Weird Worlds Mac OS X patch for testing

Fingers · #1 August 7th, 2007, 03:35 PM

It's been a long wait, but the Mac OS X patch is nearing completion. However, we need a few volunteers to try it out and see if it works before we can declare it done. If you're interested, back up your game files and then download and install the following file:

http://www.digital-eel.com/files/ww-osx-patch-122.zip

The zip file contains installation instructions in readme.txt.

Play the game a few times and maybe try out some mods, and report any problems here on the forum.

Ace_Garp · #2 August 7th, 2007, 10:20 PM

OK.
Got it, and will dutifully test it to death (unless it's bug-free) tomorrow.
It's 2:20am right now, and I start work at 8:30am.
This doesn't bode well!
Thanks for the update at last ;-)

Ace_Garp · #3 August 7th, 2007, 10:48 PM

OK - couldn't resist!
Just had a quick game (was killed by both a Garthan AND the Urluquai in a very underpowered pirate ship), and haven't noticed any problems yet.

One note though.
The readme states: -
"* Move both the ww_osx_patch folder and the Weird Worlds application
that you want to patch to the desktop."

Shouldn't that read " . . . the Weird Worlds FOLDER (not just the application) ", as that was the only way I could get it to be patched?

I'll report any bugs I find tomorrow.

Ed_Zavada · #4 August 9th, 2007, 09:10 AM

Thanks, I've corrected that text in the readme file.

rc4126 · #5 August 9th, 2007, 01:19 PM

I have found out that it takes 60 +1 days to use the hyperdrive, that one day comes from before the playership goes into orbit, but after it exits hyperspace, ie when it moves into orbit, haven't tried with other drives though.

sgqwonkian · #6 August 9th, 2007, 02:51 PM

I've tried four games without mods, and three with mods. So far, no problems in the non-mod games.

In the mod games, it's crashed at the high-score screen after both games of Even Weirder Worlds. But, that may be a problem with that mod. I'm gonna go try some I know don't crash pre-patch, and see how they fare.

sgqwonkian · #7 August 9th, 2007, 03:11 PM

Just had a really nasty crash on generating the universe in my Sgqwonk mod using the patch.

I can't guarantee it wasn't an heretofore undiscovered bug in my mod... but instead of crashing to the desktop, it first hung for 20 or 30 seconds on the major brass screen, then went to black for over 3 minutes.

It didn't respond to the forcequit keyboard shortcut. I had to reboot the whole computer to get out of it.

Alphasite · #8 August 10th, 2007, 03:13 PM

Will there be a Universal binary soon?

Fingers · #9 August 10th, 2007, 09:22 PM

The universal binary will not happen anytime soon. If I understand the situation correctly, there's some kind of a problem getting OpenAL to work with universal binaries.

I'm going to use my own SDL-based sound system in our future games, and there's a possibility that I'll retrofit it to Weird Worlds... which may make the universal binary easier to do. In any case it'll be at least a couple of months before this happens, as it's kind of a big change in the code.

Ed_Zavada · #10 August 13th, 2007, 09:05 AM

To be specific, the problem is that Apple has taken over the OpenAL implementation on the Mac, and rewritten it substantially, but in the process, they have changed something about how it deals with larger numbers of sounds that made it much less efficient. I have a full universal binary version running, but the sounds don't play properly because the sound takes up most of the CPU. I've reported a detailed bug to Apple, but no response. So, my options are to try to build a Universal binary of an older version of OpenAL, try to fix OpenAL myself, or try to find a Universal binary version of older OpenAL that doesn't have this problem. As Fingers says, it's going to be a bit before I can get to that (and he may beat me to it with his work ripping out OpenAL).