Great news! We’ve finally completed all the skins for the initial release. Yes, all of them! Every Robot Master from Mega Man 1 to 6 can be played as in MM8BDM! We’ve come a very long way. Give these contributors a pat on the back for their hard work:

• brotoad
• clawgrip
• CopShowGuy
• Cyberkid
• FuPoo
• Korby
• Namo
• Pippin
• PressStart
• ShoySlayer
• Smooth
• squidgy617
• Tubaam
• Zero-EXE

To celebrate (and to show I’m not just sitting around!) here’s a new gameplay video showing off Drill Man’s stage, and something else… Enjoy!

I’ve posted about this on my twitter but I think it deserves it’s own post. Press Start created a pretty damn cool gameplay video of Bright Man’s stage in MM8BDM showing off the gimmick for the stage, which is the lights going on and off. The music along with it was made by Saskrotch, who wrote the song for the Chiptuned Rockman Album. Awesome.

In other news…

MM8BDM’s progress is seriously picking up. I have pretty much every tile set for every map in my possession now, and with only 3 skins left the project is really starting to shape up. As for maps, there’s only 2 of MM5 and 8 of MM6 left to make. We’re looking at a late August or September release, but it could all depend on the miscellaneous stuff afterwords (such as the launcher etc). To keep up to do date, you know what to do.

Servers are still buzzing with activity. If you’re having trouble finding one, check this forum out.

Finally someone figured it out! Thanks to MakoAoyama and a bit of trial and error, we now have a guide up for playing MM8BDM on a Mac. You should read this even if you just want to get Skulltag working.

A few things before I get to the meat of this:

-For those that care about my specs, I’m running a late 2007 model iMac(one of the first aluminium ones I believe), 2.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, and the video card is a 256 MB ATI Radeon HD2600.

-This SHOULD work for you if you have an iMac similar to mine or newer, and may even work on some older ones(not sure about non-Intel models, though). I’m afraid if you run into problems or errors, though, you’ll be on your own. I did good to get it going on mine. If nothing else maybe you can use this as a starting point.

Alright, here we go.

First:
Go here and download the demo CutmanMike posted on the blog. Extract it from the .zip file and keep it handy, you’ll need it in a minute.

Second:
Go here and scroll down the post a little and download the new Skulltag version for Mac OS X. Once it’s downloaded, open the .dmg file and it will mount on your desktop(if you have it set to not do that just click FInder and you’ll see it). It should pop up on it’s own either way.
Do as it says and drag the Skulltag.app to your Application folder to install it. Don’t close that window just yet.

Third:
You notice in that window, it also says to “add your IWADs to ~/Library/Application Support/ZDoom/”
Click on Finder. In your “Home” folder(which is labeled with whatever your system is named and has a little house icon beside it), open up you “Library” folder. Then open up “Application Support”.
Here, you need to create a folder named “ZDoom” and open it up. Keep this window open and you can close the Skulltag install window now.

Fourth:
Now, remember I had you keep the folder that the demo for the game is in open? Go back to that window with the demo files in it and look for the files “megagame.wad” and “MM8BDM-SGC.pk3″. Copy those files to the “ZDoom” folder you created and you can close that window if you want.

Fifth:
Now, at this point if you click on Skulltag.app in your “Application” folder, it tries to open and then immediately closes for no reason. For me at least, it gave no error at all. Just opened then closed right afterward and it was like I had never ran it to begin with.
The part that Skulltag left out was that you need a program called Doomseeker to find the available servers and run the Skulltag.app for you. So go here and get the 0.6 Beta for Mac OS X. Open the .dmg and install it by dragging it to your “Applications” folder.

Sixth:
Almost done. Open up Doomseeker. When it opens it displays all the available servers. You can click the “IWAD” tab at the top to organize by the name of .wad files. You’ll be looking for “megagame.wad”(those are the servers playing the demo), but don’t get excited just yet because you still have a few things to do.
Click the “Doomseeker” tab at the very top of your screen(next to the Apple icon), and go to Preferences. When it pops up, click the little arrow next to “Engines” and a drop menu will open. Click on Skulltag. Where it says “Path to client binary:” click the “…” box then follow the path “Machintosh HD(or whatever you call your hard drive)/Applications/Skulltag.app” and once it’s highlighted click Open.
Now click on “File Paths” in the menu to the left. Click Add to put a new path in and go find that “ZDoom” folder you made earlier. My path was “/Users/MakoAoyama/Library/Application Support/ZDoom”.
Hit Apply and OK.

Now, double click one of the “megagame.wad” servers and you might get some box popping up, just hit OK. The game Should load right after that. You notice that it opens the Skulltag.app for you. Basically, anytime you want to play, you need to open up Doomseeker to run the game and pick a server.

Great job dude! I hope this helps out any Apple followers who want to get in on the 8-bit action

Skulltag have finally released a final build of Skulltag 98c. It mostly consists of bug fixes and networking features, and doesn’t really add too much stuff from the ZDoom builds (which are always ahead) but is a necessary step forward.

More information on this build here

HOWEVER, along with this version has come a rather inconvenient executive decision. Basically any Skulltag servers using a version older than the latest one (i.e the one bundled with MM8BDM) will not be seen on the master server, therefore you won’t see them show up in any server lists such as the internal browser or DoomSeeker. You CAN however still connect to them if you know the server’s IP address, which I know some are happy to do so.

You can of course just simply update to 98c which I do indeed recommend, but please note that if you use the latest version of Skulltag you cannot join games running the older version’s server. You can’t play with an older Skulltag on a newer server either, so you have a choice to either host with the latest version or not. Yes, it’s needlessly complicated and annoying for newcomers but this is not my choice.

Download Skulltag 98C here

You can find information on MM8BDM servers here

Video created by Press Start

The demo has been out for just under a week and gaming blogs just seem to be eating it up, as well as the huge amount of players hammering whatever servers get posted up. We’ve even had some live streams, some video reviews (no English ones yet) and more mentions than I can count. I did NOT expect such a huge amount of notice from a tiny 4 level demo. Since people are still playing non-stop, I must be doing something right eh?

If you haven’t checked it out yet, grab the demo already and get blasting! If you’re having problems or just want to chip in, sign up to the forum and post away! The team welcomes any feedback you care to send us. Don’t forget it’s still early days, things can still be changed!

If you’re looking for a server to connect to, we have a server up dedicated to MM8BDM. Simply connect to namerehwon.no-ip.info via the launcher. I get horrible ping there but occasionally pop in for a 8-bit fragfest. You can also use an external program to find any hosted MM8BDM servers! Check it out here.

Thanks for everyone who has already played and pitched in their thoughts on the game. Over the next few days I’m gonna be mapping like crazy. Follow me on twitter for more progress,  screenshots and other MM8BDM news!