Running game assets on macOS - TheXTech/TheXTech GitHub Wiki
Unlike other platforms like Linux and Windows, there are two ways to run the game from one of downloaded game assets packages:
- Creating a standalone Application bundle with a game using a prebuilt Application template package (an engine package that contains no resource).
- Placing content of the game assets package into the
/TheXTech Games/Debug Assets/
directory: you will be able to run the engine application in as-is form without of the necessary to modifying its content, however, you will be unable to play different games in parallel without replacing content of assets directory.
- You will need to have a proper code editor (For example, the VS Code, or Xcode). The standard "Text Editor" is UNUSABLE as it DAMAGES code files: it automatically replaces several characters to typographical analogues which just breaks source code files. That means, the "Text Editor" is just a document editor, not a code editor at all!
- Download the plain executable package for macOS: (the stable or the in-development version).
- Download one of the archives of the game assets package itself.
- Unpack both archives by double-clicking each of them.
- Open the context menu over
TheXTech.app
bundle, and selectShow Content
menu item. - Browse inside the bundle to the
Content/Resources/assets
directory. - Move all content of the recently unpacked game assets package into the opened
Content/Resources/assets
directory. - Copy the
Content/Resources/assets/graphics/ui/icon/thextech.icns
file into theContent/Resources/
directory and replace the previous. This makes your bundle to get native game's icon rather than default engine's icon. - And now, open the
Content/info.plist
file via the code editor (don't use Text Editor for this purpose! if you did this mistake, you have to redownload the package or replace original file, then open via Code Editors!), find the<key>CFBundleName</key>
, and then, at the line below, put the name of the game between<string> </string>
tags, for example,<string>The User's Adventures</string>
. This makes your bundle to show the name of the game in the task manager while running. - After all, rename the bundle itself into the name of the game (for example
The User's Adventures.app
). - Try to launch the bundle, it should work now.
On the first launch, the next directories will be created:
- At your home user directory (
/Users/<your-username>/
) the~/TheXTech Games/<game name>/
directory will be created (Where the<game name>
is the directive name from the name of the app bundle, for example, if app bundle isThe User's Adventures.app
, the directory will beThe User's Adventures
). It will have the next content:- worlds - initally empty directory where you can place downloaded episodes to play them using this game.
- battle - initally empty directory where you can place downloaded battle levels to play them using this game.
-
settings - Settings of the game:
- settings/thextech.ini - Setup of the game. You can edit it via notepad to enable or disable some features including the Discord Rich Presence support.
- settings/controls.ini - Setup of game controls: all key bindings and game controller buttons setup were saved here.
-
settings/gamesaves - The storage of game saves: all saved games appears here. However, if you moved an old episode with game save files presented (such as
save1.sav
,save2.sav
,save3.sav
), they will be imported by the game, however, updated gamesaves will appear at the new storage at the settings/gamesave directory, keeping the episode directory clear.
- gameplay-records - Recorded gameplays demos: when you enable the recording of gameplay in the settings, every attempt to play a level will create a new replay file that you can open by the game and see the full playthrough. In some cases, these replays can help to reproduce various bugs that happen very rare.
- At the directory configured as Screenshots directory (The Desktop by default) there are next directories may appear:
-
TheXTech Game Screenshots
sub-directory will appear. Here will be saved any screenshots taken via the game itself usingF12
key. -
TheXTech Game Screenshots/gif-recordings
sub-directory will appear. Here will be saved any recorded GIF animations taken via the game itself usingF10
key.
-