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Cross-Platform Game Development Libraries?
Ratfink18 asks: "Is there a cross platform Game development library for Windows, Macintosh (Carbon or Coca) and Linux? I am a project director for a computer game and as such I am strongly pushing for release on all platforms simultaneous. Since programmers are limited I am looking for a library that will take the pain out of simultaneous releases of software. The library should support both 2D, 3D, input and sound functions."
Twilight 3D claims to have an SDK which will save you 7570 man-hours of coding time, which is a multi-plaform multimedia framework and 3D engine.
Crystal Space is a free 3D engine which is supported on multiple platforms, or
Flight Gear is around for those who'd like to code a Flight Sim of some sort.
All of the above are noted for their portable API and I've been following their progress for some time now. I hope this helps.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
...that can be found here. It's a college research project (by me and another person actually) that studies cross platform design, current software used for cross platform design and solutions to problems and design issues. It's a 90 page .pdf file. It also includes a survey on cross platform design and it's results. We did the research project in order to try and find out why many commercial companies do not create cross platform software, and to find solutions to the problems they claim. It is an interesting read I think.
P.S. Currently this is the next to final draft.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
SDL is a cross-platform game devel library, that (off the top of my head) works on Linux (X and fb), MacOS, Windows, and probably a bunch of other targets too :) )
The API is quite nice, and the whole thing is.. it's just nice :). I love it.
SDL has sound support, and 2d video. If you need 3d, you can use GL for graphics with SDL for everything else, which is a big plus.
SDL is, BTW, what Loki uses to port games from Windows to Linux (Like Civilization:CTP, etc).
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When you create software using OpenGL & OpenAL to handle the graphics and sounds, all you need to do is set up the windowing code specific to each OS, and then recompile based on that new window code. I've created simple OpenGL projects on both Macs, Windows & Linux (no Be/BSD/Solaris, though, but I'd assume this still works), and by using an Object Oriented method (C++), the only file that I ever had to change was my main.cc file.
Doh!
www.libsdl.org (BeOS, MacOS, Linux Win32 others?)
SDL is indeed worthy of praise, but I should point out that Linux, Win32 and BeOS are the only platforms that it _officially_ runs on. From their FAQs, MacOS "sort of" works (8-bit displays don't work properly, audio support is experimental). I mention this since the original questioner specifically asked about Mac support.
Back in the "old days", I worked at a company that created products that ran on Linux, Windows, and DOS. This was about four years ago and there weren't as many choices. We used:
/dev/js0 on Linux
rendering: Glide
input: DirectInput on Windows,
sound: Midas
widget set: Qt on Linux, win32 on Windows, text mode hackery on DOS
There were plenty of custom code blocks (file access, system timers, keyboard input, window setup) but they were all small, very quick to write, and self-contained.
In other words, it's actually no big deal to not use a single, all-encompassing library to protect you from the horrors of coding to a specific platform.
However, there are other choices these days. OpenGL+OpenAL+Qt would make a pretty nice, completely cross-platform toolkit setup that should do everything you want and more.
And of course there's SDL, which I think is probably the best choice. I haven't used it extensively myself, but everything I've seen looks very good, and moreover it's what Loki uses, so that's a pretty good recommend right there.
Also, you might check out the links here.