Reply to Re: let's do a bug list or something
If you don't have an account, just leave the password field blank.
OK first of all I am using a Mac, yes I know haha Macs are not as good as PCs for gaming, but seriously, there is a macOS version of Dink Smallwood HD so I will be talking about that.
Anyway, so first of all, this website does not even have the macOS version of Dink Smallwood HD which you can find at https://www.rtsoft.com/pages/dink.php. Direct link to the file: http://www.rtsoft.com/dink/DinkSmallwoodHD.dmg
On a Mac they use .dmg instead of .zip files to package downloads and executables are .app instead of .exe files, otherwise it is fairly similar to Windows. So yeah you need to include the macOS download for Dink Smallwood HD here on the Dink Network since actually a lot of people have Mac computers out there, Mac computers don’t have anywhere near as many games available for them as Windows computers, and yet this game both can run on a Mac and is quite a good game.
OK so now that I got out of the way how you need to provide a download for this I will get to the bugs I have found in Dink Smallwood HD on macOS.
When I run the game on my Macbook with its 1280x800 pixel display, with its menu bar on the top and that “Dock” thingie with all the icons on the bottom, well, the available number of pixels vertically between the menu bar and Dock is less than 768. But since there are MORE than 768 pixels below the menu bar if you ignore the Dock, and Dink Smallwood HD ignores the Dock, Dink Smallwood HD runs in a 1024x768 window and the bottom part of it is cut off and unavailable since it is behind the Dock. So the “Back” button in the main window is off the edge and cannot be clicked, unless I set the window size to 640x480.
And now we get to fullscreen where there is a similar problem. First of all, the “Toggle fullscreen (or Alt-Enter)” option in the settings does absolutely NOTHING when it is clicked on. The only way to toggle fullscreen is to go to the macOS menu bar at the top of the screen and in the Window menu, click on “Enter Full Screen” or “Exit Full Screen”... well OK there is one other way too, in the upper left corner of the window are 3 different colored buttons, a red one to close, a yellow one to minimize, and a green one to toggle fullscreen, and the green button in the upper left also works.
But in then in fullscreen mode again we have a similar problem where the bottom of the screen gets cut off only it is even worse. In fullscreen mode it is because Dink Smallwood HD expands to fill the entire width of the screen despite having a 4:3 aspect ratio for its contents, so since my screen has an 8:5 aspect ratio (also known as 16:10, slightly taller than 16:9), well, the bottom part still gets cut off since 4:3 would be 16:12 or 8:6. On my 1280x800 screen, Dink Smallwood HD in fullscreen mode thinks it can display things at a resolution of 1280x960, and cuts off the bottom 160 pixels off the bottom edge of the screen.
There IS a workaround. Well actually 2 workarounds. In windowed mode, on my 1280x800 screen, I click on 640x480 in options and that gets things to fit inside the area of the screen below the menu bar and above the Dock, although admittedly things look a bit small. In fullscreen mode, I click on 1024x768 in options and then things look pretty good. Actually very good. Other than the 32 wasted pixels at the bottom of the screen of course. Oh and I CAN click on either 1280x960 or 1920x1080 while in fullscreen mode and the game fills up the entire screen but then the aspect ratio is wrong regardless of aspect ratio setting in the options menu. It would be nice if the game could actually resize to any resolution at all with the correct aspect ratio. This would mean, for instance, that when running in fullscreen mode with a screen height of 800 on a widescreen monitor, it would be 1067x800, since 1067x800 is the biggest resolution with a 4:3 aspect ratio that fits inside the dimensions of 1280x800. That is just one example of course, there are other screen resolutions besides 1280x800 out there, in fact a wide variety. Not on my computer, at least not if we are counting native resolution. But if we are counting all Apple devices there is a very wide variety of native resolutions and it is even wider of a variety if we include PCs as well as Android devices.
