Originally posted by BeheadThoseWhoInsultKane:

Thanks for the hard work!
Do you think it is feasible for you to work on font smoothing/scaling?
currently it's quite eye-straining even with UI scale enabled

Ps. Did you try the "Small Screen" option?

Hi! For some reason, my version is stuck on version 3.3.59 (it's been a while since I played, but I wanted to get back to it). Even uninstalling and re-installing the game causes Steam to install that particular version again. I'm using an Intel Mac with macOS 14.7, and am not opted in to a beta branch (I don't even have any beta branch codes). I've tried verifying the files, clearing the Steam download cache, repairing my Steam library folder, and uninstalling/reinstalling the game.

Then I looked at the "MAC" depot of the game on steamdb (https://steamdb.info/depot/335622/), and it seems it has in fact not been updated since then. The Windows and Linux versions look fine. However, I can't seem to find any public announcement anywhere on halting updates for macOS. Is this simply an oversight that got unnoticed for a year, or did I miss something?

Thanks.

Originally posted by Jonas:

Hi! For some reason, my version is stuck on version 3.3.59 (it's been a while since I played, but I wanted to get back to it). Even uninstalling and re-installing the game causes Steam to install that particular version again. I'm using an Intel Mac with macOS 14.7, and am not opted in to a beta branch (I don't even have any beta branch codes). I've tried verifying the files, clearing the Steam download cache, repairing my Steam library folder, and uninstalling/reinstalling the game.

Then I looked at the "MAC" depot of the game on steamdb (https://steamdb.info/depot/335622/), and it seems it has in fact not been updated since then. The Windows and Linux versions look fine. However, I can't seem to find any public announcement anywhere on halting updates for macOS. Is this simply an oversight that got unnoticed for a year, or did I miss something?

Thanks.

Our apologies, this is our bad and mistake for not better communicating the situation.

We have spent a year trying to figure out a way to continue updates. We spent another 8 hours on this this week, and contacted Apple support again. The XCode application keeps updating, the Steam SDK keeps updating, and we keep hoping something in their updates will help us find a path back to playable. But Mac OS' non-backware compatible updates unfortunately have left us in a lurch.

We're in the process of making a last ditch effort to get a final post-DLC update out for Mac OS and then official announce end-of-updates on the platform because we've dumped easily a hundred of hours into it with no results now.

Originally posted by Trese Brothers:

Originally posted by BeheadThoseWhoInsultKane:

Thanks for the hard work!
Do you think it is feasible for you to work on font smoothing/scaling?
currently it's quite eye-straining even with UI scale enabled

Ps. Did you try the "Small Screen" option?

I did not, i will check, thank you!

I definitely need to dive back in. Love coming back to this game from time to time. Thanks for letting me know about the supporter badge. Happy to invest in such awesome devs. I appreciate all the entertainment your team has provided over the years for me!

Originally posted by Jonas:

Hi! For some reason, my version is stuck on version 3.3.59 (it's been a while since I played, but I wanted to get back to it). Even uninstalling and re-installing the game causes Steam to install that particular version again. I'm using an Intel Mac with macOS 14.7, and am not opted in to a beta branch (I don't even have any beta branch codes). I've tried verifying the files, clearing the Steam download cache, repairing my Steam library folder, and uninstalling/reinstalling the game.

Then I looked at the "MAC" depot of the game on steamdb (https://steamdb.info/depot/335622/), and it seems it has in fact not been updated since then. The Windows and Linux versions look fine. However, I can't seem to find any public announcement anywhere on halting updates for macOS. Is this simply an oversight that got unnoticed for a year, or did I miss something?

Thanks.

We have returned to this fresh on a Monday morning and are trying again. :fingerscrossed:

Thanks! I know it's a pain with Apple always requiring the latest Xcode/SDK to be able to codesign/notarize the application.

I know this comes a bit out of left field, but I'd be happy to give it a shot if that would be somehow possible. I have access to the Steamworks SDK via my employer. While I am by no means an expert on building macOS GUI apps or Xcode intricacies, I do have a background in compilers and linkers, command line macOS development, and I have colleagues who are familiar with integrating the Steam SDK in Mac games.

I fully understand that giving access to your source code to a random stranger is a bit of a leap, not to mention that there are undoubtedly some idiosyncrasies involved in setting up the build environment (like with any large project). But hey, it's worth a shot :)

We dumped a ton of hours into it this afternoon and were able to get a working build out of it. We will finish testing hopefully and do a capstone update here.

A Mac OS update has been pushed that brings STF Mac OS up to 3.4.3, the latest!

:HYPE:

Awesome, thank you so much!

Small issue: the distributed binary only contains an ARM64 slice, so it won't launch on Intel Macs (like mine) anymore :)

Originally posted by Jonas:

Small issue: the distributed binary only contains an ARM64 slice, so it won't launch on Intel Macs (like mine) anymore :)

Bugger - can't ever win lol. We're just following the Mac OS standard build procedures now to get the game to build for M1 to M3.

We will try AGAIN :D

Originally posted by Jonas:

Small issue: the distributed binary only contains an ARM64 slice, so it won't launch on Intel Macs (like mine) anymore :)

Ok, please try again with the latest update.

Success confirmed, thanks again from the void!

Hi! I have some bad news and some good news.

The bad news: the updated version of the game no longer runs on my old MacBook Air that's stuck on macOS 12.7.6. I now get the same crash that was reported many years ago already for Templar Battleforce, with a callstack similar to https://gist.github.com/jhkrischel/4a7c4560146353941112014e0bd03c75

The good news: I think I've figured out the cause:

1. the game contains its own Objective-C class with the name AVAudioPlayer
   
2. a class with the same name also exists in Apple's own frameworks

On the working system, what happens is:

As you may be able to guess by now, on the non-working system that property returns the AVAudioPlayer class from the StartTradersFrontiers binary itself. Hence the infinite recursion.

My guess is that the AVFAudio framework is part of the AudioToolbox umbrella framework on more recent systems (or perhaps of some other framework that the game links), and therefore gets loaded there and has its own AVAudioPlayer class found. On older systems, that's presumably not the case. Therefore, explicitly linking against AVFAudio.framework should solve the issue.

That said, having classes in your binary with the same name as a class from a system framework is generally dangerous. Incidentally, on startup you get these warnings on the console on the working system:


On the non-working system, there's only the second warning, which is another hint pointing to the issue on the non-working system being that the AVFaudio framework does not get linked/loaded there.