Forced MacOS X boot = no CMBB?!?

[karsten]

Since Apple is killing the ability to boot into MacOS 9 and only allowing items to run in Classic mode, what's the new story on CMBB? :confused:

We know that it's not for MacOS X and never will be, we know that it uses RAVE and that's not supported by MacOS 9, we know that it's not Classic mode compatible - so where does that leave us?

Looks like the only way to play CMBB now is to reformat your hard drive to just MacOS 9 - or just skip CMBB altogether.

To me, neither of those are acceptable. :mad:

Matt - what's the story??

[Doug Beman]

I'm totally ignorant of Macs (among other things ) so I must ask this: is it completely impossible to partition your hard drive and keep a 1 ro 2GB section for CMBB?

DjB

[Buckeye]

I have another post about this you might want to take a look at.

My take on this it that Apple won't make it impossible to boot into OS9 anytime soon, if only because the desktop publishing crowd do not have a Quark version that is OSX compatible. So, for the time being, we can create separate partitions for OS9 and OSX and play CMBB to our heart's content. But sometime in the not so distant future, that won't be an option.

BFC has not said that they are totally opposed to trying to find a way to support CMBB in OSX, just that it won't be something they deal with in the initial release. I suspect that if they get enough encouragement/cajolement/etc., and there seems to be a market, and Apple really does pull the plug on OS9, then we might see them do something about it.

After all, they use Macs to code CM, and I don't think they want future Mac purchasers to be unable to buy the game. Or at least I hope not!

[karch]

Originally posted by karsten:

Since Apple is killing the ability to boot into MacOS 9 and only allowing items to run in Classic mode, what's the new story on CMBB? :confused:

Apple will pobably be killing the ability for new computers to boot into 9 next year. Probably not until next July or so when the G5s come out. OS9 is NOT classic mode. Classic mode is the flavor of OS9 you run while you're running OSX. Otherwise it's just OS9. Any computer you get until then will be able to boot OS9 fine and run CMBO and CMBB.

We know that it's not for MacOS X and never will be, we know that it uses RAVE and that's not supported by MacOS 9, we know that it's not Classic mode compatible - so where does that leave us?

CM is not made for X. RAVE IS supported by OS9, but not fully by X. CM is playable in classic, but with only software 3D graphics, no hardware rendering. I use it when I don't want to bother rebooting. The game plays the same, just doesn't look as good. IP works too. It leaves you with: Any computer you currently own or will buy until sometime next year can play CM. Period. After that, we'll see.

Looks like the only way to play CMBB now is to reformat your hard drive to just MacOS 9 - or just skip CMBB altogether.

What!!?? Where did you get that. You don't need to reformat your hard drive. You can either reboot into your OS9 system and make sure you remove the classic RAVE extension, or install a second OS9 onto the computer just for CM. Then you don't have to worry about removing the extension. You can have as many systems on a single partition as you like. You specify which one to boot from in Startup Disk. It's easy to bounce back and forth between OS9 and OSX. PC users have done it for years. NT4 didn't play games, so many users have dual or triple boot systems to play games, work and do development on. NT, 98, Linux. It's been pretty common. It's not like we're the first people to have to reboot into a previous OS to get certain things done.

Who knows, after CM is released, BF May find a way to get CM working in X within a year. Maybe, maybe not. But that's not important right now. All Macs sold right now can run CM, either of them, without any work.

[kmead]

Karsten:

As Karch has pointed out, the Mac you have today will continue to support the ability to run Mac OS9 for as long as you have it installed. It is likely that new Macs next year will no longer have 9 installed as a bootable OS and may not even allow booting into 9. So yes those computers may not run CMBO or CMBB at all unless Apple fixes Rave. This is unfortunate, but it is not a make it or break it issue for Apple and likely not for BTS, although they will certianly miss the market share.

As was pointed out by our esteemed forum member above, please get your facts clear before running off and yelling wolf. This is not the first thread on this subject, we have been talking about this ever since OSX was released and so far BTS has not been able to take the time to make the needed changes to the game. Apple has also not seen fit to fix Rave. Apple is the one you should really be complaining to, so please do.

In the mean time please throttle back a bit and enjoy the CMBO you have not and CMBB when it comes out.

