Yeah, except the file I downloaded isn’t zipped. It’s just a file. I’m on mac, so I don’t know if that should make a difference. But nothing is zipped. It’s possible I downloaded the wrong thing?
In any case, none of this should be happening because in the year 2024 when we send things to Mars I should be able to just go CLICK and play a game.
Wow! When I saw how many games were in the competition, I didn’t expect anyone to get through all of them this fast.
If a game has to be downloaded, it ought to have an installer. Just bunging people a zip isn’t enough.
Well, there are 17 games. Five of them took less than 20 minutes (a couple less than 10) to play, and I also didn’t play 4 of them because they weren’t easy to play. I didn’t finish a few. There’s only one game of any real length-- Garry’s-- and I haven’t finished that one yet although I intend to.
So it’s not as accomplished as it might seem.
Oh that’s funny, it turns out macs just automatically unzip files for you. Which means the author here had this confusing extra step that didn’t apply to you. But besides that, their file format for the game just doesn’t work on macs. So probably quite definitely inaccessible!
Back in the day, when they sold adventure games in stores (and they had software stores, period) there was a bewildering array of home computers, or platforms, for developers to support. IBM, Apple, Commodore, TI, TRS-80… This is the reason game engines like the z machine were developed in the first place.
Decades of multi-platform support have taught users to expect that authors should make it easy to run their software, on whatever platform the user happens to have. They aren’t wrong to expect this. I say that having written my last three games with custom engines.
I’m gonna add this to my growing list of Mac lore.
FWIW, I never remember to change that default $2 suggested tip on Itch downloads. Of course, my stuff is meant to be played in-browser, so it’s less of an issue because hardly anyone’s downloading, but I wanted to speak up for my fellow forgetful authors and say that it’s not necessarily a sign of presumptuousness. (Frankly my mental energies vis-a-vis Itch uploads are mostly going to making sure I haven’t forgotten to enable the goddamn scrollbars again.)
I also tried to find ways of having my z5 game playable in browser, but I lack the technical skills to make it happen. 
Adam
If things are playable in standard interpreters that are widely in use and that I know I can trust and that are easy to find and download-- like Spatterlight-- I consider that easy. It’s when people expect me to download something I’ve never heard of that is the problem. First, why should I trust that, and second, there will inevitably be bad directions and issues installing it.
It’s the balance of giving devs & authors the freedom to experiment and use systems outside of the norm, whilst also providing a super simple way for the players to play. I wouldn’t want ParserComp to lose it’s appeal to people using weird and wonderful game creation systems, but to your point earlier you need something that gets you there in a couple of clicks. I might look at doing a short video reaching out to devs/authors to make sure and provide this.
Hi Folks! I address Moon-house Technician in this other thread. In short, we decided to rapidly port the entire game from REXX to C++ and the game is now a single executable. Programming the entire game in REXX was an intentional design decision as an homage to early mainframe text adventure games. REXX is in its core DNA… but now it’s been transformed and brought to the present-day, thanks to you. 
Thanks, Tyler. Alas, I’m on a mac and still can’t play it.
But what if it automatically unzips this?
Hi Tyler,
That makes sense, so it’s C++ rather than REXX.
So, what we need please is a link to something we can download (the game) and then something we can download to play it (interpreter or whatever).
Thanks!
If it’s C++ then that’ll be the executable that the C++ compiler kicks out, which should run natively without an interpreter of sorts.
Sorry for the lack of clarity on my end. This is a .exe and does not require any other installations. This was more a statement on how we managed to port it. The first download on the Moon-house Technician page is that .exe.
Bear in mind that exes are windows only so you’ll likely need to cross compile for mac and linux. Unless it works in wine!
This was understood and it’s unfortunate that we don’t yet have a solution for Mac users, but this is the best we could do given the time crunch. We spent a couple of days porting everything over–we might release a version for Mac users down the road.
Great, will have a play! Thanks 
