NULLFRONT 0.8 — A Living Front

Installation help: This build requires an Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or newer), macOS 14+. It is not Apple-notarized, so macOS may block the first launch. Read the step-by-step installation and troubleshooting guide before opening it.

NULLFRONT 0.8 — A living front

Three new battlefields

• Cascade Highlands: waterfalls pour off the plateau into the void, with a lake and forest lanes.
• Riverwood Crossing: a river runs through the centre, and armies wade across the fords.
• Emerald Basin: lakes and streams in low, forested ground.
• All three have rolling hills and procedural forests, with clear lanes guaranteed between every base. The maps are point-mirrored for fairness.

Living battles (Watch Battle)

• Reinforcements keep arriving by faction: Concord orbital drops, Bloom eruptions and Lumen light pillars. Heroes land in slow motion.
• Destroyed units burn and smoke. Bloom leaves bile pools and Lumen leaves light motes.
• Weather per world: Frostglass snow, Ashfall embers, and falling leaves and pollen on the new maps.

Movement and feel

• Characters blend idle, walk and run by their real ground speed, so their feet stay planted.
• They lean into turns and acceleration, rock back when braking, step when turning on the spot, flinch in the upper body when hit, and glance around when idle.
• Turning is smoothed instead of rotating at a constant rate.

Visuals

• Trees, bushes, rocks, pebbles and round props are rebuilt as smooth, organically shaped geometry.
• Cliff edges follow smoothed contours, and terrain shading comes from the real surface.
• Water has a clean sky reflection and sun glint.
• Every battlefield has its own lighting and atmosphere.

Interface

• Redesigned start screen: a live battle stays visible behind it, with new typography, expanding faction cards, battlefield tiles and a Deploy button.
• At full zoom-out, units show team-coloured markers by class (infantry, heavy, air, worker, hero) and structures show outlines.
• The game now opens straight to the start screen. The intro film is still available from Intro Film on the start screen.

Native macOS game; Apple Silicon, macOS 14 or newer. Ad-hoc signed, not notarized.

Validation: The combat (26 checks), controls, effects pool, campaign rules and campaign playtest suites passed; the campaign playtest reported 0 failures. Packaged battle samples on Apple M4/16GB at 1280×720, Balanced profile, about 30 seconds each after a five-second warmup: Lumen–Bloom on Emerald Basin 59.7 fps (1 frames over 33 ms, 0 over 50 ms); Concord–Bloom on Ashfall Mesa 59.0 fps (0 frames over 33 ms, 0 over 50 ms). These are bounded measurements, not a hardware guarantee.

Download the named Mac ZIP to play. GitHub’s automatic source archives contain the website and documentation.

NULLFRONT 0.6.1 — Unit Identity & Surface Shading

Installation help: This build requires an Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or newer), macOS 14+. It is not Apple-notarized, so macOS may block the first launch. Read the step-by-step installation and troubleshooting guide before opening it.

NULLFRONT 0.6.1 — Unit identity and surface shading

• Lancer: dedicated shoulder launcher, ammunition pack and heavy armor silhouette; projectile origin follows launcher.
• Voss: commander armor and distinct weapon.
• Blightcaller, Veyla, Cantor and Aurelion: distinct animated role equipment, crowns and back silhouettes. Base skeletons and bodies remain shared within these groups.
• The same role equipment appears in unit portraits.
• Hero proportions no longer receive the previous excessive size multiplier.
• All nine animated body assets preserve authored surface normals; existing skeletons and materials are retained.
• Art audit now reports shared base meshes explicitly rather than calling coverage proof of visual uniqueness.

Native macOS game; Apple Silicon, macOS 14 or newer. Ad-hoc signed, not notarized.

