One of my goals for 2004 is to exploit the portable nature of our code and release our new games for Win32, Mac and Linux at the same time, as well as porting our existing games to Mac.

However, I don't have a Mac, and I know almost nothing about Macs, so I don't know what to buy. I have very little money, so I must buy the cheapest possible machine that allows me to compile and run our games (which aren't too hardware demanding).

Being located in Uruguay, South America, I must buy a notebook (getting a desktop through customs can take months and end up being prohibitively expensive). So I'm thinking of buying an used Mac notebook at eBay and finding a friend who can take it here.

What Mac do I need? There are many processors (68K, G3, G4...), since the architecture is RISC I don't know if the speeds are comparable to x86s, there are many OS versions which I don't know how compatible they are... for example, if I had to answer the opposite question for a Mac indie, I'd say "target a PIII/400 with 64 MB of RAM and no 3D accelerator, with Windows 98 and up". What would be the equivalent machine in the Mac world? What hardware and OS should I target?

So, the questions are, what do I need, and where can I buy it? Under $400 would be great, and I found a couple of auctions on eBay which could be what I need.

By the way, are there free compilers? PowerBuilder, CodeWarrior? I've only heard of them. If I could build native apps using g++ (gcc's C++ compiler), it would be great, since I'm using g++ for Win32 and Linux.

I am not a Mac person in any respect, but my fiance owns a Powerbook and I have some Mac friends.

Here is the deal:

OS 9 and OS 10 are not directly compatible. If you make a game for Windows 98, it will run in Windows 2000, XP, etc without a problem (usually).

OS 9 and 10 are two different platforms.

That being said, $500 is not going to be enough for anything but older computers running OS 8/9 (which are fine together but not as fine with OS X). OS X requires the higher end and more expensive computers, and Apple is good at making sure you upgrade your hardware periodically.

In any case, OS X supposedly makes software development easy, providing different tools and such. I would suggest checking out the book Mac Game Programming: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?endeca=1&isbn=1931841187&itm=2

It should have info on development for OS X and 9.

And congratulations on going cross-platform! I love seeing games that work on Gnu/Linux platforms. I run Debian myself, but I am seriously considering moving to Gentoo to get some actual updated software B-)

I don't know much about development on the Mac, but I believe g++ still exists for it. You might want to google under g++ and PPC or g++ and OS X or something like that.

As a Mac person, I suggest you target Mac OS 10.3 and up.

All Mac OS versions below 10 have been abandoned by Apple, and OS 10 is completely different from previous OS versions. New Apple hardware for over a year now cannot run OS versions before version 10. Pre OS 10 users are slowly converting, and it is possible that by the time you finished the learning curve for programming the older OS you'd have no audience to speak of.

If you target OS 10.3 and higher, the IDE and compiler are completely free from Apple:

http://developer.apple.com/tools/macosxtools.html

In fact, the development kit actually comes with OS 10.3 on CD and pre-installed on OS 10.3 Macs.

Apple has well-documented 2D and 3D APIs for OS 10:

http://developer.apple.com/games/

Java is also a standard part of OS 10, so that is a potential cross-platform route you could investigate.

OS 10 requires a G3 processor or higher, which is in all iBooks and the PowerBooks made in the last few years. Your best bet for a used laptop in your price range on eBay is going to be one of the original clamshell, flavored iBooks (Blueberry or Tangerine). Be sure to get one with 128MB, as that is the requirement for OS 10. If you check the listings, you can probably find someone selling one of these laptops with OS 10.3 already installed, which would save you the cost of the OS upgrade.

You can check hardware compatibility here:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/requirements.html

The flavored iBooks are at the low end of the hardware specs for OS 10.3. On the positive side it means if your software runs okay on your development machine it will run on any OS 10 machine. On the negative side, these iBooks do not have 3D hardware if you need that for your game. However, they are really fast laptops (I have one myself), and I have played realtime 3D games without any trouble.

I hope this helps. :)

-Tom

And if anything, having Expose is a nice plus B-)

Many thanks for all that detailed information!

It's great that XCode includes g++. With all my code already g++ and using SDL, porting anything should be trivial.