Anyway here is a list of common resolutions that actual Apple computers that run macOS on Intel CPUs have as their native resolutions nowadays:
1280x800
1366x768
1440x900
1680x1050
1920x1080
1920x1200
2304x1440
2560x1440
2560x1600
2880x1800
4096x2304
5120x2880
Mine, 1280x800, has the smallest width in pixels out of all of those, but is only second-smallest when it comes to height. Anyway I listed all of those screen resolutions that are common on Mac computers (both laptop and desktop) because, well, the game ought to work well on all those resolutions. Only one I can test it on, on my Mac, is 1280x800, although I can also test it on a PC that is 1920x1080. Anyway I don’t recall having any issues at all with screen resolution on the Windows PC version, it seems to have an easier time of things than the Mac version of Dink Smallwood HD. Then again on Windows I think I tested it on 1920x1080 which is listed there and that is also the original platform for Dink Smallwood and Dink Smallwood HD, we all know how originally it was a Windows-only game prior to GNU FreeDink and Dink Smallwood HD porting it to more platforms.
I think on those higher resolutions it is possible there might be an issue with the game being way too small on the screen on Macs but I dunno since I don’t have a Retina display on my MacBook, mine is pretty low-res. Judging by the options and how things appear to work I would surmise that there probably IS an issue with things being too small on Retina displays just like there are various issues on a 1280x800 display with it not picking the correct size and picking bigger sizes than can fit on the screen. Anyway just wanted to post these issues about Mac display size on your bug list here, it is a real problem on Macs. Yes there are workarounds to get things working but it is annoying since I have to do it every single time I run the program and it doesn’t remember the settings for later. If you want to see something that scales correctly on a Mac, well try playing a video in VLC Media Player, it does things perfectly both in windowed or full-screen mode no problem. Or if you are talking games, well, any game developed with the cross-platform Ren'Py engine for “visual novels” scales very very well on Macs, there are hundreds of free games developed with that, kinda like how there are hundreds of free DMOD games developed with the Dink Smallwood game engine. Well except DMODs tend to take up much less disk space than Ren'Py games thankfully, so you can fit a whole lot more of them on your disk all at once.
Other than problems with screen resolution and scaling of the game there is only one other bug I know of on Dink Smallwood HD on a Mac. It involves the mouse. Sometimes the game thinks you clicked somewhere other than where you actually clicked. This is not in the main menu or options menu at the beginning. It happens once you are actually in the game and press Escape for the in-game menu and try to use the mouse in it, the in-game menu is the one with a bunch of text items listed on separate lines in the middle of the screen, it can also be navigated with the arrow keys and Control key. The arrow keys and Control key work for navigating it on a Mac perfectly fine but the mouse is super-buggy on that menu and almost always if you click the mouse the game thinks you clicked on something else. Actually I just tested and figured it out, no matter where you click the game thinks you are clicking on the thing that is currently on the bottom of the list vertically, with the in-game menus, on Dink Smallwood HD on macOS. So this is the other bug I found, with the in-game menu, no matter where you click it thinks you clicked on the bottom entry on a Mac, thankfully the keyboard works for navigating the in-game menu.
Oh and one other thing, the game is compiled as 32-bit not 64-bit, so it will no longer work on macOS 10.4.x once that version comes out this September. Dink Smallwood HD needs to be compiled as 64-bit, as macOS is going to be a 64-bit-only OS soon.
I guess that makes, umm, 7 bugs in total for Dink Smallwood HD on macOS (the OS formerly known as Mac OS X). 5 of them relate to screen resolution settings and 1 is the one about the mouse and the in-game menu and 1 of them is the 32-bit thing.
1) Game picks wrong resolution, ignores Dock if windowed and displays part of game behind Dock where you can’t see it.
2) Game picks wrong resolution, ignores screen height if fullscreen and takes up entire screen width going off bottom of screen.
3) Option to toggle fullscreen in options of game is broken, fullscreen must be toggled the standard way that macOS usually does it instead but after doing this bug (2) is triggered so the screen size must be changed in options to get things to fit.
4) Aspect ratio setting in options menu is not respected and aspect ratio is ignored when fullscreen even if user does not want it ignored.
5) Resolution settings are not persistent and need to be set every time the game is run rather than being saved permanently.
6) In-game menu that you get by pressing Escape while playing the game always thinks you click on bottom entry when you click mouse instead of actually looking which thing you click on.
