Hi all

I just uploaded a beta of an OS X port of Zen Puzzle Garden. If anyone with a Mac would care to try it out, I would be most grateful. I'm still pretty much a Mac newbie, so let me know if I'm doing anything blatantly wrong. In particular, I'm using SDL so it would be good to check that it runs on a machine which most definitely doesn't have any SDL libraries installed.

Thanks!
-Joseph

Download:
http://www.lexaloffle.com/ZenPuzzleGardenDemo.tar.gz

Screen shot:
http://www.lexaloffle.com/img/sszen1.gif

I'm downloading it, I'll take a look later today.

For the final distribution .tar.gz isn't the best option - you should use either a .dmg or an installer.

Great, thanks!

I was wondering about installers..
Most games seem to use .sit rather than .tar.gz. But the end result is the same (from my point of view as a novice mac user). After I download the game, I end up with something on my desktop that I can double click on to open, and there's the application icon. And if the user can open a .sit, then they can also open a .tar.gz.

.dmg.sit seems like more of a pain because there is the additional step of mounting the dmg.

What are the advantages of using dmgs or sits? Perhaps it is more familiar to see a file with .dmg or .sit on the end of it.

I believe most people (including myself) distribute a .dmg.sit. A .dmg is a disk image (if you ever downloaded and burned an .iso you know what I'm talking about) so you can include a whole folder tree in there.
.dmg.sit seems like more of a pain because there is the additional step of mounting the dmg.
Nope. At least for me, Safari opens the sit and mounts the dmg automatically, so it's actually easier. Try it with http://www.mysterystudio.com/demos/bbb_demo.dmg.sit

What are the advantages of using dmgs or sits? Perhaps it is more familiar to see a file with .dmg or .sit on the end of it.
That's the most obvious advantage I see from using a .sit. .tar.gz is too "unixy" for regular Mac users, I guess.

As for a .dmg, the disk image inside a .dmg is more than a folder tree in a .zip - it is a volume itself, I believe you can configure the background image, for example. I've seen an installer (was it ThinkTanks for Mac?) which was actually a .dmg with a background image that said "to install the game, drag this icon to the desktop".

Worked fine here. Fun game!

I could finally play it ! yay ! ( never worked on my PC for some unknown reason )

pat.

Works fine.

However, a bug between the monitor and the chair (which is also present in the Windows version) prevents me from completing level 4 :rolleyes:

Also works for me.

One thing is that it doesn't respond to cmd-Q which is the standard Mac quit command. In fact, it has an empty application menu, which is distictly odd.

And I think that chair-monitor bug is present here as well.

Nice game. Almost annoyingly so ;)

Oh, and the zen.txt file should list the Mac System Requirements, not the Windows ones. Some Mac users can be a little touchy about things like that. As far as requirements, I'm using a 500MHZ G3 iMac which is about as slow a machine as you'll find running OS X and your game runs fine, so you may not even need to list a processor speed as a requirement.

Looks good and runs perfectly on my mac. You should definitely set up cmd-Q to quit the app, you will probably get complaints if you don't.

I don't "listen" to Cmd-Q either. What should it do? Exit at once or present the "are you sure you want to exit" dialog?

I haven't tried it out yet, but I found this (slightly old) post on how to add menu items to an SDL application:
http://twomix.devolution.com/pipermail/sdl/2003-July/055387.html

I'm building from command line at the moment, so I'm not sure how tricky it will be.

[EDIT: Got a bit lost trying to do pull-down menu items so just implemented the keyboard shortcut i.e. the user can now press either meta-Q to quit. It's supposed to be a full-screen game anyway :rolleyes: ]

Yep, I think I've seen a .dmg installing with a background image too. I'm quite happy to have a plain copy-install though, so I'll probably go with .sit. Do you know of any alternatives to stuffit? I couldn't find any but US$50 seems a bit steep just for creating archives.

radiance - I did put the OS X requirement in the docs, it's just hidden at the end of a long list of Windows OS variations. I'll put OS X first in an attempt to win favour with Mac users. (:

patrox - I never did figure out why Zen doesn't work with your machine. It's possibly something to do with 640x480x8 not agreeing with your radeon. I'm thinking of switching to SDL for Windows builds too, which might help with compatibility. I haven't heard any other reports about the game not running, but I can't imagine anyone would bother to report it.

Still working on the monitor-chair bug..

cmd-Q should exit at once (or show the closing 'Buy Now' screen) if the user is just in a menu screen.

When in a game showing a 'Are you sure?' dialog would be good.

For fullscreen game the menu item doesn't have to be there. (I didn't even see any menu when I tried it out).