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EDuke32 on OSX

I played a bit with the Icculus.org Duke Nukem 3D sources today. I wanted to have a native OSX binary for no reason (heck.. even the original PowerPC only binary from 3D Realms1) runs superfast inside the Rosetta emulation).

Unfortunately my efforts with that port lead to nowhere since the resulting binary crashes at startup while reading the IWAD file. It smelled like a lot of work2) to do and so I googled a bit for other Duke ports.

I found Jonathon Fowlers work which is pretty much amazing but also dated. Seems like he lost interest in it a few years ago (but don't miss to check out his fantastic website over here). I had success compiling his version of the build engine on OSX Leopard (with some changes), but failed with the actual game part. Maybe I'll get back to it later again…

Another candidate was EDuke32 which is available here. It is not as fancy as Jonathons work at first sight3) but I had more success in compiling it into a working binary. And what a result I got! :-D This enhanced version of Duke Nukem 3D is all that I ever wanted to have. Among other things it features:

  • OpenGL rendering (it get like 170 fps :-D)
  • good looking 8,16 and 32bit textures
  • lightning effects
  • MD2 models
  • enhanced event-based game scripting system
  • cross-platform
  • augmented map editor

Kudos to Jonathon Fowler, Ken Silverman, Matt Saettler, TerminX, Plagman and the whole EDuke32 Team! You have done a great job!

Screenshots

Splash Screen Nice view down the tube... Sample Screenshot Videosetup Menu There is also a Quake-like console A HRP model displaying a dead alien A HRP model of Duke himself in the mirror The famouse Bleached Blonde Biker Bimbos movie The same movie running in the theater

Sample Videos

Here are some recordings I took on my 2.16GHz iMac using the screen recording software ScreenFlick (former ScreenCast). Please note that these files are huge! Don't click on them as it might trash your browser session! Better right-click and save the files.

Downloads

OS X 10.4 Tiger

Binary only Distribution - you need the Duke Nukem 3D data files (either Full- or Shareware version) to run it.

"Considered stable" versions:
Shareware data files:


This is a special distribution with everything packed into an application bundle. Download, drag the Duke Nukem icon onto your Macintosh and run it from there:

OS X 10.5+ Leopard/Snow Leopard

Binary only Distribution - you need the Duke Nukem 3D data files (either Full- or Shareware version) to run it.

"Considered stable" versions:
Unstable versions:
Shareware data files:


This is a special distribution with everything packed into an application bundle. Download, drag the Duke Nukem icon onto your Macintosh and run it from there:

Installation

There are three different types of installation:

  1. Get the application bundle distribution that fits your version of OSX; drag the icon onto your Macintosh drive and run it from there.
  2. Get one of the binary-only distributions and the Shareware gamedata file provided here (or use the contents from your 3DReals Duke Nukem CD)4) and install it like described below.
  3. Get the source code and compile it on your own and run your own binaries (see below).
  4. In certain cases it might help if you download this ZIP and put its contents into your Application Support folder.

Running the application directly

I came to the conclusion that it might be a good idea to do some sort of a HowTo movie that explains all needed steps to get EDuke32 including HRP running out of the box on a Mac. It took me less than 10 minutes and no illigal downloads to fire up the first level in OpenGL - it's really that simple. :-)

Enjoy this video: EDuke32_HowTo.m4v

You will find more informations about installation and EDuke32 in general in the EDuke32 Wiki over here.

High-Resolution Pack

There is a must-have addon available that replaces the original graphics with high quality textures. The game looks way better with them installed. You will find it here.

Without HRP With HRP

Another site has updates for the HRP - so don't miss to check in here as well and download all those updates - they are well worth it and also they are essential to work with latest EDuke32.

Create an “autoload/” folder inside ~/Library/Application Support/EDuke32/ and in there another one called “duke3d.grp/” and put HRP and all the other files in there. The contents in there should look like this:

Compiling the source

To compile the whole thing on OSX Leopard I only had to do minor modifications. There were linux libraries and object files in the source distribution which had to be replaced. I rewrote the Makefiles so they work correctly on Darwin and changed a few bits in the sources.

I sent in my patches to the EDuke32 Developer Team and as of August 2008 the sources should compile out of the box (whith just a few changes to match your local setup) on OSX.


If you don't trust my binaries all you have to do is to grab the source distribution and unpack it into some folder. You need to have Xcode installed (Xcode 3.0/Leopard and Xcode 2.4/Tiger are confirmed working).

Change into the eduke32/ subdirectory and edit the Makefile. You only need to define the root directory of your SDL installation. For example: if you have MacPorts (aka Darwinports) installed then point SDLROOT to /opt/local.

Starting with the 2008-07-09 release you can also use SDL/SDL_mixer frameworks. Change SDL_FRAMEWORK to 1 in build/Makefile.shared if you want to use the official Framework distribution from http://www.libsdl.org.

That's all you have to configure. You can create a eduke32 binary by running “make” now.

UPDATE: I have seen that the official sources need a few more edits in the Makefiles to compile out of the box on a given Mac system. This will get fixed in a later release.

UPDATE: Starting with the 2009 releases you only need to edit the “build/Makefile.shared” file and do all the needed changes in there.

UPDATE: Starting with the 2010 releases you need to edit 5 Makefiles (Makefile, build/Makefile, build/Makefile.shared, source/jaudiolib/Makefile and source/enet/Makefile). I moved everything into a central Apple/Makefile.shared - so everything is at a single place.

Known problems

  1. Sound FX are not working in the PowerPC builds.
  2. I also had troubles getting the HRP high resolution textures to work on PowerPC.
  3. Fullscreen mode and high resolution textures don't work (mixes up textures).
  4. The 2008-10-14 version crashes as soon as you try to run it with OpenGL enabled. The temp fix is to compile a version without OpenGL and use that one. You can change to 16 and 32 bit colormodes but the GFX will be rendered in software (it looks quite interessting, though :-) ).
  5. Some of the HRP textures slow down rendering performance.

Feel free to jump into channel #EDuke32 on irc.freenode.net and ask if you encounter strange problems.

1) actually the 1.5 update looks like a recompile of the icculus.org sources when you analyze it
2) the sourcecode is aware of the apple platform but back in 2004 “Apple” meant PowerPC and BigEndian
3) as it turned out later it is based on jfduke
4) how to install Duke from the original CD is not part of this website
5) I am about doing a proper patch so it can be put into the official source distribution