Heads up for our Mac users

In the past few weeks I've been taking a stab at all the Mac specific stuff for Xonotic. Most of these changes will probably go unnoticed for the majority of our players, but for the sake of documentation I will post some details about what I've done.

Let's start out with the good news, all of the libraries have been updated to the latest versions and are now all capable of running as 64-bit (x86_64). For many Snow Leopard users this will mean easier compilation and we will be able to include 64-bit binaries in our future releases. Furthermore we are switching to the SDL interface as the default for OSX now, largely because it is easier to maintain and there is very little difference in performance these days. The `all' script automatically selects SDL already, however you can choose AGL by means of `./all compile agl' and `./all run agl' if desired.

The reason why we're moving away from AGL is that the interface has massively changed in Snow Leopard, and currently AGL doesn't even compile on Snow Leopard. In fact this is unlikely to ever get fixed, as it would require the rewrite of a large portion of the code. This really only makes AGL an option for those of us still on Leopard.

Due to the 64-bit capability, we've also had to drop support for OSX 10.4 Tiger. I suspect everyone who likes gaming on his Mac does not run Tiger any more, and even PPC users can still upgrade to Leopard (Yes, we still support PPC).

With all of these changes, it has also become pretty easy to run Xonotic from GIT on your Mac. You will still need to install XCode and the SDL framework, but that's pretty simple. More information can be found on the wiki page. If you run into any trouble, please let me know.

Merlijn Hofstra

got it working now, Installed Xcode thank you

Team Xonotic?

Due to the 64-bit capability, we've also had to drop support for OSX 10.4 Tiger.

Uh oh. Isn't Tiger still kinda popular version?

I thought most people would be on leopard or snow leopard by now. In reality, macs only have a small amount of market share anyway. I don't think any back-breaking labor is worth supporting it. Mac users are lucky merlijn has an interest .


Disclaimer, my opinions of Mac OS X do not necessarily reflect those of Team Xonotic.

wiki page

fixed.

and thank you for taking an interest.

I thought most people would be on leopard or snow leopard by now. In reality, macs only have a small amount of market share anyway. I don't think any back-breaking labor is worth supporting it. Mac users are lucky merlijn has an interest .


Disclaimer, my opinions of Mac OS X do not necessarily reflect those of Team Xonotic.

Well, I wouldn't say that +10% is "small market share". However, Mac's percentage is still growing, but there won't be Tigers anymore.

Well, I think you know what you are doing. I'm not a Mac user, so I can't be 100% right (even though I know Mac users, also Tiger users).

Hmm the links are funny, I intended to post this on the blog only, but apparently that automagically posts it here.

Anyway, I won't pretend that I enjoy doing the work to get stuff working on Macs, but someone has to step up and do it. With most of the stuff taken care of now, we should be okay for quite some time regarding Mac specific stuff (assuming I didn't make any horrid mistakes).

Going 64-bit was really needed, as Snow Leopard defaults to using 64-bit these days. Especially for people building stuff live from git this is kinda troublesome if 64-bit is not supported at all. Dropping Tiger support seems pretty natural to me, work is ongoing to make the game more eye-pleasing in many different ways and this requires better hardware. I will bet that most machines that originally shipped with Tiger will barely be up to the task of running the game in any sane way. If people still wish to try, upgrade to Leopard - upgrading actually works on Macs and afaik Leopard is supported on ANY Apple hardware still. If you are really desperate to run it on Tiger, chances are the good people at Fink/MacPorts will create the build tools for you.

I'd love to hear more feedback of people running with the latest git on Macs and whether stuff actually works. Right now I'm still waiting for a small fix to make it into the stable branch of darkplaces for libpng-1.4.2, but this shouldn't be much of a problem as PNG is rarily used anyway. If you use the darkplaces.git master branch, it will work.

I guess the most accurate statistics we have right now are through the website, but those are skewed because they include people just coming to check out the news. However, they are interesting too look at and give us a better idea of our general audience.







You can cross examine these with the general OS X trends I googled... though I don't know how accurate those are either.

As you can see, we haven't yet had much of an impact on the western world. I imagine this will grow once we release a beta.

Historically there have been more linux users than os x in the Nexuiz community.

"(not set)", wtf? i bet that's me.

aww that means no slayer on xonotic. oh well. yes im still running 10.4 anyone got a copy of leopard i can have?? btw HI

It should also be pointed out that Steam, and therefore all games available to Mac users on the Steam platform are also only available on Leopard or better (in fact, even only the latest versions of both Leopard and Snow Leopard).

I did see someone posting about porting to cocoa, perhaps there could be a separate AGL (carbon) binary which supports 10.3.9+ and a Cocoa version which is 10.5+ [in fact, it would probably be best to drop PPC support at that point]). I'm not saying releases would have to contain all these binaries, but keeping build paths open would probably be beneficial.

It should also be pointed out that Steam, and therefore all games available to Mac users on the Steam platform are also only available on Leopard or better (in fact, even only the latest versions of both Leopard and Snow Leopard).

