BAR Launcher for macOS v0.13

Online play is temporarily disabled, pending approval from the official
Beyond All Reason team. Everything else plays as normal: LAN and
direct-connect games work, including with friends on Windows and Linux, and
skirmish against the AI works. If the online lobby isn't there, that's this —
no need to report it.

What's new since v0.12

The big one: this build is on the current engine

• Updated to engine 2026.07.04, the version Beyond All Reason itself now
  runs. v0.12 was on 2025.06.24, so this brings across months of the game
  team's own engine work as well as everything below, and keeps the Mac build
  lined up with what everyone else is playing.

Fixes you'll notice right away

• The grey box in the bottom-left is gone. Selecting any unit put an empty
  grey panel on screen, in the gap between the minimap and the build menu. It
  has been there since the very first release. Under the hood: the app was
  never shipping one small engine configuration file (LuaUI/ctrlpanel.txt).
  Without it the engine falls back to drawing its own command panel underneath
  BAR's interface. Windows and Linux installs have always included it, so this
  was a Mac-only packaging mistake rather than an engine bug.
• The in-game interface draws properly again. On some maps every panel lost
  its background — the build menu, minimap frame, player list and top bar showed
  their text and icons floating over the terrain, which made the UI almost
  unreadable. The main menu was fine, which is what made it look random. Under
  the hood: after the engine recompiled a map's terrain shader it checked the
  program before restoring its texture settings, and then refused to restore
  them because the check had failed — which left plain untextured drawing broken
  game-wide; engine Shader.cpp.
• Health bars, build-progress bars and build/reclaim particles are back
  (#9). On v0.12 the nano spray only appeared with Particle type set to
  "simple", and the bars were missing whatever you did. Under the hood: Apple
  GPUs have no geometry-shader stage, but the graphics stack accepted those
  shaders and silently drew nothing; the engine now tests the stage at startup
  and uses the game's ordinary versions instead — same visuals, no measurable
  cost (82.7 fps either way on the arena bench).
• Water and shadows are on by default on a fresh install. Beyond All Reason
  reads any Apple GPU as a low-end card and turns them off on first launch, so
  Macs were quietly running the low-detail preset. New installs now get the
  proper defaults; if you have already set your own, they are left alone. The
  real fix belongs in the game and has been reported upstream.
• The mouse pointer no longer sits on top of the game until you switch away
  and back.
• Interface elements sit in the right place on Retina displays — a few
  widgets could be positioned off-screen or in the wrong corner.
• Turning screen-edge scrolling off now actually turns it off. Setting the
  edge-scroll width to zero used to leave a one-pixel strip live, so the view
  could still creep if the pointer sat against the edge.

Matching the official game exactly (sync)

In plain terms: the Mac version runs the game logic identically to the
Windows and Linux versions, down to the last bit. Unlike previous releases this
one does change the simulation — it moves to a new engine version — so it was
re-checked from scratch rather than assumed.

What was verified for this build:

• Identical to Windows and Linux, including both Intel and ARM machines, on
  the game's own cross-platform check — the same simulation fingerprint on every
  platform.
• Eight real multiplayer games from the public replay site re-run
  frame-for-frame (about 302,000 frames) and matched exactly, including large
  16-player team games and Raptors and Scavengers matches. Those games were
  played on Windows and Linux; the Mac build reproduces them move for move.
• The maths library the simulation depends on is bit-identical to the official
  builds'.
• Live cross-platform games, played both ways — a Mac hosting with a Windows
  PC joining, and a Windows PC hosting with the Mac joining. Both ran to a
  natural finish, in step the whole way, with no desync.

This is also what online play is waiting on: the port matches the official
builds bit for bit, and the remaining step is the BAR team's sign-off.

Source for this release

• Everything that changed since v0.12:
  v0.12...v0.13
  — 453 commits across 300 files. Both ends are tags, so this link keeps showing
  exactly this release's changes no matter how far main moves on.
  Most of that count is the engine bump itself: moving from 2025.06.24 to
  2026.07.04 brings across months of the Beyond All Reason team's own engine
  work alongside the Mac-specific fixes. GitHub will describe the two tags as
  "diverged" because the port's branch was rebased onto the new engine rather
  than merged.
• This release is built from a49a8ec,
  which is what the v0.13 tag points at.

