pedrocatalao/skyroads-mac
Native macOS port of SkyRoads (1993), the classic DOS game rewritten in C + SDL2, universal binary for Apple Silicon & Intel - pedrocatalao/skyroads-mac
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README
SkyRoads for macOS A native macOS port of SkyRoads (Bluemoon Interactive, 1993) — the classic DOS space-racing game — rewritten in portable C with SDL2 and running natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs (universal binary). No emulation, no DOSBox.
Download SkyRoads for macOS here! Unzip, move SkyRoads.app anywhere you like, and right-click → Open the first time (the app isn't notarized, so macOS asks once). That's it — the app is self-contained. Build from source brew install cmake sdl2 git clone https://github.com/pedrocatalao/skyroads-mac.git cd skyroads-mac ./make_app.sh # fetches the freeware game data, then builds the app open build/SkyRoads.app That's it. If the game data isn't in ./data yet, make_app.sh downloads it from Bluemoon's official site (the game is their freeware and is not part of this repo), then builds a self-contained app bundle around it. Already have the game files? Point make_app.sh at your folder — DOS-style uppercase filenames (ROADS.LZS) are fine: ./make_app.sh ~/Downloads/skyroads-data The app is self-contained (game data is copied into the bundle) — you can move it to /Applications. Progress and settings are saved to ~/Library/Application Support/. Alternative: run from the terminal cmake -S . -B build cmake --build build --target skyroads ./build/skyroads ~/Downloads/skyroads-data Controls
Key Action
← → steer
↑ ↓ accelerate / brake
Space jump
Enter select (menus)
P pause / unpause
Esc abort road / back
F9 music synth: AdLib FM (OPL2) / wavetable ("AWE32"-style, sampled instruments)
F10 CRT effects on/off (scanlines, phosphor trails, smooth scaling)
Cmd-F fullscreen
What's in this repo
src/ — the port:
render.c — C rewrite of the original 16-bit assembly 3D road renderer game_play.c — the physics/collision/gameplay engine (bit-faithful fixed-point math) assets.c, menus.c — data loaders, menu flow compat.c — DOS runtime emulation (segment memory model, LZSS decompressor, file I/O) platform.c — SDL2 window/input/timing audio.c — The original AdLib music driver (adlib.asm) ported to C: drives either a software OPL2 FM chip (Nuked-OPL3) or a SoundFont wavetable synth (TimGM6mb) mapped to MIDI instruments; plus the SoundBlaster digitized sound effects (sfx.snd)
docs/trek_blueprint.md — reverse-engineering notes on the original renderer make_app.sh — builds the signed SkyRoads.app bundle
Troubleshooting
"required data file … not found" — the path you gave make_app.sh must contain the SkyRoads data files (trekdat.lzs, roads.lzs, world*.lzs, …). Point it at the folder where you unzipped the freeware download. CMake can't find SDL2 — brew install sdl2, then delete build/ and rebuild. Intel Macs — the app is a universal binary and runs natively on Intel too (x86_64 slice verified under Rosetta).
Credits & legal
SkyRoads was created by Bluemoon Interactive (Ahti Heinla, Jaan Tallinn, and team). All game content, art, music and the original design are theirs. This is an unofficial fan port, not affiliated with or endorsed by Bluemoon; the game itself is distributed by Bluemoon as freeware. OPL2 FM synthesis via Nuked-OPL3 (Nuke.YKT), LGPL-2.1 — see src/opl3.c for its license header. Wavetable music mode via TinySoundFont (MIT) playing the TimGM6mb SoundFont (GPL, Tim Brechbill), fetched by make_app.sh — the instrument mapping was reconstructed from the original Sound Club song sources.