More people continue to have issues launching Freeciv, even as of 2.0.9.

In trying to get it to work, some people went as far as installing MacPorts (formerly known as DarwinPorts), thinking that it is needed. This is simply not the case. While my Freeciv distributions are built using MacPorts, it does not need anything else except Tiger and X11 to run.

I tend to think that most issues have to do with the installation of X11.app. But since I only have access to the one Mac OS X installation that I perform the builds on, so I cannot say for certain.

If you are having issues launching Freeciv 2.0.9, give the following a try:

1. Run the Aqua launcher at least once.
2. Assuming X11 is launched, you should see that it has opened a window with the words xterm in its title bar.
3. Click on this window to focus input on it, type and execute the command

   cd ~/Library/Application Support/Freeciv/2.0.9

4. Type and execute the command ls. On my machine, executing the command shows the following:
   

   fonts           gtk-2.0         pango           run-freeciv.py
   

5. The entry we are interested in run-freeciv.py. Assuming it exists on your machine, type and execute the command

   python run-freeciv.py

Now Freeciv is supposed to launch. Well, at least it does on mine.

If this workaround doesn't work for you, please let me know.

Freeciv 2.0.9 is out. Head on over to here to download it.

In related news, 2.1.0 beta 3 has been released. I will free up time to work on it soon.

If you are interested in trying out the Freeland tileset in different sizes, here's how.

First, quit Freeciv, download this disk image, and mount it in the Finder.

Next, assuming you have Freeciv 2.1.0 Beta 2 installed in /Applications, press Cmd-Shift-G while in the Finder, and type in the following path to navigate to that folder:

/Application/Freeciv 2.1.0 Beta 2/Freeciv.app/
Contents/Resources/freeciv-x.y.z/share/freeciv

Lastly, select the following items from the disk image and copy them into the above folder:

• (file) freeland.tilespec
• (file) freeland-med.tilespec
• (file) freeland-big.tilespec
• (folder) freeland

That's it! Now start Freeciv, and you should be able to select medium and large sizes of the Freeland tileset from the UI.

The Mac OS X Tiger (PowerPC) package of Freeciv 2.1.0 Beta 2 is out.

With this release, I modified the launcher application to dynamically scan for tile sets at startup, as well as incorporated the standardized icon for Freeciv. In addition, I've also included the "normal" size of the Freeland 2.0.0 tile set.

Furthermore, a small bug in the launcher is fixed such that the game client will no longer launch the wrong version of civserver process that is accessible via the PATH environment variable.

The dynamic scanning of tile sets means that you are now able to experiment with the various tile sets. All published Freeciv tile sets can be found here.

I will make another post later with instructions on how to add tile sets to your 2.1.0 beta 2 copy of Freeciv.

Enjoy!

With Apple's transitiion to the Intel processor architecture, the world of virtualization opened up to Mac users beyond the emulation capabilities provided by Virtual PC and its competitors, first with unofficial hack to boot Windows XP on Intel-based Macs, followed by Apple's Boot Camp and the Parallels Desktop product.

However, in the midst of all the good news, I don't see anyone talking about the missing capability to virtualize Mac OS X itself. This, in my mind, still leaves the Mac platform a second class citizen in this area of computing.

Sure, you can run any number of versions of Windows and several distributions of Linux on an Intel-powered Mac, but how about the ability to run Mac OS X within Mac OS X? It is missing.

Why would you want to do that, you might ask. Well, the same reasons virtualization solutions exist for Windows and Linux. For example, to be able to test some software in a clean room environment. When I compile my distribution of Freeciv, I would love to have the ability to test it in several environments, so that I know how the application might behave like if X11 isn't installed, or to make sure it is free of DarwinPorts dependencies that are specific to my environment.

Or, let's say I download some software. It would nifty if I were able to test it out to make sure it doesn't do things to mess up my environment.

With available virtualization and emulation products for Windows, there was always the ability to host Windows itself. Just check out offerings from Parallels and Microsoft for Windows. The same is true for Linux. But that has never been true for the Mac, neither before or since Mac OS X.

Perhaps Apple will surprise us next week at the WWDC. We shall see.