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Heya, unfortunately avoiding DOSBox would require me doing a native port to Windows. Based on a test port I did with an older version of the game's engine, it didn't run all too well, even on a modern system; I'm really not sure why. Trying to port it again is low on my list of priorities.

That being said, there *are* two options for running the game under XP: either manually setting up the DOS version in an older version of DOSBox (not the "Staging" version used for WH), or if you don't care about music/sound, the DOS version can be run directly via XP's built-in DOS VM. Hope that helps!

Yeah, allegrogl is something I could *probably* look into, but the thought of mucking about with that on an underpowered G3 + OS X 10.2 scares me haha

Hi,

Unfortunately it isn't possible. The word list is compiled into the game itself (along with all of the associated size/frequency constants), meaning you'd need to either decompile the game (not easy) or have access to the source to switch out the dictionary.

However, the plan is to release the game's source alongside an update around July/August, and that includes the dictionary generation script- meaning recompiles with alternate dictionaries should be possible then. It's still not ideal (setting up the dev environment takes a bit of effort!), so I'm looking into ways to decouple the dictionary from the game's exe for that release. That's all dependent on how much time I have, though.

Thanks for asking!

Huh, not sure then. If you haven't tried installing the SDL stuff through apt like OP did, then it's probably that; otherwise, manually setting up the DOS version in DOSBox (or a fork) is your best bet for now, sorry :(

Demo has been updated alongside v2.01!

The DOSBox builds now use output=texture by default as of v2.01. (Strangely, when I tried to reproduce that strobing issue, I got an upside-down output instead...)

The crashes under XP should now be fixed as of v2.01. Note that the fix disables sound entirely.

hi-

i haven't had time to test on XP. from what it sounds like, it seems like you're trying to run the DOS version directly; this ends up running the game under NTVDM, which i haven't tested against yet. i'll see what i can do for the next update, but i'm not confident i can do a whole lot (could be related to file access, zen mode writes after each round)

the game is 32-bit because i used djgpp/allegro to write it. i'm not very confident in my ability to write an entire game in assembly just yet

hi-

that could be down to a couple changes i made to the config (dosbox-staging.conf in the same folder as wordhopper.exe). first thing to try would be the line starting with "output", changing the value from "opengl" to "texturenb". if that doesn't work, on the line starting with "glshader", change that from "interpolation/sharp" to "none" (in addition to the previous change). if neither does anything, worst case scenario the config from v1 should still work with v2 (if you've still got it)

sorry for the inconvenience.

Yep, I'm planning on it. Weekend's been pretty busy, and the next few days seem to be as well, so it's going to be a tiny bit of a wait.

Thank you, I'm glad you like it! And yes, kind of- I'm adding some continent, country, and language names in the next update. I haven't done any calculations to see if I can fit a larger word list in yet, but if I can, it'll be saved for a future update

Oh, that's not good to hear; I don't have any AS Macs around (nor the funds to buy one), so if app security works differently from an Intel Mac, then I can't test that at all :(

Just double-checking, this on the latest v1.00-1 build and not the one from when the game was first released, correct? It shouldn't have a signature at all (though to be fair, I never recieved confirmation from anyone that it worked after it was updated). I was under the impression that unsigned apps would still run, but only with Gatekeeper disabled and opened via the right-click menu. But if this isn't the case with newer Macs, then I may just remove the build entirely as there's too much time, effort, and cost involved in making it work properly.

Thank you for the suggestions! A few things:

• Volume settings are on the roadmap for the next update. Currently muting music/sfx can be done in the DOS version via `wordhopr setup` and setting the midi/sfx drivers to "NONE", but in the DOSBox builds this is tricky to get to so yeah, a proper in-game setting is needed
• Mouse controls are, likewise, on the roadmap
• Controlscheme toggles and custom highlight colors are definitely doable, I'll save them for the update after this next one
• Key rebinding could be a bit tricky, but I'll see what I can do in the future.
• I'd love to put in a bigger wordlist, but I'm up against the constraints of what can fit on a 1.44MB diskette. I still have some room left, but I'd prefer to save it for additional features unrelated to the wordlist. I could probably sneak in country and continent names though
• The lack of an explanation of what words are valid/how scoring works stems from me wanting to keep the tutorial as short as possible, so I'll need to figure out a place to put some of that extra info. The DOS version comes with a readme which could be a good place to put it, but it's moreso designed for troubleshooting (and modern OS players won't be able to see it normally)
• Word score preview is a huge oversight, I'll move that into the next update lol
• Unlocks, not sure.

Overall, good stuff, I'll keep this all in mind for future updates!

I've just pushed a fix for the macOS build which removes the signature. I wasn't able to test it on another Mac (every other one I've got runs Mojave or earlier), so there could be some lingering issues. Thank you for bringing this to my attention in the first place!

Huh, then it seems like it's emulator-dependent. You could try seeing if a fresh copy of DOSBox-Staging with its default config elicits the same behavior; if it does, try playing around with the settings under '[mixer]' in ~/.config/dosbox/dosbox-staging.conf. The comments explaining the blocksize and prebuffer values mention stuttering, so perhaps increasing them would help?

Oh odd, I haven't run into that. If you're able to set it up manually, does the audio act like this under any other fork of DOSBox? The preconf'd downloads use the latest release version of DOSBox-Staging at the time of writing, so it could be an issue with that

(The only other thing I can think of is an audio system discrepancy; I still use PulseAudio on my system despite everyone else seemingly using PipeWire at this point. But I don't think that'd be the issue)

Thanks for letting me know! I definitely should've tested on another Mac before release, but I was in such a rush -n-

I'm contemplating whether or not I should even leave the Mac version up until it's fixed, but in the meantime I've updated the project page with a note linking here.

EDIT: Also, regarding the bundle identifier, it looks like that's commented out in a fresh copy of DOSBox Staging to begin with. Not sure why :s