I haven’t posted here in a while now. Not due to a lack of things to post about, just due to a lack of actually taking the time to sit down and write something.

Here’s what I’ve been up to recently:

• Slowly chugging along with my game, “Death is Inevitable.” Registered the .com for it yesterday! Woot! But there’s nothing noteworthy on there. Boourns. Yet. Hoping to have something playable with actual gameplay (that is, not just a walk around techdemo-ish thing) by the end of the month. Wanted to have something ready sooner but, …
• Picked up some freelance work in March. This rekindled my hatred for PHP. How times have changed, I used to actually like PHP many years ago (was my first venture into web development, around 2001).
• Started playing around with developing an Android app. It’s a remote control app to be used with an HTPC. Specifically, the HTPC software like XBMC and Plex which you typically install yourself on a spare computer… in which case you probably don’t have a ready-to-go remote control to use with it. There are other apps readily available that do this already, but every one I tried either was semi-broken or had weird quirks / missing features that I didn’t want to deal with. Small preview of the app here and here. Still pretty early in development and I’m not devoting a lot of time to it currently.

And that’s pretty much it really.

It’s been a few months or so now since I installed OS X on my self-built desktop PC. During that time, I’ve used OS X as my main operating system, rarely if ever booting into either Windows or Linux. I figured now was a good time to go over what the experience of using OS X on a Hackintosh PC has been like. And it will include my general impressions as someone who never used OS X for anything serious prior to this.

Keep in mind that my set up is using hardware that is all known for working really well with Hackintosh’s.

What I Like / What Works Well

• Pretty much all the hardware works well. Audio, graphics (including 3d acceleration), input devices (mouse/keyboard), USB, CD/DVD, hard disks, general system speed/responsiveness. I’ve had a little bit of trouble with a USB headset only using certain USB ports on my PC, but I haven’t tested this extensively as I’m somewhat convinced my USB headset is on it’s last legs.
• OS updates so far haven’t been a problem, though there haven’t been any major ones yet, unless you count 10.7.3 (semi-major perhaps).
• Excellent dev tools available. Things like GitHub for Mac, SourceTree and Sequel Pro and others I find I miss quite a bit when I switch to Windows or Linux. Lots of other apps I used on Windows/Linux also tend to have OS X equivalents too which is nice.
• “Unix-y” command line with most typical GNU or BSD-equivalent tools available. Win.
• Support for more games then Linux (and without needing to resort to using Wine). Less rebooting and OS switching is a big win in my books.
• Homebrew. When you compare to any package management system in any Linux distribution, Homebrew really falls short in my opinion. Same for MacPorts, etc. However, for installing things like open source libraries and tools, Homebrew has been a giant timesaver. For example, I needed to install Assimp. After looking at the website and documentation, I realized that installing this so it’s ready to be used in code was going to be a giant pain in the ass on OS X. Decided to check Homebrew with brew search assimp and sure enough, there is a formula for it. Then all I needed to do was brew install assimp and it was good to go. Easy.
• Mostly consistent user interface across different apps. Developers seem to take pride in making OS X versions of their apps which conform to standard OS X user interface conventions. Obviously doesn’t apply to X11 apps, or most apps that run on Java/Mono.

What I Didn’t Like But Like Now

• To get GCC installed, you needed to install XCode in it’s entirety. This is a biggish download, which by itself doesn’t really bug me, but more the fact that I’m being forced to install an entire development package and IDE (XCode) which I have no intention of ever using just to get a compiler. With the latest XCode update this has been changed and now I can uninstall the bloat (XCode) and just get GCC itself. Much smaller download too.
• Font hinting / anti-aliasing everywhere. Typically the first thing I do in a fresh Windows/Linux install is set fonts which don’t have hinting enabled or find some other way to turn it off for most/all of the operating system UI. I’ve kind of warmed up to it now since you don’t really get a choice in the matter in OS X. However, I still go out of my way to disable hinting in my code editors and IDEs.
• Single menu bar. To be honest this still irks me somewhat. Especially if I’ve moved a window over to the other monitor so that the window and menubar are on different screens. However, I notice that it bugs me less and less now. Guess it was really something that I just had to get used to.

