In my last report, I was creating a new SDL3-based release for my strategic leaf-raking business simulation game, Toytles: Leaf Raking.
Since SDL3 is so different and I’ve been unable to dedicate substantial time to it, the work to create release builds for each platform I support is still ongoing.
Sprints 2026-MJ_3 and 2026-MJ_4: Release SDL3 update version
Completed
- Ensure Windows version can still be built/deployed
In progress:
- Ensure Mac version can still be built/deployed
Since Toytles: Leaf Raking is in the No ICE in Minnesota Bundle on itch.io (which, by the way, at the time of this writing has raised over $500,000 for the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota and is still going!), I’ve been focusing on updates for the desktop version of the game.
The Linux version was done right away, but when I last did the work to release a build for Windows, I apparently did a poor job documenting how I did so, so I had to reverse-engineer how I did it before with SDL2 in order to figure out how to do so for SDL3.
And this time, I’m writing scripts to do it for me so that next time I have executable documentation.
I run Ubuntu has my main development system, and one thing I love is that cross-compilers exist. Basically, I can build a Windows version of my game just by using the C++ compiler from MinGW, but I need to use the MinGW development libraries that SDL3 provides.
Next up is the Mac build, complicated by the fact that I don’t have a Silicon-based Mac. I do have access to Mac computers I can remote into thanks to a service I pay for.
Due to how they handle billing by the hour even if I only use one minute and my limited development time which sometimes finds me trying to squeeze in development minutes at a time, I feel pressured to make sure I have an entire hour at a time to dedicate to the effort.
I’m not sure how much I can iterate on trying to automate the Mac build, but I hope I’m most of the way there already and just need to adapt my scripts in minor ways.
Assuming I can knock out the Mac build soon, I’ll move on to the Android and iOS builds soon after.
Thanks for reading, and stay curious!
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