I’ve been slowly chipping away at getting “she danced in the wind like a holographic dream before the world died” on all the storefronts that are available to me, as well as battling with making a macOS build.
I’m happy to say that the game has passed the finish line to be on…
* Steam
* The Epic Games Store
* And it has it’s own website
Also the Linux build is here!
Thanks largely in part to the documentation that’s out there, especially this video…
I hope so very much that it works. I was not able to test it because the virtual machine part doesn’t work on my computer.
It’s an .sh file, to the extent of my knowledge that should work… I hope hope hope hope it does!
That having been said, the sad news is that I gave up on the macOS build.
I throw in my hat. It’s too hard. I can’t even begin to summarize the breadcrumb trail of issues that I’ve had to follow, and as soon as one is resolved, another weird mac specific issue arises.
The biggest problem is that Apple has this forced obsolescence philosophy to their software, so you can’t really build older versions of Unreal on the most recent MacOS. I wasn’t able to figure it out.
I spent a few days installing this, that, and the other extra that you need.
The things that did come in useful where…
xcodebuild -downloadComponent MetalToolchain
softwareupdate –install-rosetta
But then you also need the xcode command line tools, which should be easy, but to install the xcode command line tools you need the xcode command line tools… And somehow I got that to work, but then there where other issues…
I think it all comes down to really only being able to work in the latest Unreal version (that being with the least amount of issues). Also MacOS does not like spaces in filenames, so when you install Unreal, Epic wants to put it into “Epic Games” folder. So fine, after a bunch of trial and error, I uninstall it, reinstall without the space, but then there are more issues… I gave up when one of the suggestions was to install CocoaPods. At that point I couldn’t do anymore installing things with cute names.
Why not push through?
So here’s the issue with me dedicating maybe a full week of work into this. I know I could eventually get it to work, but…
I was able to successfully get a macOS build of “individualism in the dead internet age” out there. It was fairly straightforward. It’s not a complicated game, but only four people have downloaded it. Two of them being me.
A big issue with this is that I need to properly notarize this, so that it will not get blocked by Gatekeeper. The alternative is to give instructions to change the settings on Gatekeeper so that it allows non-notarized apps…
BUT most people will not do that. I would have to pay Apple a $100 a year for that.
“The Apple Developer Program costs $99 USD per membership year for individuals and organizations, while the Apple Developer Enterprise Program is $299 USD annually. This annual fee allows developers to distribute apps on the App Store, use advanced capabilities, and access beta software.”
– Source
And I cannot justify that for the very little amount of downloads this will get, let alone that people will likely prefer it for free anyway.
I was able to get a Mac Mini because a family member needed it, and gave it to me on loan. If not that, then it would have cost over a grand to buy one…
The summary of this entire journey: Apple development is for people with money. Just the cost of bypassing Gatekeeper alone makes it unfeasible.
I’m very sad about this. It’s a bitter defeat for sure. Apple used to be my preferred platform. I built everything on it! It was so much fun, but then Apple changed.
A good post about my feelings is “the future of my games on Apple (post-Catalina) and what this means for art games in general” where I talk more about that.
Their OS became too restrictive. Nothing third party really works on it anymore, without a lot of struggle.
Moving forward…
I will do everything I can to distribute macOS builds of my games. They will not be notarized so people will have to follow the instructions for bypassing Gatekeeper, however long Apple will allow that.
Apple is just not accessible to me anymore.
Thank you to everyone that showed interest in the MacOS version of it. I wasn’t able to do it.
I hope the Linux build will work. At least Linux is free, so I can keep trying if it doesn’t!