BAR Launcher for macOS v0.12

• Online play: disabled in this build (LAN / direct-connect unaffected)

What's new since v0.11

Fixes you'll notice right away

• Fullscreen and windowing actually work now. Fullscreen, borderless, and
  windowed all come up at the right size on the monitor you're using — no more
  oversized windows, windows jumping to another display, or "Fullscreen"
  launching as a plain window (#7, #13). Under the hood: the Mac window code now
  lets the system (SDL's FULLSCREEN_DESKTOP) own sizing and display choice
  instead of hand-rolled math; engine 4e91c00ce2.
• Screen-edge scrolling works on every edge, in every mode (#7). Pushing the
  cursor to the right or bottom edge now scrolls the camera like it should, and
  on a multi-monitor setup the pointer no longer slips onto the next screen
  before the edge triggers.
• No more giant blue triangle or garbled graphics (#14, and the same cause
  behind #6 and #8). The map, units, and text now render cleanly on M2 Air and
  M2 Ultra. Under the hood: a driver bug read vertices at a stale stride;
  fixed in the KosmicKrisp/zink driver, testcard shows zero contamination.
• The selection box and minimap box are outlines again (#2), not solid
  filled rectangles covering what you're trying to look at.
• Big battles stutter less (#5). The game no longer freezes the picture for
  about a second while the simulation catches up in huge fights. (Applied to
  new installs only — if you've tuned these settings yourself, they're left
  alone.)
• Switching audio output no longer crashes the game (#12) — e.g. plugging in
  headphones or changing the output device mid-match.

Play against the AI

• Skirmish AI (the BARb bot) is now included and runs natively on Apple
  Silicon, so you can play skirmish/AI games (#1, #4). This is verified in
  testing — a quick confirmation in your own games is welcome.

Performance

• A little more GPU headroom on Apple GPUs, with no change to how the game
  looks — measured +3.7% frame-rate on an M2 Air (+1.7% on an M2 Ultra;
  bigger gains where the GPU is the bottleneck). Helps the beyond-all-reason#15 GPU-bound cases.
  Under the hood: enabled zink renderpass (tile load/store) merging for
  KosmicKrisp, mesa patch 0013; byte-identical rendering, bit-exact
  simulation, A/B-measured on a real battle scene on both Macs.

Install & updates

• Windowed by default on a fresh install, at a sensible size — no more a huge
  5K window filling a MacBook Air on first launch. Existing setups are untouched.
• Clearer download progress and a friendlier label — it now reads
  "Downloading Beyond All Reason (latest)…" instead of the raw content tag.
• Content updates track the correct live version now. In v0.11 the launcher
  could update the wrong content tag and leave you on stale files; v0.12 follows
  the same tag the official game does.
• "Skip update" is only offered when there is a game to play without it.
  Upgrading from v0.11 means downloading the real game files for the first time,
  and skipping that would leave you with nothing playable — so the button stays
  hidden until a complete install is on disk.

Heads-up for this build

• Online multiplayer is turned off in v0.12 (it was on in v0.11) while
  cross-platform sync is re-validated for the online fast-follow. LAN and
  direct-connect games are unaffected.

Still imperfect / not a Mac-port bug

• Empty end-game awards screen vs AI (#3) is a bug in the Beyond All Reason
  game itself (BAR beyond-all-reason#516), not the Mac port — it happens on the official build
  too, so the fix has to land upstream, after which the port inherits it.
• Late-game slowdown on fanless MacBook Airs (beyond-all-reason#15): the GPU tweak above helps
  early/GPU-bound scenes, but heavy late-game is limited by the game's simulation
  on the CPU — the same wall every platform hits, not a Mac-specific problem.
  Fanless Airs also throttle as they heat up over a long game.
• A trackpad-scroll quirk and an occasional crosshair drop — reported but
  not yet reproduced; still investigating.

