Star Why You Should Support Mac OS X and Linux
Linked by Kroc Camen on Tue 30th Dec 2008 23:21 UTC
Games Indie game developer Wolfire Games gives 5 solid reasons why games developers should support Mac OS X and Linux. [via TUAW] "Obviously supporting Mac OS X and Linux means you tap into another platform and expand your potential market base. That much is clear. But surely adding an extra 5% is negligible, right? Wrong. Not all five percents are created equal." For their game Lugaru, they go on to claim "supporting Mac OS X and Linux directly increased sales by around 122%."
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RE: Mac?
by danieldk on Wed 31st Dec 2008 09:28 UTC in reply to "Mac?"
danieldk
Member since:
2005-11-18

I can support Linux, free and Open Source. But I never support Mac.


Yes you can, the APIs are nearly the same.

But seriously ;) , if you are making a live as an independent game or application developer, you need food on the table. It doesn't automatically land there when RMS swings a magic wand. If the developer can't support him/herself, there will be no game at all. Adding Mac OS X support can be a good manner to add more users.

Besides that, many independent gaming companies are often handling way more ethical (by my standards) by not promoting DRM, caring about their customers, and supporting more platforms than the platform that is basically a monopoly.

Edited 2008-12-31 09:29 UTC

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 7

RE[2]: Mac?
by anarxia on Wed 31st Dec 2008 11:42 in reply to "RE: Mac?"
anarxia Member since:
2006-06-02

Actually the APIs are very different. If you don't use a portable game engine you will have to write thousands of lines of platform specific code.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 2

RE[3]: Mac?
by mmu_man on Wed 31st Dec 2008 12:29 in reply to "RE[2]: Mac?"
mmu_man Member since:
2006-09-30

OpenGL ? GLUT ?
The rest is barely file system tweaks, input handling and sound playback, and there are other libraries (OpenAL ?) for that.
Not mentionning SDL, which is a bit slow on some platforms at least.
Or you can wrap your own crossplatform engine with a bit of design. The BZFlag was one of the cleanest I recall porting:
http://bzflag.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/bzflag/trunk/bzflag/src/pl...
C++ helped.

Edited 2008-12-31 12:39 UTC

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 6