Validation: 47 art types present, seven role equipment checks passed, three distinct Concord weapon meshes, 26 combat checks and the control suite passed. Final packaged battle samples on Apple M4/16GB at 1280×720 Balanced: Concord–Bloom 59.958 fps, Lumen–Bloom 59.548 fps. Each measured about 30 seconds after a five-second warmup; the Lumen–Bloom sample had two frames over 33 ms and none over 50 ms. These are bounded measurements, not a hardware guarantee.

Download the named Mac ZIP to play. GitHub’s automatic source archives contain the website and documentation.

NULLFRONT 0.6.0 — A Living Frontier

NULLFRONT 0.6.0 — A Living Frontier

The visual overhaul now covers all 47 roster types, including all 23 buildings. Concord's industrial armor, Bloom's living structures, and Lumen's ceramic-and-metal architecture have distinct detailed silhouettes and physically based materials.

• 36 new original models: 34 roster replacements and two environment models for basalt formations and ancient ruins. Decorative crystal scenery reuses the new resource-crystal model.
• Four newly rigged units—Sporeling, Spitter, Broodling, and Luminar—with 20 matching idle, walk, run, attack, and death clips.
• Separate worker tools, aircraft wings, and defensive turret assemblies support visible work, flight, and aiming motion.
• Revised battlefield lighting and material response, with clearer team lights and hit flashes.
• Smoke, fire, dust, and impact effects use textured density sprites, with revised weapon-origin placement and attack timing.
• Detailed rock, crystal, and ruined architectural scenery replaces remaining simple decorative forms.

Heavy attacks now have readable, cancelable wind-ups; fast units can sidestep the Luminar’s committed beam lane. Target acquisition includes legal edge-range hits, dead targets are replaced promptly, and AI regrouping respects units already fighting. Bracing, recoil, hit reactions, distinct flight motion, settled wreckage, prioritized impact lighting, and a more responsive audio mix strengthen battle feedback.

The control pass removes the 60-unit selection limit, makes F1 cycle through idle workers, keeps failed ability targeting available for correction, and lets manual camera movement or zoom suspend automatic cinematic framing.

A performance pass adds a Balanced default and four saved graphics profiles with a 60 fps frame limit. Dynamic lighting updates have bounded per-frame budgets. Effects update instance data without rebuilding their render state, mobile units avoid costly indirect-light captures while retaining received lighting and direct shadows, and invisible fallback models are no longer instantiated. Repeated AI/pathfinding work is reduced; recorded combat audio streams in bounded chunks with equivalent samples.

The four-chapter Quiet Meridian campaign, opening cinematic, skirmish modes, map objectives, and existing controls remain part of the game. This is an original single-player RTS for Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 14 or later.

Models, textures, animations, and the pre-rendered opening use generated media. The opening cinematic is not gameplay footage. Gameplay runs locally and requires no service account or internet connection.

This release uses an ad-hoc signature and is not Apple-notarized.

NULLFRONT 0.5 — The Quiet Meridian

The Quiet Meridian adds a four-chapter single-player story campaign. Lead Ada Voss through relay recovery, civilian evacuation, resonator strikes, and the final assault on the Meridian Heart. Illustrated briefings, mission objectives, field dialogue, debriefs, retries, and saved chapter unlocks carry the story from opening to ending. Press F6 at the title screen to begin.

• Detailed, textured faction infantry with skeletal idle, running, attack, and death animations, smooth pose transitions, and animated weapon handling.
• New Warden and Behemoth heavy characters, a Hammer tank with an independently aiming turret, and a hovering Lancet construct.
• Heavy footfalls and dust, layered combat effects, and a cinematic battle camera that moves between wider fighting and closer engagements. F9 launches an actual AI battle; F8 switches the camera and command interface.
• A short generated opening cinematic, included in the app. It is pre-rendered imagery, separate from gameplay footage. Press any key to skip; F7 at the title screen replays it.

Download NULLFRONT-0.5.0-macOS-arm64.zip. Requires Apple Silicon and macOS 14 or newer. Extract it, move NULLFRONT.app into Applications, and open it. The campaign, skirmishes, music, effects, and intro run locally without an account. The download is a native macOS game; the website presents the game and its media.

