Hi all,

I don't have a Windows PC atm and I was wondering if this might be a viable short-term alternative to follow along with the Handmade Hero coding until I get one:

https://www.paperspace.com/core

More specifically, I was wondering if anyone has experience trying to follow along on a Windows 10 VM instance (running as Windows Server 2022 in desktop mode) and if so, does it work well?

Their $0.45/hr instance has 8 CPUs, 30 GiB RAM and Quadro M40000.

https://hero.handmade.network/forums/game-discussion/t/7235/p/22390

Thanks for the link. I'm not sure if (technically) running Windows on a cloud instance specifically designed to be usable (according to their sales blurb at least) is the same thing as running it on my Mac via VirtualBox or whatever, but I admit I don't have the technical chops to know one way or the other.

I don't know that it will be a good experience, but if it can display a window, it should work at least up to when Casey starts using OpenGL (assuming you can install VisualStudio).

Maybe it would be better to work on a local Virtal Machine (virtual box like you said) but I assume that if you're asking you can't do that.

I think I'll give it a shot (with Paperspace). Any chance you could tell me approximately which commit I might try compiling and running to see whether OpenGL works or not? That way in the worst case scenario I waste a couple of dollars, that's all.

You can search "OpenGL" in the episode guide at the top of the forum.

I believe the first OpenGL thing is on day 235 and uses "legacy" OpenGL APIs. Modern OpenGL might start around day 372 but I didn't check properly.

Can't one kind of easily swap the Windows platform layer with another one?

Is it easy? I'm on MacOS 12.

I'm sure it's doable - and I have seen people having put tutorials for it, albeit from a few years ago - but I'm trying to overcome the "getting started" inertia.

If there's a reliable & up-to-date resource for building the platform layer on MacOS, then that works too.

Thank you.