Gamemaker For Mac., The green light! Options

[Smarty]

To summarize this shortly, and bluntly, there is no way in [your conviction's underworld here] you can make a DLL run on a Mac.

[Corey Edwards]

Any intelligent businessman will tell you that if you have a strong hold in one market (as GM does in Windows development for hobbyists and people who just enjoy its simplicity), you would be rather insane to not make a move into another market as well, provided you don't pull too far from your strength.

Porting GM to Mac is a brilliant move. It opens up the GMC to a whole new era in which Mac-only users now get to join in and develop with this brilliant tool that has grown profoundly over the past 10 years. Mark never envisioned it to be a Game Development tool...it was an animation tool....then it became Game Maker.....2D only......now it does 3D but is Windows only.....now it's moving to Mac as well. Rather than complain about this decision (which has already been made and its unlikely to be revoked), why not support it? I personally prefer Mac compared to Windows. However, Windows has its place. Mac has its place. Linux also has its place.

So seriously, instead of arguing about something you're not directly involved in (the development of GM and the portage to the Mac), stop complaining and rejoice! GM is constantly taking turns that were never foreseen for it. So long as it stays alive and well on Windows, don't complain about it moving to Mac as well, or even Linux in the future. For one, it would provide a wonderful game creation tool for both platforms. It would be great to see more GM-style games for both of those operating systems.

One last thought, to back up what the mods and admins are TRYING to get across...this topic is about GAME MAKER being ported to the Macintosh.....now about how Windows beats Mac or Mac kicks Window's butt or Linux is better than all of them...so seriously, with all due respect to everyone here, please grow up and behave like adults. Stay on topic and don't go off the deep end arguing in the same stupid debate that has been going on since Steve Jobs and Bill Gates first started cussing each other out and throwing out "yo momma" jokes. Just let it rest already.

[methegamemakingg...]

So, I gather the GM game runner is being reprogrammed in C++ - in turn allowing for cross-platformability. My question is this: will it be open-source?

Obviously Game Maker itself, due to costing money, can't be released openly without people opening it up, disabling the license check, recompiling, and forever enjoying the full version for free.

But the runner seems to have no such issue, being distributed with every GM game anyway - there's no paid version of the GM runner! If the runner was open source, any platform with GCC and OpenGL support could run GM games. And there's a lot of platforms with GCC and OpenGL support. (Heck, even the DS kinda has OpenGL support!) Bam, GM games become amazingly cross-platform.

[Dangerous_Dave]

So, I gather the GM game runner is being reprogrammed in C++ - in turn allowing for cross-platformability. My question is this: will it be open-source?

It's being programmed in Lazurus, which attempts to allow the same programs to run on many Operating Systems. It uses Delphi, not C++.

But the runner seems to have no such issue, being distributed with every GM game anyway - there's no paid version of the GM runner! If the runner was open source, any platform with GCC and OpenGL support could run GM games. And there's a lot of platforms with GCC and OpenGL support. (Heck, even the DS kinda has OpenGL support!) Bam, GM games become amazingly cross-platform.

The runner is the problem. You could change the runner so it didn't check for versions, and then you could just run any lite GMK with pro features so long as you wrote it in GML. On the same note, the editor tells the runner whether it's pro or not, so neither could be open source.

[King InuYasha]

So, I gather the GM game runner is being reprogrammed in C++ - in turn allowing for cross-platformability. My question is this: will it be open-source?

It's being programmed in Lazurus, which attempts to allow the same programs to run on many Operating Systems. It uses Delphi, not C++.

In GM7:Mac, the runner does use Lazarus-fpc. However, the runner that comes with GM8 is written in C++. Additionally, Lazarus does NOT use Delphi. Delphi isn't even a programming language. It is an environment for writing Object Pascal code. Admittedly, there are slight differences in Obj-Pascal code written to specifically target Delphi targets over Lazarus-fpc targets, but that generally is a matter of the libraries, not the language itself. Lazarus uses Object Pascal.

But the runner seems to have no such issue, being distributed with every GM game anyway - there's no paid version of the GM runner! If the runner was open source, any platform with GCC and OpenGL support could run GM games. And there's a lot of platforms with GCC and OpenGL support. (Heck, even the DS kinda has OpenGL support!) Bam, GM games become amazingly cross-platform.

The runner is the problem. You could change the runner so it didn't check for versions, and then you could just run any lite GMK with pro features so long as you wrote it in GML. On the same note, the editor tells the runner whether it's pro or not, so neither could be open source.

Lazarus can target Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Many platforms actually use APIs from one of these three platforms internally. For example, the XBOX and XBOX 360 use a subset of various Windows APIs. Obviously the iPhone and iPod Touch uses a customized subset of the Cocoa API called CocoaTouch.

However there is a huge snag. It is highly unlikely that GM games will EVER be available on handheld platforms, given that most devkit licenses for those platforms prohibit interpreted code. The iPhone is a well known example. It's App Store prohibits the selling and otherwise distribution of programs capable of using interpreted code to the phones. Since the App Store is the only way games can be downloaded to the phone without jailbreaking it, YoYo Games would not be willing to do it unless they wrote a whole new compiler for GML that compiles it down to native code for platform distribution.

