Soldak Entertainment Interview
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Are there any aspects of developing for the Mac that were either particularly enjoyable, or frustrating, or simply different from targeting Windows?
Um, yes.
Some things were a lot easier. For example, the icon composer and disk image tools were nice. Windows has many similar tools but they are not part of the dev kit or OS, so you have to search through the ton of options to find something that is suitable. This searching, many times takes longer than the actual task does.
One of the hardest things (well time consuming and tedious is probably more accurate) to do was to get the game to work on the older PowerPC computers. Tracking down all of the places to byte swap is not terribly fun. For other developers, this will become less and less of an issue as the older PowerPCs move below their minimum specs. I'm pretty happy that both of our games still support PowerPC Macs though.
Overall though, most of it was just different. Microsoft and Apple have different philosophies on a lot of things. For example, it even took a while to get used to where the minimize and close buttons are on Mac applications since they are basically the exact opposite of Windows apps.
On the business side of things, has targeting the Mac proven to be a worthwhile decision as a publisher?
From the beginning I viewed porting to the Mac as a calculated risk. I was hoping that if Depths of Peril didn't pay back the hardware and development cost then at least the next game (Kivi's Underworld) would. Looking back at it though, it was a very wise decision. The Mac version of Depths of Peril is nearly 40% of out direct sales now and paid back all of its costs a while back. The Mac version of Kivi's Underworld on the other hand is actually outselling the Windows version so far. I don't suspect that this will last, but it's interesting. So yes, I would have to say it has been a worthwhile decision.
