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Foodles

Can't get GZDoom to work on mac

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So I'm visiting the folks for about a week and all I have access to is this old macbook. I've tried using GZDoom but it's saying that it can't find the IWAD despite doom2.wad being right there in the folder. I honestly hate the mac OS so much, I have no idea how it works and it seems like total garbage, can anyone help me out here?

 

 

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Edited by Foodles

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Well have you tried moving doom2.wad to ~/Library/Application Support/gzdoom/ ?

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That directory doesn't exist as far as I can tell and I can't find this gzdoom.ini file. The only files that I downloaded are what you can see in the screenshot. I'll admit I have a very limited understanding of what's going on here so it is possible I'm making a very basic mistake.

 

The licenses folder contains only txt files.

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OK so I've worked it out, I had to create a gzdoom folder in the application support folder which I only found after googling how to find it since it wasn't showing up when I sifted through all my folders. I'm never complaining about windows OS again!

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Massive thanks @Foodles - wanted to play some Doom at work during lunch, and we work on MAcs. Really appreciate this help, I really dislike this OS. Not sure how romero plays Doom on Mac. 

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It really isn’t hard to find though, they don’t even hide it.  In Finder go to ‘go to folder’.  I mean, it’s right there…

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'lLibrary' is marked hidden, though, which is just retarded. Hiding these folders makes a bit of sense if you don't have to copy stuff there, like on Windows. But on macOS it's often necessary to copy stuff there.

 

 

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On 3/17/2022 at 3:02 PM, Graf Zahl said:

'lLibrary' is marked hidden, though, which is just retarded. Hiding these folders makes a bit of sense if you don't have to copy stuff there, like on Windows. But on macOS it's often necessary to copy stuff there.

 

I would recommend adding a section to the launcher to either manipulate the directories that WADs are scanned in, or just have an easy "Open User Directory" button that someone can mash to open their userdir.  Odamex did the former and it's quite the quality of life change, especially if you use the installer.

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8 hours ago, AlexMax said:

 

I would recommend adding a section to the launcher to either manipulate the directories that WADs are scanned in, or just have an easy "Open User Directory" button that someone can mash to open their userdir.  Odamex did the former and it's quite the quality of life change, especially if you use the installer.


Or users could..  you know..  learn their system?  Seems it is a lost skill in todays world.

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1 hour ago, Gibbon said:


Or users could..  you know..  learn their system?  Seems it is a lost skill in todays world.

 

And it's not even something arcane. It's using the fucking file system, and even only the basics of that, can't get much more simple.

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1 hour ago, Gibbon said:


Or users could..  you know..  learn their system?  Seems it is a lost skill in todays world.

Tell that to the developers of the OS who intentionally hide stuff their users need to access, and make it obtuse to learn that it even exists. At least with a button to open the directory, people at least have a chance to learn that the folder is there.

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23 minutes ago, Shepardus said:

Tell that to the developers of the OS who intentionally hide stuff their users need to access, and make it obtuse to learn that it even exists. At least with a button to open the directory, people at least have a chance to learn that the folder is there.


Going to Finder and seeing ‘Go’ then clicking on ‘Go to folder’ isn’t rocket science nor is it hiding it.

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4 minutes ago, Gibbon said:


Going to Finder and seeing ‘Go’ then clicking on ‘Go to folder’ isn’t rocket science nor is it hiding it.

There's no reason one should believe that would actually work when the main window that's supposed to display your files and folders doesn't show it.

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52 minutes ago, Shepardus said:

There's no reason one should believe that would actually work when the main window that's supposed to display your files and folders doesn't show it.


Same as the APPDATA directory on Windows.

 

Its called learning and using your brain.

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8 minutes ago, Gibbon said:


Same as the APPDATA directory on Windows.

 

Its called learning and using your brain.

Well not exactly, because you don't have to manually copy files to that folder for a doom port to work. You can operate Doom absolutely fine without knowing appdata even exists.

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14 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Well not exactly, because you don't have to manually copy files to that folder for a doom port to work. You can operate Doom absolutely fine without knowing appdata even exists.


Indeed you can, just as you also do not have to use Application Support folder.  Yes it is a standard place on macOS but it isn’t mandatory.  They should instead use DOOMWADDIR or scrape the file system for wad files rather than enforce this directory.

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4 minutes ago, Gibbon said:


Indeed you can, just as you also do not have to use Application Support folder.  Yes it is a standard place on macOS but it isn’t mandatory.  They should instead use DOOMWADDIR or scrape the file system for wad files rather than enforce this directory.

Uhh... Yes? Congrats on circling back to the original point:

12 hours ago, AlexMax said:

 

I would recommend adding a section to the launcher to either manipulate the directories that WADs are scanned in, or just have an easy "Open User Directory" button that someone can mash to open their userdir.  Odamex did the former and it's quite the quality of life change, especially if you use the installer.

