A focused follow-up to v0.6.0: an experimental macOS build, automatic crash reports, and one-click client downloads from your own server. We'd love help testing the macOS and Linux clients! 🚀
🍎 Experimental macOS build — ⚠️ needs validation, help wanted!
The game now builds a native macOS .app (StandaloneOSX), shipped as a portable zip — so Justus (and you!) can try it on a Mac.
We haven't been able to test it on real hardware yet — it builds and packages cleanly in CI, but that only proves it compiles, not that it runs. If you have a Mac, please help: grab BlocksBeyondTheStars-osx-0.6.1-Portable.zip below and run through the quick checklist in issue #87 — even "it bounced in the dock and quit" is useful. 🙏
- Intel x64 (runs on Apple Silicon via Rosetta 2).
- Unsigned & un-notarized, so macOS quarantines it: right-click → Open, or run
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine BlocksBeyondTheStars.apponce.
🐧 Native Linux — still fresh, testers welcome!
The native Linux client (new in v0.6.0) is still young, and this release adds a one-click Linux download from the server portal. If you're on Linux, we'd love a hands-on report — see issue #86.
🛡️ Automatic crash reporting
The server tick is hardened so one bad event can't bring the whole world down, and both server and client now write opt-in crash reports (with a PII scrubber) so we can find and fix problems faster. Nothing is sent unless you opt in.
⬇️ One-click client downloads from your server
The dedicated-server portal now hands out the Windows, Linux (AppImage) and experimental macOS clients directly — players open the server's portal page and click their platform. The container fetches the latest builds from the GitHub Release automatically (best-effort, each platform independent).
👨👩👦 Made for kids — and for the community
- README, Code of Conduct, in-game Credits and the Codex now clearly state the kid-friendly intent (no inappropriate content; profanity filter + report button as safeguards).
- A friendly "star the repo" invitation and a Let's Play video link.
⚙️ Under the hood
- Faster, cleaner release CI: the version is resolved once and shared across all jobs, the Docker image build no longer waits on the Windows build, and overlapping release runs are serialized.
- A dedicated slim macOS CI workflow for quick platform iteration.
- Removed the last dead arcade HTML/JS; minigame + wiki data moved under
data/. - New Playtest report issue template.
⬇️ Downloads
- Windows: Setup.exe · MSI · Portable.zip
- Linux: AppImage
- macOS (experimental — help us test it!):
BlocksBeyondTheStars-osx-0.6.1-Portable.zip(unsigned — see the Gatekeeper note above) - Dedicated server: self-hostable (Windows / Linux x64 / Linux arm64) + Docker image
🐳 Docker (dedicated server)
Run the dedicated server (game server + admin/portal/download UI, optional AI backend) on any OS with Docker:
docker pull ghcr.io/marceld23/blocks-beyond-the-stars-server:0.6.1
# or the rolling tag:
docker pull ghcr.io/marceld23/blocks-beyond-the-stars-server:latestSetup & configuration: SELF_HOSTING.md §10.
What's Changed
- feat: serve native Linux client (AppImage) from server portal, drop WebGL stub by @marceld23 in #83
- feat(ci): experimental macOS client build (StandaloneOSX) by @marceld23 in #84
- chore(issues): add Playtest report issue template by @marceld23 in #85
- feat: automatic crash reporting (server + client) by @marceld23 in #103
- chore: remove dead HTML/JS arcade, move catalog+articles into data/ by @marceld23 in #104
- fix(macos): Microphone Usage Description + slim macOS CI workflow by @marceld23 in #105
- chore(release-ci): single version job, decouple docker, add concurrency by @marceld23 in #106
- feat(portal): offer the macOS client download via server portal by @marceld23 in #107
- docs: record v0.6.0 + post-release work in TODO.md and README by @marceld23 in #108
- docs: signal kid-friendly intent (README, CoC, in-game credits & Codex) by @marceld23 in #109
- docs: charmingly invite GitHub stars to grow the community by @marceld23 in #110
Full Changelog: v0.6.0...v0.6.1