What I Don’t Like / What Didn’t Work Well

• Most media keys on my keyboard are not recognized at all my OS X. Not even just a keyboard remapping issue, the operating system doesn’t detect the keys at all. The only keys that work are the Play/Pause, Volume up/down and Mute which thankfully are the most important ones to me. My keyboard is a cheapo Dynex one so I guess I’m not entirely surprised by this.
• Sleep/Hibernate/Resume doesn’t really work. I haven’t spent much time troubleshooting this. It certainly didn’t work out of the box, but some quick research indicates that it should definitely work with my hardware. This hasn’t been a priority for me since I never would sleep/hibernate my computer with Windows or Linux anyway.
• Customizability. OS X is definitely a “use it my way or not at all” kind of operating system. Limited customizability in most things. For example, I really hate the way that the Finder sorts files and folders. I like folders to appear first regardless of what my sorting method is (alphabetical, by type, etc.). This isn’t possible with the Finder. In order to fix this I had to install a Finder modification (TotalFinder).
• The Finder. Just in general, it doesn’t impress me. Feels like a really, really watered down Windows Explorer.
• XCode. Also just in general it left a bad taste in my mouth. Glad I don’t do iOS development. I’d probably cry myself to sleep at night.
• OS X seems to run my CPU and graphics card about 10 degrees hotter then Windows/Linux. Not really sure why, I guess it’s taxing them slightly more (even when idle)? Also not sure if this is specific to my set up being a Hackintosh. I’d be interested to try this on a real Mac dual booting to Windows or Linux and see how it compares.
• Lots of apps cost money whereas most equivalents in the Windows or Linux world are free. Not the end of the world, but it can be somewhat annoying when I know of a great and free equivalent app for Windows/Linux but need to pay for the same thing in OS X, especially if it’s got a smaller feature set on OS X.

Conclusion

Overall I’ve been very impressed with the current state of Hackintosh-ing. With the right hardware it certainly does seem to leave you with a very functional and stable system. I haven’t had OS X crash on my once, and I’ve certainly been doing a lot more heavy things with it then reading email and browsing the web.

As far as OS X in general, I have to admit that I kind of like it. I did the Hackintosh thing in the first place because I was looking for a “unix-y” operating system which also had better support for games then Linux does. OS X lacks customizability in a lot of areas, but none of them so far have been deal breakers for me. Also I really, really like the fact that it’s also a developer friendly operating system like Linux is. In some ways even moreso then Linux with respect to helpful and easy to use developer tools. I would Hackintosh my laptop if I could. However Hackintoshing a laptop is almost always a futile exercise. Paying the “Apple Tax” for a MacBook is not going to happen. I don’t really play games on my laptop anyway, so Arch Linux + Gnome3 is fine.

Looks like I’ll be sticking with OS X for now. Until Apple finds a way to enclose it in their walled garden crap anyway.

January 30th marked my first regular work day as voluntarily unemployed. Or (perhaps more exciting) as an “independent game developer.” Being unemployed now gives me the freedom to make up my own job titles.

First project announcement!

Ok, so that mockup promo banner thingy turned out to be less impressive then I imagined. Anyway, yes, it will be a Roguelike or perhaps more closely categorized as a Dungeon Crawler with an emphasis on a “hack and slash” style of play. This is basically going to be the game I’ve been wanting to make for quite a few years now. I’m a huge fan of hack and slash dungeon crawlers (e.g. Diablo). I also firmly believe as a game developer that you stand the best chance of success by making a game that you are passionate about and a type of game that you would really want to play.

Dungeon crawlers could probably be considered a bit of a niche genre and so maybe a bit risky, especially when you want to make money off that type of game. Regardless, I think there is an audience for this type of game, and I’m very excited about tapping into it by making something that will bring a higher level of quality, moreso to mobile platforms where I think most of the existing dungeon crawler games are a bit lacking. There are some exceptions of course, but in general after playing what’s available, I’m left wanting more. Much more. I aim to fill that gap.

My main inspiration comes from an old game: The Dungeon Revealed. One big thing that I want to do differently (and what will probably make this less of a “roguelike” in the strictest sense and more of a “hack and slash”) is to have the game use real-time combat. I think this has more potential for an exciting game then turn-based crawlers.

The above mockup of a promo banner is actually a screenshot of a level I mocked up in the current engine/framework I’ve been working on the past several months. I just spent 5 minutes in Gimp putting a bit of text on it. The artwork is from Oryx’s LOFI Sprite set, with the animated character sprites from Geeze’s collection here. I’m using them temporarily for now. I like the feel of this set overall. Matches what I had originally envisioned more or less, but I’m not sure if I will take it upon myself to draw up a completely new set or not (been a long while since I pixeled anything).

Also, the title “Death is Inevitable” is a working title. It kind of makes me chuckle a little bit, but I still need to mull over the idea of using it as a final title.

I’ll have some posts this week that will discuss the engine details as it is currently. Something I should have really been writing about as I was working on it, but better late then never.