Macintosh programming in C of a Mac OS Classic game

[Funlight]

Dear everyone,
My name is Thomas, and I have worked on a project since the 90s trying to upgrade an old Macintosh classic game ported to Mac from Windows in 1995 called Actua Soccer (American version = VR Soccer). In 2014 I was able to obtain the source code of the game from the porter. It has been a massive undertaking with several trips to England and many memories for life.

The game is programmed using Codewarrior under OS 7.5 - 9. The programming language is C. I have had the code for a decade now, but as a non-programmer I have been working in the blind. I have had some success with the artwork of the game, but not the C-coded parts at all. I really need some help to sort things out to find a reasonable plan and way to move forward.

Currently two programmers help out, but they have never work on a Mac. Are there anyone out there with experience on C programming with Codewarrior?

Best regards Thomas

 

[Snial]

Dear everyone,
My name is Thomas, and I have worked on a project since the 90s trying to upgrade an old Macintosh classic game ported to Mac from Windows in 1995 called Actua Soccer (American version = VR Soccer). In 2014 I was able to obtain the source code of the game from the porter. It has been a massive undertaking with several trips to England and many memories for life.

The game is programmed using Codewarrior under OS 7.5 - 9. The programming language is C. I have had the code for a decade now, but as a non-programmer I have been working in the blind. I have had some success with the artwork of the game, but not the C-coded parts at all. I really need some help to sort things out to find a reasonable plan and way to move forward.

Currently two programmers help out, but they have never work on a Mac. Are there anyone out there with experience on C programming with Codewarrior?

Best regards Thomas

Hi, it's not clear what you want to achieve. You're saying it's a soccer game already ported from Windows (3.1/95) to a classic Mac OS using CodeWarrior, but you want to port it to classic Mac OS? Or you want to port it to a modern platform? Or you just want to be able to recompile it?

 

[Funlight]

Hi, it's not clear what you want to achieve. You're saying it's a soccer game already ported from Windows (3.1/95) to a classic Mac OS using CodeWarrior, but you want to port it to classic Mac OS? Or you want to port it to a modern platform? Or you just want to be able to recompile it?

Dear Snial,

Thanks for your reply.

Yes, the game was originally a DOS/WIN95 game. Then it was ported to SegaSaturn, PSX and Macintosh.

I wasn’t just a title amongst many. It is the first revolutionary soccer game using real motion capture for players in the Premier league. This was never done before. The lead programmer is still in the business and was headhunted to EA (where he still works today). The PlayStation version sold over a million copies (Platinum).

I want to develop the game and add more stuff to it. That’s the whole idea about since I started this project in 1998.

One of the programmers in my team work on a port to OSX. While I try to work on the old port and make tools/editors that can make it possible and easier to add additional artwork, tactics, teams and motion captures. So far I’ve been able to get a decent working tactics tools, but that’s not a OS9 app (MONO under OSX). My idea is to work mostly under OS9.

I look for someone how could be helpful to look through the code and help out to understand the best approach to continue the development and/or make tools I can use for binary assets the game utilities (like the artwork, mocaps and tactics).

Hope you get the idea, and might be able to help or give advises.

Best wishes Thomas

 

[Snial]

I think that helps. The problem you'll get is that Mac OS 7.5 to 9 is really a very different OS to Mac OS X. CodeWarrior apps usually have code written in C++ on top of the PowerPlant Application framework, but Mac OS X had its own object-oriented framework (Cocoa) which was integrated into it's APIs and was written in Objective C (which is a more flexible object-oriented language akin to Java, but faster). That is, although Mac OS X looks and works a lot like Classic Mac OS, it's really an illusion. To bridge the gap, Apple developed the Carbon API, a kind of hybrid subset of classic Mac OS that enabled some apps to run under both environments, but I don't think it's possible to develop for Carbon any more. It's possible the same framework was shared between the ports, but the task is involved as I'm sure you've discovered (or your programmer has) challenging.

