As I'm working on my game I keep wondering whether to use direct3d or opengl (for portability). I've heard it frequently mentioned that the mac market offers huge opportunities due to the lack of games on it.

However, I have to wonder why Dexterity and other companies don't port their most popular games to macs? Surely if a game like dweep has such huge sales, wouldn't it be worthwhile to port it to the mac?

So what's the reasoning behind it?

Well reasons may vary depending on the author ?

-they don't want to have to handle 2x the support .
-they simply don't have a mac.
-their code is not portable at all
-they are totally bored after they finished the pc version and don't want to deal with it anymore
-they think a small market is not worth it

pat.

I think the reason is simple: it isn't so easy. and also probably don't think it's worth the effort.

Of course, if there was a method of quick porting your games from pc to mac... ;) hehe

I can't wait for your library to get out, patrox! move your a## !! LOL

Opportunity cost mainly. When we run out of higher priority opportunities, then Mac ports will be next. Localized versions (German, French, etc) are another possibility.

Localized versions (German, French, etc) are another possibility.
I'm moving in that direction right from my first title... since I'll have different downloads for each language, I'll be able to keep a statistics of how many customer I get based on language... that could be interesting (I'll post results here after some months).
Mac port is interesting too, but for this one was too late, is almost finished.

Well, I'll port USM 1.4 to mac then ;)

-they don't want to have to handle 2x the support



That's the big one for me. Although my codebase is already portable to the Mac, I don't have one and so can't support it.

Although, based on some recent threads, it might be time to give Apple a call and get a dev box.

Since all I do (at least for now!) is port Windows games to the Mac, I guess I ought to weigh in on this question.

First, no one should think that the Mac is this golden land of opportunity because no one is in the market. No one is here with me (well, very few people) because the market is teeny tiny. The most current figures I've seen are that the Mac has about 3% share of new computers sold, and some people (Brian Hook, late of Pyrogon, comes to mind) said that his Windows business was even more disproportionate than that.

Plus, believe it or not, Mac people are discriminating buyers too; you can't just shovel any old PC game onto the platform and expect the starving Mac-abees to lap it up because they're so hungry for games. Most of the AAA stuff does come over, and some middle-tier things too, so people do have standards.

Another factor is that the Mac market is different than the PC market. Because the market is so small overall, developers and publishers have to select titles that are going to have the broadest possible appeal. On the PC, you can target all kinds of different genres; look at HPS Simulations, with their crude graphics but deep, technical gameplay. That stuff would never sell on the Mac, but on the PC there's a dedicated group of grognards who keep them going. In a huge market, that's a viable business model, but if you start to cater to a subgroup of a tiny market, well, those three people aren't going to feed your family.

So why do I do it? Because I'm one of those weenies who love the Mac, and I love bringing solid Windows shareware to my favorite platform. And I can indulge that because I don't make my living from shareware, so the business judgments are a little different. We're making some money, and my conversion rates are pretty decent, but it's not a cakewalk.

(ANN: To the few Mac people who read this board: our next game, the popular Bugatron, is coming very soon!)

Mark Batten
Red Marble Games
http://www.redmarblegames.com

Mark: how difficult is it to port a game? Is programming the Mac very different or is it more of a matter of writing iMessageBox instead of MessageBox? Basically, how long would it take to learn enough about Mac development to port a typical indie game and how different is the resulting OS-specific code?

With PTK it's the same , there is 1 line to change though. ( main instead of winmain ;) )

http://ptk.phelios.com


patrice.

Hey that's spamming!!! ;) hehe
Well, I can see a lot of potential customers here in this forums...
I think everyone has to be grateful to you who made a so great tool.
Sigh I wish I had it available before starting writing USM in blitzbasic! Now I'd have the game ready in 2 platforms... :(

Next one will be PTK-made for sure ;)

Unfortunately, there's no single answer to the question (unless, as Patrice suggests, you use a cross-platform library like PTK, or SDL, or something). I've had games that ported with very little effort, and others that were a real bear. Language choice is the first issue; people who use Delphi or Visual Basic are going to have trouble, because everything has to be rewritten. I'm completing a VB port now, and am starting on a Delphi port, and it's pretty trying.

At the other extreme, code that's written with porting in mind -- that is, which isolates Win32 and DirectX API calls from the rest of the code (or uses OpenGL) can be more straightforward.

The way to think about it is this. C, C++, and the STL are pretty much identical on the two platforms; except for endian issues, plain C or C++ that you write on Windows often will run without modification on the Mac. Everything call to a Windows API has to be replaced, of course, and you have to know the Mac equivalents. They're often quite similar, and some of the bigger-picture differences (e.g. event handling) became a lot more analogous with OS X. I've been porting for about 15 years, so this all comes pretty naturally to me, but it's not a completely different world on the Mac.

Mark Batten
Red Marble Games
http://www.redmarblegames.com

I don't have a Mac :(

I don't have a Mac :D

Sorry, couldn't resist...

It's not really important if we (developers) have a mac, it is important if they (customers!) have them ;)

I think it's worthwhile... ask Spidweb why they get they game out for mac first and then port to windows ;)

Yes, Mac people love it if you release for the Mac first. We get beaten down by having to wait for months to get AAA titles ported, so Mac-first titles get a little more attention just for being released in that order.

Mark Batten
Red Marble Games
http://www.redmarblegames.com