7) The program is 32-bit instead of 64-bit which means it will not work at all on macOS 10.14.x or later versions, and the first of those versions comes out September 2018 in just a few months, you need to compile it as 64-bit for better compatibility.
Anyway, so first of all, this website does not even have the macOS version of Dink Smallwood HD which you can find at https://www.rtsoft.com/pages/dink.php. Direct link to the file: http://www.rtsoft.com/dink/DinkSmallwoodHD.dmg
On a Mac they use .dmg instead of .zip files to package downloads and executables are .app instead of .exe files, otherwise it is fairly similar to Windows. So yeah you need to include the macOS download for Dink Smallwood HD here on the Dink Network since actually a lot of people have Mac computers out there, Mac computers don’t have anywhere near as many games available for them as Windows computers, and yet this game both can run on a Mac and is quite a good game.
OK so now that I got out of the way how you need to provide a download for this I will get to the bugs I have found in Dink Smallwood HD on macOS.
When I run the game on my Macbook with its 1280x800 pixel display, with its menu bar on the top and that “Dock” thingie with all the icons on the bottom, well, the available number of pixels vertically between the menu bar and Dock is less than 768. But since there are MORE than 768 pixels below the menu bar if you ignore the Dock, and Dink Smallwood HD ignores the Dock, Dink Smallwood HD runs in a 1024x768 window and the bottom part of it is cut off and unavailable since it is behind the Dock. So the “Back” button in the main window is off the edge and cannot be clicked, unless I set the window size to 640x480.
And now we get to fullscreen where there is a similar problem. First of all, the “Toggle fullscreen (or Alt-Enter)” option in the settings does absolutely NOTHING when it is clicked on. The only way to toggle fullscreen is to go to the macOS menu bar at the top of the screen and in the Window menu, click on “Enter Full Screen” or “Exit Full Screen”... well OK there is one other way too, in the upper left corner of the window are 3 different colored buttons, a red one to close, a yellow one to minimize, and a green one to toggle fullscreen, and the green button in the upper left also works.
But in then in fullscreen mode again we have a similar problem where the bottom of the screen gets cut off only it is even worse. In fullscreen mode it is because Dink Smallwood HD expands to fill the entire width of the screen despite having a 4:3 aspect ratio for its contents, so since my screen has an 8:5 aspect ratio (also known as 16:10, slightly taller than 16:9), well, the bottom part still gets cut off since 4:3 would be 16:12 or 8:6. On my 1280x800 screen, Dink Smallwood HD in fullscreen mode thinks it can display things at a resolution of 1280x960, and cuts off the bottom 160 pixels off the bottom edge of the screen.
There IS a workaround. Well actually 2 workarounds. In windowed mode, on my 1280x800 screen, I click on 640x480 in options and that gets things to fit inside the area of the screen below the menu bar and above the Dock, although admittedly things look a bit small. In fullscreen mode, I click on 1024x768 in options and then things look pretty good. Actually very good. Other than the 32 wasted pixels at the bottom of the screen of course. Oh and I CAN click on either 1280x960 or 1920x1080 while in fullscreen mode and the game fills up the entire screen but then the aspect ratio is wrong regardless of aspect ratio setting in the options menu. It would be nice if the game could actually resize to any resolution at all with the correct aspect ratio. This would mean, for instance, that when running in fullscreen mode with a screen height of 800 on a widescreen monitor, it would be 1067x800, since 1067x800 is the biggest resolution with a 4:3 aspect ratio that fits inside the dimensions of 1280x800. That is just one example of course, there are other screen resolutions besides 1280x800 out there, in fact a wide variety. Not on my computer, at least not if we are counting native resolution. But if we are counting all Apple devices there is a very wide variety of native resolutions and it is even wider of a variety if we include PCs as well as Android devices.
