Mac OSX Trouble Distributing game to Mac

Sak_

Member
Hello

I made a Mac version for my Gamemaker Studio game(Farjob) as a .app and uploaded it to Steam. I tried installing it from Steam onto my personal Mac(that I've been testing the game from) and it ran fine for me. However, I asked someone else to test it on their mac and they got this error when they tried to run it:



This issue is frustrating because I can't replicate it on my own Mac.

Anyone got any suggestions? Do I need some sort of approval from Apple? Just to be clear, this is Gamemaker Studio not GM2.
 

Sak_

Member
I can't seem to be able to post images or links without mod approval. It is a Steam message saying "An error occured while updating Farjob(missing executable)" with the filepath to the .app. I assume I need my .app to be approved. I am paying the $99 but I have no idea how to code sign the app. I'm really confused about what to do for my specific problem because alot of the online information for mac pertains to the app store. Do I need to use Xcode? Do you have any instructions for codesigning my Gamemaker app?
 
S

Sam (Deleted User)

Guest
All apps whether on or off the AppStore either need to be code signed or follow that tutorial if you don't want to do that. There are many tutorials online for code signing your app as well.
 

Sak_

Member
Please please give me specific instructions for how to codesign my Gamemaker Studio app. I've been looking through tutorials for hours but I can't figure it out because I can't replicate the problem.
 
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Sam (Deleted User)

Guest
I've never done it before, but even YoYoGames provides this information on their knowledge base - help.yoyogames.com
 

Sak_

Member
Oh, I guess I already tried codesigning in "signing identity" with the developer ID certificate. All the Gamemaker Studio documentation seems to be slightly outdated for this though.
 

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
Thanks but that's for Gamemaker 2. I noticed that it was you who wrote the original GM Studio article. The original launch file path for Steam is Skein.app\Contents\MacOS\Skein when shouldn't it be Skein.app\Contents\MacOS\Mac_Runner?
Ummm... I honestly couldn't tell you. I'll have a look at my Steam console and edit this post to let you know what I have... Keep in mind, that none of the 1.4 articles are up to date anymore as 1.4 has been deprecated. This means that no work is getting done on anything related to it at all (which is why the article seems outdated).

EDIT: I do indeed have "Skein.app\Contents\MacOS\Skein" as my launch path... I suspect I renamed the "Mac_Runner" to "Skein" before uploading or something.
 

Sak_

Member
Ummm... I honestly couldn't tell you. I'll have a look at my Steam console and edit this post to let you know what I have... Keep in mind, that none of the 1.4 articles are up to date anymore as 1.4 has been deprecated. This means that no work is getting done on anything related to it at all (which is why the article seems outdated).
Yeah Gamemaker has amazing documentation but Steam and Apple are just moving too fast.
 
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Sam (Deleted User)

Guest
You can't just rename the runner to the title of your game. The Info.plist needs to also point to it, otherwise the app will not be valid or runnable. In case you are wondering, I develop apps in C++ and Objective C and this is very much required for any standard macOS app to run. In GameMaker's case, running the runner executable directly will produce the classic "cannot find game!!" error message which pretty much ruins the ability to see the output of show_debug_message() or using command line parameters from the terminal. The only way to run a GM game is by double clicking the App bundle, and not the executable inside it. I'm going to file a ticket.

Edit:

Ticket submitted.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Sak_

Member
You can't just rename the runner to the title of your game. The Info.plist needs to also point to it, otherwise the app will not be valid or runnable. In case you are wondering, I develop apps in C++ and Objective C and this is very much required for any standard macOS to run.
Yeah but the older documentation indicates that GameMaker used to name the runner to be the same name as the .app. It might not be important but it’s hard to know when there are so many different pieces to this puzzle. Again, the game runs on Steam fine for my Mac. But 2 of my testers had the same Steam error(missing executable) pop up. I could give them instructions to disable Gatekeeper but that would defeat the purpose of using Steam.
 
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