I currently develope under windows 98. I hope there is a MacOS X expert to help me. Due to MacOS X, I am now in love with the Mac. Unix baby!! I have always liked the hardware, but not MacOS classic. Anyway, I am a graduating highschool student, and will soon be getting either a PowerMac G4 or a PowerBook. I develope games for a hobby, and was doing research on developing for MacOS X. Can anyone please explain all of the various frameworks for me. First of all, I program in C++, and was wondering if OpenGl and GameSprockets can only be used in C++. And what is the difference between Carbon and Cocoa vs. frameworks such as MacApp and PowerPlant? Don’t you have to Program under either Carbon or Cocoa? If so, what is the purpose of MacApp and PowerPlant? Confused.
If you have done research and development on Mac OS X, then you should be one answering those questions. 
I for one don’t know. I do have a logical answer. Just 2 days ago I saw on Tech TV: Screen Savers this lady downloaded a UNIX app and compiled it on her Mac just exactly the way I do on my linux box (./configure->make->make install).
So, you should be able to compile and run your game on MAC OS with minimal problems (using gcc), unless you wrote your program OS/platform specific (generally you should always write platform/OS independent code).
Try compiling your code and see what you get.
Send us some feedback (I’m too poor to even get close to a Mac).
BTW, Mac always reminds me of 1970s Chevy’s, slow and ugly, yet practical and reliable.
Later,
Rizo
Originally posted by KwamiMatrix:
I currently develope under windows 98. I hope there is a MacOS X expert to help me. Due to MacOS X, I am now in love with the Mac. Unix baby!! I have always liked the hardware, but not MacOS classic. Anyway, I am a graduating highschool student, and will soon be getting either a PowerMac G4 or a PowerBook. I develope games for a hobby, and was doing research on developing for MacOS X. Can anyone please explain all of the various frameworks for me. First of all, I program in C++, and was wondering if OpenGl and GameSprockets can only be used in C++. And what is the difference between Carbon and Cocoa vs. frameworks such as MacApp and PowerPlant? Don’t you have to Program under either Carbon or Cocoa? If so, what is the purpose of MacApp and PowerPlant? Confused.
OK, MacApp is by Apple, PowerPlant is by Metrowerks, competing C++ frameworks for Apple Classic OS, although MacApp has been ported to Carbon I believe. Hopefully PowerPlant is being converted as well. Cocoa is a framework designed to work with Objective C language (see Apple developer documentation at developer.apple.com). Gamesprockets is Classic only. OS X wil use HID USB manager (still in development). Carbon framework is modernization of Classic libraries which dumps the event loop and uses handler callbacks, many of which have default modes meaning less code: you can use C or C++ for Carbon. Cocoa lets you program in Java and C++ as well as ObjC, tho ObjC is best. Please read the Inside Mac OS X: System Overview in PDF or print-on-demand to get the best info and explanation on the structure of OS X and how the frameworks fit in. In case you didn’t know, GLUT exists for Classic and Carbon, but I don’t think for Cocoa. I’m currently learning Carbon and OpenGL at the same time. I recommend you use Carbon for games, as it lets you work most like classic C/C++ – the frameworks seem to offer the most functionality to User Interface development (Classic or Aqua), as most other stuff (HID, networks, audio, OpenGL, etc etc) have their own frameworks/libs as far as I can tell.
Apple’s website is overloaded with info now that OS X is live, but I’d recommend checking out the new titles from O’Reilly out soon.
theEnigma