PowerMac OpenRCT2 possible?

[Traace]

Hi, thanks, i really enjoy openRCT2.

Can it run on PowerMac's? Apple used this CPUs until 2006. G4 and G5 should have enough performance to handle this awesome game.

Unfortunately there are no compiling instructions for osx on the wiki yet, nor the download page says if its Intel CPU only,

Dont get me wrong, I also own some X86, but getting openRCT2 on a older Mac (all before 2006) would be just amazing.

 

Thats the basics (Mac OSX):

Xcode Version: 3.1.4 | make, cmake ....

SDL2: Yes - 2.0.3 Hybrid files @ 2.0.1 Core (latest possible to compile for PPC osx) | Already getting used in sdlMAME for PPC.

 

Something else needed? Maybe macports can help, i can take a look

 

Linux ppc may even offer more up to date libs.

 

 

Edited July 25, 2018 by Traace

[Gymnasiast]

PowerPC is big-endian, while x86 is little-endian. It's a somewhat technical story, but it boils down to how numbers are saved internally. Since OpenRCT2 does a lot of stuff like "get the bit at position 9 of this number" or "get the upper 8 bits of that number" this would not work properly on the PowerPC. All of these calls would have to be modified to also work on PowerPC.

Since the newest mainstream PowerPC systems are from 2006, and because we don't even support macOS versions that old (the minimum is 10.9 Mavericks IIRC)*, I wouldn't expect support for it, though if someone were to step up to do so, we would still welcome it.

* I know that Linux PPC exists, but it's quite a niche within a niche.

[Traace]

3 hours ago, Gymnasiast said:

PowerPC is big-endian, while x86 is little-endian. It's a somewhat technical story, but it boils down to how numbers are saved internally. Since OpenRCT2 does a lot of stuff like "get the bit at position 9 of this number" or "get the upper 8 bits of that number" this would not work properly on the PowerPC. All of these calls would have to be modified to also work on PowerPC.

Okay we need byte-swapping.

Osx has a utility for that https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corefoundation/byte_order_utilities#overview

3 hours ago, Gymnasiast said:

Since the newest mainstream PowerPC systems are from 2006, and because we don't even support macOS versions that old (the minimum is 10.9 Mavericks IIRC)*, I wouldn't expect support for it, though if someone were to step up to do so, we would still welcome it.

* I know that Linux PPC exists, but it's quite a niche within a niche.

Talos II is production since early 2018. It supports PCIe 4.0 and has a open source bios , Not even X86 Mainboards supports PCIe 4.0 currently.

However that boy can handle .BIG and .little anyway

https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/prerelease.php

 

Why openRCT2 doesn't support anything below 10.9 ?

 

Edited July 26, 2018 by Traace

[Gymnasiast]

> Okay we need byte-swapping. Osx has a utility for that

It's mostly the amount of calls to modify, not so much the existence of a library. But even if it was, a macOS-only library is not going to help - the last PPC version was 10.5, which is way too old for us to support. The only place where PPC support would conceivably be of any use would be Linux.

> Talos II is production since early 2018

Talos II is not a mainstream CPU. Do you expect the average user will own such a computer? They're specialised machines for a specific niche.

> Why openRCT2 doesn't support anything below 10.9 ?

Because it means we cannot use C++ 17 for example. Xcode is the main problem here, it always lags behind GCC and even MSVC in terms of standards support. And we're being generous here, Apple does not even support anything older than 10.11 El Capitan.

 

Look, we all do this in our spare time and we have limited time available. Hardly anybody is going to benefit from a PPC compatible version, not to mention that none of us even have PPC hardware. Again, it's open source, so if someone were to step up and do it, we would welcome their patches. But you can't just demand that we do it for you.

[Traace]

On 26/07/2018 at 14:47, Gymnasiast said:

 But you can't just demand that we do it for you.

I never ask u should do it for me...

I ask if its possible to port it in general. Thats a difference ...

Edited July 27, 2018 by Traace