Field notes

THUG on a Mac

How Tony Hawk's Underground (2003) got a native macOS build: the platform layer rewritten on SDL2 and OpenGL, and a pile of quality-of-life features bolted on top. Each guide is a short "how to", with the diffs that did it.

GoalRun the original game data on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, natively, with modern settings menus, rebindable keyboard and gamepad controls, and hints that show the right button.

New Jersey, native on Apple Silicon: 1280×720, 60 fps, original PC data.

Installation

Build it, run it, ship a .dmg

Graphics and sound fixes

Pixels and noise

How save works

A memory card made of folders

Screen settings

Window, fullscreen, resolution, 60/120 fps

Controls

Keys, contexts and the caveman

Keyboard settings

Rebindable keys in Options

Gamepad settings

Rebindable buttons in Options

Button hints

No more triangles on a keyboard

Controllers

SDL game controllers, hotplug, rumble

The map

Three layers, and almost every guide touches all three:

Folder	What lives there	Touch it when
`Code/`	The engine and the game: skater physics, screen elements, scripting, the front end.	You need a new script function, or the engine has to know about something (text measuring, button glyphs).
`Wn32/Code/Plat/`	The platform layer. Originally Xbox/Win32; here it's SDL2 + OpenGL + miniaudio: graphics, audio, input, files, saves.	Anything that talks to the Mac: windows, keys, controllers, files.
`Scripts/patches/`	QScript patches applied on top of the retail scripts (the menus).	You add or change a menu.

The retail qb.pre wins over freshly compiled scripts. So you don't edit the game's scripts, you patch them. See Screen settings, step 3: it's the trick everything else relies on.

How it got here

Commit	What	Guide
`962139d`	First commit: the port itself (SDL2/OpenGL renderer, audio mixer, saves, Enter in menus, PC keyboard layout)	Graphics and sound, Saves, Controls
`5660c56`	Options › Screen, `config.ini`, script patches	Screen settings
`3ca5eea`	Numpad 1 caveman fix	Controls
`a4cac21`	Game controllers: hotplug, Xbox layout, rumble	Controllers
`28ef9a3`	Music and streams (Bink audio decoder)	Graphics and sound
`97790b7`	`build_dmg.sh`, app bundle paths	Installation, Saves
`c46ec33`	60 / 120 fps	Screen settings
`72de709`	Options › Keyboard	Keyboard settings
working tree	Options › Gamepad, button hints	Gamepad settings, Button hints

How to test a menu without touching it

Screen recording permissions are a pain, so the menus were checked with a throwaway hook in Wn32/Code/Plat/Gfx/p_nx.cpp (never committed): it replays key presses and controller buttons from a file, and dumps frames with glReadPixels right before the swap.

excerptWn32/Code/Plat/Gfx/p_nx.cpp (temporary test hook)

// SDL's own internal: updates the key state *and* queues the events, like a real key
extern "C" int SDL_SendKeyboardKey(Uint8 state, SDL_Scancode scancode);

// A fake controller SDL treats like a real one (Sony's IDs make it a PS4 pad)
SDL_VirtualJoystickDesc desc;
SDL_zero(desc);
desc.version = SDL_VIRTUAL_JOYSTICK_DESC_VERSION;
desc.type = SDL_JOYSTICK_TYPE_GAMECONTROLLER;
desc.naxes = SDL_CONTROLLER_AXIS_MAX;
desc.nbuttons = SDL_CONTROLLER_BUTTON_MAX;
desc.vendor_id = 0x054c; desc.product_id = 0x09cc;
s_vjoy = SDL_JoystickOpen(SDL_JoystickAttachVirtualEx(&desc));

// ...then, frame by frame
SDL_SendKeyboardKey(SDL_PRESSED, SDL_SCANCODE_RETURN);
SDL_JoystickSetVirtualButton(s_vjoy, SDL_CONTROLLER_BUTTON_A, 1);
glReadPixels(0, 0, w, h, GL_BGR, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, px.data());   // -> .bmp

Sixteen D-pad presses in a menu with sixteen items lands you exactly where you started. Ask me how I know.

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 THUG/ folder.