Distribution Exporting for Steam, will it work on Mac?

[MPRiv]

Hello All,

I am releasing my first game on steam soon but was wondering if when exporting as a zip in GMS as instructed by Steam documentation, will enable my game to be played on Mac? Unfortunately I do not have a Mac to test on or I wouldn't have bother you all.

Thank you!

 

[MPRiv]

Has no one tried this before?

 

[MishMash]

GM exports to lots of different platforms. You would need to select the Mac export no matter what, the windows EXE will not work on Mac. Though you will actually need a mac if you even want to build the game for Mac, as the build process happens on the Mac side (GM connects to the target device via SSH by the looks of it).

On a general note, it would be very unwise to distribute on a platform that you cannot actively maintain/test on. Your best option is to start by just releasing on Windows and Linux, then when it becomes possible for you to get a Mac, at that point should you start thinking about distributing a Mac version. Conveniently, it is very likely that your game will just work on all platforms, however sometimes there are OS specific quirks such as filename conventions or even just performance hits that you need to test for.

-- The zip folder that GM exports when you are under the windows export is simply the windows exe and associated file contents (such as GMs default assets and your own external files) zipped up for distribution convenience.

 

[Yal]

Conveniently, it is very likely that your game will just work on all platforms, however sometimes there are OS specific quirks such as filename conventions or even just performance hits that you need to test for.

Some stuff I'm aware of:

• Windows filenames are case insensitive, Unix (aka Mac / Linux) filenames are case sensitive. This can cause you to fail to find files that are actually there, or overwrite files erroneously. On top of that the way folders are arranged is completely different.
  
• DirectX is mostly Windows-only, so some Windows games I did with GM8 would run just fine on Ubuntu with Wine and then randomly crash as soon as it tried to use alpha or blending.
• Windows and *nix has completely different authorization methods for critical operations (UAC/sudo) so stuff like installers will ABSOLUTELY not work cross-platform.

 

[MPRiv]

GM exports to lots of different platforms. You would need to select the Mac export no matter what, the windows EXE will not work on Mac. Though you will actually need a mac if you even want to build the game for Mac, as the build process happens on the Mac side (GM connects to the target device via SSH by the looks of it).

On a general note, it would be very unwise to distribute on a platform that you cannot actively maintain/test on. Your best option is to start by just releasing on Windows and Linux, then when it becomes possible for you to get a Mac, at that point should you start thinking about distributing a Mac version. Conveniently, it is very likely that your game will just work on all platforms, however sometimes there are OS specific quirks such as filename conventions or even just performance hits that you need to test for.

-- The zip folder that GM exports when you are under the windows export is simply the windows exe and associated file contents (such as GMs default assets and your own external files) zipped up for distribution convenience.

Thank you for your detailed answer, much appreciated!