Finally, I have a computer for development again. As I said before, it is an Intel iMac, so I will now be concentrating on Intel builds rather than PowerPC. I know that the development tools supplied with the iMac allow me to create Universal Binaries, but I will not be using them directly. For application development, I will switch to Lazarus with FreePascal. This is a Delphi like environment that allows for cross platform development. I will, however, continue to use BlitzMax for game development. I had planned on moving over to FreePascal and the SDL libraries, but I don’t think the move would allow me to gain anything, and I already know a fair amount of BlitzMax, so why change?
What does this mean for existing projects?
Firstly, I have no plans to recompile Mr Wimpy, unless I update it. The PPC version runs fine under Rosetta, so it can stay as is for now.
Mr Wong’s Loopy Laundry will now be developed on Intel. This makes no difference to the development process, so I will get on to that when I can.
I am not sure about Pride. I won’t be continuing it with RealBasic, as the licence I had for it only allowed me to create PowerPC builds. I may look at restarting the project in Lazarus, particularly as I now have access to the SynEdit controls, but it’s not a high priority.
I also have some other projects in the planning stages. I am going to be creating a Tapper clone, hopefully using real video for the entertainment sections, and pre-rendered 3D graphics. I was also planning to create a sequel to Mr Wimpy. This game would have been a side scroller, in the same style as Super Mario Bros, but I have finally received an e-mail from the Wimpy company and they have asked me NOT to use the character in a game. I may still proceed with the game, but change the character to a more generic guy, or possibly create a new character that I could then use in subsequent games.
One final bit of news in this post. It has come to my attention that my remake of Mr Wimpy is now referenced on
Wikipedia.