So, this reply probably isn't so helpful for you, because I'm not explaining how to solve it, I'm just listing a few reasons why it's more difficult than might appear.

 

[Snial]

Porting SSA Detailed Calculator to Xcode/Intel: Intro

Introduction to my port of the Social Security Administration's Detailed Calculator app from PowerPC to Intel Macs

bslabs.net

Compiling a Mac OS 8 application on macOS Sierra

A light hearted look back at my time programming in the 1990s as I try to get an old Minesweeper implementation of mine from 1999, written in C++ using PowerPlant for Mac OS 8, compiling in Xcode 8 and running on macOS Sierra.

www.cocoawithlove.com

 

[Funlight]

I think that helps. The problem you'll get is that Mac OS 7.5 to 9 is really a very different OS to Mac OS X. CodeWarrior apps usually have code written in C++ on top of the PowerPlant Application framework, but Mac OS X had its own object-oriented framework (Cocoa) which was integrated into it's APIs and was written in Objective C (which is a more flexible object-oriented language akin to Java, but faster). That is, although Mac OS X looks and works a lot like Classic Mac OS, it's really an illusion. To bridge the gap, Apple developed the Carbon API, a kind of hybrid subset of classic Mac OS that enabled some apps to run under both environments, but I don't think it's possible to develop for Carbon any more. It's possible the same framework was shared between the ports, but the task is involved as I'm sure you've discovered (or your programmer has) challenging.

So, this reply probably isn't so helpful for you, because I'm not explaining how to solve it, I'm just listing a few reasons why it's more difficult than might appear.

In general it is not that difficult to port this game for an experienced programmer since they coded the game to be easily portable to other platforms later on. In my team there is already one programmer on this case. The game uses the Apple sprockets APIs, and the major difference to get it working on OSX is to change those Apple sprocket specific codes to OpenGL, which is our intention.

For me I reach out to work on the OS9 version of the source code using Codewarrior and Resorcerer etc. that the code used. What I do it to try and learn programming and also add more stuff to the game with the use of Editors and tools. That is why I reach out here. As those tools would have to be able to use under OS9.

 

[Funlight]

Porting SSA Detailed Calculator to Xcode/Intel: Intro

Introduction to my port of the Social Security Administration's Detailed Calculator app from PowerPC to Intel Macs

bslabs.net

Compiling a Mac OS 8 application on macOS Sierra

A light hearted look back at my time programming in the 1990s as I try to get an old Minesweeper implementation of mine from 1999, written in C++ using PowerPlant for Mac OS 8, compiling in Xcode 8 and running on macOS Sierra.

www.cocoawithlove.com

Thanks for sharing. This looks interesting. I’ve sent him an email.

 

[joshc]

with several trips to England

Would those have been trips to Sheffield by chance? I’m not sure what happened to the people who worked for Infogrames after the Sheffield office closed. I grew up in Sheffield so I remember walking past their building near the city centre a few times.

I also remember the Actua Soccer game - I had a demo of it as a kid in the 90s. It came on a Macworld or perhaps ‘The Mac’ magazine cover disc.

I can’t help on the programming side of things much but I wish you the best of luck with this project.

 

[VMSZealot]

I used to love "The Mac". My collection got turned to papier mache in a flood. I can't find an archive online. All those awesome old 'mac'azines, lost to history. The Mac were also the first people to 'publish' my software, on a cover disk. Even I don't have a copy anymore!

 

[joshc]

I used to love "The Mac". My collection got turned to papier mache in a flood. I can't find an archive online. All those awesome old 'mac'azines, lost to history. The Mac were also the first people to 'publish' my software, on a cover disk. Even I don't have a copy anymore!

What was your software called? I had some ‘The Mac’ cover disks and they’re with @mg.man now.

 

[VMSZealot]

I can't remember - I can only remember what they did. One was a fractal generator, one was one of those message of the day things, and one was a game like space invaders but the player has to control two shooters, one on the x-axis and one on the y-axis and you can only kill an invader in the crossfire.

