Tutorial on what it takes to port to iPad?

[JPhilipp]

Hi! Loved adventure games ever since the earlier Lucasfilm ones. Question: I've researched with Google and found several threads here talking about iPad support, but I was wondering: Is there a tutorial here outlining what it takes, in what steps, to bring your AGS game to the App Store to run on the iPad?

Thanks!

[Vault15]

I recently tested out an Android port of AGS that worked very well (minor lag on my dual core phone & video stuttering). As for Apple devices, I'd check out this forum post if you haven't already. It's pretty straightforward if you have experience in jailbreaking. Android devices are so much easier to permanently Jailbreak in my experience.

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=46040.0

Edit: I realize I didn't fully answer your question. It would be incredibly helpful if official AGS Engine ports were released for Itunes as well as the Android Marketplace so that you could just import the game through Itunes without need of any jailbreak. I'm sure that alternatively you could package your game with the port on the marketplace if you acquire legal rights.

[inspiredsimji]

Similarly (I guess) to this, is it possible to port a Windows AGS game to Mac without the use of Wine, etc?

[Crimson Wizard]

Similarly (I guess) to this, is it possible to port a Windows AGS game to Mac without the use of Wine, etc?

There was an old Mac port, but it is working only on older OSX versions (up to Mac OS X 10.6). The new port requires rewriting some parts of AGS Engine. This work is in process now, but it's difficult to tell how much will it take to make version fully compatible with all AGS games. Partially compatible version may come in few months (being optimistic).


EDIT: Hmm, unfortunately I failed to find if there's older Mac port distributive anywhere on forums. I hope someone else could point to that (if it exists).
I was able to find only this alternative SDL port: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=45708.0, but it is incompleted and discontinued for some reason.

[inspiredsimji]

Thank you very much for the information! perhaps I should explain my situation better: I have created a small, very basic game in AGS on Windows. Is it possible to somehow translate this to a Mac format without actually owning a Mac?

[Crimson Wizard]

Thank you very much for the information! perhaps I should explain my situation better: I have created a small, very basic game in AGS on Windows. Is it possible to somehow translate this to a Mac format without actually owning a Mac?

I think we should eventually post this explanation somewhere on homepage, after we make "official" release of the ports (it's coming), because many people asked already.

The game made by AGS Editor consists of Windows engine executable and attached game data. What engine does, it looks into given file, seeks for game data, and executes it. By default, engine looks into "itself" (running executable). But it very well supports reading game data from separate file.
This means, that if you have an engine port (Linux, Mac, etc), you may run exactly same game without any changes. You will just have two separate files: engine executable, and your compiled game.
For example, you may take "acwin.exe" (that's pure raw engine) from AGS program folder, and run "acwin.exe mygame.exe" from command line (passing path to your game as parameter) - this will make acwin.exe run and read data from mygame.exe. The mygame.exe program will be ignored, only game data taken.
This way you may run older games on a newer engine version. That's in theory, in practice, previous AGS engines has very limited backwards compatibility. New engine, being developed right now, supports running games as old as ones made with AGS 2.50.

It may be a good thing to "cut" the Windows binary from the game file. It will make things cleaner (and save about 1.5-2 MB). This may be done by a simple utility.
Eventually, I hope, there will be an option added to the Editor - to compile game data without attached Windows exe, or even make distributable package for other platforms.

So, putting this simply, you do not need to convert anything, you may just give your game to Mac owner as it is , and he will be able to run it using Mac engine port.
Same for Linux, Android, etc.