And congratulations on going cross-platform! I love seeing games that work on Gnu/Linux platforms. I run Debian myself, but I am seriously considering moving to Gentoo to get some actual updated software B-)
I'm not going cross-platform, I was born cross-platform :) Betty (http://www.mrio-software.com/info.php?id=bbb) was made in my RedHat 8 box, and cross compiled to Win32. The only step that involves Windows so far is making the installer, mostly because I'm too lazy to try running NSIS under Wine...

Well good then!

On that note, what do you use to compile on Windows? I tried to do a google search and found mingw, but I thought maybe there was something else as well.

I am interesting in making any of my projects cross-platform, and so I am interested in knowing how you do it.

Check out msys (http://www.mingw.org/msys.shtml)(minimal mingw dev environment), or devc++ (http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html)

Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com/) is also useful for unix style tools on windows.

I'd also like to get a mac to develop on. Seen a few on australian ebay with OSX 10.3 for ~$300-$400 AUD.

Or could do like that old school atari hacker, and make games in the store ;) Another option may be to do it at some school.

Have fun!

Eheh I'm thinking of buying one too :)
But it's safe to buy a computer from Ebay? I guess you'll have to pay a lot of cost for shipping if it's far from where you live... and if the computer isn't working?
luckily there's a good market of used mac here in Italy, so I'll buy one here, but not now.

For now I'm letting patrox do the mac port of my new game, since I can't invest yet 400$ unless I am sure that I can make some money with mac games.
If I sell 1000 mac copies of my puzzle game, I'll definitely buy one, but for now isn't a good option for me :)

Originally posted by GBGames
On that note, what do you use to compile on Windows? I tried to do a google search and found mingw, but I thought maybe there was something else as well.
I don't compile on Windows, I compile for Windows, without leaving bash.

Download the gcc sources and build a cross-compiler (./configure TARGET=mingw32, or something like that). You'll need a separate tree for this "environment" (new bin, include, and lib somewhere, I have mine in /usr/local/i386-mingw32). Then you just use the new i386-mingw32- prefixed tools to do whatever you want, except that they produce a Win32 .exe instead of an ELF executable.
Originally posted by Jack_Norton
But it's safe to buy a computer from Ebay? I guess you'll have to pay a lot of cost for shipping if it's far from where you live...
I won't have it shipped here. I'll either ship it to a FedEx PO Box (not all vendors ship to PO Boxes, and FedEx might have trouble passing a notebook) or have it shipped to a friend or friend's friend in the US. I have two or three friend-of-friends who come visit more or less regularly.

:O just the thread I've been looking for!

If anyones interested, I have a titanium powerbook that I've been wanting to sell for awhile.

off the top of my head...
g4 400mhz
256mb
mac os9/10 (9 installed, x on discs- never installed)
I believe its a 20gig hd-- but I'm not sure
I'm pretty sure its got some form of 3d acceleration but again--not positive...never played games on it :)
cd/dvd combo (NOT superdrive)
wide angle screen - (1 dead pixel, on screen)
firewire/usb/infrared ports
All manuals + Original Packaging
Wireless mouse
Carrying case

The school I was in required all of its multimedia students to shell out for these ultra expensive powerbooks. After interest, I believe the total was around $2400 :X

Heres the deal... Its been out of my possession for a long while. I let a friend from school borrow it, and just never pushed very hard to get it back.

Last time I spoke with her, she had informed me that her niece had dropped it and broke one of the hinges from the screen :/
She also said that other than that, the computer was fine and that she was willing to give me the cash to fix it...

Up until I let her borrow it (I know, big mistake), the computer was in perfect condition. Had 1 dead pixel on the screen that I just couldnt be bothered to fix.

Anyways, If anyones interested in possibly buying, I'll definitely go and retrieve it from her asap. Then I can give a more objective look at its current condition, provide pictures, selling price, etc.

I'm located in Southern California, USA. I'm trying to get cash, but I may be open to a fair trade.

If you've got any questions, I'm usually on aim: p0edboy
or you could email me: p0edboy(at)aol.com

Sorry I know this isnt ebay, but considering the thread content-- I dont feel this post is unwarranted ;)