If I was able to back port the latest version & form a group that continues to do so, would you be willing to officially support it.nil wrote:I'm not sure if I'd add it to old_releases page or as a small link for an alternative version (like for last 10.5 & 10.6 compatible version), but it also may depend on how functional & stable the build is. I also don't want to add it in a way that makes it sound like we officially maintain it. Unless a *lot* of work is put into it, a ppc compatible build is going to have less functionality than we intended to have.
It's worth noting that you may also want to add a halo-like UI (just like the retail version) as it adds to the feel. Just a thought.nil wrote:There might be a defect with how MD plays or sets up campaign maps, although I have not been able to reproduce it, and don't have much info on it.
I'm actually an amateur coder so I can't guarantee success, but I'll give it my best whack.nil wrote:We have a simple model where we either have one latest version that we support & maintain, or an archive of older versions we used to support in the past. Considering 10.6 and 32-bit intel Macs are too much of a pain to support for the latest app now, it's unlikely PPC support will reach its way better in there.
One thing I think we can both agree on is that before I can attempt to compile the MD wrapper, I should attempt to fix the halo engine via hex editing.nil wrote:1.0b26 still supported 10.5 intel, which in our git repository was released at changeset d335a1ecebe49627834d925d9f933a00aec406fa. However, b26 added custom maps to the in-game map selection by using an extension written for x86, so 1.0b23 (changeset 729784dc24023708e6f2c959bed6d0d695cf2df1) may be easier for getting the old way of mod hosting to work (by choosing a mod from the menu bar of the lobby app). 1.0 added being able to play the full campaign, although this is just reverting a trivial limitation we intentionally placed from the beginning. It is probably feasible to build it for PPC from one of those changesets but it will still require code changes, including a no-op to a chdir() function in the PPC portion of the UB binary, and probably it's easier to exclude the MD extensions rather than re-write them. There may be some creating user profile code that may be wrong because Halo writes different files based on the architecture with a slightly different data format (because, poorly ported...) - so the user profile/name code probably has to be removed as well, or rewritten.
Ok, I understand now. It's worth noting though that separate versions of the MD wrapper will still be needed considering that modern macs can no longer compile ppc binaries, and code created on older macs usually presents complications on newer ones.nil wrote:Code changes can be made to the UB for PPC or intel without affecting the other, extensions can be built as universal binaries having different paths for ppc & intel, the app can be built as a universal binary, etc. Nothing requires the overkill of having to download different engines or what not for different OS releases. The "mavericks" patch (which MD includes a fix for this too in an extension) for example primarily fixes a bug that is easily encountered in 10.9, but has been a real bug ever since the Mac port was released, just that it wasn't hit before.