moriarty@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Meyer) (05/04/89)
When I bought my Mac SEx (a.k.a. SE/30), I had heard that most programs that
worked with a Mac II worked with my SEx. And, indeed, this has been true,
right down to dozens of PD and shareware programs written over five years
ago that run like a charm. As expected, though, quite a few game programs
haven't been working, even ones that work fairly well on a II or IIx. I've
assumed that these incompatible games are mostly due to the SEx's VRAM chips
(as opposed to the SE's use of standard RAM for the video) and the custom
CRT controller chip that the SEx has. (Got this information from the
Microprocessor Report.) Or perhaps some games check the processor type and
assume the machine's a Mac II (and thus has a larger monitor) or checks out
the screen size and assume it's a 68000-based machine like the Plus or the
SE.
At any rate, I decided to do a quick review of which games worked on the
SEx, and which didn't. I also called up the makers of the various
commercial games I had problems with and asked about fixes/upgrades -- this
was rather interesting in itself, as I got some diverse impressions of these
companies through their tech support people. Both results and company
feedback are listed below; I've sub-divided games into PD/Shareware and
Commercial sections.
Test equipment: One Mac SEx, 5 Megs memory, all INITs off, ram cache off, 80
MB internal hard drive. If I couldn't get it to run on the hard drive, I
tried running it from the floppy drive.
My selection of games was limited to a) which games I'd purchased and b)
which PD games I enjoyed playing. None of these games was extensively
tested -- I played for a few minutes to look for obvious problems. I've
attempted to supply version numbers with every game tested. Oh, and all
PD/shareware games were checked with Disinfectant 1.1 beforehand.
Here we go....
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
<<<PD/SHAREWARE GAMES>>>
PROBLEMS:
AQUARIUM 0.5: Yeah, the little demo program that turns your screen
into a fishtank. It's *old*. Kept giving me some type of read
error (don't think the file was corrupted, but you never know).
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER 4.0: *This* was a disappointment, as I've always
enjoyed this game. (Didn't the author say at some time that he was
working on a commercial version?) The help menus and everything
work fine, but as soon as the actual games starts, the first mouse
movement made causes an 01 bomb.
BLACKBOX 1.0: An old favorite. Would start up and immediately quit
back to the Finder.
CONTINUUM 1.01: It's got "Falcon's Disease" (see FALCON in the
commercial games), i.e. the screen flickers horribly. It gives you
a message at startup about INITS, something about "Do you have a
second graphics buffer reserved?" I said yes, and then it would
start, albeit with massive flickering.
MEGAROIDS: Starts game, and then hangs without drawing screen.
RAN O.K.:
1000 Miles 1.1
BioRhythm 0.51
Brickles 8.0
Bstations 2.0
Cairo Shootout 1.0s
Canfield 3.1
Dungeon of Doom 4.0
Hangman 10.0
Risk
Scarab of Ra 1.2
Seahaven Towers 1.2 (but who'd want to play it without color?)
Stratego 0.95 (If someone can come up with a challenging algorithm for
the computer opponent on this game, I'll buy it toute suite).
Tanked
Theldrow 1.0
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
<<<COMMERCIAL SOFTWARE>>>
PROBLEMS:
MAZEWARS+ 1.0 (MacroMind): Problem: sounds don't play with this. This
was certainly the most entertaining call I made to a game
manufacturer; I phoned in to discover that they had discovered the
problem themselves about two weeks ago, but I was the first SEx user
to call in to report it. "Hey, Bill, we finally got one!"
Apparently version 1.1 will fix all these problems; $10 upgrade fee
with a xerox of the disk and the letter I got with the game (the one
saying I was one of the first 300 purchasers of the game). Very
nice people at MacroMind...
APACHE STRIKE, DARK CASTLE (Silicon Beach): Problem: Remember when you
tried to run Silicon Beach games under version 6.0? You'd get
"something in high memory" even when you had no INITs, no RAM cache,
no nuthin'? It's baaaack! What is interesting is that BEYOND DARK
CASTLE runs fine...
Silicon Beach didn't say much about DARK CASTLE (I know, they're
getting out of the game market -- I've got Super 3D and I've used
Digital Darkroom, and more power to 'em), but they said they were
working on fixing APACHE STRIKE, and that registered users would be
notified. Very polite.
BALANCE OF POWER (the 1985 version) (MindScape): Boots up from the hard
drive, but the little boxes that fade in and over don't appear, and
you're stuck on the opening screen. MacroMind said I needed to buy
BOP 1990 (the new version); upgrade price, $27.95! Screw that, I
could buy it from MacConnection for $30. Probably the most brusque,
except for Epyx, who were downright obnoxious.
