Perturbatio: I hope not...
Really, risking presenting this in a over simplistic manner (which is rather unfair to blr/mark) seems to me like using the cross compiler is just a matter of adding the "-arch ppc" and/or "-arch i386" to gcc calls and building the libs/exe, linking them and using the lipo tool to make the universal binaries afterwards.
This is really important for mac users, as it is the capability of choosing the sdk we want to use (i.e. the logical choise of defaults should be MacOSX10.3.9.sdk for the powerpc versions and MacOSX10.4u.sdk for intel... but it gets a bit more complex than that. MacOSX10.3.9.sdk does not come with xcode 3, so I believe it is better for brl to use acOSX10.4u.sdk as default for ppc and intel, making system requirements tiger / 10.4 version of OS X... with the option of letting us change that and install the older sdk to release panther apps... And MacOSX105.sdk makes sense if one is going to interface with 10.5 only frameworks and release a 10.5 app/game with exclusive stuff found on leopard). It all comes down to having a flag in bmk that would allow developers to choose the framework for each platform if building universal binaries or at the very least letting us produce the apps in two different/separate compiler runs (one for each architecture) and using lipo manually afterwards.
Anyway. Blitzmax is in my opinion the best high level option to write 2d games on a mac, followed closely by python+pyglet. I am not even considering things like unity / torque game builder since I _hate_ the interfaces (rather use a simple editor by far).
It would become a nice 3d system also if support was added to in a cross platform way to something like ogre (or some other good crossplatform engine) and all binaries where included in the distribution wrapped and working out of the box. Pretty much what happens with all the other libs blitzmax uses, wrapps and distributes. Even minib3d is nice, very usable as long as you don't need to animate meshes, but is lacking a lot of stuff that other options offer like shaders, etc.
PLS
Really, risking presenting this in a over simplistic manner (which is rather unfair to blr/mark) seems to me like using the cross compiler is just a matter of adding the "-arch ppc" and/or "-arch i386" to gcc calls and building the libs/exe, linking them and using the lipo tool to make the universal binaries afterwards.
This is really important for mac users, as it is the capability of choosing the sdk we want to use (i.e. the logical choise of defaults should be MacOSX10.3.9.sdk for the powerpc versions and MacOSX10.4u.sdk for intel... but it gets a bit more complex than that. MacOSX10.3.9.sdk does not come with xcode 3, so I believe it is better for brl to use acOSX10.4u.sdk as default for ppc and intel, making system requirements tiger / 10.4 version of OS X... with the option of letting us change that and install the older sdk to release panther apps... And MacOSX105.sdk makes sense if one is going to interface with 10.5 only frameworks and release a 10.5 app/game with exclusive stuff found on leopard). It all comes down to having a flag in bmk that would allow developers to choose the framework for each platform if building universal binaries or at the very least letting us produce the apps in two different/separate compiler runs (one for each architecture) and using lipo manually afterwards.
Anyway. Blitzmax is in my opinion the best high level option to write 2d games on a mac, followed closely by python+pyglet. I am not even considering things like unity / torque game builder since I _hate_ the interfaces (rather use a simple editor by far).
It would become a nice 3d system also if support was added to in a cross platform way to something like ogre (or some other good crossplatform engine) and all binaries where included in the distribution wrapped and working out of the box. Pretty much what happens with all the other libs blitzmax uses, wrapps and distributes. Even minib3d is nice, very usable as long as you don't need to animate meshes, but is lacking a lot of stuff that other options offer like shaders, etc.
PLS