[jeffsmith]

I'll offer this up once again

CM:BB / OSX Poll

granted this poll is not scientific at all

but if Mac users register their preference

we all will get a better idea of the "demand"

for an OSX compatible version of CM:BB

[Schrullenhaft]

You can 'demand' and 'poll' all you want. The simple fact of the matter is that CM (CMBO & CMBB) needs RAVE and the ONLY way to get it to completely work with OS X the way people expect is to have the graphics routines rewritten in OpenGL. That would take 1 1/2 years minimum for BTS to complete. Making CMBB OS X compatible isn't simply a matter of 'carbonizing' the application (which would be simple to do in comparison) and it isn't something that would delay CMBB by 'just a few months', but years. BFC/BTS cannot live on the sales of CMBO alone (or the other games they are helping to market/support) for another year and a half (at least that is my guess). So the better choice between the two right now is to release CMBB in its RAVE incarnation and forego the sales to those who would refuse to install OS 9 (or eventually be unable to due to Apple's lack of support).

This is not an issue of BTS/BFC ignoring the demand for an OS X compatible version, it's just financial reality. As far as I know at this point an OpenGL/OS X compatible version of CM is the very next thing to be worked on when CMBB is patched satisfactorily. This is the 'engine rewrite' that people talk about. At that point all sorts of changes will be incorporated into CM that aren't possible with the current engine (plus the availability of faster hardware to support these new features should be more common by then). However it will not be a re-release of CMBO and/or CMBB, but the next theater which is the Mediterraen/Desert War. The Eastern Front and NWE will be revisted quite awhile from now (most likely after another engine rewrite).

There will be attempts to get CMBB to work with OS X, but don't count on them involving hardware-rendering in Classic mode. Most likely it may involve some automated manner of getting it to work in software-rendering mode (much in the manner that karch mentioned above). Most likely the solution will only be instructions in the manual, but I don't know what the final resolution will be at this point.

[ August 02, 2002, 11:35 PM: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Schrullenhaft:

This is not an issue of BTS/BFC ignoring the demand for an OS X compatible version, it's just financial reality. As far as I know at this point an OpenGL/OS X compatible version of CM is the very next thing to be worked on when CMBB is patched satisfactorily. This is the 'engine rewrite' that people talk about. At that point all sorts of changes will be incorporated into CM that aren't possible with the current engine (plus the availability of faster hardware to support these new features should be more common by then). However it will not be a re-release of CMBO and/or CMBB, but the next theater which is the Mediterraen/Desert War. The Eastern Front and NWE will be revisted quite awhile from now (most likely after another engine rewrite).

That seems clear enough to me, so why don't we lock this one up and move on to more interesting topics, such as Dorosh's Nazi regalia fetish.

Michael

[jeffsmith]

I did not mean demand as in "I want it now"

I meant demand as in "Supply & Demand"

Thats also why I put a smiley next to it

So no-one Particluarly the fine folks at BTS/BFC would think it was a demand for action

Merely trying to guage the need/desire

for an OSX version of CM:BB

If its not going to happen so be it

I would boot into Win 3.1 if it meant playing BTS/BFC products

[ August 03, 2002, 02:27 AM: Message edited by: jeffsmith ]

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by jeffsmith:

I would boot into Win 3.1 if it meant playing BTS/BFC products

Ooooo, don't say that! The gods might be listening and we don't want to give them ideas. They have a pretty twisted sense of humor as it is.

Michael

[karsten]

Actually, Quark for OS X is coming out in January. At least according to recent reports.

Also, there are two parts to the OS 9 no-boot stuff:

- New macs (HW)

- Existing macs (SW)

The whole point is to disallow booting directly in to OS 9 no matter what machine you have OS X installed on. Support for OS 9 would be through Classic only.

That means partition or not, no direct boot into OS 9.

Not sure how you've been able to get CMBO to run in Classic, mine just blanks the screen...

[karch]

Originally posted by karsten:

Also, there are two parts to the OS 9 no-boot stuff:

- New macs (HW)

- Existing macs (SW)

The whole point is to disallow booting directly in to OS 9 no matter what machine you have OS X installed on. Support for OS 9 would be through Classic only.

That means partition or not, no direct boot into OS 9....

I don't know where you are getting your information but this is just flat out wrong. The only way they could prevent any current machines that currently run OS 9 is to upgrade the ROMs to specifically NOT allow booting into OS9, and I'll bet you $1000 that's not going to happen.

1) Any Mac that can boot OS9 right now, will be able to forever, no matter what else you load onto it. It has nothing to do with partitions or anything.

2) To get CM to run in classic mode on OSX, when classic is booting, hold down the shift key when starting up to bring up the extension manager and remove the Classic Rave extension. That's all you should need to do.

Scott

[Ignatious J. Fathead]

Originally posted by karch:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by karsten:

Also, there are two parts to the OS 9 no-boot stuff:

- New macs (HW)

- Existing macs (SW)

The whole point is to disallow booting directly in to OS 9 no matter what machine you have OS X installed on. Support for OS 9 would be through Classic only.

That means partition or not, no direct boot into OS 9....