SUB BATTLE SIMULATOR (Epyx): Problem: Well, it runs (make sure you
move all the sounds into the same folder with the games, not in a
sub-folder), but... the target ships are about 1/2" above the water!
And I got some strange graphics when passing other ships. Called
Epyx; from the conversation I had, I got the impression they are not
very Mac knowledgable. They tried to snow me with, "Well, that's an
Apple System Software problem"; when I pointed out that it ran fine
on a Mac Plus with the same software, and that the pre-6.0.3
software didn't run with the SEx, he basically said they didn't plan
to fix it, and that there were no plans for an upgrade. Thank you,
Epyx. (Though I wouldn't be adverse to a Mac version of CRUSH,
CRUMBLE AND CHOMP.)
MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR 1.0: Problem: Won't boot. Called Microsoft,
who told me that a version which worked on the SEx or the Mac II was
not yet available. I believe it for the Mac SEx, but doesn't MS
Flight Simulator work on the Mac II? Maybe he meant to say the IIx
or the IIcx. Usual polite MS customer service.
SHANGHAI 1.0 (Activision, now Mediagenic): Problem: Get bomb 01 on
booting. Rep from Mediagenic said that an upgrade to the program
would be available around the end of June, and that it would fix the
bug. They will notify registered users. Nice folks; apparently no
one had called in about an SEx problem yet.
FALCON 2.0
GATO 1.42
PT-109 1.0 (Spectrum Holobyte): Well, they are THE Mac games company.
Falcon has that damn flickering problem, though it runs fast; Gato
1.42 had no sounds playing; PT-109 ran fine, except that when you
pulled down the QUIT command, the game bombed. The rep at Spectrum
Holobyte (or Sphere, as they're called now) was very straight and
up-front about it. They don't know what's ailing FALCON yet, but
they've been working on it for a month; they hope to have it licked
by early June. Said they probably won't send out notices to
everyone (strictly an SEx problem), and asked me to call back in
about a month. (I'll let you know what I find out.) No plans to
upgrade Gato, but a fix -- the sounds work... if you run it under
MultiFinder! Ha! I'd love to see what caused that problem. Fine
with me, I got 5 megs... They are also beginning to look at a fix
for PT-109, but since only QUIT bombs, it's not ultra-high priority.
Sounds like a patch might be sent out, which is reasonable.
Professional support rep here; I especially appreciated his candor
after Epyx.
RAN O.K.:
Beyond Dark Castle
Colony
The Fool's Errand (difficult to check much of it)
Lode Runner 1.0 (Created in 1984, and still runs fine!)
Shufflepuck (Rev. HC)
Smash Hit Raquetball II
Tetris 1.00 (This one was *extensively* checked :-) )
Trust & Betrayal
All Infocom games worked OK, too (gosh, all that volatile parser
technology... :-) )
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hope this is of some help to you game-players out there thinking about
upgrading to a SE/30...
"You think anyone who's
proud of the work we do
is an ass-kisser."
"No... I think anyone who
*puckers* up their lips,
and *presses* it against
their boss's buttocks
and then *smootchs* is
an ass-kisser."
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
INTERNET: moriarty@tc.fluke.COM
Manual UUCP: {uw-beaver, sun, hplsla, thebes, microsoft}!fluke!moriarty
CREDO: You gotta be Cruel to be Kind...