Completed chapters save automatically. Retrying restarts a mission, and returning to the title screen retains chapter unlocks; battles do not have mid-mission saves. The included FIELD-MANUAL.md covers all three original factions, both battlefields, campaign objectives, and controls.

As with 0.4.0, this early public preview is ad-hoc signed and not notarized by Apple. If macOS blocks launch, follow Apple’s Open Anyway guidance.

The download is 545 MiB; the installed app uses approximately 889 MiB. The Shipping build, app signatures, and fresh ZIP extraction passed verification. The packaged cinematic replay, campaign selector/briefing/deployment, and development battle motion were checked. All 19 campaign-rule checks and an automated ordinary-command playthrough of all four chapters passed; a complete manual campaign playthrough has not been performed.

SHA-256: bed154f5a03bfa739a7a5c7eaf988a247c45ae49ea09bf37f55d94bd2d251f0a. The archive includes a field manual and first-launch instructions; SHA256SUMS-0.5.0.txt is also available below.

Website · Field manual

NULLFRONT 0.4 — Feel every clash

Battles now have articulated infantry aiming, alien claw strikes, directional hit reactions, and a closer camera that follows the fighting. Press F9 at the title screen to watch an immediate clash of infantry, armor, and aircraft; F8 returns to command.

• Light-reactive smoke, hex-pattern shield ripples, environmental glow, and map-specific atmospheric particles.
• Scorched ground, tumbling model-part debris, lingering wreckage, and secondary explosions.
• Two original stereo soundtrack cues that crossfade with combat intensity, plus six new weapon and explosion effects with directional sound and distance filtering.
• The website includes an Onslaught soundtrack preview and updated controls.

Download NULLFRONT-0.4.0-macOS-arm64.zip to play. Requires an Apple Silicon Mac and macOS 14 or newer. The archive is approximately 428 MiB; the installed application is approximately 770 MiB. Extract it, move NULLFRONT.app to Applications, and open it. Music and effects are included locally; no service account is needed.

This is an early public preview, ad-hoc signed and not notarized by Apple. If macOS blocks launch, review Apple’s Open Anyway instructions. Browser play, Intel Mac, Windows, and online multiplayer are not included.

Validation: Shipping build and asset cooking passed; the packaged app and a fresh extraction passed signature verification. Native battle, camera-switch, and pause/resume checks passed. An extended battle test crossed the music loop boundary without a crash. SHA256SUMS.txt is included for download verification.

Website · Field manual

NULLFRONT 0.3.0 — Cinematic Mac Preview

The first public NULLFRONT: Frontier Wars Mac release, including the cinematic graphics update.

Download NULLFRONT-0.3.0-macOS-arm64.zip below to play. Requires an Apple Silicon Mac and macOS 14 or newer. This is a native download, not a browser game.

In this build

• Three original factions and two battlefields.
• AI skirmishes, four difficulty levels, and an AI spectator mode.
• Rapid Deployment, a capturable relay objective, and Classic Build-up.
• Detailed terrain, redesigned faction structures, atmospheric lighting, layered explosions, smoke, embers, and energy effects.
• F8 cinematic camera with automatic battle framing in spectator mode.

Installation

Extract the ZIP, move NULLFRONT.app to Applications, and open it. Choose a faction and press Enter. The ZIP includes the field manual.

Early build: the app is ad-hoc signed and is not notarized by Apple. macOS may block the first launch. If you choose to run it, use Apple’s official instructions to allow this app through Privacy & Security. Do not disable system-wide protections.

The app requires about 750 MiB after extraction. Windows, Intel Mac, browser play, and online multiplayer are not included. SHA256SUMS.txt verifies the downloadable files. GitHub’s automatic Source code archives contain the public website/docs, not the playable game.

Game website · Field manual