In my last report, I mentioned how my back pain was preventing me from making substantial progress in the previous few weeks, and that I was working on automating my Mac port build for Toy Factory Fixer and needing to prepare for a festival.
I continued to do the work as my body let me.
Sprint 69: Ports
Planned and Complete:
- Automate Mac port
I have been able to sit at my desk for longer periods of time, and so I was able to be a lot more productive than I have in weeks.
I managed to update my libSDL2 libraries so that they could be found properly by my project, but I struggled for some time trying to get CMake to configure my Xcode project so that it would embed and sign those libraries.
SET_TARGET_PROPERTIES(${GB_PROJECT_NAME}-bin PROPERTIES XCODE_LINK_BUILD_PHASE_MODE KNOWN_LOCATION)
This line seems to be needed to get the libraries that are found with FIND_PACKAGE to show up in the “Frameworks, Libraries, and Embedded Content” section of Xcode. But they would be listed as “Do Not Embed”.
SET_TARGET_PROPERTIES(${GB_PROJECT_NAME}-bin PROPERTIES
XCODE_EMBED_FRAMEWORKS_CODE_SIGN_ON_COPY ON
XCODE_EMBED_FRAMEWORKS "${SDL2_LIB_DIRS}/libSDL2.dylib ${SDL2_LIB_DIRS}/libSDL2_image.dylib ${SDL2_LIB_DIRS}/libSDL2_ttf.dylib ${SDL2_LIB_DIRS}/libSDL2_mixer.dylib")
I found a number for forum posts, pull requests, and pieces of CMake documentation, and I felt pretty frustrated that I couldn’t get things to work properly. I made sure to have the latest version of CMake so I had the ability to set XCODE_EMBED_FRAMEWORKS and work with dylibs, but when I did the above, all I got was libSDL2_mixer to show up as “Embed & Sign” while the rest continued to be appear with “Do Not Embed” instead.
I found that no matter how I specified everything, it was always the last library in the list.
Well, luckily, someone runs a great account on Twitter, so when I was frustrated enough to end my day by complaining about my situation, I got a reply that helped me learn more about CMake:
CMake expects a list as the value of that property. Lists are semicolon separated.
— CMakeAid (@cmake_aid) August 3, 2022
Lists are semicolon separated?!
Now, I’ve used CMake for years, and the documentation has always felt a bit obtuse to me. It is very much a reference document and not meant to be a tutorial.
But I have never known that lists were semicolon separated before.
I mean, even the unit tests for this feature don’t feature semicolon separated elements of a list. They are separated by spaces.
But someone on IRC told me that “Semicolon separated lists is how CMake does lists. It automatically adds the semicolons if you don’t quote your items.”
So the following examples would work out in this manner:
foo bar baz --> "foo;bar;baz" foo "bar" baz --> "foo;bar;baz" "foo bar baz" --> "foo bar baz"
So I took some deep breaths to calm myself down, and made the following change:
SET_TARGET_PROPERTIES(${GB_PROJECT_NAME}-bin PROPERTIES
XCODE_EMBED_FRAMEWORKS_CODE_SIGN_ON_COPY ON
XCODE_EMBED_FRAMEWORKS "${SDL2_LIB_DIRS}/libSDL2.dylib;${SDL2_LIB_DIRS}/libSDL2_image.dylib;${SDL2_LIB_DIRS}/libSDL2_ttf.dylib;${SDL2_LIB_DIRS}/libSDL2_mixer.dylib")
And now all of the libraries show up as “Embed & Sign” like I wanted. Nice!
On a separate note, I learned that properties in CMake similarly have some flexibility in terms of what arguments can be provided.
So I have seen XCODE_EMBED_FRAMEWORKS_CODE_SIGN_ON_COPY take the argument ON in unit tests, TRUE in forum posts, and YES in examples I found on GitHub. And they are all correct, apparently.
One last thing was that I wanted to make sure I could build a release version in Xcode, but the default was Debug. Basically, I wanted to create a release by merely building the project, rather than needing to do a separate archive step.
When creating Makefiles, you can use CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE with arguments as Release or Debug, but Xcode needs you to use CMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES instead.
Of course, I found that even when doing so, the release build it creates is a little different in size from the release build that gets created when using the Archive functionality of Xcode, so it might be a moot point.
Anyway, after I got the Mac port automation done, I wanted to leverage it to create the desktop ports for Toytles: Leaf Raking, but there was a game festival I needed to do some last-minute preparations for.
Last Friday, I had a table at the 3rd 60 FPS Fest, and it was gratifying to hear the first player, an 8-year-old, say, “This is definitely a fun game.” B-)
He also had a lot of ideas for how to make the game better, so I wrote some down. Thanks, Rowan!
One of my favorite pieces of feedback was hearing someone laugh about the toy parts getting “yeeted” to the inventory.
I will say it was a bit humbling to see the number of people who struggled to know what to do when they started playing. I know I worked on tweaking the interface to funnel new players to what they needed to do, such as making the START button huge and obvious, or setting the default menu to the Hire Menu so you immediately know you need to hire someone. I also made the workers flash to indicate that you can tap/click on them when you have enough toy parts in inventory to create Good Toys.
And yet, it was very obvious as I watched new players struggle that I still had some work to do to make it more intuitive and easier to figure out how to play the game. Clearly whatever I’ve done so far is too subtle. I especially felt bad when a player felt incompetent or “bad at games” because it felt like a failure on my part to make it enjoyable from the beginning.
So the festival was a successful one, if only because I learned some ways to improve the game, especially for people who won’t have me standing next to them to help when asked. I also got some positive feedback from a number of new fans, including parents who were looking for non-violent, family-friendly entertainment that they could trust.
Thanks for reading!
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