Patches aplenty, part 2
I've got some random follow-up notes to comments on the previous entry.
* I haven't heard of crash-when-leaning-while-opening-a-door bug in MOHAA mp. Does it happen in Spearhead too? More details (and a crash log) would be helpful. If I can easily reproduce it here, count on it getting fixed. If I can't reproduce it, it helps to have as much information as possible so I can guess at a fix. :-)
* I haven't heard anything about the final Civ3 1.29 patch, or the Centipede patch for that matter. I assume MacSoft is up to their ears in Halo and Age of Mythology stuff right now, and with Christmas, New Years and MacWorld all happening over the next 3 weeks, I wouldn't be surprised if it gets pushed aside for now.
* There should be a Jedi Academy demo, but as with above, the next 3 weeks are probably going to limit Aspyr's QA time on it, so I wouldn't count on seeing it until after MacWorld sometime.
* I'd love to fix Bloodrayne's 10.3 crasher, but that's an issue that, at least for now, must be addressed by the Mac developer, Terminal Reality.
* Alien Crossfire has been carbonized - the build is in the same archive as the one with Carbon Alpha Centauri, linked in my previous post. These are in fact new builds that I made in September. They addresses the crashing-when-saving issues and add netplay. In my limited testing, the netplay in this Carbon beta works much better than it ever did in the classic version. The reason for this is technical. SMAC uses NetSprocket, and relies on a feature called "guaranteed packet delivery" to send data over the wire. In the classic NetSprocket, this was pretty broken, and games would often crap out. Since NetSprocket is open-source now, I ended up fixing this issue when we did Age2 and SWGB (which also use guaranteed packets) and now SMAC takes advantage of that as well.
* I've updated the demo app for Jedi Knight 2 and put it here. When we did the original demo, it contained a snow effect that wasn't in the retail version, and the snow rendering went down a new path in the JK2 code that was only in the demo. This code triggered a bug on some video cards that caused totally mis-rendered textures and frame rates that were incredibly low. This new app fixes that, but note that you need the original Mac demo as well. So download that, replace the original demo app with this one and you should be good to go. This new Mac demo isn't an "official" Aspyr release, but I've gotten the blessing to post it here for the morbidly curious.
Also, Jedi Academy should be arriving to folks as early as today. I know that IMG has their stock now, and I got my boxed copy from Aspyr today as well. Make sure you download the 1.01a patch - it's got some nice performance improvements in it. We also put out a "bonus map" installer that contains some multiplayer bonus maps that Raven released a week or so ago. They're pretty cool - check 'em out.
Comments
So, Brad "The Patcher" Oliver. Patches for short? Patches Oliver doesn't sound right. How about "Patches Mc"Oliver? Yeah. Should go good with the McChicken McNuggets. Why don't they call them McChicken McNuggets? They have a McChicken Sandwich. Maybe they should name that McChicken McSandwich... Hmmm... on second thought I think I'll just call you Brad.
Posted by: a2daj | December 19, 2003 05:09 PM
It's a shame Glenda isn't doing programming anymore. Glenda "Patch" Adams has a certain ring to it, although I somehow doubt she'd care for it. ;)
Posted by: Brad Oliver | December 19, 2003 10:52 PM
Brad Oliver, I'd like to thank you for doing all this patching. But I have a request, one which you may or may not be able to fulfill. To patch the first two Tomb Raider games, so that they will use OpenGL rendering. I ask this because even after several months, Apple has yet to fix the Classic RAVE bugs that make TR1 and TR2 rendering look rather screwy. And the games' creators have yet to open the games' source code.
You can see those if you look at some areas with flat texture, like the TR2 sky and the TR1 Lara model. Also, some objects, like the passport in the TR1 menu ring, look perforated, and TR1 does not display the current weapon's ammo count, as it normally does.
Posted by: Loren Petrich | December 20, 2003 06:14 AM
Regarding: "I hope you fix the MOH:AA multiplayer bug where I crash when opening a door while leaning."
I couldn't help thinking when I read that description that the player may have the Command key mapped to open doors, and "Q" for leaning left. Then the player would get a mysterious "crash" when pressing both keys, but there wouldn't be a crash log. Just a thought.
Posted by: Matt Diamond | December 22, 2003 10:42 AM
I have tried to unstuff the SMAC patch several times on a few different computers without success. I always get an error part way through.
Posted by: Fredjikrang | December 25, 2003 12:26 PM
Never mind. That file was corrupted. Downloaded a new one and it worked.
Posted by: Fredjikrang | December 25, 2003 12:32 PM
Got a completely reproducible crash on my TiPB from a newly installed Jedi Academy (1.0.1b).
Everytime I start the game it crashes when doing what looks to be a resolution switch. I have a crash log if that would be useful....
Posted by: Nick Beadman | January 5, 2004 09:56 PM
I have a stdlog or 2 about a multiplayer bug in moh, half the people on the server may appear to freeze in motion, but you can still see others running around (I've only seen this bug when a new level is loaded). You can't shoot the frozen people, nothing happens. You can disconnect from the server and reconnect and its just fine, but if you wait too long without disconnecting it gives a type 2 error quit. Although it does seem more stable in multiplayer games with macsbug installed.
Posted by: Who Knows? | January 7, 2004 01:44 PM
nvm, I found the bug listed in the readme on the cd, I'm guessing it was a gamespy bug.
Posted by: Who Knows? | January 11, 2004 10:18 PM
>>half the people on the server may appear to freeze in motion, but you can still see others running around (I've only seen this bug when a new level is loaded). You can't shoot the frozen people, nothing happens.
I've seen this bug a few times too. I didn't have to disconnect, I go to spectator mode then join a team again it goes away.
The main crasher for me in MOH:AA is sometimes when a multiplayer game finishes, the crash happens just as the new game begins (no level change). I can always tell it is about to crash because there is a slight delay and the screen briefly flickers to the Finder, then the game looks like it's going to start for a split-second and then the submit-crash window appears. Dual 450, OSX 10.3.4, Radeon 9000 Pro. (I just submit all the crash reports to Apple).
Posted by: CarstenKlapp | August 9, 2004 10:51 AM
I'm downloading the SMAC X patch/carbonization but I think I already have it. I was using it, but it crashed on me one too many times or something. Now I'm on a new powerbook and have played two games of Civ III and was wondering if anything had happened on the Play the World front, aparently not.
Too bad,
Muskie
Posted by: Muskie | January 19, 2005 08:06 PM