I don't know where you are getting your information but this is just flat out wrong. The only way they could prevent any current machines that currently run OS 9 is to upgrade the ROMs to specifically NOT allow booting into OS9, and I'll bet you $1000 that's not going to happen.

1) Any Mac that can boot OS9 right now, will be able to forever, no matter what else you load onto it. It has nothing to do with partitions or anything.

2) To get CM to run in classic mode on OSX, when classic is booting, hold down the shift key when starting up to bring up the extension manager and remove the Classic Rave extension. That's all you should need to do.

Scott</font>

[karsten]

The news is already out about the removal of OS 9 boot capability - check almost any mac news site.

It's supposed to happen in January or thereabouts...

Even if it's possible to shift-boot into classic and run CMBB in software graphics mode, I don't think I will.

I've tried the software mode in CMBO and, basically, it sucks.

I really hope that something happens with CMBB or with RAVE support in Jaguar or I've got a feeling that CMBB just won't be the big seller I know it could be.

[Pzman]

Originally posted by Ignatious J. Fathead:

No, not quite. Apple could easily disable the ability to boot into OS9 on current Macs buy (1) removing this option from the Startup Disk control panel in future revisions of OSX and/or (2) updating the Classic environment for OSX to make it unbootable.

Think of this for a minute, if I don't install OSX on my hard drive, they can't do that.

[Ignatious J. Fathead]

Yes, you can stick with OS9 so long as you never want to own new Mac hardware or software. As much as I like CM, this is one sacrifice I don't plan to make.

[Ignatious J. Fathead]

Originally posted by karsten:

The news is already out about the removal of OS 9 boot capability - check almost any mac news site.

It's supposed to happen in January or thereabouts...

Even if it's possible to shift-boot into classic and run CMBB in software graphics mode, I don't think I will.

I've tried the software mode in CMBO and, basically, it sucks.

I really hope that something happens with CMBB or with RAVE support in Jaguar or I've got a feeling that CMBB just won't be the big seller I know it could be.

There seems to be quite a bit of confusion over precisely what Apple has recently announced. As of 10.2, they will no longer include an OS9 boot CD. By itself, this is of little importance or significance. But they have also announced that as of some time next year, new Mac iron will no longer support booting into OS9. This is significant -- it indicates Apple's intentions to more tightly integrate the Classic environment into OSX. It signals the end of OS9 as a freestanding operating system.

[karsten]

Here's one of the articles - no more confusion:

Apple Computer Inc. plans to crank up the heat on users and developers slow to move to Mac OS X.

The Mac OS X-only policy will be enforced via a software feature in Pinot, the next major Mac OS X update after Jaguar (Mac OS X 10.2), which Apple said will ship Aug. 24. Apple will make the move by January's Macworld Expo/San Francisco.

This tweak will not disable the Classic environment, which allows Mac OS 9 to run as a separate process within Mac OS X, providing limited compatibility for older applications. However, it will present a quandary for developers and users alike who rely on Mac OS 9 for their day-to-day work.

For the past year, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has signaled publicly to third-party developers that they should turn their attentions solely to Mac OS X and forgo future plans for the legacy system.

At May's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, Calif., Jobs theatrically eulogized Mac OS 9, rolling a boxed copy out in a coffin while funereal music blared from speakers. Mac OS 9 "isn't dead for our customers yet," he told assembled software and hardware developers, "but it's dead to you."

Meanwhile, Apple has wooed consumers with Mac OS X-based "i-apps" such as iMovie, iTunes and iPhoto, and a growing number of cutting-edge games are appearing for Mac OS X only.

----------

So - do we get a free Mac running OS 9 with each copy of CMBB?

[karch]

-removed first line because it was pretty rude... sorry-

Short of forcing people to update their ROMs to run OS X 10.2 that would not allow OS9 to boot, there is no way you could get OS 9 to NOT boot on a current computer. It has nothing to do with Classic.

Please think about this before replying.

What is to stop any user or machine from inserting an OS 9 CD, holding down the C key when rebooting and installing OS 9 onto their computer. Wether they have OS X 10.2 or 10.3 or 11 running.

If your computer runs OS 9 right now, how on earth do you think OS 9, or any other pre X version will not install or boot.

Please, there is enough Mac DIS-information out there without more coming out.

Any Mac users reading this:

THERE IS NO REASON TO WORRY ABOUT YOUR CURRENT COMPUTER NEVER BEING ABLE TO BOOT INTO OS 9 AND RUNNING COMBAT MISSION OR CMBB unless Apple forces everyone to upgrade their ROMS to forceably not allow OS9 booting. Very unlikely.