[Recreate]

No interpreters? Why?

[methegamemakingg...]

The runner is the problem. You could change the runner so it didn't check for versions, and then you could just run any lite GMK with pro features so long as you wrote it in GML. On the same note, the editor tells the runner whether it's pro or not, so neither could be open source.

Why doesn't Game Maker actually, y'know, check for that while you're writing the scripts?

No interpreters? Why?

Presumably because interpreters on a closed base like the iPhone could potentially allow people to run their own code and crack it wide open.

[Dangerous_Dave]

In GM7:Mac, the runner does use Lazarus-fpc. However, the runner that comes with GM8 is written in C++.

No, no it's not.

Additionally, Lazarus does NOT use Delphi. Delphi isn't even a programming language. It is an environment for writing Object Pascal code. Admittedly, there are slight differences in Obj-Pascal code written to specifically target Delphi targets over Lazarus-fpc targets, but that generally is a matter of the libraries, not the language itself. Lazarus uses Object Pascal.

Okey dokey, I was under the impression Delphi was based on Object Pascal. Thanks for clearing that up .
Edit: This page says Delphi is another name for Object Pascal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_(disambiguation)

Why doesn't Game Maker actually, y'know, check for that while you're writing the scripts?

Because it wouldn't make a difference. There is already an open source editor for GMK/GM6 (and GMD?) files. Although it's somewhat limited, if the runner was open source, I'm sure it would get a lot more contributors and then, wabang! no need for pro.

This post has been edited by Dangerous_Dave: Nov 17 2009, 09:29 PM

[methegamemakingg...]

Why doesn't Game Maker actually, y'know, check for that while you're writing the scripts?

Because it wouldn't make a difference. There is already an open source editor for GMK/GM6 (and GMD?) files. Although it's somewhat limited, if the runner was open source, I'm sure it would get a lot more contributors and then, wabang! no need for pro.

Oh, righto... Now I'm wishing that GM was actually free. Except that there's no effective way to get cash in such an arrangement.

[GisleAune]

So a windows user can export both win and mac executables?

Will this make iPhone game export possible?

The iPhone game market has a great majority of games below GM game and a majority of GM-games are far below PC-game standard. Great GM users could actually make some bucks this way...

[Hach-Que]

So a windows user can export both win and mac executables?

No idea, but I don't see why (as others have been saying) that YYG wouldn't include the ability for each Game Maker (for Windows and for Mac) to export to both executable formats. After all, Game Maker just inserts the game data into the runner data and produces an application, so there's no reason you can't produce two applications (one for Windows and one for Mac) with two runner datas.

Will this make iPhone game export possible?

The iPhone game market has a great majority of games below GM game and a majority of GM-games are far below PC-game standard. Great GM users could actually make some bucks this way...

The answer to your question was three posts above yours. Read the freakin' topic next time.

[rinkuhero]

No idea, but I don't see why (as others have been saying) that YYG wouldn't include the ability for each Game Maker (for Windows and for Mac) to export to both executable formats. After all, Game Maker just inserts the game data into the runner data and produces an application, so there's no reason you can't produce two applications (one for Windows and one for Mac) with two runner datas.

it won't have that ability at first. it might one day, but sandy said no promises. besides, even if it gets that ability, you can't be sure it actually works unless you have both machines to test it on, so it's still a good idea to get a computer of each (or even just a mac with a windows partition on an intel processor) just to be sure.

[Hach-Que]

No idea, but I don't see why (as others have been saying) that YYG wouldn't include the ability for each Game Maker (for Windows and for Mac) to export to both executable formats. After all, Game Maker just inserts the game data into the runner data and produces an application, so there's no reason you can't produce two applications (one for Windows and one for Mac) with two runner datas.

it won't have that ability at first. it might one day, but sandy said no promises. besides, even if it gets that ability, you can't be sure it actually works unless you have both machines to test it on, so it's still a good idea to get a computer of each (or even just a mac with a windows partition on an intel processor) just to be sure.

Hmm, that is true. However, YYG will know what functions are not compatible across platforms and could simply prevent the creation of application for the other platform if the games uses incompatible features.

[rinkuhero]

i don't think it'll be as simple as what functions are compatible with each, there will always arise bugs which appear on one platform but which do not appear on others, which aren't related to incompatible functions.

i mean, sometimes only on WINDOWS you get bugs on some versions of windows which don't appear on other versions of windows (driver-related, operating system related, directx version related, videocard related, or whatever)

This post has been edited by rinkuhero: Nov 21 2009, 01:20 AM

[FredFredrickson]

I agree with Rinku - I don't think we'll be seeing either version able to output games for both anytime soon, so I wouldn't get my hopes up about that. Now, you might be able to upload to YYG and have users of both systems play the games from there - but I doubt either version will be able to output a stand-alone version for both systems.

[Dangerous_Dave]

The Dude said the data files for Win/Mac use slightly different formats. This rules out multiple exporting options in the near future, unless he wants to rewrite it. I think he'd rather fix the multitude of bugs.