How To Create A Game On A Mac

The most reliable tool for gaming on a Mac is Boot Camp, but it’s also resource- and time-intensive. GeForce Now is an amazing secondary option for Mac gamers who don’t want to split their hard drive in half for Windows. Retro gamers can emulate most classic games, and Steam offers native Mac support for a variety of games. I had to solve a similar problem for a game I worked on. It mostly requires use of the free program, Wine/Winebottler to convert.exe files to usable Mac.app files. It took a lot of hoops to jump though but it is doable. I took my exported.exe file that I already had of it on my pc and copied it onto a USB to bring to the Mac in question.

Even if you don’t have a knack for programming, you can still achieve a lot in Unity with tools from the Asset Store and artist and designer-friendly features natively integrated in the editor.

It’s true that most of the interactive content you create in Unity relies on text-based programming. Unity supports the C# programming language, and there are two main areas that need to be understood: logic and syntax. You can think about the logic as ‘what’s supposed to happen’ and syntax as the language in which we communicate that.

However, if you have little or no experience with Unity or coding, and simply want to begin to understand some basic workflows and concepts, then we suggest that you download the free version of the Unity editor via the “First-time Users” option on our Getting Started page. During the download process you will be able to select a ready-made Microgame that will automatically open in the editor when you launch it.

With your Microgame open, you can immediately begin to make simple changes to it by following the interactive tutorials in the editor, that guide you step-by-step through your first creative tasks in Unity.

When you’re done with the tutorials, you can continue customizing your Microgame with our collection of Mods that enable you to build on and add to your microgame in a number of fun and simple ways.

There are also plenty of tools available in the Asset Store that help you get very far in your game creation with little or no coding. Take a look at three of the best in the following sections.

Visual scripting with Bolt

Bolt, which is free with all versions of Unity, gives you the ability to bring your visions to reality in a creative and visual way, thanks to its fully-featured visual scripting system developed by award-winning tool and game developer Lazlo Bonin. There’s no integration layer between Bolt and Unity which simplifies maintenance. Bolt will improve your ability to prototype rapidly, iterate and bring your ideas to life faster.

“I wanted to make a visual tool, a tool that’s meant to work for visual thinkers, people who enjoy good design and visual feedback, people who want to know what’s going on at a glance, know when and where there’s an error or warning.” (Lazlo Bonin, Bolt publisher)

Bolt in action
Laszlo Bonin started working on the Bolt visual scripting tool while he and his team were still working on the narrative, walk-around experience called Ephemera. They were looking for visual state machines that could help artists and animators contribute to the scene structure and gameplay, while still focusing on the core systems and coding.

With Bolt, you have immediate access to your own character classes and your own item classes, etc. You can just call functions from these inside the tool and set properties.

“I don’t have to do anything nor do my users: Bolt just automatically picks it up. It directly analyzes and reads the entire code base and gives you options.”

Visual scripting with PlayMaker

If you’re a designer or an artist who wants to realize your creative potential without coding, PlayMaker’s the way to go. You can quickly make gameplay prototypes and A.I behaviors, as well as animation graphs and interactive objects. This visual scripting tool was also used in games such as Hearthstone, INSIDE and Dreamfall Chapters.

'Playmaker is the smoothest and most intuitive way for non-coders to implement functionality into our games!' Andreas N Grøntved, INSIDE

PlayMaker in action
Playmaker is a visual scripting tool which replaces the text-based paradigm with a visual metaphor. The logic is expressed through graphics, wired together to create relationships, and syntax automatically expressed using pre-made Actions that can be selected from a list.

A tool like PlayMaker integrated in Unity empowers a lot of creators who are interested in game creation, the story, or relationship between characters and objects, without having to get down to the code syntax details.

If you want to see how it works, there’s a series of videos that explores how to create interactivity using visual scripting with PlayMaker.

Numerous game creators have struggled with getting right the code syntax and error compilers, but you don’t have to be stuck there. Get back to what’s important to you.

Visual scripting with Adventure Creator

Adventure Creator is the asset you need if you’re into making 2D, 2.5D or 3D games in Unity, no coding required. Its visual scripting system and intuitive Editor enables beginners to build an entire game without writing a line of code, and helps programmers plug-and-play their own functionality.

“It’s incredible, all of the tools needed to create a professional looking point-n-click game without having to type a single line of code. Plus the creator is super helpful and has pulled me through many issues and complex ideas I’ve had with his software.” (Ash Denton, Capital)

Adventure Creator in action
Another example of a tool that makes a non-coder’s life easier in Unity is Ash Denton’s story.

He has worked on videos for Inside XBox and is one of the creators of the “Thank You for Playing” video series.

Ash found through the Unity community the Adventure Creator, an open ended and flexible tool that allowed him to get 2D characters in a 3D world. What’s great with this tool for a non-coder is that you can easily create node-based scripted events and buttons, and the scene manager organizes all the logic in a scene, including hotspots, navigation and triggers.

Learn basic coding in Unity

If you are interested in learning how coding works in Unity, we provide free resources on our Learn site, such as:

  • Creator Kit: Beginner Code: In this short beginner project, you’ll explore the basics of C# code for Unity in the context of an action RPG.
  • Create with Code: In this official course from Unity, you will learn to Create with Code as you program your own exciting projects from scratch in C#.
  • C# Tutorials: A collection of bite-sized tutorials that explain how C# scripting works in Unity, for beginners and beyond. Start with the Beginner C# tutorials and then try the Intermediate C# tutorials.

