Howdy y'all,

So ever since GLBasic was revealed to me, I've been really interested in using it to make games for every platform, particularly Linux/Mac. I was just wondering if anyone here develops for Mac and might have any pointers for me? What good resource sites are there for Mac developers, and where can I put games for Mac online where people can find them easily?

GLBasic is awesome and I can't wait to start developing multi-platform!

If you want to develop for Mac, the best ecosystem to get your apps published is through their App Store platform, particularly for iOS applications. For that, you will to get an Apple Developer account, xcode, and learn some objective-c. You don't need to develop exclusively in obj-c, but you will need to use it for some parts of your project.

As for GLBasic, I can't really comment on how well it integrates with the xcode tool chain. Before you dive into it, research whether GLBasic is problematic with the App Store approval process.

Hey,

i develop nearly only for mac and iOS.. Obj C is definitely the language to go and pretty cool too.. i hated it in the beginning as i come from a straight C background but now i Love it. Best Resource on the web is the apple developer page.. Thousands of Examples, Dev Videos etc..
really worth a visit

Peace
Markus

Before you dive into it, research whether GLBasic is problematic with the App Store approval process.

It's not. A lot of people on the GLBasic forums have gotten their games published in the App Store. That's why I've decided to use it to start developing for Mac/iOS.

[size=2]Hey,[color=#1C2837][size=2]
i develop nearly only for mac and iOS.. Obj C is definitely the language to go and pretty cool too.. i hated it in the beginning as i come from a straight C background but now i Love it. Best Resource on the web is the apple developer page.. Thousands of Examples, Dev Videos etc..
really worth a visit

Peace

[color=#1C2837][size=2]Markus

I eventually want to learn Objective-C. It actually looks easier than C++ to me, and I haven't even explored it much yet.

Is Objective-C comparable to C++ in terms of how "good" it is?

Coming from C++, I find the [object method] syntax kinda harder to read over object.method(). Is this something that you get used to and stop minding it?

If you want to develop for Mac, the best ecosystem to get your apps published is through their App Store platform, particularly for iOS applications.

If he wants to develop for Mac, that's not the same as developing for IOS ;)

For mobile devices, for any platform you usually have to go with the "official" language/API, be it Java, C++/Qt, C#/.NET or whatever. And this is for reasons beyond simply what the app store supports - the official language tends to be better supported in general on a mobile platform.

But for non-mobile? it's an interesting question - is the Mac application store already so dominant, that a developer should choose his tools based on what Apple approve for the store, even though there's (presumably) a wealth of different languages to choose from? I hope Microsoft don't try pulling the same tricks (if they aren't already).

Is Objective-C comparable to C++ in terms of how "good" it is?

A couple of computer scientist could probably argue about that a long time
Technically, method calls should for example be a bit slower because of obj-c more dynamic nature.
On the other hand, you can do things in obj-c that you can't do in C++

On the conceptual level, that is OOP, it has everything you need, and feels a bit more "clean" then C++ imo.

I kindof like it, though I still like C++ better

Coming from C++, I find the [object method] syntax kinda harder to read over object.method(). Is this something that you get used to and stop minding it?

Our brains are amazing, they can get used to almost anything, as long as its internally consistent
joke aside, I got used to it a lot faster then I thought.

Also, he said he wants to develop for Mac and Linux. GLBasic, and C++, allow him to do that fairly easily. Objective C wouldn't, and doesn't seem to give any notable benefits to make up for it. Well, it may allow porting to IOS, but at the same time as cutting every other platform out, so doesn't really move him towards a goal of writing games for every platform...

Also, he said he wants to develop for Mac and Linux. GLBasic, and C++, allow him to do that fairly easily. Objective C wouldn't, and doesn't seem to give any notable benefits to make up for it. Well, it may allow porting to IOS, but at the same time as cutting every other platform out, so doesn't really move him towards a goal of writing games for every platform...

Yes, all my game programming on both OSX and iOS have been very thin integration layers in obj-c and then pure C or C++
obj-c is nice in that it mixes with C and C++ very well, just rename the files .mm and you can put any C++-code mixed into the obj-c code.

should've made that clear in my post.

I think the misquote from the ObjC creators "[font="arial, geneva, helvetica, sans-serif"]this language has all the memory safety of C combined with all the blazing speed of Smalltalk" [/font]is amazingly apt. From what I understand the (OSX) libraries and API are extremely clear and logical, much cleaner than the mess that is Win32, but the language itself is horrid.

I recently did some C++ work on my Mac using XCode 4 for the first time and wow, what an awful experience. As I understand it though, XCode 4.x is pretty much universally reviled with most developers sticking with 3.x.