info-mac@utcsrgv.UUCP (info-mac) (06/26/84)
Date: Sun 24 Jun 84 12:12:53-PDT From: uw-beaver!B.BPE%LOTS-A@SU-SCORE.ARPA Subject: WARNING: Transylvania To: info-mac@SUMEX-AIM Potential purchasers of this (or presumably any other) adventure from Penguin software whould be warned that there are many bugs in their Macintosh implementation. I successfully avoided the bug mentioned on this list, where use of the mouse button in response to <Press any Key> trashes the disk, however there seem to be a number of ways of achieving that effect. In particular, attempting to open two saved games in a row caused my disk to be trashed. There are also bugs in the information display, and a long session sometimes causes the system to lock up with garbage on the screen, though a reboot seems to work in such cases. There are other bugs in the game logic, which I mentioned when I sent my disk back for replacement, but which I will not describe here to avoid a spoiler. My recommendation is to avoid this game until a newer version is issued with the bugs fixed. I will report to the list if/when I get a replacement from them and if it has the problems fixed. Unfortunatly they do not give a version number on their games, so even if they immediatly begin issuing corrected versions, you may still get stuck with a buggy one and have to return it. I should have guessed this might happen, based on the interview with the implementor of the game in the June ST.MAC - he apparently hacked the program from BASIC into 68000 assembler on the fly, then chased bugs until he and one other person didn't notice any more. I really hate it when companies use initial purchasers as their beta release testers. -Barry Eynon -------