You can also subscribe to Learn Premium, which gives access to an extensive collection of scripting tutorials from our team as well as Unity-approved content featured on partner platforms like Coursera, Udemy, Pluralsight, and Pathstream.

Finally, there are many free resources available from our community of users that will teach you coding in Unity, including Brackeys, Code Monkey, and Jabrils.

The Unity Editor is a creative hub for artists, designers, developers, and other team members. It includes 2D and 3D scene design tools, storytelling and cinematics, lighting, audio system, Sprite management tools, particle effects and a powerful dopesheet animation system. Get an overview of the feature set:

There are thousands of other assets available in the Unity Asset Store to cut down your development time even more: characters, textures, environments, animation assets, 3D models and audio assets, as well as editor extensions and complete projects.

Creator Kits
AR & VR Branded Content: Uncover new ways to connect with your audience
Create with Code: Learn & teach computer programming by making games

Get LÖVE

Download the latest version of LÖVE from the website, and install it. If you're on Windows and don't want to install LÖVE, you can also just download the zipped executables and extract them anywhere.

To find out which version of LÖVE is installed, run the following command:

Making a Game

To make a minimal game, create a folder anywhere, and open up your favorite text editor. Sublime Text is a pretty good one for all operating systems, and it has Lua support built in. Create a new file in the folder you just created, and name it main.lua. Put the following code in the file, and save it.

Running Games

How To Create A Game On Macbook Air

LÖVE can load a game in two ways:

Create
  • From a folder that contains a main.lua file.
  • From a .love file that has a main.lua file in the top-most directory level (aka root)

For creating .love files see Game Distribution.

Windows

ZeroBrane Studio, Sublime Text, Notepad++, and SciTE allow you to launch the game from within their code editors.

Otherwise, the easiest way to run the game is to drag the folder onto either love.exe or a shortcut to love.exe. Remember to drag the folder containing main.lua, and not main.lua itself.

You can also launch the game from the command line:

You can create a shortcut to do this; simply make a shortcut to love.exe, right-click on it and select 'Properties', and then put the command line you want in the 'Target' box for the shortcut.

On Windows, there is a special command-line option which will attach a console to the window, allowing you to see the result of print calls (equivalent to setting t.console=true in conf.lua or running lovec.exe (since 0.10.2)):

Linux

On Linux, you can use one of these command lines:

If you installed LÖVE system-wide, you can double click on .love files in your file manager as well.

Mac OS X

On Mac OS X, a folder or .love file can be dropped onto the love application bundle. On the Mac Terminal (command line), you can use love like this (assuming it's installed to the Applications directory):

However, the above method will not output printed text to the terminal window. To do that, you will need to execute the love binary inside the application bundle directly:

You can set up an alias in your Terminal session to call the binary when you use love by adding an alias to your ~/.bash_profile.

Open the file with

You may have to run

first if the file does not yet exist.

Then paste in the following code and save the file:

Now you can call love from the command line like Linux and Windows:

Android

As long as you have LÖVE for Android installed from the Play Store or another source and assume you didn't download/use the 'embed' suffix flavor, the following methods will work:

  • Transfer your game folder to /sdcard/lovegame where main.lua is found at /sdcard/lovegame/main.lua. Then run LÖVE for Android. In Android Marshmallow or later, you have to grant LÖVE for Android storage permission (will be prompted).

How To Make A Game On Macbook Air

  • Transfer/download a .love of your game to the device and click on it. Most file explorers will run the .love using LÖVE for Android. If it does not you can install ES File Explorer which will. If you use Dropbox, you can use that to open .love files. May not work in Android Nougat or later due to some changes.

iOS

In order to run LÖVE for iOS, it must first be compiled and installed. To do that, you’ll need Mac OS X, Xcode 7 or newer, and the LÖVE for iOS source code downloadable from the home page.

  • If the include and libraries folders are not present in the love/platform/xcode/ios folder, download them and place them there. They contain the third-party library dependencies used by LÖVE.
  • Open the Xcode project found at love/platform/xcode/love.xcodeproj and select the love-ios target in the dropdown menu at the top of the window.
  • You may want to change the Build Configuration from Debug to Release for better performance, by opening the 'Edit Scheme...' menu from the same dropdown selection.
  • Choose either an iOS Simulator device or your plugged-in iOS device in the dropdown selection to the right of the previous one, and click the Build-and-Run ▶︎ button to the left, which will install LÖVE on the target device after compiling it.

LÖVE on iOS includes a simple list interface of games that are installed (until you fuse a .love to it for distribution.)

  • To put a .love file on the iOS Simulator after LÖVE is installed, drag the file onto the iOS Simulator’s window while it’s open. LÖVE will launch if it’s not running already. If another game is currently active you may need to quit LÖVE for the new game to show up (press Shift-Command-H twice to open the App Switcher menu on the iOS Simulator.)
  • To put a .love file or game folder on your iOS device after LÖVE is installed, you can either download it with the Safari, or transfer it from your computer through iTunes when your device is connected: open iTunes, go to the iOS device which has LÖVE installed, go to the ‘Apps’ section and scroll down and find LÖVE, and add the .love file or game folder to LÖVE’s Documents section. On more recent iOS and Mac versions, you can use Airdrop to transfer your .love file from your Mac to where LÖVE is installed.

See the Game Distribution page for creating Fused LÖVE games on iOS and distributing them.

Next steps

  • Tutorial:Callback_Functions will teach you the basic structure of a love game.
  • Category:Tutorials are the next piece of reading.
  • Wiki The LÖVE wiki.

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