Catnap Games

I borrowed a Mac Mini to make the game run on OS X. I had already modified my build script to create zipped "app bundles" with a Java launcher, icons etc. but it was all done without actually trying it out.

Of course it didn't work for the first time; it was pretty close though. And few hours later the game was running! Performance is fine, so I'm quite happy now.

Some problems I encountered:

• The fact that I'm using Java 1.5 features but Macs come with Java 1.4 by default. Solved easily using Retroweaver.
• JavaApplicationStub wasn't marked as executable in my app bundle, so clicking the app icon did nothing and I got no feedback. My Ant build script now has an extra zipfileset section for JavaApplicationStub with filemode="755".
• I had to change the working directory to be "inside" the bundle, so the game can find it's resources. The JarBundler Ant task makes this easy, I just added workingdirectory="$APP_PACKAGE/Contents/Resources". Note that $APP_PACKAGE gets expanded by the launcher, not JarBundler.

OS X is an excellent system, even the older 10.3.9 I got. Expose is really nice and useful. I set it up to show all my windows when I move the mouse to the upper right corner and show my desktop when I move to upper left corner. It's great for dragging stuff between different Finder windows and other apps. Almost made me forget about my beloved Total Commander...

informagen.com/JarBundler/
developer.apple.com/docume…
www.javagaming.org/forums/…