At the end of december I decided to port the game to SDL so I could use my mac computer. I knew I liked programming in the style of Handmade Hero but I didn't have the motivation to learn objective-C and the Cocoa framework for Mac. I had looked at implementations using NS classes a couple of times but never got very far. I had heard about SDL and decided to look into it a bit more. I also wanted to program using OpenGL and do most stuff myself, but not have to think too much about creating a window, outputting sound etc. I also really like the layout of the MSDN wiki and the docs.gl, which I couldn't seem to find a similar style wiki for mac.
As I learnt how to use SDL, the more I liked it. It still held the concepts of the level of programming I liked, but provided a easy to use API, like SDL_CreateWindow, and SDL_GL_CreateContext for a Opengl Context, so I didn't have to learn the ins and outs mac platform programming. SDL also has a really easy API wiki that tells you what the function does, examples of how to use it and related functions. example entry
Another thing I was a bit weary about using a library was having dependency problems. I wanted the user just to download the program and run it. SDL is also easy in this respect. I just have to include the .dll or .dylib (in mac case) with the game. And it runs!
Since porting the code to use SDL, I have moved onto a new project for the time being. I wasn't having much fun making Mind Man, one of the reasons being I had lost where I was heading with the project. I hope to come back to it eventually. I don't want to say too much about the new project, but I have purposely made it a lot simpler so I can concentrate on the gameplay just as much as the engine. And hope to have an end product in a shorter time frame.
Thanks,
Oliver