I did see someone posting about porting to cocoa, perhaps there could be a separate AGL (carbon) binary which supports 10.3.9+ and a Cocoa version which is 10.5+ [in fact, it would probably be best to drop PPC support at that point]). I'm not saying releases would have to contain all these binaries, but keeping build paths open would probably be beneficial.

If we build stuff against the 10.5 SDK, it is generally quite easy to compile in PPC support. The reason I chose to drop support for Tiger is that this would mean compiling ppc/i386 against the 10.4u SDK and x86_64 against the 10.5 SDK and then using lipo to merge these. While this solution may actually work for the shared libraries, it is generally a painful proces to do this for executables.

I consider it not so bad to drop Tiger support, as I cannot think of any reason (other than pure laziness) why people would not want to upgrade to Leopard or Snow Leopard.

No 10.4? That's a bummer.

I hear where you're coming from in having to draw a line of support somewhere, but a 10.5 base cuts me out. Sure, 10.5 will run on my Mac Mini, but based on what I have seen, I will get a speed drop if I migrate.

When I grow up and buy and Intel Mac, I'll come over and play ;-)

*Looks at his PPC Tiger Mac. Looks at his empty wallet. Closes Xonotic tab.*
There goes a year of playing nexuiz...

i can't compile or run xonotic, i can't compile because it sais


The main repo is not xonotic.git, what have you done?


any help?

*Looks at his PPC Tiger Mac. Looks at his empty wallet. Closes Xonotic tab.*
There goes a year of playing nexuiz...

Yeah, macs aren't cheap... :p

tangerian, can you join the IRC as soon as possible? http://webchat.quakenet.org/?channels=xonotic
Say my name (MrBougo) when you enter so I can see when you're there.

We'll troubleshoot this and I'll post the solution here if we find it. I'll need more details on your setup, instant messaging will make things much easier.

Problem solved.

The origin repo url of the base repo was git://git.xonotic.org/xonotic/xonotic-nexcompat.pk3dir.git due to a network crash in the middle of the first checkout (for some unknown reason)

All it needed was this:

Code:

cd xonotic
git config remote.origin.url git://git.xonotic.org/xonotic/xonotic.git
cd data/
rm -rf xonotic-nexcompat.pk3dir
cd ..
./all update

(the rm is to make sure, as this directory is apparently related to the messup)
and the clones were ready to get compiled

So does it support Mac OS X Leopard (10.5.8) And PPC Processor? (PowerPC G5)
Thanks for all answers!!

So does it support Mac OS X Leopard (10.5.8) And PPC Processor? (PowerPC G5)
Thanks for all answers!!

Quoting a post above:

If we build stuff against the 10.5 SDK, it is generally quite easy to compile in PPC support. The reason I chose to drop support for Tiger is that this would mean compiling ppc/i386 against the 10.4u SDK and x86_64 against the 10.5 SDK and then using lipo to merge these. While this solution may actually work for the shared libraries, it is generally a painful proces to do this for executables.

I consider it not so bad to drop Tiger support, as I cannot think of any reason (other than pure laziness) why people would not want to upgrade to Leopard or Snow Leopard.

I guess it should compile on your system.

So does it support Mac OS X Leopard (10.5.8) And PPC Processor? (PowerPC G5)
Thanks for all answers!!

Quoting a post above:

If we build stuff against the 10.5 SDK, it is generally quite easy to compile in PPC support. The reason I chose to drop support for Tiger is that this would mean compiling ppc/i386 against the 10.4u SDK and x86_64 against the 10.5 SDK and then using lipo to merge these. While this solution may actually work for the shared libraries, it is generally a painful proces to do this for executables.

I consider it not so bad to drop Tiger support, as I cannot think of any reason (other than pure laziness) why people would not want to upgrade to Leopard or Snow Leopard.

I guess it should compile on your system.

Yeah, ok and thanks! I didn't understand well what merlijn said in his post because i'm from Finland.
[offtopic]I give all my support to Xonotic project!! I'm a graphical designer and all graphics i've seen from screenshots and videos have been awesome If you need my graphical design help, just contact me. [/offtopic]

Awesome! FruitieX from the dev team is Finnish as well, I believe he speaks swedish mostly. He's a bit busy at the moment though, better not bother him too much
Do feel free to show your graphics work on either the editing/concept art forum if you have xonotic-related works, or in Xonotic - General or Off Topic for anything that shows your skills

Yeah it would be cool to help the Xonotic community / Development team I have all my contacts info at http://samanen.tk (Has some issues, i will fix them today) and a gallery at http://samasen.otokset.fi, but there isn't any graphical work yet. I have some oooold galleries, for example at http://samanen.deviantart.com, you're warned, there's some old "devitations". But keep checking at samanen.tk and samasen.otokset.fi, I'll post some artwork today and make website to work again. Hope to see you playing the greatest fps game in this universe soon!!

Your Images don't look bad! nice work!

wanna play the greatest fps in the universe