Reply-To: "Kent Tessman" <kent@remove-to-reply.generalcoffee.com>
From: "Kent Tessman" <kent@remove-to-reply.generalcoffee.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
References: <GwVn8.9014$mA1.789819@news20.bellglobal.com> <3ca64f7c.2018051@news.actrix.co.nz>
Subject: Re: [Hugo] Macintosh player software
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Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2002 01:31:00 -0500
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"SteveG" <stev_X_grif@actrix.gen.nz> wrote in message
news:3ca64f7c.2018051@news.actrix.co.nz...
> In the weekly 'playing IF games' newsgroup post should I list the
> wxwin version as the definitive Mac player because it offers
> multimedia support or should I continue to recommend the Glk player
> because it is easy to setup?

Good question.  I'd probably recommend the wxWindows port to the Mac as the
preferred player simply because it most fully supports Hugo's display
features (including windowing and basic multimedia) and because it gets
tested the most (i.e., it's what I use for development, both on Mac and
under Linux).  If you don't want or need multimedia (or if you've got a 68K
Macintosh as opposed to a PowerPC) then Glk Hugo will probably serve you
just fine, and the choice between the two may largely be one of personal
opinion, with the caveat that Glk isn't quite able to properly reproduce all
of Hugo's display behavior.  One shouldn't be any harder or easier to set up
than the other; both include a drag-and-drop tool for setting the creator
and file type of Hugo games for the Mac.

> I looked back at the original, June 2001, announcement of the wxwin
> for Mac player. The announcement sounds a little apologetic, as if the
> software is only for Mac-gurus. Is it okay to recommend it to Mac
> and/or IF newbies now?

Yes.  I think the original announcement was apologetic for a number of
reasons, chief among them the fact that I wasn't quite happy with the port
as a Real Macintosh Application.  It has, to pay myself on the back just a
little, gotten an awful lot closer, and now looks and behaves in a much more
Mac-like fashion.  (Some of the improvements include better file dialogs, a
nicer window frame, better sound playing, proper file/document launching,
and typographic quotes, among other things.)  And, as mentioned above, it
hopefully be as easy to use as anything else.

> Also, in the original wxwin-Mac announcement there was mention of a
> native-Macintosh port. Is that still in the works or does the new
> Unix-based Mac OS-X operating system lessen the requirements for that?

The plan is to get a native Mac port done at some point, but I can't say
anything about the timeline with any certainty except that it's likely not a
short-term proposition.  But see my earlier assurance that the existing Mac
port is quite good (at least in my opinion).  In fact, other than it having
a weird name ("wxHugo") for the time being, players likely wouldn't notice
anything particularly foreign about it.

As far as Mac OS X goes, that's another kettle of terps:  I like the idea of
doing a Mac OS X port, just 'cause it's so purty.  But again I don't know
what the ultimate outcome will be once I get my hands on Mac OS X and some
more time--whether it will be a better, Carbonized port of wxHugo, or
whether it will be a Cocoa-based application via C/Objective C or Java or
what.  All future enough that I can speak grandly about it without feeling
any commitment panic.

> The range of Hugo ports is very impressive nowadays, especially
> considering many of the ports provide multi-media game support.

Always working on giving David Kinder and Stephen Granade more to do...

--Kent



