Mac Version of Hero Designer?

[Snarf]

Will there ever be a Mac OS 10 version of Hero Designer?

P.S. Just got the Hero System Resource Kit and loving it! Bestestestest GM screen ever!

[Steve Long]

If and when Apple finally and definitively approves the Java plug-in used for HD for Mac (1.4.1 is the designation, IIRC), then Dan can get to work and produce a Mac version. Until that time, there's nothing he can do. It's all up to Apple.

Also, at this point, HD v2 is in playtest. Even if Apple approved 1.4.1 today, I doubt Dan would take time away from his v2 work to produce a Mac version of something that will be outdated in a few months -- we'd probably just have v2 ready for release for Mac when it's released for the PC (or soon thereafter).

[lemming]

Though several people have been successful running HD on OS X. It's just not supported officially.

[Aroooo]

Just FYI, Java 1.4.1 was recently released for OSX 10.2.6. Hope that leads to good news for v2.

Aroooo

P.S. For those who want to know, Panther (10.3) def. rocks! I've been beta testing for a month or so now, and its def. an improvement over Jag.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Aroooo
Just FYI, Java 1.4.1 was recently released for OSX 10.2.6. Hope that leads to good news for v2.

Aroooo

P.S. For those who want to know, Panther (10.3) def. rocks! I've been beta testing for a month or so now, and its def. an improvement over Jag.
Mac's implementation of Java is still broken. Their basic window management and rendering engine still needs a fair bit of work.

Unfortunately, this is nothing new for Apple. They showed a lot of promise early on with their 1.3.1 implementation of Java....basically bringing them back into the same league as the other OSes....but then they fell back on old patterns and have yet to come up with a fully-working 1.4.1 implementation. In the meantime, Java has moved on and is now on 1.4.2

I wouldn't expect an official release of HD for Macs anytime soon. There are unofficial methods to get HD running under OSX. For the most part, they work fine....you just need to be prepared for certain difficulties (windows not rendering until they are resized, modal dialogs appearing behind their main frames, etc). These difficulties prevent me from making the release official....so those that need HD on OSX will just have to get by as best they can until Apple gets their act together.

[Snarf]

Dang, that's dissapointing.

Anyone feel like explaining some more about these unofficial methods of getting HD to work? What would I have to buy, download, or change?

[Simon]

Originally posted by Snarf
Dang, that's dissapointing.

Anyone feel like explaining some more about these unofficial methods of getting HD to work? What would I have to buy, download, or change?
Do a search on the HD forum....there's a few threads that go over the process and have even posted some utilities to help with the conversion.

[Simon]

More updates on this:

HDv2 has gone through a fair bit of code refinement....joining methods up into parent classes, trimming down the amount of code overall, etc.

This has made it a lot easier to start to "work around" some of the issues that Apple's Java implementation has.

So far, we've found three main points where Apple's Java is just plain broken. I've changed the code around to get around two of these so far....if I can get the third work around in place, I should be able to release a Mac version of HDv2 along with the Windows and Linux versions (in December).

The main thing that I'm going to need is going to be testing. Anyone with OSX 10.2 with Java 1.4.1 installed (and who is willing to help test out HDv2 on Mac) should email me at support@herodesigner.com.

I'm currently working on the installer for OSX (there are a few issues with this as well that need to be worked out). This will be the first thing that we test out.....once that's working (and you can run HDv2), then we just need to find any areas where it's not behaving properly and see what we can do to fix them.