Introduction

Learning About Apple Development Tools

Mac OS X provides a suite of developer tools, including design tools, analysis tools, packaging tools, compilers, and debuggers. For an overview of these available tools, along with examples of how to use them, read Mac Technology Overview.

Adopting Mac OS X Media Technologies

Mac OS X offers games developers state-of-the-art audio, 2D and 3D graphics, networking capabilities, and human interface features. In the course of development, you may encounter these technologies and want to know more information about them.

Porting Your Existing Games

If you have existing code written for Windows, Carbon, UNIX, or another platform, you can often integrate much of that code base into your application. Mac OS X provides a number of cross-platform APIs such as OpenGL that may be of particular interest if you develop games or other highly graphic-intensive applications.

Supporting Game Devices

Device control is fundamental to all games. In MacOSX, the Human Interface Device (HID) Manager supports access to HID-class devices, such as joysticks and non-Apple displays. For access to devices that provide tactile sensation to the user, the Force Feedback framework defines a programming interface that is functionally similar to Microsoft’s DirectInput API.

Adding Network Support to Your Games

Networking support for games is a universally hot topic of discussion among developers. Apple provides a wide range of networking capabilities that you can take advantage of in your code, including support for major protocols and services.

Building High-Performance Games

In many cases, performance optimization of code can be the key to success in games. How efficiently your software uses resources such as the CPU, memory, and hard drive is the way that performance can be measured. Apple provides a number of tools for measuring software efficiency.

Next Steps

The Games Reference Library includes the following high-level resource pages, which can be bookmarked for easy access: