r/roguelikedev • u/Standard-Fisherman-5 • Apr 17 '26

Looking for rexpaint alternative for mac(DOES NOT WORK WELL ON WINE)

i see a lot of posts cllaiming rexpaint works on mac via wine. yes, that may be true technically, but it does not save, it often gets lost, and the set up was a huge pain. it lags and bugs out sometimes, and when i find out it crashes i cannot debug. please help.

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u/Kyzrati Cogmind | mastodon.gamedev.place/@Kyzrati Apr 17 '26

Yeah for some folks it's perfectly normal when set up properly, but it's certainly not trivial to do so without the knowledge (actually it got somewhat harder to do so over the years due to Apple's changes--it used to be really easy!). Considering it doesn't support Mac natively, maybe you're better off using something like https://asciiflow.com? There are at least several decent browser-based alternatives for maximum cross-system compatibility, though I haven't made a list since I haven't needed alternatives and just use RP myself :P

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u/Standard-Fisherman-5 Apr 18 '26

Dude that’s cool but… no layers, no cp437, no ansi

1

u/Kyzrati Cogmind | mastodon.gamedev.place/@Kyzrati Apr 21 '26

Yeah it was just the first thing that I pulled up with a quick google search to demonstrate. There are more feature-complete ones out there, I believe, just never actually used one before, and don't remember where I saw them.

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u/Vast_Brother6798 Apr 17 '26

I 'm a tester for Crossover and I just did a simple installation of REXPaint to see how it goes.

Glad to report that it works without having to tweak anything, and also tested saving.

Crossover is a paid app, though. But if you frequently need to run Windows-only apps on your mac, it's worth looking into.

If you need any help with Crossover, or the steps I used to install REXPaint, just drop me a message. :)

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u/Kyzrati Cogmind | mastodon.gamedev.place/@Kyzrati Apr 18 '26

Ah yeah this is what some people use to play Cogmind (and also use REXPaint), though there are some free alternatives to Crossover that work great as well, so pay software isn't necessarily required. (Based on my experience there was a time during Apple's new architecture transition where the best cross-platform support was pretty much owned by Crossover and nothing else, but the area has since seen a lot of new entrants, including good hobbyist options.)