Continuum (also known by its original name, SubSpace) is a ridiculously fun massively multiplayer online space shooter that I've played off and on since its public beta in 1996. The original game wasn't commercially successful, but in the years since it was abandoned, community servers have sprung up and the game client has been rewritten and released as freeware.
For an online game that's been around for over 16 years, it's withstood the test of time well, and is just as fun as it ever was. I recently had a hankering to play it again. Only problem: Continuum is a Windows game, and I use OS X these days.
In the past I've run Continuum in a VirtualBox VM, but that's a pain and it's not as fast as I'd like. This time I decided to see if I could get it running in Wine, which would make it easier to play, and faster as well.
It turns out a fellow calling himself spiffyguy on the SubSpace forums had already gotten this working!
Using WineSkin, spiffyguy bundled Continuum and the necessary Wine runtime and config into a standalone OS X app. Here's how to get it running.
-
Download Continuum.app. I've hosted the file on my server so you don't need to dig through the SubSpace forums to find it.
-
Extract the zip file, copy Continuum.app to your Applications folder, and run it.
-
If you're running Mountain Lion, you may be prompted to install XQuartz as described here. Install it, then run Continuum.app again.
That's it! You should now have a working Continuum client on your Mac. I've been playing happily for the last few days with no problems. It runs smooth as silk on my mid-2011 MacBook Air.
If this is your first time playing Continuum, this quick start guide should help get you going.
And if you'd like a few pointers on how to rack up kills in Trench Wars, the most popular Continuum game type, you might enjoy this Succinct Guide to Trench Wars Badassery I wrote back in 2004.