Feedback request: Alien Abduction Mac beta

[Red Marble Games]

Hi all -- At long last I have a beta of the Mac version of Pumpkin Games' Alien Abduction, and I'd appreciate those of you with Macs giving this a try, as I don't have a lot of different machines to try it on. I'm interested in comments from all, but most especially from those with pre-10.3.9 systems, since I don't have access to such a beast for testing.

As this is a port rather than a new entry, I doubt there will be many gameplay changes, but if you all could comment on how the game runs, etc., that would be great. Both joystick and keyboard should be supported.

I don't have a web page up for it yet, but it looks identical to the Windows version, so to meet the new screenshot requirement I'll just point you here:

http://www.pumpkin-games.net/images/screenshots/alien_abduction/aa1.jpg
http://www.pumpkin-games.net/images/screenshots/alien_abduction/aa2.jpg
http://www.pumpkin-games.net/images/screenshots/alien_abduction/aa4.jpg

You can find the beta of the Mac port here:

http://www.redmarblegames.com/beta/AbductionBeta.dmg

Thanks in advance for taking a look.

Mark

[Erik_V]

I think you forgot something; here's the crash log:

**********

Host Name: deleted on purpose
Date/Time: 2005-12-02 13:31:01 +0100
OS Version: 10.3.9 (Build 7W98)
Report Version: 2

Command: Abduction Demo
Path: /Volumes/Abduction Demo/Abduction Demo.app/Contents/MacOS/Abduction Demo
Version: ??? (???)
PID: 587
Thread: Unknown

Link (dyld) error:

dyld: /Volumes/Abduction Demo/Abduction Demo.app/Contents/MacOS/Abduction Demo can't open library: /Development/Tools/Sound/OggLibs/vorbis/macosx/build/Vorbis.framework/Versions/A/Vorbis (No such file or directory, errno = 2)

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Erik

[Red Marble Games]

See, this is stupid Xcode at work. How I miss CodeWarrior! Thanks for pointing this out. New version coming within 24 hours.

Mark

[Red Marble Games]

OK, I think I've solved that crash now ... any other Mac-o-philes who would like to give this a try would be welcome. Same link as before, but here it is again:

http://www.redmarblegames.com/beta/AbductionBeta.dmg

Thanks!

Mark

[Sillysoft]

It ran fine for me on my 10.4.3 powerbook. Although the game quit when I pressed escape while playing.

[Emmanuel]

Sorry I'm late :) Runs fine (as of the build you uploaded today) on a Mac Mini running Tiger.

What was your issue with xcode/ how did you fix it? I'm sort of scared that xcode is going to do something weird and my games won't run on some Macs due to an obscure reason.

Best regards,
Emmanuel

[Red Marble Games]

Thanks for trying it. Glad it's running OK.

Xcode has all kinds of weirdnesses that I am working out; some are dysfunctional things, and others are just inherent in moving to a new IDE and compiler, and there is a also a set of problems related to using Xcode 2.2 to build apps that will run on systems before 10.3.9.

This particular issue was that when you add frameworks (rather than static libs) to a project, the resulting executable stores the full path to the framework -- so that if you're using something other than a system framework, the executable won't be able to find what it needs except on your computer. There are some command-line utilities for changing path references (nm, I think it's called). In this case, I solved it by rebuilding Ogg and Vorbis as static libraries rather than frameworks and using the static libs instead.

Mark

[Musenik]

I found a few things, no crashes, but they're pretty important I think. Ran on a Mini with Tiger.

-the game accepted keystrokes while in the background.
-couldn't drag window around.
-music kept playing while minimized.
-volume didn't change while changing volume. I had to leave dialog to hear change.
-couldn't click to operate menu system
-game didn't recognize key-pad enter

Best luck with the final release! It's a cute take on Defender, one of my favorite games.

[Red Marble Games]

Thanks, Keith. All good comments -- I appreciate the feedback.

[Erik_V]

Mark,

People running pre-Tiger systems will need to make sure they have the OpenAL Framework installed.
Apparently, I didnt and the application crashed:

dyld: /Volumes/Abduction Demo/Abduction Demo.app/Contents/MacOS/Abduction Demo can't open library: /System/Library/Frameworks/OpenAL.framework/Versions/A/OpenAL (No such file or directory, errno = 2)

I installed OpenAL (pre-Tiger from Creative), gave it a quick spin and everything looks fine!

Nice job!

Cheers,
Erik

[Red Marble Games]

Erik, good catch. Thanks for that. I really need to keep a bunch of Macs around for testing on different OSes.

Mark

[radiance]

Works fine for me on 10.4.3 (although I encounter the same issues as Keith did).

A couple other issues:

The instructions won't come up when in full screen mode. I understand it might be to avoid doing more resolution switches and such, but that shouldn't really be an issue.

If I set the resolution to the maximum available (1280x1024) it automatically switches the screen option to fullscreen. But if I switch it manually back to window and hit OK the whole game window will disappear forcing me to force-quit. Rerunning the game it still won't show a window and I needed to delete the preferences file to get things back.

Also, when setting window size I once encountered a problem that I can't duplicate now. I was using a 800x600 window and it wouldn't do the switch to a 1024x768 window. The video display said it was 1024x768, but it definitely wasn't.

Hope that helps. Looks good :)