significant step up, this is... impressive! Working on Nighthawks art must've helped?

I watched this video on YouTube which seems to indicate there's development happening about this? I don't personally use the Steam AGS plugin so don't know how that would work, sorry!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AxkhWhSWDI&t=95s

I've been successfully compiling universal binaries for a while now, but I do believe plugins have to be universal for things to work? The steam plugin probably isn't. But with Steam now slowly moving towards M1 compatibility, that might change? I think right now, there's no option to upload a universal binary / M1 binary to Steam regardless?

That did the trick - thank you!

Hi Eri0o, recently gave the rellax module a go and it's phenomenal! The smooth scrolling of the camera is an amazing addition to my game.

I was curious though, is there a way to temporarily disable rellax? Certain cutscenes in my game would play better without, so if there was a rellax.disable() command or something similar, that would be great. Not sure if I'm looking in the right place for it! Any help you can give would be most appreciated. Thanks for creating this module in the first place!

This is weird, because if you ARE using the latest CMake you should not have to do this, it sets the variable CMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES from the arch in the uname output from the invoking shell in theory, but you can pass it on the command line.

In AGS source code directory, create a clean build directory, generate files with cmake and try to build with make as this:

Code: bash

cd ags
mkdir cmake-build-release
cd cmake-build-release
cmake -DCMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES=arm64 -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
make -j8

I don't have a way to verify this. I also am not sure, but I think you can verify the architecture of a binary. After building, in the same directory, try this

Code: bash

file ./ags

Also, the CMake version would be useful...

Code: bash

cmake --version

(note I am just trying to understand why you are not getting an arm64 build, but I am not familiar with the particular way MacOS works...

But about universal binaries, that is different. If one don't want to deal with them though, just make a bash script that checks the architecture with uname and boots the specific ags_arm64 or ags_amd64 binary with the game, and set this script as the entry point of the app in info.plist)

Following on from this post a while back, I've discovered cmake is perfectly able to compile a Universal Binary! Which is great news. Just to make a small modification to Eri0o's post above, the cmake command should be:

Code: ags

cmake "-DCMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES=arm64;x86_64" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ../

This will then build a universal binary, which means it's only one binary to distribute for MacOS which includes both x86 and Apple Silicon. Works a treat with 3.6.0 too!

If it helps, I can build an empty one? And then you can a lot your stuff into it?

The difficulty will be a Universal Binary.

Oooh, good news, congrats! Was it something MacOS-port related? I'm curious to hear what the issue was in the end?

Hi Dualnames, I've got a Mac running Big Sur 11.4, so happy to help out if you send me the files?

I do think that with Big Sur / M1 changes, the link provided holds some outdated information. From what I've read in various places (can test this in more detail later) it seems that Intel / Universal apps (x64 or joint x64/ARM binary) can launch with the right-click-open feature. ARM binaries (Apple Silicon) "demand" notarization/signing unless every individual downloaders runs xattr -cr themselves, this to negate ownership issues, making MacOS go "OK, this is yours". Doesn't make any difference whether the download came from a ZIP or DMG, from what I can find out.

Hi eri0o, so sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I did exactly as you asked and the outcome of "file ./ags" is:

Code: ags

./ags: Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64

So it would appear we have success, an ARM executable! I just tried to run it, and it works flawlessly on my M1 Macbook Pro. So it works, when I use "Get Info" on the app, it tells me it's Apple Silicon (so ARM as well). This is great news.

The annoying thing for future reference is that people will need to fork out for an Apple Developer account and notarise/sign the app. MacOS is getting increasingly funny with running unsigned apps and everything on Apple Silicon has to be signed in order to run (unless you compile it yourself). Or you run the xattr -cr command on it, which is a hassle for non-command-line people. But that's a matter for another day, for now, it's great to see the future-proofing I was seeking is in place. :-)

If I run uname -a I get the following result:

Code: ags

Darwin My-MacBook-Pro.local 20.5.0 Darwin Kernel Version 20.5.0: Sat May  8 05:10:31 PDT 2021; root:xnu-7195.121.3~9/RELEASE_ARM64_T8101 arm64

I installed CMake through Homebrew so that might be the way to avoid any GUI stuff, since all that gives me is the CLI version. Worked a treat!

Eri0o, thank you so much for your investigation into the M1/Intel situation. I discovered I was running Homebrew through Rosetta and therefore got the Intel-version of CMake. I've now installed everything M1-native, but it seems that CMake will still only compile an Intel version of the game, not an M1-version. Not a big deal at this point in time anyway, since Rosetta2 is going to stick around for the next... 2 year I believe, at least. So we have plenty of time to explore this further as time moves on.

On that note, speaking as someone who has NO clue about programming, I have no idea how feasible it is to update the Mac version of the engine to Metal instead of OpenGL. The translation layer of MoltenVK (which is now open source I believe) only seems to work for Vulkan-to-Metal, but if we want to future-proof the MacOS port, then I think moving to Universal binary (Apple Silicon + Intel version combined) + Metal-graphics layer support (through a translation layer) would need to happen at some stage.

That being said, Apple has deprecated OpenGL since version 10.14 (Mojave) and it's not been removed for the past few years (since I think quite a few games/software packages rely on it). But the signs are there that OpenGL will get dropped by Apple at some stage.

A quick Google search showed up something like this: https://github.com/kakashidinho/metalangle as a potential solution, but since it's not an actively maintained thing anymore, probably not the right path to go down.

As a completely ignorant person when it comes to programming, is it "hard" to add Vulkan as a graphics driver to AGS Windows? Because then we could explore MoltenVK instead (which is actively maintained and has Valve-backing because of their Proton project on Linux).

Alternative question: Is there a way to build an M1 compatible version? I found something related to the topic here for cmake:

https://discourse.cmake.org/t/how-to-determine-which-architectures-are-available-apple-m1/2401

I tried to add the IF(APPLE) section to the cmake_install.cmake file but it resulted in the same binary file as before. Or would the process be a bit more complex for AGS?

Hi Manu, would it be OK if I added this to the AGS Wiki? It would be a great resource for people to keep an eye on. And then if the procedure changes, we can always update the wiki page.

Thanks for doing this!

It works a treat by the way! I just compiled my game from scratch using the latest AGS version   source code. I imagine this is how the wrapper is also created?

Emabolo, wow, such a guide sounds great. Looking forward to it!

I wanted to ask whether it would be possible to play the KQ4Retold under ScummVM?

... Is there any particular reason why you would want to run the game under ScummVM in the first place? ... To answer your question, from what I understand, only the ScummVM team themselves can help you with this issue, ...

Hello. I simply had been using ScummVM a lot lately and Iove to have one program to run all my King's Quest games. I have read that ScummVM supports AGS, so it seemed to me that it would be easy to run KQ3Retold. I guess I was wrong.

It's working fine for me over here. Just be sure you're using the daily build of ScummVM (link on their download page). The game isn't recognised (yet) but you can just click "Add Anyway". Works like a charm! (And the easiest way for me on my Macbook)

Wow!!

Just gave this a go and it's working really, really well. My game's playable from start to finish in Safari (on a Mac). Sound effects + music all play.

There are two occasions where I use ScreenShake(5) in my game. And whilst it works perfectly well, it temporarily halts all music whilst the effect is running.

My guess is AGS has a rather peculiar way of doing this effect, since ScummVM completely ignores it instead. 

But again, wow!!

With the latest news that development is going to speed up - good luck on the final hurdles. I've been following this game for a while now, super excited about this one!! Best of luck!