Guide 01

Installation

How to build the game from source, run it against your own THUG2 PC data, and pack a double-clickable app in a disk image. On a Mac you can build for all three systems: macOS, Windows and Linux.

Goal./build-macos.sh and play. Then ./build_dmg.sh for a THUG2.app anyone can drag to Applications.

1Get the tools

Xcode Command Line Tools for clang, Homebrew for cmake and ninja (the script installs those two if they're missing). SDL2, glad, glm and miniaudio are vendored and built from source. The port's menus are script patches, compiled with qb: on the PATH, as QB=/path/to/qb, or as source in ~/go/src/qb (the build compiles it with Go if it has to).

shellterminal

xcode-select --install

2Bring your own THUG2

The game needs THUG2's PC Data folder. The scripts look for it next to the repository (../Data), then in an installed copy (../../thug2installed/Game/Data), or take it as the last argument. A folder counts as THUG2's when it has pre/qb_scripts.prx, the packed scripts.

3Build

One script: configures CMake with Ninja, builds the game, clones THUG2's data into Game/Data and compiles the script patches into Game/Data/scripts/patches.

shellterminal

./build-macos.sh                       # Release: Game/THUG2
./build-macos.sh Debug ~/Games/THUG2/Data
./Game/THUG2

./build-win.sh                         # Game/THUG2.exe (MinGW-w64)
./build-linux.sh                       # Game/THUG2.x86_64 (in Docker)

excerptbuild-macos.sh

# CMAKE_POLICY_VERSION_MINIMUM: the vendored SDL/glm declare cmake_minimum_required < 3.5,
# which CMake 4.x refuses without this.
cmake -S "$ROOT" -B "$BUILD_DIR" -G Ninja \
	-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE="$BUILD_TYPE" \
	-DCMAKE_POLICY_VERSION_MINIMUM=3.5 \
	-Wno-dev
cmake --build "$BUILD_DIR" --parallel

stage_game_data "$DATA_SRC"
compile_script_patches

The data copy is an APFS clone. A whole second Tony Hawk game, zero bytes of disk. Apple got one right.

The three executables can share one Game folder, and that folder can be copied to another computer as it is. Any key or button skips a movie; THUG_SKIP_MOVIES=1 skips them all, and THUG_LEVEL=TR goes straight to Training.

First boot: THUG2's main menu wheel. — First boot: the Wheel of Looogie, spun by the skater from your newest save.

4Teach the game it lives in an app bundle

Inside THUG2.app/Contents/MacOS/THUG2 the data sits in Contents/Resources/Data. The game detects the bundle by its folder names and points the data path there. This came over from the THUG1 port unchanged.

excerptWn32/Code/Plat/Sys/File/p_filesys.cpp

	// Return the Contents folder if running from a macOS app bundle (THUG.app/Contents/MacOS/THUG)
	static std::filesystem::path GetBundleContentsPath()
	{
#if defined(__APPLE__)
		std::filesystem::path macos_dir = ModulePath().parent_path();
		std::filesystem::path contents_dir = macos_dir.parent_path();
		if (macos_dir.filename() == "MacOS" && contents_dir.filename() == "Contents" && contents_dir.parent_path().extension() == ".app")
			return contents_dir;
#endif
		return {};
	}

Writable things (saves, config.ini) can't go in the bundle: they live in ~/Library/Application Support/THUG2. See How save works.

5Pack the disk image

shellterminal

./build_dmg.sh [path/to/thug2/Data]    # -> dist/THUG2.dmg (universal, macOS 11+)
ARCHS="arm64" MACOS_MIN=12.0 VERSION=1.0 DMG_FORMAT=ULFO ./build_dmg.sh

# unsigned app: let Gatekeeper know you meant it
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/THUG2.app

The script builds the app (icon from macos/icon.png, the retail icon redrawn at 1024), draws the window background with macos/dmg_art.swift (THUG2's main menu logo on black) and lays out the Finder window by scripting Finder, which is why the first run asks for permission to control it. The Windows and Linux releases come from build_dist_win.sh and build_dist_linux.sh; chapter 2 tells how the art was made.

If Finder asks whether Terminal may control it: yes. It's moving two icons, not your bank account.

FOR EDUCATION PURPOSES ONLY. Screenshots are captured from the port running the reader's own copy of the game. The diffs are trimmed to the interesting lines (unchanged context is cut, marked ⋯); the repository has the full changes. Paths are relative to the THUG2/ folder.