MechVM for OS X

[Keebler]

Hello all,

Thought I would formerly introduce myself. Perhaps this is not the forum for it, but this is what brought me here. My name is Christopher. I've been a player of MW2 since it's formal release in 1995. Through the years I've played and forgotten games. But never Mechwarrior, or Battletech. It was because of Mechwarrior that I garnered an interest in Robotics, Programming, and computers in general. If it weren't for the concept of say, neural helmets controlling gigantic robots, or the idea of a weaponized gauss rifle, PPC, and the general theories of intergalactic travel. I probably wouldn't be where I am today, (playing 15 year old games, and loving every minute of it).

That said, I'm much older now, and an aspiring Engineer/Programmer/Business Owner, and I want to make my own lasting contribution to the community. I've been a part of other Mech Communities focusing on remakes, but all of them have stalled or failed entirely. Many, for the same reasons Skyfaller mentioned in the Mission Statement. So, here I am, (rocking line a hurricane), making a port of MechVM to OS X. By that, I mean, not just compiling it, but adapting it to use the Cocoa Framework and Quartz elements that OS X uses to render it's Windowing System, and other features. All the while, packaging it into an easy to use and install App package.

So far, I've managed to get it to compile without it reporting any errors. But it immediately closes after execution. Reporting issues with QtGui/QtCore, and warnings with SDL. But, I'm getting close.

I will post my progress here, and I welcome comments and suggestions.

Happy Hunting,
Christopher Thomas
aka : Keebler (Keebler64 - MekTek, MW3, etc)

[Skyfaller]

Good luck, and let me know if you need anything.

MechVM uses C's stdlib for file access under non-Windows OS and SDL, so hopefully that will make porting easier. Do you plan to use DosBox for the DOS editions, or do you plan to support the MW2 Mac editions?

Please post changes back to me so I can check how I can include it in the main build. I don't have a Mac, so I won't be able to help in testing the Mac port.

[Keebler]

Good luck, and let me know if you need anything.

MechVM uses C's stdlib for file access under non-Windows OS and SDL, so hopefully that will make porting easier. Do you plan to use DosBox for the DOS editions, or do you plan to support the MW2 Mac editions?

Please post changes back to me so I can check how I can include it in the main build. I don't have a Mac, so I won't be able to help in testing the Mac port.

I only plan on supporting the DOS editions via DOSBOX. Getting the Mac version to work would require too much backwards compatibility on the part of the mac user, and even then. It's not a guarantee to work. And even if they could get it working with MechVM. I haven't even looked at how it handles the IPX protocol. Or how to tunnel it to a UDP/IP interface. It's ironic. You don't have a Mac, and I don't really have a reliable Win/Lin system. Nor do I have the time to build one, (I do have some rigs I could use if I found the time.)

So far the only real changes I've had to make are locations to the libraries, eg. gtk, SDL, Qt, and so on. And the default makefile Qmake provides doesn't do it right. (Also, probably just need to do a proper config. ) However, $qmake -macx work's well enough to get the xcodeproj file made as a start. Still requires removing the 'gtk-config --cflags --libs' command.

As far as the Qt frameworks go. It's not loading the absolute paths to the binaries. Which, again, is just a config issue I think. As soon as I iron out most of the bugs, I'll send you the source.

[Skyfaller]

MechVM analyzes /proc/mounts to detect CD-ROM drives with installable MW2 editions. I've heard that MacOS does not have the /proc file system. So, either you will have to use some other means to detect the CD-ROMs, or we have to do the following. I have been working on an ISO 9660 driver that can install MW2 directly from the image that is required for DosBox anyway. The image file is selected using QT's file dialogs, which should work directly under MacOS. I just don't know if they look like MacOS, but this just should be the fast lane towards a working version.

[Keebler]

OS X is /Volumes/*** and physical locations and drives are in /dev/disk0s1 /dev/cdrom /dev/sba (USB Drive) and so on. It I didn't have to get up at 0530, (5.5 hours from now), I would give a more indepth explanation/analysis of my findings thus far...

But, alas, sleep beckons, maybe tomorrow.