K, small rant, what started out as a Mac only game engine par excellence – let alone, one I even parted hard-earned cash for before it went free – damn my luck, is getting high jacked by lazy-ass PC devs who aren’t entering into the spirit of the game (pun intended).
What I’m saying is this, if you’re going to use the tool, at least make a Mac UB version available along with the PC .exe when posting your hard work in the Showcase.
More and more frequently I’m seeing some interesting and innovative stuff but hey, no Mac version to tinker with.
This isn’t a Mac fanboy musing, just asking for some fair play.
How can you be confused? He’s just asking for people to make an OSX version of the build. Unless you have a plugin, it is not hard to build for both platforms.
Can’t say I disagree, but I would argue with the “Lazy PC dev” comment. Mac is a horrible operating system to develop for, and I hate talking to developers that focus their attention to what “Windows does wrong”, and go on and on about “portable code”.
Mac has done things their way for a long, long time, and Windows became the industry standard for software engineers.
Let’s face it, it’s not about who does what, it’s about ease of use at the end of the day, and when developing REAL software from scratch, it’s one thing to not put out a Mac build, but it’s something completely different to not support something that an IDE supports out of the box with the click of a button.
I will argue, though, that Mac is what’s pulling the Indy game development scene at the moment, though, and from a marketing standpoint, it’s pretty obvious.
Just look at the number of Indy games being sold on XBox Live that have grossed over 5,000 downloads… There are only a handful.
Now take a look at the Indy games being sold on the Iphone that have grossed over 5,000 downloads… We’re talking factors of ten here.
The market is indeed changing, and not supporting smartphones, and the IPad these days for a simple indy app, is almost suicidal from a pure numbers standpoint.
This isn’t relevant to the topic; OS X is not iOS. Personally, I only really care for console/portable games, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to try out some of the stuff in the Showcase.
Its technically not reasonable to expect that people post OSX app along the exe, as it is not reasonable to expect webplayers instead of standalone, just due to the nature of plugins or opengl vs dx.
Devs just don’t needfully care about the other platform, they didn’t needfully choose unity cause it also supports the other side.
some did, but I know a fair amount of devs here that don’t give a damn about OSX existance at all.
It’s usually technically stupid not to post both OS X and Windows, since it takes one click and almost no effort. 99% of people here aren’t using plugins or other things that need special work for both platforms. The vast majority of stuff should just work on both, and if it doesn’t, it would be good to know about for the sake of fixing bugs. It’s not like the old days of Unity, where it was unreasonable to expect Windows builds since only Pro owners could make them.
Not to cause trouble, I need the reminder about the Mac users,
but is it possible to expect a build to work out of Unity some day that supports both Mac and Windows,
like some games are playable by both platforms?
Maybe the installer runs separately on a game that works on Macs and I don’t know about it being a Windows user.
I can understand the argument that little work is required on the developers part, given a great tool such as Unity, to create a Mac port at the same time. However, it may not be that they are lazy, but if they do not own any Mac hardware, how can they test their game? The game may run very well on the PC, but on the Mac there could be issues unconsidered.
I personally own a Mac and used boot camp to install Windows (my OS of choice.) So I consider myself lucky that I will be able to create both a Windows version, and an OSX version and test them both.
Remorse, that is all the more reason to build an OSX version. If you are showing off your work, you should expect feedback and if you throw out an OSX build you will get feedback about problems you could not have known existed.
I understand. But if the user doesn’t own a Mac. It doesn’t matter much about who finds what problems. Essentially it has to be fixed and to properly do so, it may be done best on the Mac. Difficult to do if you haven’t a Mac available to you.
Here’s the other issue. Essentially it comes down to developer choice. Either the developer is cognisant of the ability to compile for both OSX and Windows or is not. But if they are, and they choose not to, then so be it. Its about choice, and I think Unity exemplifies this greatly with all the platforms it does support.
The title of the post suggested that a rule be made to individuals/teams that submit showcase items that they make their project for both the PC and Mac.
I’ve not searched all of Unity forums yet, but I would suggest possibly a different category within the forums meant for testing and feedback. In my mind, showcasing your work is different.
i think that we should leave this up to the dev showcasing something. Some dev’s might only target mobile platforms, some only mac’s, some only pc’s, some only wii (or in the near future xbox360).
Showcasing is done for the target audience. Nothing more nothing less.
Same is with game genres. Some make a RPG, some make a racing game, some make a platform game etc etc…
Should we demand that those dev’s incorporate a different play style too in their showcases? ofcourse not, that would be silly to ask!, or would it?
Now back to the topic, as mentioned, it’s up to the devs. If an engine is capable of doing something, it’s doesn’t mean, the dev’s MUST use that capability. It’s an option. Just like all the features of the engine.
If you find a showcase, but you want to use it on a different platform other then the dev put up, you could post a request for it.
Maybe the dev will grant the request and build one for your platform of choice…
However, demanding somehting like that is a bridge too far if you ask me.
I don’t believe this is a valid argument. It’s not like any two hardware configurations are going to run things the same way, regardless of OS. Some of us know this very well, from back when everybody around here used a Mac, and results were inconsistent, even taking GPU limitations into account.
In my experience here, the Showcase is actually very rarely for showing off a product, so there is no target audience. It’s generally, “Hey, look at this thing that maybe someday will be a game. Here’s some stuff that might be in that game.” It’s your choice to not put a cross-platform version out there, but if you make that choice, with Unity, I probably don’t want you around here. Not to say there’s any reason that I need to want you around here. So no, I don’t think it should be a rule. I just think you should adopt the practice if you don’t want to be garbage.
yes, Jessy’ post is indeed offensive in nature.
(or sarcastic in a bad way)
wanting me or not (as community member), or claiming it would be garbage, is not friendly, and more importantly offtopic.
Note:
It could, in general speaking (not specificly written towards Jessy), drive away newcomers (who can be very resourcefull to us all) from these forums, or curious folks (researching engines, to choose for their project). (or even long time dev’s)
If the boards get’s a general offensive nature, with personal attacks here and there.
There are no games that run on both platforms (without using emulation); Windows and OS X are simply incompatible. Some games, usually Blizzard’s, have OS X and Windows on the same disc, but they are still two different executables. It’s not feasible to package them in a way that would run on both, aside from filesystem tricks on CD/DVD which hide the Mac/Windows stuff as needed, since OS X puts all files together into an .app folder, which looks to the user like a single icon. The actual executable is buried a couple levels deep, and you normally never see it unless you specifically go looking for it.
This is a good point…people have done shaders in Unity that won’t run on my graphics card because it’s too old, and that’s going to be the case regardless of whether that card is used in a Mac or not.
As for an actual rule, no, I’d say that’s going too far. It’s just usually a sensible thing to do. You can say “I haven’t tested on X”, although, as Jessy said, that’s true anyway, unless you happen to own dozens of different machines running all sorts of configurations.
So no, I don’t think it should be a rule. I just think you should adopt the practice if you don’t want to be garbage. 