Clunky Hero Mac OS
A platformer metroidvania with a touch of RPG and tons of humor!
Introduction
I began playing Dungeons & Dragons in grade school, and I used Apple computers almost as long. I started writing up adventures on my Apple II and printing them on an dot matrix printer, took a brief sojourn into the world of Windows PCs during and after college, and then returned to the Mac with the release of Mac OS X.
To that point, there are many alternative Linux platforms that are more efficient than Mac OS, users just aren't as comfortable with them (and they lack as much support). Most can afford and operate a windows machine with little computer knowledge, and that is why windows is so big I also wouldn't necessarily compare a work machine to a personal. Linux is a highly customizable and open source operating system giving system administrators the options to change almost anything they want about how the OS functions. There are so many different versions that if you need the OS to do something, there is a decent chance that that use has already been developed by other organizations. MacOS Big Sur elevates the most advanced desktop operating system in the world to a new level of power and beauty. Experience Mac to the fullest with a refined new design. Enjoy the biggest Safari update ever. Discover new features for Maps and Messages. And get even more transparency around your privacy. Support CLUNKY HERO on Kickstarter! CLUNKY HERO is a platformer metroidvania with a touch of RPG an.
My Macs remains a critical component of my game, as I use it for everything from creating characters to writing adventures to tracking combat. What’s changed over time is the decline in Mac-specific utilities. In the early days of Mac OS X there were a slew of Mac-specific utilities and tools, foremost among them being Crystal Ball. Crystal Ball was a Mac-specific campaign manager and character creator for D&D 3rd Edition, with aspects of that game’s system resource document built in. There were also utilities for randomly generating cities and villages, constructing battle maps, and more.
Clunky Hero Mac Os Download
Two things drove the decline of these platform-specific utilities:
- Java-based, system-agnostic utilities: The Mac market was never as big as the Windows one, plus a good number of RPG geeks run Linux. Native apps didn’t make sense in the long run … if you could create a system agnostic that could run just as well.
- The rise of tablets: The iPad and its tablet kin were what gamers had wanted for years: a way to read game PDFs on the go. At the same time, their portable and niche nature made them an obvious choice for purpose-built, easy-to-use apps.
- The dominance of the Web: A lot of generic utility apps, and even character creators, have migrated to the Web.
What we find on the Mac today tend to be OS-agnostic applications, which brings with them a different set of challenges. macOS prefers to run applications from the Mac App Store and requires you to override certain security settings to download unsigned apps from the Internet. It’s a reasonable control, given how trojan viruses and worms can spread, and it requires the security complacent Mac to make absolutely sure they know where they’re getting their apps from.
I’m always looking for websites and tools to add to this page. If you have one, email me at nuketown@gmail.com.
Clunky Hero Mac Os X
My Setup
The Computer: A Mac Book Pro (2.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB) running the latest macOS. It’s the workhorse machine I used to do most of my game prep.
The Tablet: A iPad Air 2 (64 GB). Used to read game PDFs, run modules at the table, control playlists on my Mac, and jot down notes.
The iPhone: An iPhone 7 (128 GB). My primary means of documenting the game, either for blogging or restoring the battle map prior to a game session
The Watch: Apple Watch Series 3. Used to tell time during the game (it’s unlikely there will be any RPG utilities for this)
My Campaign Regime
I’ve settled on a couple of different tools for managing my D&D campaigns with my Mac:
Campaign notes: I write my adventures and campaign notes using Typora, a Markdown editor for the Mac. I keep track of my campaign calendar and character experience using a spreadsheet on Google Drive. I also use Google Drive to collaborate with other game masters on big campaign events where two or more of us will be running concurrent games. Finally, I use Google Keep as my scratchpad for the random campaign ideas that I get throughout the day. In addition to the web app, Keep has local versions for macOS and iOS.
Character Creation (D&D 5th Edition): I use Forged Anvil, an Excel-based, fan-built spreadsheet for character creation. Unlike earlier Excel spreadsheets for D&D 3.x and Pathfinder, I’ve had no issues with macro compatibility when using Forged Anvil.
Combat tracking: Microsoft Excel is my go-to tool for tracking combats (specifically hit points, battle field conditions, and experience earned).
Overland mapping: I created a ton of maps using ProFantasy’s Campaign Cartographer (Windows only) but in the last year I’ve switched to using the platform agnostic Hexographer.
RPG Utilities
Dungeonographer: A robust Java-based mapping tool for creating dungeon maps. You can use it to create battle maps, one-page dungeons, and even random dungeons … complete with room descriptions! It’s a companion tool to Hexographer.
Hero Lab:Originally a Windows-only tool, Hero Lab is now available for Mac as well. It’s popular with my gaming group because it supports some of our favorite RPGs, including Pathfinder, Savage Worlds, Call of Cthulhu, Mutants & Masterminds, d20 System, 4th Edition, and World of Darkness. The drawback is its printing; the default character sheet templates are limiting, and don’t organize things as well as your typical print character sheet. Still it’s a worthwhile investment if you have complicated character concepts or need to throw together quick-and-dirty non-player characters for your campaign.
Hexographer:As the name implies, Hexographer is all about making hex-based maps, like the classic World of Greyhawk map or the expansive Wilderlands of High Fantasy map set. It’s a Java-based tool that’s available for free online, and offline as part of a premium download. I’ve played around with the online version had some fun with it; when I have a project that demands hex maps I’ll buy the premium edition. It’s a companion tool to Dungeonographer.
PC Gen: PC Gen is a Java-based, open-source character generator that incorporates the D&D 3.5 core rules, as well as numerous d20 game systems and supplements. Because it is Java-based, it can be run on Mac, Windows and Linux operating systems.
