Comments on “0.81 feature creep”

Boxer 0.81 underway

2008-10-30T02:49:59+02:00

Just for the record, I've never been a fan of the Spaces thing either.

Boxer 0.81 underway

2008-11-08T13:07:41+02:00

Just tried it out, pretty smooth app! Thanks :)

Rebranding

2008-11-25T23:37:26+02:00

The link to the preview is broke. Fix it!

Rebranding

2008-11-28T03:55:34+02:00

Looks great!

Rebranding

2008-11-28T04:06:18+02:00

The image is fixed now - I somehow overwrote the images folder and didn't have backups of the lost images. I'll re-add the rest of them once I've remade them. *sigh*

New website emerges

2008-12-04T15:09:00+02:00

The new design is great!! Congrats!

Yet more feature creep

2008-12-06T03:18:03+02:00

hello! would be nice ifyou could add NE2000 pass-through patch for tcpip support! thx for your build!

Merry Christmas released

2008-12-25T06:05:59+02:00

Sadly, I have to give you a bug report for Christmas. Boxer 0.85 utterly and completely breaks the full version of XCOM: UFO Defense (oddly, the demo included works just fine). I'll try to see if the problem is on my end (since its left over from a previous version of Boxer); I'm hoping it is.

Merry Christmas released

2008-12-26T23:42:49+02:00

Hi it's me, Jef you know me from the mail about building DOSBox and the Dutch localisation, If you've managed to get G3 support, did you use rhoenie/Marcus Herbert their build ? (just curious)

Merry Christmas released

2008-12-27T02:49:41+02:00

I'm still trying to get to the bottom of the X-COM problem, but it seems to be specific to that installation, and other installations of X-COM are working fine with 0.85.

And yup, I integrated rhoenie's G3 binary with his official DOSBox build (which had binaries for G4, G5 and Intel). Alas, DOSBox's performance on G3s is by all accounts awful... the only reason I put it in was to stop Boxer crashing with no error message on old PPCs, so that I wouldn't have to field support requests about it. Selfish me.

Merry Christmas released

2008-12-27T12:13:32+02:00

I would do just the same Alun... I'm still trying to get a static SDL (and if I can make that, trying to build UB).

I know you're going to explain it but I'm curious (again), if you make a localization, is it done with TextEdit or with some OS X tool ?

Merry Christmas released

2008-12-28T04:03:57+02:00

Most (and in Boxer’s case, all) localised strings are stored in plaintext files inside an application. If you view the contents of an application package and go to Contents/Resources/, you'll see a bunch of folders named e.g. English.lproj, French.lproj etc. These contain localised files: string files, localised images and interface nibs. The string files (named e.g. Localizable.strings) can be edited in TextEdit, XCode or any plaintext editor, and their format is pretty self-evident.

OS X's elegant approach to localisation means that it's frequently possible for you to localise applications yourself without modifying the application code: just duplicate the English localisation folder inside an application, rename the folder to the name of your language, and translate the files.

Merry Christmas released

2008-12-28T06:09:17+02:00

Reliving my childhood games... this definitely made my X-mas! Thanks!!! :D

Merry Christmas released

2008-12-28T14:01:15+02:00

I dunno if it's just me or my laptop but Master of Magic has become unbearably slow. I normally play on a 2.8 Dual Core 2 iMac at around 50000 CPU cycles. The iMac though needed to be taken into the shop for repairs the other day so I decided to put the new version .85 on my 2.2 Ghz Dual Core Macbook Pro(I was using .8 on the iMac). I didn't think 600Mhz would make a huge difference given that it's still a strong CPU, but it's the slowest I've ever seen it, even if I ramp the CPU to 70000. Nothing seems to do the trick. Master of Magic typically gets slow no matter what toward the end game but I've never seen it this bad.

Merry Christmas released

2008-12-28T15:35:53+02:00

That's a bit of a concern - my development machine is a 2.2ghz macbook and there's very few games it can't handle. Bear in mind that increasing emulated CPU cycles beyond what the CPU can keep up with will actually slow things down: you're probably better off lowering them again to around 30000, or switching it to max in the config file, which regulates the speed to what your CPU can handle. The emulation is very CPU-intensive so it is affected also by what other processes are doing (e.g. time machine backups, Growl notifications).

You could always download Boxer 0.8 again from the release notes page to see if you get better speed, though nothing has changed in 0.85 that should affect this.

Facelifts

2009-01-01T07:39:45+02:00

Nice work! The feelies that came with Ultima games is something I always remember about the series. Great stuff. Unfortunately I don't have the little obsidian stone that came with Ultima VIII Pagan, but still have the nylon cloth!

Facelifts

2009-01-02T19:13:56+02:00

My Ultima IV and V boxes are probably stuffed in an attic on the other side of the world, if they weren't just tossed away... *sigh*. I remember the codex medallion that came with Ultima V; alas I don't think our edition of Ultima IV came with the ankh. The maps were terrific, Ultima V's especially.

I recall my big brother fell in love with Ultima IV in a big way: at one point he painstakingly mapped out the entirety of Britannia, tile by tile, onto sheets of graph paper. They covered the floor when laid out properly.

Live dangerously

2009-01-09T01:53:44+02:00

Thanks i like living on he edge ;D

So much for a speedy release

2009-01-25T15:03:36+02:00

You've got the menu bar working ?, Switched to Applescript Studio ? Nice work!

So much for a speedy release

2009-01-29T11:28:13+02:00

Actually this was done by hacking on SDL (the cross-platform library) and DOSBox, using Obj-C and C++. Boxer is still a separate application (without a menubar of its own) and it isn't responsible for controlling DOSBox after it starts up. The “Boxer” in the menubar is actually DOSBox renamed, making the whole thing an elaborate smoke-and-mirrors routine.

SDL apps actually start up as standard Cocoa NSApplications using Obj-C (before SDL promptly wrests control away from the Cocoa classes and hands it to their own cross-platform code), so when I reimplement Boxer as a Cocoa application it may be possible to bolt SDL and DOSBox directly into it without too much pain and suffering. Ha ha ha.