Jammer Six

I'm pretty sure that's not what you mean, because in your analogy, the answer is that if my work schedule were destroyed by my two primary customers for a year, I would at least double both my personal income and my company's profit for that year, and I'd be looking at a vacation in Europe instead of the Caribbean. Not to mention all the "How I Did It" speeches I'd get asked to give at the Master Builder's Association... My contracts are written so that if a customer changes the specs on a project, the price changes along with it, and I'm pretty sure that that's the difference between your analogy and what you meant. At the risk of alienating you further, it's a bad business decision to commit massive amounts of resources to anything that's not nailed down. You can end up with a product that doesn't meet expectations, and no way to recover the lost investment. I have no idea how you would avoid that scenario in your business, I only know how to avoid it in mine. I will say that it took a few (more than I like to admit) painful, expensive (WAY more expensive than I like to admit) lessons for me to learn those skills, and it almost cost me my precious company. One of the problems with analyzing your current position is, as my accountant likes to put it, you can't see very far down the road you didn't take. As good as sales are for you right now, how much better (or worse) they would have been had you supported OS X is a thing you'll never know- you didn't choose that road. It sounds to me like you refuse to take any responsibility for the decision stream that led you to the point where you have a product that doesn't work under Apple's current OS, and you steadfastly insist that Apple and API did it to you. Be that as it may, I tell you true, from my own, hard won experience in the trenches of business, that as long as that refusal exists, you can look forward to being in exactly this position, again and again. It didn't happen to other companies, or else when it did, they dealt with it in some fashion other than the one you chose. They made different decisons, and today, their products work under Panther. I have no details past that, but that level of detail is all I need to make my buying decisions. In construction, we have a term for contractors who refuse to recognize The Way Things Are, and deal with the hard realities (and the inherant unfairness) of business in a cold blooded fashion. We call them "employees". And finally, you don't have to "sugar coat" anything to get it said. I can say anything that needs to be said, and I can say it in a way that will have my customers reaching for their checkbooks, or I can say it in a way that will have them calling the police. That, too, is a skill that took learning, but it is easily one of the most valuable investments anyone in business in 2003 can make. It starts with self control, which is where I had problems. I look forward to the next version of Combat Mission. It's debut will tell me that your company is surviving, and that The Market is judging your efforts satisfactory, in the only decison that matters. For the moment.

I'm glad to hear it. I imagine that I'll buy a copy. Actually, the reason I started this thread is because I own a Mac that runs OS 9.2, and your game doesn't run correctly on it. Therefore, your statement that your game runs on Macs that run OS 9.X simply isn't correct. Speaking as the president of a construction company, I tell you this: it's not meaningless to your customers. One of the worst things a small business can do is tell a paying customer that that customer's money is un-important to the company, for any reason. I'm not saying there aren't customers we don't want, there certainly are. I'm saying we don't go out of our way to make sure they know it, because it's not a thing to be proud of. The reason the choices other software companies make and the products they produce are relevant to us is because we have to choose where to spend our finite amount of money, and when another game runs on our system and yours doesn't, that's an important point. In fact, it makes the decison for those of us who are affected by it. I understand what it's like to be under the gun. I understand what customers who complain can do to morale, and I understand what it's like to be stuck with a decision, made a long time ago with the best of intentions, that goes against you. I've just never receieved any slack from a paying customer for any of those reasons, and I've had to step back, take a deep breath and get a grip many times. I've even walked away a couple of times, but I try not to make a habit of that. It's always been more important to me to be in business in the morning than it was to be right, or to have my say. As I said, when you come out with a game that runs on my system, I'll probably buy a copy. If you wish, however, I'm sure you can change that. [ November 20, 2003, 09:11 PM: Message edited by: Jammer Six ]

I'm glad to hear that CM is being re-written. I'll re-examine the issue when they ship a new version. Quite frankly, I don't see how the "best intentions" of BTS/BFC's efforts matter. I run a construction company, and I'm very aware of the market value of a complete set of the best intentions, and I have several spare sets for sale, if anyone here is interested in buying them. The Mac world has moved on, leaving many pieces of obsolete software behind. If I understand you correctly, BTS's target market, and the market they are developing for seems to be the Windows market and those with older Macs. I don't fit either market. Perhaps I'll leave the game installed and pack the CD with one of my older Macs when I donate it to the battered women's shelter, or something. In my company, the situation is never out of our hands to solve. Everyone have a good day, and thanks for your help.

