Results 1 to 17 of 17

Mod Developer's Mac OS Compatibility Resource

  1. #1
    Member Duke of Shao's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    In my own head...

    Mod Developer's Mac OS Compatibility Resource

    Greetings HW2 mod developer community:

    I am among the few (I think) that love playing HW2 and HW2 mods. However, getting mods to work on both platforms can sometimes be a little difficult as there are some variations between the HW2 game engines.

    <aside>For Mac users, I am referring to functionality on the PowerPC chipsets (me=G5); it might be interesting to see if there are differences in functionality for Intel chipset users.</aside>

    I am not a developer myself, but will happily contribute by playtesting mods, submitting error logs (i.e. hw2.log), and generally assisting with troubleshooting problems. However, for those that have already achieved cross-platform compatibility, please post your "lessons learned" for other developers to access.

    Many thanks to all!
    DS

  2. #2
    Devil's Advocate Zatch's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
    Location
    CA, USA
    Just a heads up, I'm stickying this so we can get all the Mac OS compatibility issues and solutions consolidated.
    ~

  3. #3
    Member Moleman's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Arizona
    sweet im gonna be getting a mac soon and this is one issue i would like to get taken care of as well

  4. #4
    Could all those modders who have encountered differences between the mac and pc version please report their findings so we can consolidate our knowledge. I'm still looking into the shader differences, but I'm drawing a blank atm.


    HW2:B5TC Team Member (Effects and Game Scripting), HW2 Shader Designer, CFHodEd Maintainer, Nuclear Physicist

  5. #5
    Really i need to know the mac replacement for the function getgamesettingasstring() (that work on Mac and PC)

    That and Getgamesettingasvarible() , they both do not work at all on the mac. i remember back when someone made a huge list of mac differences.

  6. #6
    SRI-Sajuuk: Here's the thread.
    http://forums.relicnews.com/showthre...PC+differences

    P.S. Duke Of Shao: The Hw2.Log does not work for the Mac version of HomeWorld2.

  7. #7
    Member Duke of Shao's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    In my own head...

    What to make of HW2.log

    Fantastic, thanks for the link to this old thread Blah!

    Quote Originally Posted by Blah
    P.S. Duke Of Shao: The Hw2.Log does not work for the Mac version of HomeWorld2.
    This seems to be true to some extent; at least I have not been able to figure out if the -luatrace tag (used in the Terminal) does anything. Macs certainly don't seem to generate the same kind of files as the Win machines do.

    However, Macs always generate error logs. They can be found on your Mac here:
    Macintosh HD/Users/username/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Homeworld 2.crash.log
    and you would use the Console.app to read them (though they can easily be copy/pasted into a Text Editor).

    my latest Homeworl 2.crash.log (long!)


    Here is a Technical Note from Apple that discusses how to read them (as a non-programmer, only half of this makes sense to me, but this may be helpful for the more computer-savvy of us!):

    http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2004/tn2123.html

    what I took from my last crash.log


    Anyone else have any luck with log files and Mac OS? For that matter, can anyone else interpret these log files?!

  8. #8
    I've found them to not be very helpful to useless. For fixing or identifying bugs, I take note of where the crash occurred on the loading bar as that will almost immediately narrow down the search for the problem.

    ie.
    Universe crash --> generally something out of place with either a ship file or hod.

    Then I'd go into the level file and have a look at the used ships .ship file

    Macs are more particular about files, things that generate errors on windows don't always crash windows hw2 but are much more likely to crash osx hw2.

  9. #9
    NiteMaestro
    Guest
    A quick quip about the Intel chipset stuff...
    Apple is supposedly moving to completely remove PPC support, meaning no more 'Rosetta' for Intel users. Has anyone tried using 'Cider' to try and build/run the windows version of HW2 (with or without mods). I haven't looked into the application/tool enough to know if it would work, but I do know that the EA games that were released on Mac made heavy use of that technology. Perhaps that'd be a possible option?

  10. #10
    Member yafn's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Location
    San Diego, CA
    We got some OS X modding notes on our mod wiki at http://www.hw2bsg.org/wiki/index.php?title=OSX_Modding

    The trick with Mac crash logs is to look at them often paying attention to the first few lines. as it can help track down generally what is causing the crash, but from what I can tell you will not get specifics like what hod caused the crash, or what lua file, but you can figure out that it is a lua problem or a CM problem. My limited notes are linked to off of that page too.

  11. #11
    NiteMaestro
    Guest
    Any updates fellas?

  12. #12
    Lost in the code... Mikali's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2003
    Location
    %HW2_ROOT%
    Nice thread. It's long overdue.
    Download my HW2 mods, maps & tools. link
    Username|SF on Gamespy/Xfire/Hamachi/Gameranger

  13. #13
    Bug squashing OSX style!!!

    The official homeworld release has a spelling error in the bigfile in the kamikaze attack script, maybe the windows release as well.

    If you intend to use this attack script for osx, just correct the spelling and it will work properly.

    *posting in the thread here as well so it doesn't get lost*

    This one took me a long long time to track down (about 2 years), for those of you who have played the OSX source release of the Battlestar Galactica v0.5.0 mod will have seen that we successfully added animatics and cinematics for osx (and will be adding even more).

    The way to do this is with the rad video game tools. The irony is that these tools don't work in osx and require windows to run...

    http://www.radgametools.com/bnkdown.htm

    Once you have made the video using the Bink button. The video needs to have the extension changed from .bik to .avi

  14. #14
    lol, "Kaimikaze". It's amazing that has not been spotted before.

  15. #15
    Member ajlsunrise's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2008
    Location
    Binaryland
    the windows release is fine.
    EDIT: *SCRATCHES OUT ABOVE LINE*
    You actually meant inside the script file itself. Doh!

    correct this:
    Code:
    AttackStyleName = Kaimikaze
    Data = 
    { 
        howToBreakFormation = StraightAndScatter, 
        RandomActions = 
            { 
            { 
                Type = PickNewTarget, 
                Weighting = 1, }, 
            { 
                Type = NoAction, 
                Weighting = 9, }, 
            }, 
        BeingAttackedActions = {}, 
        FiringActions = {}, }
    to this:
    Code:
    AttackStyleName = Kamikaze

  16. #16
    I'm scouring through the decompiled files and comparing them and found this one with reference to the beenox credits...

    If someone understands this better, it might bring us one step closer to being able to use the 'get game setting as string' to work for macs as well.

    line 127 is the first difference.

    line 157 (pc) /line 149-156 (osx) is the second.


    OSX version of data/ui/newui/main/new/newmainmenu.lua



    PC version of data/ui/newui/main/new/newmainmenu.lua


  17. #17
    Member yafn's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Location
    San Diego, CA
    Loading it up in diff the only real changes I see are the removal of the Path button and addition of the beenoxcredits.

    Good idea though, could be a difference in another file.

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

     

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •