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3 old favourites -best way to play them on a MBP?
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TOPIC: 3 old favourites -best way to play them on a MBP?

3 old favourites -best way to play them on a MBP? 7 years, 11 months ago #4188

3 Favourites... Titanic, Obsidian and Blood Bath:

i.imgur.com/0mTgG0H.jpg

I just pulled them out of my storage cage (and chucked out the porn DVDs I used to store in multi-disc CD cases as a desperate, nerdy teenager).

Question... what's the best way to play these games? It's a bit disappointing that there's no interpreters for any... but that's life.

My thoughts are:
- Use Virtual Box with WinXP since some are dual OS discs.
- Use Sheepshaver so that I get the Mac version
- ... some other way that I haven't thought of?

Screen resolutions have changed significantly, so I'm hoping to be able to stretch out 640x480. Not sure how to get the best results with this...

PS - I also saw Weekend Warrior and Power Pete (AKA Mighty Max) for free online at Pangea's site the other day. Any suggestion for them? I think Weekend Warrior being 3D could cause issues since Sheepshaver doesn't emulate a graphics card?
Last Edit: 7 years, 11 months ago by jetboy.

Re: 3 old favourites -best way to play them on a MBP? 7 years, 11 months ago #4189

Not sure if it's the same Titanic game, but seems like it's being worked on to implement it in ScummVM: dm-notes.blogspot.de/2016/04/implementin...anic-in-scummvm.html

In the mean time I think the best way to play the games is using a VM with Windows. Or if the Mac version of game is much better than it's DOS/Windows counterpart (like it's the case with Wolfenstein 3D) use SheepShaver.

Qemu gets better at emulating Macs, there is some work done to boot OS X 10.1 to 10.3 or something around that. I don't know if it boots classic Mac OS though.

Re: 3 old favourites -best way to play them on a MBP? 7 years, 11 months ago #4190

Weekend Warrior & Power Pete...loved those old games. I'd love an emulator that can play those & the Ambrosia games. They should make a ScummVM-like app that plays older games with the same engine, or company.
Last Edit: 7 years, 11 months ago by Thundar.

Re: 3 old favourites -best way to play them on a MBP? 7 years, 11 months ago #4191

ScummVM works due to the adventure games being written using a scripting language. The Ambrosia games require actual emulators of the full Macintosh.

SheepShaver should work, but I have not attempted it myself.

www.emaculation.com/doku.php/sheepshaver

Re: 3 old favourites -best way to play them on a MBP? 7 years, 11 months ago #4192

menace690 wrote:
ScummVM works due to the adventure games being written using a scripting language. The Ambrosia games require actual emulators of the full Macintosh.

SheepShaver should work, but I have not attempted it myself.

www.emaculation.com/doku.php/sheepshaver


This possibly brings up another issue. A few nights ago I pulled out Sheepshaver and gave it a go. Unfortunately there's a few issues, which I'll list:
- Only an old, pre-compiled version boots for me (a build from 2009 I believe). It works fine, but CDs (and disk images I've created) appear as an unrecognised format so cannot be mounted within Sheepshaver - I've successfully used this version to complete Prince of Destruction. Maybe there's a better way for me to be making my disk images?
- I've tried compiling a newer version to see if this irons out a few of my issues. I can't build it with JIT (this throws up a bunch of errors beyond my technical expertise - likely requiring low-level knowledge of the hardware). The macports version won't compile for me either (same errors)... so I disable JIT, compile the X11/GTK+ version and it compiles. I can use the preferences GUI, but can't 'start' the emulator because it throws an error in relation to the allocation of memory. I can 'disable' this error by compiling it without something called 'pie' (which seems to do some pre-launch checks) but this just disables the error message and checks (rather than fixing the underlying issue - so it crashes upon launch instead of sayi g 'warning this will crash if you continue so we'll stop it here.')

Has anybody had better luck with ripping CDs (and getting them to mount in Sheepshaver) or with compiling a newer version. Github messages indicate that Tiger broke the ability to compile Sheepshaver (for technical reasons beyond my capacity to understand). IMO it would be great if somebody could update it. Unfortunately it could be tough finding somebody with the time, knowledge and expertise. I finish my law degree at the end of May... so might be able to have another go then... but I don't have the required skills/training in software engineering, so it'd really just be me trying to hack it and force it to work (by doing things like disabling important checks/error messages without even knowing what the checks are looking for - as demonstrated earlier.)

Side note, does anybody else find that studying new things makes them want to play more and more retro games? I find my passion went away when I finished my studies and worked full-time. When I went back to uni to re-train, my passion for retro games came back. Maybe just my way of dealing with stress?

Edit:
To respond to the other posts.