<*> DISCLAIMER: Do what you want with me, but leave my employers alone! <*>res12@snoopy.UMD.EDU (Matthew T. Russotto) (05/04/89)
In article <8074@fluke.COM> moriarty@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Meyer) writes: >When I bought my Mac SEx (a.k.a. SE/30), I had heard that most programs that >worked with a Mac II worked with my SEx. And, indeed, this has been true, >right down to dozens of PD and shareware programs written over five years >ago that run like a charm. As expected, though, quite a few game programs >haven't been working, even ones that work fairly well on a II or IIx. I've >assumed that these incompatible games are mostly due to the SEx's VRAM chips >(as opposed to the SE's use of standard RAM for the video) and the custom >CRT controller chip that the SEx has. (Got this information from the >Microprocessor Report.) Or perhaps some games check the processor type and >assume the machine's a Mac II (and thus has a larger monitor) or checks out >the screen size and assume it's a 68000-based machine like the Plus or the >SE. > >At any rate, I decided to do a quick review of which games worked on the >SEx, and which didn't. I also called up the makers of the various >commercial games I had problems with and asked about fixes/upgrades -- this >was rather interesting in itself, as I got some diverse impressions of these >companies through their tech support people. Both results and company >feedback are listed below; I've sub-divided games into PD/Shareware and >Commercial sections. > >Test equipment: One Mac SEx, 5 Megs memory, all INITs off, ram cache off, 80 >MB internal hard drive. If I couldn't get it to run on the hard drive, I >tried running it from the floppy drive. > >My selection of games was limited to a) which games I'd purchased and b) >which PD games I enjoyed playing. None of these games was extensively >tested -- I played for a few minutes to look for obvious problems. I've >attempted to supply version numbers with every game tested. Oh, and all >PD/shareware games were checked with Disinfectant 1.1 beforehand. > >Here we go.... > >--------------------------------------------------------------------------- > ><<<PD/SHAREWARE GAMES>>> > >PROBLEMS: > > CONTINUUM 1.01: It's got "Falcon's Disease" (see FALCON in the > commercial games), i.e. the screen flickers horribly. It gives you > a message at startup about INITS, something about "Do you have a > second graphics buffer reserved?" I said yes, and then it would > start, albeit with massive flickering. > > MEGAROIDS: Starts game, and then hangs without drawing screen. > > APACHE STRIKE, DARK CASTLE (Silicon Beach): Problem: Remember when you > tried to run Silicon Beach games under version 6.0? You'd get > "something in high memory" even when you had no INITs, no RAM cache, > no nuthin'? It's baaaack! What is interesting is that BEYOND DARK > CASTLE runs fine... > > Silicon Beach didn't say much about DARK CASTLE (I know, they're > getting out of the game market -- I've got Super 3D and I've used > Digital Darkroom, and more power to 'em), but they said they were > working on fixing APACHE STRIKE, and that registered users would be > notified. Very polite. > > [All sorts of stuff deleted] > >Hope this is of some help to you game-players out there thinking about >upgrading to a SE/30... > > > Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer >INTERNET: moriarty@tc.fluke.COM >Manual UUCP: {uw-beaver, sun, hplsla, thebes, microsoft}!fluke!moriarty >CREDO: You gotta be Cruel to be Kind... ><*> DISCLAIMER: Do what you want with me, but leave my employers alone! <*> The problem with these three games is the lack of the secondary screen buffer since System 6.0. Try telling Continuum 'No' when it asks about the second graphics buffer. There has supposedly been a new version of the original Dark Castle around for quite a while, which worked on the Mac ][. -- DISCLAIMER: Not only does the University not share my opinions, they don't want me sharing my opinions. "This 'Pnews', what does it do?" Matthew T. Russotto res12@snoopy.umd.edu (this semester only)
gandreas@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU (Glenn Andreas) (05/05/89)
In article <8074@fluke.COM> moriarty@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Meyer) writes: >At any rate, I decided to do a quick review of which games worked on the >SEx, and which didn't. > >RAN O.K.: > > Theldrow 1.0 ^^^ The latest version is 2.2, and it works on an SEx (and a II, IIx, etc) as well (though at times it is just plain too fast - scenery can just wiz past you like it was a driving game). It is available from Sumex, etc... disclaimer: I wrote the thing, of course I'm biased. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= = "Whether you like it, or don't like it, sit | - gandreas@ub.d.umn.edu - = = back and take a look at it, because it's the | Glenn Andreas = = best going today! WOOOOoooo!" - Ric Flair | = =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
thecloud@dhw68k.cts.com (Ken McLeod) (05/08/89)
In article <8074@fluke.COM> moriarty@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Meyer) writes: > [list of pd/shareware programs compatible with SEx omitted] > > Stratego 0.95 (If someone can come up with a challenging algorithm for > the computer opponent on this game, I'll buy it toute suite). Sounds good to me! Actually, I have been working on the evaluation functions for Stratego for several months, off & on. It hasn't been an especially high priority, though. When 0.95 hit the 'big time' in terms of wide distribution, it was brought to my attention that literal derivations of board games were fodder for copyright-infringement lawsuits. That (along with less free time) is the main reason why there hasn't yet been a "smart" version of Stratego. However, the project is far from dead: it's evolving into the commercial realm, and becoming a vastly-improved (albeit somewhat different) game. The possibility of a final freeware release certainly exists (*wink*), but I can't say exactly when. -- ========== ....... ============================================= Ken McLeod :. .: UUCP: ...{spsd,zardoz,felix}!dhw68k!thecloud ========== :::.. ..::: INTERNET: thecloud@dhw68k.cts.com //// =============================================