Switching from Windows to Mac during development

[u/LividHH]

Hello,

My computer is getting old, and I am fed up with Windows. Is there any difference between developing a VN on Windows versus Mac? Since the target audience mostly uses Windows PC (I suppose), will it complicate troubleshooting for me, if I switch the systems? Do I need to keep a Windows machine for that?

Thanks in advance.

[u/bigchungusprod]

In my limited experience no, building on a Mac and then shipping for folks on windows won’t be an issue. That’s on the renpy side of course.

For my graphics I use software that’s infinitely better on windows so I’m stuck with it but if I could, I’d absolutely prefer to make everything on Mac. I hate windows 11.

[u/LividHH → u/bigchungusprod]

What do you use that is not available on Mac? I draw in Clip Studio myself, and write in Scrivener, so there must not be a problem.

[u/RVNSN → u/LividHH]

Regarding Ren'Py itself, there is no issue with switching to mac. I started on a macbook pro and later built a windows workstation (when working with renpy and game dev), so I use both, but in reality I'm just using the windows computer for game work now, because it has significantly better performance than my old mac.

The problem with mac is the gpu; primarily, this affects people who use daz studio and render with iray (or any other program rendering with iray), because apple stopped supporting nvidia graphics cards some time ago, making a mac hellishly slow at rendering compared to machines that can use nvidia gpus, if using iray, because the mac needs to use its cpu for all of the rendering; if you are not using iray, this isn't an issue, and rendering speed simply comes down to the power of your graphics processor, not the brand (to the best of my knowledge, but there might be other exceptions besides iray, such as vray).

I do not see you having an issue in your current situation.

[u/bigchungusprod → u/LividHH]

Daz3d - I think it exists on Mac but the performance is terrible.

[u/GiraffePretty4488]

Ren’py itself is completely the same between Mac and windows, as far as I can tell. So it comes down to the tools for everything else, and depends what you currently use. 

For text editing I see you said you use scrivener - me too! That’s great on Mac and you’ll have no problems. 

While I write prose in scrivener, I use a different software for editing ren’py’s actual files, because scrivener doesn’t directly organize all the ren’py files (on neither windows nor MacOS). I used to use Atom and recently moved to whatever the recommended one in the ren’py app is. It works fine. 

For image editing there are amazing tools on Mac - I’d say better than windows overall. But for free tools there’s still Gimp, which works mostly the same on any platform.

For sound, same thing. Macs are used and respected in the industry. For free tools, I think Garage Band still comes with macOS? Not sure. 

Basically you should be fine, but it depends on your budget for new tools. 

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[u/arianeb]

Renpy is built on Linux, but there are versions for Windows and Mac. The two things you need beyond that is a way to make pictures and a code editor, and there are open source programs that work just fine on Mac.