MAc plugin situation.. [Archive]

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jat

11-22-2005, 09:54 AM

is there any plugin that's not available for the Mac that is vital in your opinion, is the plugin situation getting better or is it still the same....thanks for any input...

Captain Obvious

11-22-2005, 10:44 AM

Once Lightwave is compiled in Xcode, the plugin situation will improve.

noiseboy

11-22-2005, 11:13 AM

That's very sweeping statement Captain, how do you come to that conclusion?

Captain Obvious

11-22-2005, 12:01 PM

Because CodeWarrior costs money. I doubt people are all that eager on first spending a few hundred dollars on a Mac mini to port their plugins, and then another $99 just for CodeWarrior. Apple's Xcode is free. $99 one way or the other might not matter much for Worley, but if you're developing a freeware plugin, I can understand why people don't want to spend all that money just to please us Mac users.

DarkLight

11-22-2005, 02:19 PM

I don't think that things will change that much once LW is compiled with XCODE.

I think the problem is that a lot of Plugins developers are PC based and just don't have access to a mac. I have an old mac here which i use mainly for compiling and testing plugins.

I would happily compile plugins free of charge, but another part of the problem is some developers are not willing to give thier code to someone else, this is especially true of people who provide commercial plugins and one of the reasons that i got a mac in the first place.

Now that there is a windows 64 bit version of LW, this is a problem that is no longer common to the mac. A lot of developers are not going to have a 64 bit platform to test thier plugins so are simply not going to provide them.

Steve

Captain Obvious

11-22-2005, 02:22 PM

I don't think that things will change that much once LW is compiled with XCODE.
No, not that much. But I think the situation will improve at least a little. Or perhaps I'm just deluded because I want the situation to improve. :)

gatz

11-22-2005, 02:25 PM

Off hand the plugin I would pay for right now if it was available is Surpasses. http://sps.polas.net/sps/News.htm

They said a Mac port was planned but it hasn't called my credit card out yet...

Plugin related pet peeve: The developer bulk mails a product announcement ...that isn't offered on the Mac

or

The cool demo vid that uses a plugin that doesn't work on the Mac...it's available, it's just broken

eblu

11-22-2005, 03:12 PM

the economics of plugins has changed very little since 5.6 on the mac.
I'm not just talking about profitability versus cost here, I'm also thinking about intangibles like exposure versus effort.

One of the biggest challenges is that you need to buy codewarrior, but another is that you also need to understand the mac and Lightwave each in some fashion. Neither of which, is exactly similar in execution. Then if you think you're going to port plugins from the PC, you need to know how to program at least a little on the pc, so you can interpret what is going on. And if you can program on the pc, you have a built in, wider audience for your ideas. so the economics of the situation draw some people away from the mac (for a macro view of how this can occur just take a good long look at what happened to bungie). Its the law of bang over buck, and I can't blame 3rd party developers for it, I just hope that when the mac saturation increases, as I believe it will, and the Intel-ified Mac maces porting mildly easier, developers perceive the situation as having changed. Because even if its not as simple as a recompile, developers would be more likely to offer their wares on the mac if they saw the mac as a much easier port. I see this as one of the biggest benefits of going intel, processor optimizations are (supposedly) cross platform.

Lightwolf

11-22-2005, 04:24 PM

I see this as one of the biggest benefits of going intel, processor optimizations are (supposedly) cross platform.
Not really, you don't do source optimization unless you code in assembler... and I wouldn't know anybody dong that for something like a plugin, it is just not worth the extra effort. For a game? Surely.

Cpt. Obvious is quite right imho, the XCode port will get a couple of developers going, and even the price drop of CodeWarrior got some going (i.e. Graham Fyffe).

Picking up OSX and getting the first plugin to run should be easy enough. After all, it is just another computer. And if you program, you tend to develop a different understanding anyhow...

Cheers,
Mike - who's glad Macs have a command line now :)

DarkLight

11-22-2005, 04:50 PM

Macs going to intel hardware is not going to change the situation much until lightwave is using XCODE as developers will still have to use Codewarrior.