 

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5 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Uhh... Yes? Congrats on circling back to the original point:

 


Well if nobody is in favour of actually educating their users then yes, the original point is probably the only way, but better to do it automatically because another button might make their heads explode.

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Here's a hint: If you design your system to discourage portable installs you have to provide and advertise some place where to copy your data. Apple does not advertise such a place and the closest thing to it is marked hidden.

BTW, those paths were set by people who actually use Macs!

 

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11 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

Here's a hint: If you design your system to discourage portable installs you have to provide and advertise some place where to copy your data. Apple does not advertise such a place and the closest thing to it is marked hidden.

BTW, those paths were set by people who actually use Macs!

 


Well because Mac developers know how to use one.  Probably a better place (albeit a bit dirty) would be to make a directory in the users’ home directory called Games and inside make the GZDOOM directory.  Not portable but it is clear, not hidden and easily found.

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Anything would be better than a hidden AppData folder. Don't ask me why this was chosen as the place to go. I had to defer to the opinions of people more familiar with the system.

 

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22 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

Anything would be better than a hidden AppData folder. Don't ask me why this was chosen as the place to go. I had to defer to the opinions of people more familiar with the system.

 


A lot of Mac devs would say to use Application Support for files and Preferences for configurations.  Though in this case it was the wrong choice and likely they didn’t consider Mac users who don’t know about that part of the system, in which case it should either be the original workaround for a button or to change the location itself to something more usable for basic users.

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Over the past few versions, Odamex has made significant improvements to how the port behaves when installed.  We are now at the point where Odamex is perfectly usable from the installer and does not feel like a second-class citizen compared to the portable install.  I personally use it as a user-level installed program and it's quite convenient that way.  Here's what we did to get that set up.

 

1. In the installer, when installing start menu items, add one that points to the user's configuration directory.
 

image.png.cdfc21998232d1519d3eed4d4acf4112.png

 

2. Put your user configuration folder in "Documents/My Games", not in someplace hidden like AppData.  This is an initiative started by Rock Paper Shotgun, and as you can tell from the number of other folders, we're not the only ones doing this.

 

image.png.9a9cd63ef9f68e6b289530337816e0ab.png

 

3. Allow installing your port user-locally and globally.  If globally, install to program files.  If user-locally, it should install into %localappdata%\Programs, as this appears to be the universal standard used by programs such as Python and Visual Studio Code.

 

4. Upon launching, your port should look for a file in the same directory that is ONLY installed, never distributed with portable installs.  If this file exists, the port uses installed prefixes (My Games).  If the file does not exist, assume a portable install.  For Odamex, this file is called odamex-installed.txt, and the contents is not checked, just checked for existence.

 

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5. The launcher doubles as a place to set up WAD directories.  This is critical to ensure players can set up their WAD folders without having to set environment variables or edit a config file.

 

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Edited by AlexMax

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2 hours ago, Gibbon said:

And the Mac screenshots? ;)

 

Thanks for asking!  Mac users are also not second class citizens.

 

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I should probably add a button to open the user directory from the boot window to take care of locating said user directory.  But comparatively, that's a pretty small lift.

Edited by AlexMax

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26 minutes ago, Gibbon said:

You’re using wxWidgets?  I recognise that GUI library every time I see it on a Mac 

 

Oh no no no no no no no no no no.  We use wxWidgets for Odalaunch server browser and just the thought of trying to do....anything to it makes me sweat.  No mas.

 

We use FLTK for the boot window.  It only looks a little bit less ugly than the website itself, but it's easy to build (we use a devbuild that we build in-tree), it's small enough to statically link, it's been around forever, it has an active support community around it, it gets the hell out of your way and doesn't try to own the entire stack, and since it does not rely on native widgets you can customize the widget drawing process so it actually looks nice.  "Pragmatic" is the word I would use.

 

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Edited by AlexMax

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Ahhhh I thought I recognised it from the launcher but yes, that’s the same library as Eureka :)

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22 hours ago, Gibbon said:

Ahhhh I thought I recognised it from the launcher but yes, that’s the same library as Eureka :)

 

Yep.

 

And to be clear, I'm not using this thread as a vehicle to promote our port.  Rather, I'm using our port as an example that a Doom port can be a well-behaved citizen in multi-user environments, and the benefits you get from improving the multi-user version bleed over into the portable version as well, reducing the amount of time spent setting up paths and fiddling with config files.

 

It's not 1998 anymore, and being a well-behaved multi-user application should be the norm and not the exception.  I'd hope that @Graf Zahl would consider one or more of these features in the future for his port - and all ports, really.

Edited by AlexMax

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I guess it helps if the developers actually use the systems themselves that they support.  I support 4 because I use 4 (Windows, FreeBSD, RedHat and macOS).  It’s hard to care about a platform if you never use it and pass it off to someone else to do.

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