Finally having the 600 over the 1200 pays off!

pff it seems not everybody is an Amiga nut... OK, I'll explain myself. Whilst the Amiga 1200 is undoubtedly the better Amiga, it is significantly larger than the 600 and wouldn't fit on the shelf!

Thunderhawk

Should have been the killer app for the Mega CD. Way ahead of it's time and showed what was possible on the system. Unfortunately everybody else was obsessed with postage stamp sized "FMV" windows and the Mega CD died a slow death. This game also has a phenomenal rockin soundtrack, really putting the CD media to good use!

Cross Platform FTW!

Mac:




Windows 7:




For anyone interested in the details.

Windows:
1. Install MinGW and make sure to get the basic gcc, c++ and make packages.
2. Install FreeType for Windows.
3. Download the SDL2, SDL2_image and SDL2_ttf MinGW development files -
  a. Copy headers to the MinGW/include dir.
  b. Copy the libs to the MinGW/libs dir.
  c. Copy ALL of the the dll's to the game exe dir (easiest solution). Obviously, do this after step 5.
4. Configure Eclipse search directories as above, and link to mingw32 and sdl2main.
5. If you have been good with your cross platform coding, the source builds perfectly without modification.
6. Spend half an hour wondering why the game seems to be running properly with all debug output showing, but there is no game window. Then remember that you set the window to startup with x=1280 for testing with dual monitor, and now you only have one monitor. Change the x back to 0 and voila.

(alright, so step 6 is only for me)

Mac:
1. Download the SDL2 sources, extract, run "configure," "make" and "make install."
2. Thank me for step one, and not having to bother with Frameworks, sdlmain etc. as most of the online tutorials say.
3. Project will build in Eclipse without source modification (if you've been cross-platform friendly)
4. Voila.

OS X

I remember starting with Senseless Soccer in X Code, fannying around for hours with "frameworks," search paths, SDLMain.m  etc. to get SDL working.

Well I've just done the same damn thing to build the latest version of Sensi for Mac, this time using Eclipse.

I can save you 3 hours and 50 minutes of the 4 damn hours it took me to finally work it out:

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT pay any attention to the guides on the interwebs! You'll spend hours fannying around with frameworks, search paths and SDLMain.m and in the end, it wont work! It is much easier than the internet wants you to think.

You don't need to bother with frameworks at all!

Simply install SDL from source as usual (run configure, make, and install.) Set up Eclipse exactly as in Linux (just add search path and tell it what libs to link to), import your Eclipse project and build.

Voila (as long as you've stayed away from system specific code in your project source).

Yeah, it's that easy.

Not my screenshot, I just liked this guiy's colour profile!

SDL and Eclipse

Thought I'd share this in case anyone else has the same problem:

In Eclipse CDT I had the strange problem where the project would run in debug mode in eclipse, and normally from a terminal, but not when using "run" from eclipse.

In this one particular case, SDL failed with "no available video device."

The solution is to add the DISPLAY environment variable to your run configuration. I have no idea why this isn't needed to launch a debug session as well:

Note: in older versions of Eclipse, this option can be found in Properties -> Run/Debug Settings. Select the configuration and then "Edit..."

A window similar to the above screenshot will come up where you can add the environment variable. Remember to do it for all configurations.

Videos

A progress playlist for the mame launcher

http://youtu.be/555F0agc43w?list=PLEkFlhknHMPBND_kdW12WZl2lieoyx-g8

Videos

A handy playlist showing the game progress:

http://youtu.be/VZheMAjSe-o?list=PLEkFlhknHMPDrhjpTnFzku-Z9j6MdW3zD


Of course, you're better off checking out the blog posts or you'll miss out on my terribly interesting and funny commentary...