Anyway here is a list of common resolutions that actual Apple computers that run macOS on Intel CPUs have as their native resolutions nowadays:
1280x800
1366x768
1440x900
1680x1050
1920x1080
1920x1200
2304x1440
2560x1440
2560x1600
2880x1800
4096x2304
5120x2880
Mine, 1280x800, has the smallest width in pixels out of all of those, but is only second-smallest when it comes to height. Anyway I listed all of those screen resolutions that are common on Mac computers (both laptop and desktop) because, well, the game ought to work well on all those resolutions. Only one I can test it on, on my Mac, is 1280x800, although I can also test it on a PC that is 1920x1080. Anyway I don’t recall having any issues at all with screen resolution on the Windows PC version, it seems to have an easier time of things than the Mac version of Dink Smallwood HD. Then again on Windows I think I tested it on 1920x1080 which is listed there and that is also the original platform for Dink Smallwood and Dink Smallwood HD, we all know how originally it was a Windows-only game prior to GNU FreeDink and Dink Smallwood HD porting it to more platforms.
I think on those higher resolutions it is possible there might be an issue with the game being way too small on the screen on Macs but I dunno since I don’t have a Retina display on my MacBook, mine is pretty low-res. Judging by the options and how things appear to work I would surmise that there probably IS an issue with things being too small on Retina displays just like there are various issues on a 1280x800 display with it not picking the correct size and picking bigger sizes than can fit on the screen. Anyway just wanted to post these issues about Mac display size on your bug list here, it is a real problem on Macs. Yes there are workarounds to get things working but it is annoying since I have to do it every single time I run the program and it doesn’t remember the settings for later. If you want to see something that scales correctly on a Mac, well try playing a video in VLC Media Player, it does things perfectly both in windowed or full-screen mode no problem. Or if you are talking games, well, any game developed with the cross-platform Ren'Py engine for “visual novels” scales very very well on Macs, there are hundreds of free games developed with that, kinda like how there are hundreds of free DMOD games developed with the Dink Smallwood game engine. Well except DMODs tend to take up much less disk space than Ren'Py games thankfully, so you can fit a whole lot more of them on your disk all at once.
Other than problems with screen resolution and scaling of the game there is only one other bug I know of on Dink Smallwood HD on a Mac. It involves the mouse. Sometimes the game thinks you clicked somewhere other than where you actually clicked. This is not in the main menu or options menu at the beginning. It happens once you are actually in the game and press Escape for the in-game menu and try to use the mouse in it, the in-game menu is the one with a bunch of text items listed on separate lines in the middle of the screen, it can also be navigated with the arrow keys and Control key. The arrow keys and Control key work for navigating it on a Mac perfectly fine but the mouse is super-buggy on that menu and almost always if you click the mouse the game thinks you clicked on something else. Actually I just tested and figured it out, no matter where you click the game thinks you are clicking on the thing that is currently on the bottom of the list vertically, with the in-game menus, on Dink Smallwood HD on macOS. So this is the other bug I found, with the in-game menu, no matter where you click it thinks you clicked on the bottom entry on a Mac, thankfully the keyboard works for navigating the in-game menu.
Oh and one other thing, the game is compiled as 32-bit not 64-bit, so it will no longer work on macOS 10.4.x once that version comes out this September. Dink Smallwood HD needs to be compiled as 64-bit, as macOS is going to be a 64-bit-only OS soon.
I guess that makes, umm, 7 bugs in total for Dink Smallwood HD on macOS (the OS formerly known as Mac OS X). 5 of them relate to screen resolution settings and 1 is the one about the mouse and the in-game menu and 1 of them is the 32-bit thing.
1) Game picks wrong resolution, ignores Dock if windowed and displays part of game behind Dock where you can’t see it.
2) Game picks wrong resolution, ignores screen height if fullscreen and takes up entire screen width going off bottom of screen.
3) Option to toggle fullscreen in options of game is broken, fullscreen must be toggled the standard way that macOS usually does it instead but after doing this bug (2) is triggered so the screen size must be changed in options to get things to fit.
4) Aspect ratio setting in options menu is not respected and aspect ratio is ignored when fullscreen even if user does not want it ignored.
5) Resolution settings are not persistent and need to be set every time the game is run rather than being saved permanently.
6) In-game menu that you get by pressing Escape while playing the game always thinks you click on bottom entry when you click mouse instead of actually looking which thing you click on.
7) The program is 32-bit instead of 64-bit which means it will not work at all on macOS 10.14.x or later versions, and the first of those versions comes out September 2018 in just a few months, you need to compile it as 64-bit for better compatibility.