Sorry, this is all the information I have. It's a 867 mhz. G4. It is exactly like those screenshots. Yes, I've tried it with the Classic RAVE extension removed. Thanks for your help, I appreciate it.

Thanks for your help, Wicky. I appreciate it. I played CMBB and CMBO for quite a while before I bought my TiBook. (If you recall, CMBO came out quite a while before the TiBooks came out, making it difficult to compare the game's specs to those of a machine that had yet to be invented.) I don't buy machines based on what games they play, I buy them based on what they will do for my business. If games fall by the wayside, so be it. I'll spend forty five, fifty, maybe even sixty bucks for a game, as long as it amuses me, but there's no way I'll buy a $500 graphics card to play a game. Or a $400 card. Or a $100 card. There's no game that rates that kind of money. They're games, not women. I'm glad to hear that Amish, Inc. will leave their horses and wagons behind in the future, and I'm glad to hear that CMBB runs on your machine. I'll check back, and consider buying a copy when they catch up with the rest of us. Of course, by the time they re-write for OS X, I'll probably be running OS XII, and then we can have this lovely dialog all over again. I'll try to remember to post a warning, so you'll see it coming. I am so looking forward to it. It still appears to me that there's no one here who can get it to run on a TiBook, with a Radeon 9000, and that doesn't surprise me. I imagine TiBook owners figured out that it doesn't run on our machines months ago, and then they left. It's only a game, and it doesn't run in OS X. No great loss. And now, I'll leave you to your otherwise, I'm sure, heroic pursuits, as I have many things to do. I admit that they're trivial, but they're more important that graphics cards, computer games, or bothering you, particularly with these issues that frustrate you so. Try and have a nice day.

Nope, didn't help. It looks to me like CMBB is being developed by Amish Software, Inc., and will never support anything newer than 9.2. That appears to be their position on their announcements, and it actually looks like they're developing a new game, CMAK, for 9.2 It's a shame. It was a good game. Frisbee, anyone?

Yes, I've been booting into 9.2.1 to run CMBB. Turns out my TiBook won't boot into 9.1- I discovered that when I installed 9.1 onto one of my iMacs, copied it to a Firewire drive, and then to my TiBook. Won't boot, has to be 9.2.

Sort of. First of all, thanks for your help. Under Panther, System Profiler doesn't tell me much, it just says "Vendor: ATI (0x1002)", and the only reason I think that's the video card is because another line in that window says "Display". No "Radeon", or "9000". In Profiler in system 9.2, it does say "Radeon", but still no "9000". The only other reason I think it's a Radeon 9000 is because my symptoms match the ones here exactly, including the screen shots. Yup, I saw that. Since that was the case in 2002, and one computer year is supposed to be equivalent to seven dog years, or something, I was hoping there'd been progress. It sounds to me like the only people who had this problem aren't here anymore, because the game doesn't run on our machines. Thanks again for your help. I'll take a shot at installing a virginal 9.2 (also problematical, since a TiBook won't boot from the 9.2 install discs, and running the installer under Classic results in a Classic-ized installation) and then run the latest and greatest ATI driver installer. After that, I'm afraid I'll be joining the G4 CMBB Frisbee League. I'm always impressed by the computer Industries’s inability to accept responsibility. Saying or implying anything that starts with "It's not my fault because..." is one of the fastest ways to get me to fire you. Thanks again.

Actually, I have a 32mb ATI Radeon (I think), and it's showing me the psychotic colors. Thanks for your help. So, is no one playing CMBB on a TiBook with these specs? We just throw the games away?

I have a G4 TiBook, which I'm told had an ATI Radeon 9000 video card, although I can't confirm that- all I've confirmed is that it's an ATI card. Is there a fix for the psychedelic color problem?

G4 TiBook, Radeon 9000 video card. Psychelelic colors. Any solutions?

G4 TiBook, Radeon 9000 video card. Psychelelic colors. Any solutions?

Who's still alive? Who hasn't been deployed to the gulf, and who is up for a PBEM scenario? Let me know. Pick a scenario, any scenario. Pick a side, set it up, send me emai.