Hi yall,

This game engine seems pretty sweet, but is intensely frustrating. I downloaded the Mac package, but have no idea how to install games and maps into it. None of the directories appear to be existent. I would love to get this working, but the Spring app appears to be stand-alone...creating no directories for its files.

Help me out please?

You might be looking for viewtopic.php?f=65&t=27273

according to that you are looking for:

~/.spring/games for you game or mod content packages

~/.spring/maps for your maps

do those locations exist?

Use http://weblobby.springrts.com/ to log into the lobby for realtime assistance. There are also multiplayer instructions for Mac users in the Help tab.

No...none of those folders are created...so go through and create them myself and hope it reads them?

---The .spring folder is supposed to be in you home directory?

Both folders are supposed to be created at first run of the standalone app (just in case you don't know, the .spring folder is hidden so won't appear in your Finder unless you activate the appropriate option).
And yes, if you create them yourself Spring will read them, that's where spring looks by default unless you change paths in the settings file

In any case, you shouldn't bother too much about folders at this point. Now that you have an engine, you need a lobby to connect to the server and players. I suggest you start with NotaLobby (cf. http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=27289 and http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=28180), or Springlobby (springlobby.info). Both will let you join games with automatic game/map download (most of the time)

To reveal hidden folders, in the terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

killall Finder

This will reveal the .spring folder in your home directory and then, since the maps and mods folders are not there, one simply has to create them.

***note the "killall Finder" relaunches finder to show files.

To hide them again, do the same thing, but change "TRUE" to "FALSE"

a common technique is also. to create a non-hidden folder that links to the hidden one:

after this, you will have a non-hidden folder spring in your home dir, linking ot the hidden folder .spring.

Another possibility to reveal the .spring folder:

Within Finder: Command+Shift+G (Go To Folder)
"~/.spring"