[A Number One]

Hi!

So the good news, right off the bat here, is that I got it all working. EDuke32, the HRP, Duke it out in DC, Duke Caribbean, Duke Nuclear Winter... it's all running on my Mac Mini. It looks great, it plays great. I'm having a ton of fun with it.

The bad news? It was one wild ride getting there. It took several hours to figure it all out. One of my obstacles is that I'm sort of new to Macs (I grew up on DOS and Windows). But even then, the current HRP sites don't give a lot of support to folks who are trying to get things running on Mac OSX.

So I was curious: are there any plans to put together a better package for Mac users?

It's alright if the answer is "no". After all, I think I've got it all figured out now. But, I would love to help write some better instructions, especially if I could get it put up on the EDuke32 wiki or as a sticky on these forums.

As some background information, here are some of the obstacles I ran into

• The FAQ hosted here doesn't even mention that Macs can indeed run EDuke32 (http://hrp.duke4.net/faq.php)
  
• The EDuke32 site makes a passing mention to it, but they only provide a Windows version for download (http://www.eduke32.com/)
  
• This "Spam-Filter" guy from Germany has compiled a Mac version from the latest source snapshot (http://www.spam-filt...eduke32_on_os_x). As utterly grateful as I am for that, his instructions for getting it up and running only get you so far. His video tutorial doesn't leave you with a very clean install (lots of unnecessary files still around) and it doesn't help you out much with the expansion packs.
  
• Unpackssi.exe is only available on PCs. Which means you need a PC around in order to get the .con and .grp files from the expansions.
  
• The link to Iggy's site referenced by the FAQ doesn't seem to take you to the place it suggests it will take you. There's no obvious information about taking the extracted information from the .ssi and reconstituting it into the .con and .grp files.
  
• Making things more complicated for getting the expansion packs to work, the Mac-compiled version from "Spam-Filter" doesn't respect the "/?" or "-?" parameter for EDuke32. Furthermore, the EDuke32 wiki doesn't list all the parameters. So unless you have a Windows machine handy (and luckily I do), there's no way for Mac users to discover the allowable parameters.
  
• Finally, if you're a UNIX-shell n00b that's more used to DOS (and that describes me) it can be pretty frustrating just getting a .exe to run in Mac's "Terminal" app.

As I said, I'd love to put together a more complete, step-by-step guide if it seems like that would be handy. I'm also curious whether or not we could start getting "official" Mac builds. I'm extremely grateful to "Spam-Filter" for his Mac compile, but it's unknown how long his interest in EDuke32 will continue. :^)

[NY00123]

Hi,

Here are a few answers I think I can provide. If it matters, I've never really used a Mac. However...

1. In general, it looks like the HRP FAQ is outdated. For instance, the HRP is *not* released under the GPL, but rather under a customized license.
2. As long as TX doesn't have a Mac (and even if he had, it does *not* mean he *has* to build Mac executables), he can't compile them by himself.
4. I've found the unpackssi source code here: http://www.jonof.id.au/misc
5. Again, the HRP FAQ seems to be outdated.
7. The concept of "Application Bundles" may confuse you, as you're new to the Mac platform.

[TerminX]

I think the guy who does the OSX builds will have some interest for a while... he's been in our IRC channel (nick is rhoenie) for a couple of months now and seems active every day. We like him and hope he sticks around!

As for the expansions, as far as I'm concerned I think somebody should just package them up in an EDuke32-friendly format and be done with it since they aren't sold commercially anywhere anymore other than on the second hand market. If people want a boxed copy for their collection by all means they should go snag one off of Amazon, but as it is these things are semi rare and not even very accessible to you once you've actually got your hands on it, as you've noticed.

I'm not even going to start on the price; some douche is selling Duke Caribbean on Amazon for $80 right now -- need I say more?

[Tea Monster]

As far as I know, none of the developers for EDuke32 has a Mac. If you've succeeded in getting it all to work under Mac OS X, then package it up in a form that can be unpacked and run on a Mac and see if one of the devs will host it somewhere.

Failing that, get a tut together.

Maybe we might have more Mac users that way!

I don't know if Duke Carribean was ever released for the Mac.

[A Number One]

I'm glad to hear that Spam-Filter/rhoenie is active in the IRC and that he's likely to stay active on it for a while. I was thinking about getting hooked up to the SVN and getting the builds working on my machine as a back-up, just in case. That said, I'm more than willing to let someone else take the helm on Mac builds.

I'm a bit of a new Mac user. I've had my Mac Mini for about a year and while I use Windows every day at work (I'm typing on my work laptop right now), I find that the Mac is nice for the simple things I use it for at home. And it plays retro-games really, really well. EDuke32 runs great on it, as do DOSBox, ScummVM, and the like.

Maybe I'll write up a tutorial to get folks to the state I've got mine working in. It's a little rough though. It would be better if it ran in an application bundle (and yes, I do know a little bit about how those work), but right now I basically just start up the main game or one of the expansions through a shell script. It gives me a "click on this to run the game" experience, but it's not as neat as it could be.

After I've got that written up, maybe I can do some work to make a clean setup for the Mac version. I was actually involved with the setup programming for a couple of games out there in retail.

[NY00123]

Maybe a front-end with the ability to launch MODs can be useful?
While it's not perfect and requires you to select mods by ZIP/CON/GRP/DEF mod files (unless you add some -game_dir argument), you can use this: http://ny.duke4.net/ ==> YANG
rhoenie hosts a Mac build. I don't know if it'd work, but at least you can always get the source (in that case, see compiling.txt).

[A Number One]

I'm going to take a stab at putting together a more complete compilation guide for the Mac OSX. Rhoenie has some great info on his site, but I'd like to expand on it. I've also got some other ambitious ideas, but in case I don't follow through on them I don't want to promise anything.

I just got hooked up to the SVN via Xcode (it's very cool that SVN support is built right in - I didn't know that until tonight). I've built out a skeleton for a document on how to compile the project via Xcode. I know what I want to do, now it's just a matter of seeing if I can make it all pull together. Some initial investigations seem promising.

[DeathStalker]

Hello Im Mac...
and I CAN'T FREAKING MAKE IT RUN!!.... LOL

Im using the Spam-Filter's version, I follow all the "instructions" but the HRP makes the game to crash after the start up Logo... the 32 bits mode makes the textures to "melt down" after a while of gameplay, so i can only use the classic mode... (well at least i can play some...)
and i just got no idea of how to load the DC and the other Mods...

Ta-dah!!

Do you mind to share a bit of your wisdom?

Never used DOS, I'm using mac since 1996 i only know how to double click or drag and drop, i can deal with pakages and anything icon related but anything related to the terminal freaks me out LOL