I am officially announcing GM Cocoaizer here. (Tentative name)
This will basically convert a GameMaker Game into a SilverCreator Game, so that it runs on the latest Macs*.
One of the requirements for GM Cocoaizer is that you will be able to run* it on the upcoming Mac OS X 10.15. This presents several unique challenges.
The Mac Resource Fork format will have to be read without using any of the old toolbox routines. Fortunately, I have found some Xojo code that does this, written by Thomas Tempelmann.
Then the resources themselves have to be parsed.
- PICTs can be parsed using "picttoppm", more information in the SilverCreator Cocoa thread. (This assumes that no games have Vector PICTs. The built in GameMaker drawing tools were bitmap, so I don't think this will be a problem). This also does not include PICTs compressed with tools such as GM Toolkit. However, GM Toolkit compressed the PICTs using PNG or JPEG, so all I need to do is remove the PICT "wrapper" from the underlying PNG or JPEG and process normally.
-- Secret Agent Bob is going to screw this up though because of Road Pizza Compression.
- Sound resources present an issue due to compression. I have code that can convert uncompressed sounds to WAV. What I really need is code that can convert "snd " resources to .caf files, because the .caf files are actually rather amazing and support ALL of the old compression formats (man afconvert in Terminal). SilverCreator now uses .caf internally instead of QuickTime.
- STR resources and the like are simple enough to parse.
*Unless I receive a donation, GM Cocoaizer and the converted games will not be "code signed". Code signing is just a surreptitious way for Apple to control developers. The $99 annual fee STRONGLY discourages younger folks from getting into programming**. Malware still occurs, using stolen credentials, or legitimately purchased credentials. This is not an issue of inadequate finances, it is an issue of principals. If the $99 is donated then I will use the certificates to code sign SilverCreator, GM Cocoaizer, and RuntimeMac (used by both SilverCreator and GM Cocoaizer).
You can open non-codesigned programs by right-clicking and choosing Open. If Apple removes this from OS X 10.15, this entire project as well as SilverCreator for Mac are permanently cancelled, and OS X 10.14 will be the last version of the Mac OS that I will ever install and use. If that situation occurs, I may consider an alternate project such as conversion to HTML5, since I could potentially partner with Gan or someone else on that.
** It was hard enough to convince my mom in 2000 (when I was 12) to pay $20 one time for GameMaker, which was at least a tangible product I could explain to her. $99 annually for "Developer Program Access", no way in hell.
