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The Omni Group is fine-tuning a Cocoa (native Mac OS X) port of Gathering of Developers' third-person shooter Heavy Metal F.A.K.K. 2 for release, and a public beta is currently available. A number of threads on our forums are reporting radically different experiences with playing both the final and demo versions under Mac OS X, with some having perfect success and others not able to get past the initial title screen.

One of the most puzzling issues has affected those trying to play the demo version of the game with the Omni Cocoa build. It turns out that the "Insert CD" problem suffered by many is an actual bug, and the current beta was not intended to be used with the demo in the first place. Those who are reporting success must be quite lucky indeed. According to a forum post by an Omni developer, this bug will be fixed and in the future separate "demo" and "full" releases will be made.

The beta itself is progressing rapidly, adding better support for multiple-monitor setups, a solution for the "Unable to Initialize OpenGL" bug and many more minor fixes. A new release is expected later this week.

Overall those who have had success with the Omni port are reporting excellent results, with speed equal to or better than the OS 9 port and better sound and music performance as well. As with Omni's port of Quake 3 Arena v117, this team seems poised to bring the power of Mac OS X and some of the best games of the last year together in a brilliant fasion, unlocking the gaming potential of the Mac we have all waited patiently for. Future titles that Omni will tackle include American McGee's Alice, Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force and Bungie's thrid-person action title Oni. Be sure and report your experiences with the Cocoa port of FAKK2 in our Mac OS X forum.

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Heavy Metal F.A.K.K. 2

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