Monday 3 September 2007

Windows to Mac in no time flat

Yep Moviestorm now runs on a Mac. It doesn't render out to a movie yet until I get Quicktime working (but we're most of the way there). No lipsync yet either as that comes from a third party library but we 're hoping that will be along soon. Right now only on Intel (next job is to learn how to build Universal binaries).

The best bit is that it really didn't take much effort to get this far (about 4 fairly lazy evenings all told). Java & OpenGL makes porting from Windows to Mac pretty trivial. A few native libraries to rebuild (and the main time with that was learning about the non-standard gcc options on the Mac) and some Microsoft-isms to eliminate (replace \ path separators with / and similar). There were a few deeper bugs that had me scratching my head for a while but nothing too nasty.

So when we've got the rendering and lipsync issues sorted out, we'll have a beta of Moviestorm for all you Mac fans out there - early October with a bit of luck.


[edit: twak] you can download moviestorm for the mac here



6 comments:

Overman said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Overman said...

Nice work!

You downplay it a bit, but I think it's an important milestone to hit this early on (still in beta). I think it will pay big dividends in terms of interest, as the word spreads.

Hugh "Nomad" Hancock said...

Nice one. I'll look forward to loading it onto my Macbook and being able to do demos without a PC again!

twak said...

So apart from only being able to hire bad programmers, java does have some advantages ;)

http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html

Unknown said...

Way to code!

I also got a kick out of reading that other article, twak.

Aragorn_78 said...

Hail to England!
MovieStorm is a superb inovation. I will start a workshop with some of my multimedia teenage students this year, and I can't wait to see their imaginative power at work on this new tool...And upload their work on your website! But we are equiped with Imac and G5 (latest versions for both), so I really hope the mac version is going to be ready soon as my class starts in october. Anyway, you guys are amazing... all the best to you and your business.
And good luck to England in the rugby cup !