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Good to their word, OmniGroup has posted an OS X update for Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.2 on their web site. This software is considered beta, though they claim it is even faster than its OS 9 counterpart. Other improvements include fixes to the sound system, which cause stuttering in some cases under OS 9. Here's an excerpt from the ReadMe with more:

Improvements from the OS 9 version

In the process of porting the OS 9 version, we fixed some bugs which
are enumerated here.


- The sound system has been updated to fix a number of issues
including incorrect stereo separation, and some stuttering problems.


- You can hide the application when the game menu is up. This will
allow you to check your mail, read a fan site, or whatever and then jump
back into the game quickly. Simply hit cmd-h or cmd-tab. When you want
to resume playing, just click on the application icon in the dock.


- The OS 9 version appears to only run if it is in the root of the
volume on which it is located. The OS X version should run from
anywhere.


- The OS 9 version will select stretched video modes on wide screen
monitors instead of the unstretched version that has a square pixel
aspect ratio. The OS X version prefers unstretched video modes.


- Various performance improvements on average the OS X version seems to be about 10% faster than the OS 9 version (although we certainly haven't tested every location in the game under every machine configuration!)

Known issues with the OS X version

- The OS 9 app will not read the OS X-generated config files. If you copy config files from Library/FAKK2/fakk2 to your OS 9 installation, the OS 9 version will complain about not having enough video memory. This is probably a line ending problem and we should be able to fix it in a future build.

- There are still some areas that could use performance tuning. If you are seeing performance problems, you can lower your video resolution or lower the detail settings. One especially helpful change is to switch to 'vertex lighting' under the advanced video settings panel.

- If you run with vertex lights, several types of effects will draw incorrectly. This includes the blue glow behind menu items, the load status indicator, the sky in several levels, and some sprites of hanging plants (and probably other stuff). This is a bug in the platform-independent portion of FAKK2, so all versions of FAKK2 have this problem.

- There is at least one sound problems which we are looking at (looping monster attack sounds can sometimes continue on after the monster has been killed).

A reviewer at the MGF listing reports the update will also work with the demo. In order to get the demo running, start the game, then hit tilde to bring down the command line. Type "map fakkhouse_demo" (without the quotes) and hit return to start playing. Be sure to rate your experiences with the update in the MGF listing as well. Also be sure to post any issues you have in our OS X forum.

Mac OS X Forum

OmniGroup FAKK2 Web Site

Download FAKK2 OS X Beta 2 Update (2.5 MB)

Gathering of Developers

Ritual Entertainment

Heavy Metal F.A.K.K. 2

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