1) Qemu can emulate PowerPC now (and other CPUs)... wow, I always thought it was just an x86 emulator (and later virtualiser.) Might check it out... the development seems to be a lot more active than that of Sheepshaver.
2) It would be cool if somebody could make an interpreter for the Cyberflix game (and Obsidian.) But yes... I accept that SCUMM was a more useful one because there are soooo many SCUMM games. It's cool to see how ScummVM has expanded (partly with the cooperation with the original devs of some games, and partly due to mergers with other interpreters.) The Cyberclex games (Titanic, Dust, Redjack...etc) were iconic games... guessing it would take a massive effort to reverse-engineer the engine (no doubt multiple versions depending on the game too) but to the end-user it was a bunch of Quicktime movies controlled by a scripting language. You never know! If somebody could RE the scripting language then they might get a lot of functionality for free (i.e. not have to re-write movie/image viewers...etc?) I dunno. Obsidian looks similar to the end-user but undoubtedly uses its own language... and it's the only game using that engine (to my understanding.) Guessing copyright and the like could get in the way (and even if not, interested devs would be needed)... could be worth investigating whether the devs are willing to cooperate and tell ScummVM how their scripting languages work. Pretty vague idea, but it'd be cool to see it happen. Same with Bloodbath TBH! Surely a pretty simple engine that displays a background, randomly displays enemies on-screen at different speeds and registers clicks as gun shots. But reverse-engineering it all? Eeeeeep out of my league, I just wanna play games unfortunately so these ideas will more than likely remain as dreams
Last Edit: 7 years, 11 months ago by jetboy.

Re: 3 old favourites -best way to play them on a MBP? 7 years, 11 months ago #4193

Just checked the system requirements for Titanic. It'll work in Basilisk II as well. I'd suggest you take any Sheepshaver technical issues over to the E-Maculation forums — the current project maintainer hangs out there regularly (as does Em and some other veteran MacScene people).

Fun fact about Titanic: Adventure out of Time is that it was made by Cyberflix, which was founded by Bill Appleton of World Builder, SuperCard, and Apache Strike fame. Appleton's current company (DreamFactory) takes its name from the engine he developed for the game.

jetboy wrote:

Side note, does anybody else find that studying new things makes them want to play more and more retro games? I find my passion went away when I finished my studies and worked full-time. When I went back to uni to re-train, my passion for retro games came back. Maybe just my way of dealing with stress?

Yeah, I had that when I did my masters. Now I make most of my living writing about games history, so you could say it worked out pretty well. I think it's partly stress-related, partly just missing your freedom and wanting to enjoy the simple pleasures from when you were younger.
The following user(s) said Thank You: jetboy

Re: 3 old favourites -best way to play them on a MBP? 7 years, 11 months ago #4194

Cheers I'll do that and report back if I find success.

Awesome to hear you've found a kick@ss career writing about games man! Aren't you a Aussie too? Pretty cool community on here, and it's good to see lots of the regulars are still posting. Is Niemann still around?

Re: 3 old favourites -best way to play them on a MBP? 7 years, 11 months ago #4195

Yep, I'm down in Melbourne. I vaguely recall you being somewhere around Queensland, or maybe NSW?

MacScene is basically just us old regulars nowadays. Between the lack of new news posts (I'll get something new up there eventually), the general quietness of emulator development outside of a few projects, and a problem we had (but didn't notice) for ages with new account registrations, there's not been any new blood for a long time.

Niemann pops in occasionally, but he's busy with teaching and running his business (and when not doing those things, chipping away at Archive.vg development stuff).

Re: 3 old favourites -best way to play them on a MBP? 7 years, 11 months ago #4198

jetboy wrote:

This possibly brings up another issue. A few nights ago I pulled out Sheepshaver and gave it a go. Unfortunately there's a few issues, which I'll list:
- Only an old, pre-compiled version boots for me (a build from 2009 I believe).


Newer Builds are here: www.emaculation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=7360


But yeah, SheepShaver is pretty much dead since some time. It doesn't compile on any OS X after 10.6 because it does some dirty stuff. Changing that is pretty much a rewrite, so I think everyone is hoping for Qemu now.
Last Edit: 7 years, 11 months ago by MetalDragon.

Re: 3 old favourites -best way to play them on a MBP? 7 years, 11 months ago #4204

Weekend Warrior likely won't work, due to the hardware dependencies, and it isn't Carbon-clean, so won't run in PearPC. Remember once you've got the latest SheepShaver build, set the prefs to ignore illegal instructions. You can also use SparseBundle images instead of NDIF DMGs for your disk image now. This is supported as of the 01 February 2014 build linked from the E-Maculation site by MetalDragon.

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