I do find development on the mac less friendly than on the pc, this is most likely down to the fact that i have been programming on pcs for longer than i care to remember. :) There are hundreds of websites with information on programming under windows but i have seen very few sites for the mac.

jeremyhardin

11-22-2005, 05:05 PM

monovich

11-22-2005, 05:13 PM

I got tired of waiting for the Mac plugin (and redraw speed) situation to improve. I bought a PC last week.

I'm still keeping my mac and always will work with Macs, but the vast availability of idiosyncratic plugins for PC and the better interactivity while animating won me over for LW use.

-s

DarkLight

11-23-2005, 03:20 AM

will mac still be xcode friendly with intel under the hood? if so, only for a limited time? or will we get microsoft visual basic for the mac and so on?

disclaimer: i do lscript. that's all atm. i could be asking a very stupid question. i'll take that chance though.

Yes the mac will still be using XCODE when it switches to intel. Actually XCODE will be the best dev tool to use when that happens as it will allow you to compile for both PowerPC and Intel targets for the same code.

Steve

Lightwolf

11-23-2005, 03:42 AM

I do find development on the mac less friendly than on the pc, this is most likely down to the fact that i have been programming on pcs for longer than i care to remember. :)
I'd venture out to say that for most of the LW plugin programmers that is a moot point, _if_ they only move within the LW SDK.
Even though I only code on windows as well, my standalone apps (except for rare exceptions) rely on open source tools for anything that is outside the scope of the base C/C++ libraries, just in case I'd need to port... :)

Cheers,
Mike

DarkLight

11-23-2005, 04:11 AM

Very true, if it is only the sdk being used then there is virtually no difference on which platform you develop on.

Captain Obvious

11-23-2005, 05:36 AM

Mike - who's glad Macs have a command line now
++

;)

I was sceptical at first, but heck, even the extra scriptability via AppleScript makes the command line worth it.

I do find development on the mac less friendly than on the pc, this is most likely down to the fact that i have been programming on pcs for longer than i care to remember. There are hundreds of websites with information on programming under windows but i have seen very few sites for the mac.
That really depends on just what you want to develop. There are probably not that many sites devoted to extremely optimized assembler coding for the Mac, but if you're looking for normal Mac programming resources, there (http://www.cocoadev.com/) are (http://www.macdevcenter.com/) plenty (http://cocoadevcentral.com/) of (http://x180.net/Articles/index.html) sites (http://developer.apple.com/referencelibrary/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000943) (all those words are different links). Add to that the fact that a good amount of all open source POSIX software just works on Mac OS X.

will mac still be xcode friendly with intel under the hood? if so, only for a limited time? or will we get microsoft visual basic for the mac and so on?

disclaimer: i do lscript. that's all atm. i could be asking a very stupid question. i'll take that chance though.
As DarkLight said, Xcode will still be the preferred developing environment for Mac OS X, regardless of the CPU in it.

Lightwolf

11-23-2005, 05:40 AM

I was sceptical at first, but heck, even the extra scriptability via AppleScript makes the command line worth it.

*ouch*
Cheers,
Mike - who thinks AppleScript is just an ugly language ;)

Captain Obvious

11-23-2005, 05:58 AM

Perhaps it's ugly, but it's really efficient for quick-n-dirty user interface scripting. Especially since it can connect seamlessly to anything that can be run from the command line. It's also great for getting information out of applications for giving non-standard feedback. Combine GeekTool with a really simple AppleScripts and you can get an IRC channel's output on your desktop with just a few minutes of "coding." It's great for controlling iTunes and stuff like that as well. Writing complex things in it is horrible, but for simpler things, it's really quite functional.

Lightwolf

11-23-2005, 06:08 AM

Captain Obvious

11-23-2005, 06:37 AM

Oh, the syntax is pretty... odd. Too much like english. But there is some project for getting more C-style (or something such) syntax. I can't remember what the project what called, though, and I'm too lazy to google.