I used PC Gen a lot during my d20 days, but it eventually fell by the wayside as Excel-based spreadsheets like ForgedAnvil rose to the fore. The tool’s great strength is its support for a wide variety of d20 rule sets; the greatest weakness is its often-clunky interface.
RPTools: RPTools offers a suite of Java-based programs to enhance your role-playing game sessions. MapTool is used to create an online game table (though I’ve heard of folks who project its maps in their game room for local play). TokenTool is used to make tokens for digital battlemaps, while InitiativeTool helps keep track of combat. It also has tools for character management and dice rolling.
VASSAL Game Engine:A Java-based tool for playing board and card games online that is available with a Mac installer. There are a tremendous number of modules for the game including a variety of war games, Arkham Horror, Battlestar Galactica, Axis and Allies, and many, many more.
Mac Gaming Web Sites
Inside Mac Games: News and previews about games and gaming-related hardware for the Macintosh. There are also online forums, desktop themes, and a files section where you can download the latest Mac demos.
Mad Irishman: Character sheets for 25+ gaming systems, including Dungeons & Dragons, Arcana Unearthed, Spycraft, Gamma World, Call of Cthulhu, and Traveller. All of the sheets are downloadable in Adobe Acrobat format, and were created on a Mac.
Sean Reynold’s RPG Files: Sean Reynolds is a prolific RPG writer who created a bunch of excellent source books for Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms. He has Excel spreadsheets for generating gear, magical staffs and magical weapons. Of particular interest to Mac fans — especially older ones — are his HyperCard stacks. They are created for Apple’s Hypercard, a database program that used to ship on old Macs, and which is all but extinct now.
The great Intel sell-out is now complete with Apple today revealing the new Mac Pro workstation. The Mac Pro - codenamed 'Hero', incidentally - runs on a pair of Intel's latest dual-core Xeon server processors, giving it plenty of horsepower to handle the clunky Safari browser. The box offers up twice the performance of older IBM chip-based Power Mac G5s.
Apple's black-shirted crusader, Steve Jobs, revealed the system to customers at the company's developer conference in San Francisco. 'Today the Power Mac is going to fade into history,' he said, going on to describe the Mac Pro as a 'beautiful machine.'
Apple has now finished off its switch from Power architecture chips over to Intel's x86 processors. But it wasn't all hardware at the developer conference today. Apple also talked up its upcoming 'Leopard' version of the Mac OS X operating system.
Before we get to the spots, let's have a look at the Mac Pro. The shiny kit boats a pair of Xeons (2GHz, 2.66GHz or 3.0GHz), eight FB-DIMM memory slots, support for the latest Nvidia and ATI GPUs, four hard drive bays and a 16x SuperDrive. There's also an additional, open optical drive bay if you happen to need another SuperDrive.
The system starts at $2,499 for a 'standard' configuration but dips to $2,199 with the 2.0GHz chips.
To complement the desktop box, Apple also announced a new version of its Xserve server that also runs on the fresh Xeons from Intel.
'Configurable with two Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors running either 2.0, 2.66 or 3.0 GHz, the new Xserve supports up to 32GB of 667 MHz DDR2 ECC FB-DIMM memory with twice the capacity and three times the bandwidth of the Xserve G5,' Apple said. 'Two eight-lane PCI Express expansion slots provide up to 2GB/s of throughput each to support the next generation of fibre channel, networking and graphics cards. Apple delivers industry-leading storage flexibility with support for up to three 3Gb/s SATA or SAS drives that can achieve an unrivaled 2.25TB of hot-plug storage in a 1U server while advanced thermal management capabilities take advantage of the low power of the Intel processors, running as low as 65W.'
This system will start shipping in October at $3,000 and up.
On the Leopard front, Apple has found another nice way to poke fun at Microsoft. While talking up Leopard, Apple executives made sure to point out how Microsoft's upcoming Vista operating system copies a number of features already found in Mac OS X.
With Leopard, which is set to arrive in the spring of next year, Apple should extend its lead over Microsoft. The company today showed off an application called Time Machine that will handle automatic data backups and restores. Leopard will also include full native 64-bit software support, anti-phishing tools in Mail and Safari, an automatic firewall, new parental controls with time limits and remote administration, a faster version of the Spotlight search tool (which puts things such as Google Desktop to shame), and a refined version of Boot Camp.
With Leopard coming out and the Intel shift complete, Apple will be under more pressure than ever to show that it can take back some meaningful market share from Microsoft and the PC crowd. A lot of the performance and price knocks against Apple have been lessened via the Intel makeover. And it's pretty clear that Microsoft remains in catchup mode on the operating system front, even after Vista ships.
Of course, there's nothing horribly wrong with remaining the BMW of the computing scene. But you'd have to believe Apple would like to make the most of its chip transition and possible iPod carry over sales.
On a historical note, the completed Intel capitulation would have put a smile on Intel co-founder Bob Noyce's face were he alive today. Noyce was one of the first investors in Apple, and Jobs used to sleep on Noyce's couch.
As Noyce's wife Ann Bowers recalls in Leslie Berlin's biography on Noyce The Man Behind the Microchip,
'Steve would regularly appear at our house on his motorcycle. Soon he and Bob were disappearing into the basement, talking about projects.'
Noyce treated Jobs 'like a kid, but not in a patronizing way. He would let him come and go, crash in the corner. We would feed him and bring him along to events and to ski in Aspen.'
As Jobs tells it, 'I remember him teaching me how to ski better. And he was interested in - fascinated by - the personal computer, and we talked a lot about that. Bob was the soul of Intel, and (he wanted) to smell that second wonderful era of the valley, the semiconductor companies leading into the computer.'
And what a smell it was. ®