…I think. Please let me know if it works for you, as I haven’t had anyone test this one!

As ever, it’s up on Beacon’s project page. (I’ll have to set up the sidebar project links tomorrow to keep that visible.)

The Linux build was easy after the Mac build – I lost some time to the case-sensitive filesystem but there wasn’t anything really odd to deal with. The only weird part is that Linux doesn’t seem to look in the local path for dynamically linked libraries, so you need to install the libraries required to your system or run a shell script that tells it to look for them locally, since I put them in the .tar.gz. I think it’ll work…

I also discovered today that my Mac build won’t work on OS X 10.5! It only works on OS X 10.6, and I think I’d need versions of SDL and possibly FMod that were compiled for OS X 10.5 in order to fix that. It’s unfortunate but I’m just not willing to put the time in to try and support the older OS. It’s an odd approach by Apple, making compiled code only work on the latest OS by default… I’m pretty sure my Windows build would run on Windows 98 or something, let alone something a mere two years old.

Anyway, so far Beacon’s been getting some great feedback (“a lovely bit of work” – RockPaperShotgun.com; “My god, this is beautiful” – an RPS commenter :D) and has already been downloaded by over 4500 people. It’s great to see so many people interested in small indie games by total unknowns. I’m feeling much more confident about trying to do this for a living now!

but I’m DONE and there’s a Mac version of Beacon now and it’s lovely.

I thought doing a Mac build would be like building stuff for Linux. It’s not! Apparently libraries come in “framework bundles”, and programs go in “application bundles”, so there’s lots of Mac-specific directory stuff to handle. On top of that, the accepted way of doing everything is to build stuff through XCode. I wanted to use gcc directly so I could port to Linux more easily, but I think that actually made everything take longer.

IT’S OKAY. I get it now! And the sheer number of Mac owners and gamers around was quite a surprise. I only realised yesterday that about half the people I know use Macs, and a bunch more showed up on Twitter to hold out for the port and help beta test. You guys are great and very patient. I won’t make you wait next time 🙂

Next up: Linux build.

Next next up: sleeping for a couple days solid.

Well – I’ve fixed a few more bugs and added a few more visual effects this morning. I’m just fixing bugs and minor hangups now.

Final version playtests so far today have thrown up a few more issues than I expected, so I’m holding the release off until this evening. If you came here to check it out now, sorry for the delay and thanks for your attention and patience. If you’d rather be notified when it comes out, please follow me on Twitter. ♥

Edit: And by “this evening” I guess I meant Sunday. I’m going over the game with hanzonaut and we’re eliminating a few rough spots he identified. It’s heavy going but it’ll be worth it!

Beacon’s pretty much good to go! But… it’s 1am and no-one’s awake to playtest.

Right now I’m going to get some sleep, ’cause I’ve been busy all day tweaking and improving! I finished the third music track, added three kinds of tile, added a bunch of detail graphics, cleared up some DLL dependencies, optimised the game to run better on low-end systems and did some quick animated graphics for the splash screen. A quick snapshot of the splash screen mid-animation looks nifty in its own way, I think:

Anyway. I guess I’ll be setting up a page, getting a few playtests and actually releasing the game tomorrow morning. I’m kinda excited! See you then!

Thursday has been kinda busy. I’ve been working on music, reverb for the sound effects through FMod, bugfixes, an icon for the app and a quick splash screen… a lot of polish type stuff, but nothing really to talk about. So instead, here are some pictures of the editor I made for it!

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