I don't have the source code anymore (although I think I found the hard disk which might have the code on it, a 1GB AV hard disk, but it only clicks when I plug it in. I don't care enough to investigate further!)

 

[Funlight]

Would those have been trips to Sheffield by chance? I’m not sure what happened to the people who worked for Infogrames after the Sheffield office closed. I grew up in Sheffield so I remember walking past their building near the city centre a few times.

I also remember the Actua Soccer game - I had a demo of it as a kid in the 90s. It came on a Macworld or perhaps ‘The Mac’ magazine cover disc.

I can’t help on the programming side of things much but I wish you the best of luck with this project.

Hi.

Sorry for my late reply. Yes, I’ve been to Sheffield twice booking the hotel at the Sheffield United home stadium. I met many programmers, one of the owners and others that worked at Gremlin. Sadly I haven’t met any involved in Actua Soccer 1 beside Richard Stevenson, which had source code materials, but sadly later on refused to share it and blocked me out completely. Everybody else I have just contacted by email or through Facebook. In Sheffield I have taken photos of the buildings and kept some of the old Infogramers building.

The source code I obtained from the porter of the game, Julian Gardner, in Sweden in 2014. He is a fantastic guy and have been in touch with me for years since he in 2006 contacted me and told me he was the porter of the game.

This has most of all been a great journey for me. The history of the game is fantastic and very interesting. Nothing like the gaming industry today! At that time no one had made a motion capture game done by real football players. Also the 3D sprites were never done. FIFA were far behind Actua.

Currently I work with an American programmer, which is very professional. We hope to make a new game in the end, but firstly try to understand the original game through port to OSX and work on the different parts of the code.

Thanks mate and thank you from reaching out.

 

[sentient06]

Thomas, sorry if I come out as blunt or even rude, but nothing here makes any sense to me. I'm very confused by your original post. What do you want to do? Are you trying to compile a game targetting Mac OS 9? Is that it?

You said the game was developed under Mac OS 7.5, then you said it was originally for DOS/Windows. That doesn't make sense to me, was it released for classic Macintosh before Windows? Or were both versions released at the same time? Or was it Windows-only? Which platform is the actual, original one? If it was coded for Windows, why was it coded on Mac OS?

Windows and Mac are very different beasts. If the code is in C, it has to handle a lot of platform-specific logic. Do you have files that are bespoke for Windows and files made for Mac? Because imagine, for example, that you declare a bunch of constants relevant for a certain.. processor like a 386 intel and a motorola 68020. For a multi-platform project you would have something like a mac-constants.c file and a windows-constants.c file, then you would have your linker on CodeWarrior ignoring the windows file and adding the mac one, and on a compiler on Windows you would link the windows file and ignore the mac file. Or you could use the same compiler with a cross-platform target with the same logic behind it: each target has its own stuff being linked. If you link all files, it won't compile because of duplicated, conflicting declarations and stuff like that. I assume, for example, that the game allows for saving state to disk. That means you need Macintosh Toolbox access on Mac. And some DLL access on Windows. These must live in different files, or at least with a lot of compiler bypasing macros.

Then, different versions of CodeWarrior have different tools and capabilities. For a time there was little support for C++, for example, and Pascal was dropped after a while. Carbon made into the later versions. So it's helpful to know what version of CodeWarrior was originally used. It's also important to note that PowerPC instructions may differ from 68k instructions. The target is certainly different if meant for 68k and PPC. If your code was made on Mac OS 9, I assume it relies at least partially in PowerPC instructions? Do you know? If you don't, does your Mac OS X developer know? Perhaps he is the best person to figure it out?

It's hard to help without more information. If you can't develop on classic, you either have to learn it, or you need a developer sitting in front of the codebase to figure out what's going on. There are some good books on the subject, but it's quite the learning curve and it would be time-consuming. Classic Mac OS is its own thing.

Also, pardon my blunt curiosity, but why do you want to compile a game for a legacy platform? I'm not complaining, I'm just curious.