As of MacOS Catalina, Macintosh computers no longer support 32-bit Apps. This is unfortunate, because the Eschalon series is written in a defunct language called BlitzMax, which is no longer supported and never had a 64-bit compiler.
What that means is the Eschalon games are not going to work on the latest version of MacOS. Perhaps some clever person will develop a 32-bit emulator for Catalina that will allow apps like Eschalon to run? Until then, your only option is to play it on an older MacOS, or on a different platform altogether.
If we find a solution that works, we’ll be sure to post it here.
Никита Демченко
The official website says it’s
>BlitzMax, 64-bit macOS edition. Includes SDL backend and mojo2.
https://www.blitzmax.org/downloads/
Did I miss something?
Basilisk Games
I honestly didn’t know BlitzMax went fully open source. The last time I checked with the original developer a few years ago, it was pretty much abandoned. We’ll take a look and see what it will take to recompile Eschalon in x64. There are other dependencies that may not compile properly, but we’ll give it a shot.
Winfried Maus
Hello from Germany,
How did this adventure turn out? I am really curious, did BMX-NG work for you?
All the best,
Winni
Rito
Just finished the first instalment of Eschalon and wanted to say thank you to the devs for making such an entertaining game with fun story and interesting mechanics. I hope to play the next two games soon when I have some spare money! Thank you again.
mg979
Writing here because I can’t register in the forums.
Any chance you can open source Eschalon I & II?
This issue could be fixed. But my main interest would be in making the games challenging, because they are good games, but the challenge level is below minimal.
They could be open sourced in a way that they require the original assets, so that you would still need the original game, I think?
Thanks
Basilisk Games
Hi! The Eschalon trilogy was written in a language called BlitzMax. Since coding the games, BlitzMax was abandoned by the developer and went open source, however it is now stagnant in terms of ongoing development. About 2 years ago we attempted to update the code to the latest version of BlitzMax, but it was an uphill task as the language structure had changed so much. Issues with sound, graphics, and file access would require a large amount of reworking, and converting it to something more modern (C# maybe?) would also be more work than it would be worth.
We do not have plans to open-source at this time (mostly legal considerations with copyright).
mg979
Thank you for the reply. It’s a pity because they could have been improved greatly (in the gameplay, because I quite like the technical side). If you reconsider I’d be willing to spend some time on it, using the old BlitzMax compiler that worked (if it’s still available), while for C# a remake in the Godot game engine would also be feasible I think.
Thanks anyway.
IJBall
So, did anyone ever figure out a way to maybe run the Eschalon games through some kind of emulator/emulation, for later Mac OS 10’s and Mac OS 11-13?
If they figured out a way to run Bungie’s Marathon games on later systems like this, I’ve got to figure there’s a way to do it with the Eschalon games….
hp5000
Hi! I run the Steam-Version of Eschalon 2 on MacBook Air M1 macOS 13.3.1.
Install Porting Kit, then install Steambuild 1 -quartz (ID: 419)
After installing run it with Renderer OpenGL and DirectSound
It seems to load for a while and is a bit slow, but playable.
Good luck!