The Mac OS Tab

This section deals with the Mac OS tab of the Global Games Settings Window.

This MacOS tab is split into three separate sub-tabs (accessible on the left of the window) to make changing and updating the information for your game clearer and less complicated. These tabs are explained in the following sections.

General

The first thing to do is fill in the Display Name of your game then go down to the Product Information section and fill in its Version Number, App id, App Output file and the Copyright details. The App Output is the location to which your game installation files go to on your Mac. When you create your .app.zip, that file can go anywhere (the location you specify when doing the save dialogue is not the only copy made of that .app.zip), but the .pkg and other files are left in this folder, permitting you to test local installations via Terminal in such a way as to simulate Mac Store purchasing, etc...

Once that is done you will need to give your game Icons and a Splash Screen. The icons should be authored as a single *.png file with a size of 1024x1024px. The splash screen should be the size of the first room in your game as this is what will briefly be shown while the game assets are being loaded. Smaller or larger images are permitted but will be scaled to fit.

Once you have configured the game details and presentation graphics, you should configure the two following options:

• Allow menu and dock in fullscreen - When checked, this option will show the OS menu and dock if the game is in fullscreen mode.
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• Display the cursor - This toggles the mouse cursor visibility in your game.

Finally we have the option to give a Team Identifier. You can leave this blank to use the default Team Identifier as set in the Mac OS Preferences.

Graphics

The graphics options will determine how your game is displayed when run and affect the way things like scaling and interpolation are handled. The following options exist:

• Start in fullscreen mode - If this is checked, the game will start in fullscreen mode.
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• Interpolate colours between pixels - Turns on interpolation, which basically "smooths" pixels. for crisp pixel graphics, it should be off, but if you have nice alpha blends and smoothed edge graphics it is better left on.
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• Use synchronization to avoid tearing - This toggles v-sync on or off. Note, that if you have a game with a room speed of 120 and the player has a monitor with a refresh rate of 60, turning this option on will lock your game speed to 60 too.
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• Allow the player to resize the game window - Checking this permits the user to change the size of the game window.
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• Scaling - Here you can choose to maintain aspect ratio (so a 4:3 room will be "letter boxed" on a 16:9) or to scale fully (stretching the image to fit the full screen).
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• Allow switching to fullscreen - Checking this will allow the user to toggle the game from windowed to fullscreen mode using <CTRL> + <CMD> + <F>.
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WARNING! Switching off the application surface will disable all the scaling options set in the Global Game Settings until it has been switched back on again. See The Application Surface for further details.

Finally there is the option to set the size of the Texture Page. The default (and most compatible) size is 2048x2048, but you can choose from anywhere between 256x256 up to a whopping 8192x8192! There is also a button marked View which will generate the texture pages for this platform and then open a window so that you can see how they look. This can be very useful if you wish to see how the texture pages are structured and to prevent having texture pages larger (or smaller) than necessary.

NOTE: Be aware that the larger the size of the texture page, the less compatible your game will be.

AppStore

If you wish the finished game to be App Store Ready then you need to check the Build for Mac App Store option, but be aware that this will only function if you are a registered Developer and have the necessary certificates. Under that are two sub-options that you should only check if they are true as Apple can reject your app if they are checked when they are not needed or vice-versa. These options simply permit your game to use the http_ and url_ functions. It is worth noting that if you wish to support GamePads in your game then the option to create an App Store ready package should be off.

Finally, you need to select its App Category (for more information, see here).

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