itch.io

Unfortunately, he problem persists with my second download attempt. Size and chucksums (CRC32, MD6 and SHA256) between the two downloads are identical. This suggests that the download succeeded...

It may be the zip file size that is the issue. I am running up-to-date 7-zip libraries and Ark as my GUI archive manager. I do not have my own Windows machine to play with, but I have often heard other people have issues with very large zip files created under Windows 10, and heard it is due to some added non-standard "features", which are not (currently) compatible with Linux or even pre-Win 10. Would you consider either packaging it as a .7z, .tar.gz, or even a .tar.bz2 or .tar.xz? Other options include breaking it down in to multiple zip files no larger than 2GiB each.

Regarding platform porting, I really recommend you make that a priority early on. The longer you put it off, the more code you will have to refactor by doing it later -- or end up not doing it at all because of the amount of work you will need to do later. DOS and Windows are both examples of where this has happened. Microsoft coders created a "solution" to an issue, but by the time they realized the solution was making the problem worse, too much code and documentation relied on the broken solution for them to try to "start over and do it right this time."

I also understand the issue with Windows-only hardware and drivers. My WiFi adapter has to load the NDIS kernel drivers, which in turn load and call the code from the driver binary designed to be run from Windows. Your best bet is to target the "lowest common denominator" for mainline development, and make anything that uses or needs a higher-end GPU as "bonus feature" for those who can use it.

This would also benefit you as you can more easily create Mac packages, iOS packages, and even an Android APK release. This design is why C/C++ are still such strong and solid programming languages even though they are 40+ years old. Porting them to a new platform is as simple as creating the base instruction set to port the compiler over, then start compiling. (Modern GCC is a little more complex than this, but the base principle has remained unchanged for decades.) Pascal/Object Pascal (a/k/a Delphi) and Java do similar, but they approach it by creating a common "virtual machine" that executes the byte compiled binary image without changes. Various BASIC dialects and JavaScript and somewhat similar, but their method of operation is _interpretation_ instead of _compilation_ -- However, modern techniques such as JIT and pre-compilation make them act very similar these days.

As an aside, Modern Mac's are Linux-based. So you will not have to do a lot of work in that regard. If it works on Linux, the majority of it will work on a Mac. The main differences are mostly non-technical; It is more about the expected UI and file system extensions. For example, Mac users expect a single "system menu" at the top of their screen that is shared by all running apps, instead of each one having it's own system menu attached to it's main window. Mac file systems store some additional file attributes and meta-data for each file, such as whether a file is an executable application or a data file, and which application "owns" it.

For the experience, you might try to write some simple TK apps, even the simple and classic "Hello, World!" app. TK is closely related to TCL, but there are also, for example. Python and Perl linkages for TK. And they all are cross-platform, executing on Android, Linux, Mac, and Windows with almost no source code changes. iOS seems to be the exception, due to the way iOS apps are licensed and distributed. But if Apple would license them, there is no reason (that I know of) they should not operate the same on iOS.

I have even seen some "homebrew" systems (Arduino/embeded) and methods (Super Famicom/NES carts, classic "arcade" gaming "cabinets", etc) that do all these things.

Heck, I was just alerted that my coffee pot is now over 4 hours old and cold... 8^O I wired my home coffee maker to 6502 CPU from an otherwise dead Commodore VIC-20 computer, and can control it and check how much fresh coffee is in it with a simple TCL/TK app that sits in my taskbar "tray area", as well an app on my Android phone that runs the same TCL/TK program (via AndroWish).

One final thought... Just about every game release on Itch is "in the same boat" as you. Per the main itch.io home page, "Download the latest *INDIE* games" (emphasis and caps are mine). Many here are low budget, single developer hobbyist types who started with nothing but an idea of a game they want to write and release. The way I see it, this is a prime place to get started and learn the real art of programming (in between graduating college and getting hired by or starting your own development company). Make the best of it!