Matching the official game exactly (sync)

In plain terms: the Mac version runs the game logic identically to the
Windows/Linux versions, down to the last bit — so replays play back correctly
and (when it returns) online multiplayer stays in step with everyone else. This
is checked every build, not assumed.

Technically: the simulation is verified bit-identical via the streflop
sync-test and in cross-platform lockstep against Windows over LAN with zero
desync in both host directions. The Apple-GPU speed-ups in this release
(fast-math shader mode, renderpass merging) are rendering-only and are proven not
to change any synced simulation checksum — staying in sync is a hard requirement,
upheld whether or not a build ships with online enabled.

Install

1. Open the .dmg and drag BAR Launcher to Applications.
2. Launch normally (double-click) — the build is notarized, so Gatekeeper opens
   it without the right-click → Open workaround.
3. The launcher downloads BAR's official content on first run — allow a few
   minutes on first launch.

Verify your download

6975ec95a556608b8d4d1b852ad7d198380b6c33bf9cec091553ff3cf9589210  BAR-Launcher-v0.12.dmg
d013bdd21978d56bf46c9adbd4aa17d7e0bfcb90cbf813e7160b4e581edfd4b2  BAR-Launcher-v0.12.zip

BAR Launcher for macOS v0.11

Caution

Unofficial port — third-party game content and code. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Recoil engine team or the Beyond All Reason project. The game is not included in this download: the app fetches Beyond All Reason — including executable game code that the engine runs, along with assets, and possibly other components in future — from BAR's official content network on first launch (after an explicit consent prompt) and may auto-update it later. That code and content is not hosted, vetted, or endorsed by this project's maintainer, who accepts no responsibility for it or for any damage it may cause — install and play AT YOUR OWN RISK. Downloads use HTTPS and rapid content-hash verification, which protect integrity in transit but do not vet the content itself. If you believe game content is malicious, report it to the BAR project.

Important

ONLINE PLAY IS CURRENTLY DISABLED in this build while approval to connect to Beyond All Reason's community servers is sought from the game's creators. Skirmish vs AI, replays, and local-network (LAN) games all work. The online lobby opens on a sign-in screen — just press Cancel; signing in will not reach the server, by design. I hope to enable online play very soon — when that happens the launcher will tell you on startup, with no re-download needed for the unlock announcement.

BAR Launcher for macOS — v0.11

First public release of the unofficial Recoil engine port for Apple Silicon Macs, packaged to download and play Beyond All Reason.

Downloads

Artifact	What it is
BAR-Launcher-v0.11.dmg	The app most people want: open, drag to Applications, play BAR (vs AI / replays / LAN — see note above). Signed + notarized.
BAR-Launcher-v0.11.zip	The same app as a plain zip.
Recoil-macos-2025.06.24-port0.11.zip	Engine-only build (spring, spring-headless, pr-downloader + bundled Vulkan driver) for other Recoil/Spring games or your own tooling. No BAR configuration or branding.

SHA256SUMS.txt covers all artifacts.

Highlights

• Native Apple Silicon engine build (no Rosetta), Vulkan via Mesa Zink + KosmicKrisp, tuned for Apple GPUs.
• Sync-certified simulation — bit-exact against official Windows/Linux builds (16-player and PvE replays re-simulated identically), so it's ready for cross-platform online play the moment it's switched on.
• Skirmish vs AI, replays, LAN all work; the launcher downloads and updates game content on launch (consent asked first).
• Signed, notarized, drag-to-install DMG.

Install

1. Download BAR-Launcher-v0.11.dmg, open it, drag BAR Launcher to Applications.
2. First launch downloads the game (~a few GB) after a consent prompt.
3. Play (skirmish vs AI, replays, LAN — online is disabled for now, see above).

Requires an Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or newer).

Feedback / bugs

This is an unofficial port. Please do not report issues with this build to the official Beyond All Reason or Recoil trackers — open an issue here instead (the bug form tells you exactly what to attach).