The likelyhood of OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) not allowing older computers to choose OS9 as their OS to boot into is very slim. The worst case scenario (which I doubt) is that you boot off your OS9 CD and use the Startup Disc on there to pick your OS9 folder to boot from. But I'll bet that isn't the case. Please get your facts straight and think about them before you post. It's hard enough getting facts out to people without this kind of stuff being posted.

Again, anyone currently running CM on their Mac, will be able to keep running OS9 and CMBO and CMBB even if they install Jaguar (10.2). The ONLY way this wouldn't be possible is if Apple forces every user update their ROMs before installing 10.2, which is very unlikely.

regards

Scott Karch

scott@karchfamily.com

[ August 05, 2002, 01:21 AM: Message edited by: karch ]

[karsten]

Of course it's a ROM update. What else could it be?

Along with the previous story, there are also stories concerning all new macs will not be able to boot into OS 9.

Think about it for a bit. Apple has to force people to migrate to OS X. It has no other choice. OS 9 is not only an old OS, it's based on old technology that Apple has moved far beyond of. I fully expected this move a number of months ago.

Considering that Apple is being pressured by Microsoft and other major developers to force their user base onto OS X, I do agree that this kind of move makes some sense.

I don't agree with Apple's methodologies, especially of late (re: .Mac, lack of upgrade pricing on 10.2), but this follows directly in that vein.

Steve has been taking a hard line and if you truly believe that he won't continue down this path, regardless of what the user base complains about, IMHO you are poorly mistaken.

It may not happen in January. It may slightly later, it may even happen sooner, but it will happen.

Will Apple ever support RAVE in OS X? - only in our wildest dreams. RAVE is an ancient technology.

I've dealt with Steve before (the Newton). Steve does what ever the hell he wants. He buried OS 9 in front of Apple developers. If that isn't a telegraph of his intensions, I don't know what is.

I'm not looking for BF to re-write CMBB for OS X, but I truly am hoping that they can correct whatever issues they have with running in Classic mode. CMBO is the only game I have left that isn't compatible with Classic.

[ August 04, 2002, 05:27 PM: Message edited by: karsten ]

[karch]

ROM updates are NOT foolproof, and if you goof it up, you're computer is HOSED. I seriously doubt Apple will force all users that wish to buy and use 10.2 to update their ROMs for the sole purpose of stopping them from booting back into OS9. If that happens, I'll eat my words and apologize.

Unless Apple forces everyone to update their ROMs killing OS9:

1) All existing Macs will be able to play Combat mission forever, regardless if they install OSX 10.2 or not

2) New macs released this Janualy-May timeframe will probably NOT be able to boot into OS9 and will NOT be able to play CM except in classic with software 3D. (personally, I think this won't happen until next Macworld in July)

No one was ever saying that Apple wasn't killing off OS9, so I won't comment on any of that, it's true. It had been stated that users that installed OSX could then never reboot into OS9 and play combat mission. That is the only thing I am correcting.

[Ignatious J. Fathead]

Originally posted by karch:

Unless Apple forces everyone to update their ROMs killing OS9:

No, I am sorry, you are quite wrong. A future version of OSX (not 10.2, we know that already) could very well (read: probably will) include and require a version of the Classic Environment which functions only in Classic mode via OSX and cannot be booted. Think OS9 can't be made unbootable? Drag the OS9 Finder out onto the desktop and see if OS9 boots. Better have a system CD handy -- you'll need it.

If you are saying that an older/current version of OS9 can be installed and booted on any current Mac, well of course. It would be silly to suggest otherwise. You can always leave your Mac exactly as it is today and it will continue to function exactly as it does today. But I thought we were talking about the future.

Please, don't try to tell me that Apple can't make future versions of OSX require an unbootable version of Classic. Of course they can, and it doesn't require a ROM upgrade. As for whether they will -- you can count on it.

The sad fact is, at best BTS is relegating Mac users to the back of the bus -- stuck with older hardware and running a version of the OS Apple stopped developing three years ago. No matter what you might say, and no matter what explanations, rationales, or work-arounds are offered, nothing can make this situation not suck.

[karsten]

here! here!

Now back to the original question:

Is CMBB going to be compatible with Classic mode (and not by sticking us all into software graphics mode)?

Why is it that other RAVE software functions in Classic, but not CMBO?

What's the official word from battlefront on CMBB and 10.2 Classic mode compatibility?

It sure would be a shame to lose out on the best game ever made just because of a couple RAVE calls...

[Schrullenhaft]

Probably because other RAVE programs don't need the 1.7 (1.6?) revision of RAVE to render properly. As far as I'm aware OS X has RAVE support up to revision 1.6, but that isn't enough for CM. Unfortunately those 'couple of RAVE calls' are probably critical to the 3D engine. Back-coding CM to support OS X's RAVE support probably wouldn't really work too well (think 'software rendering' with a few less features, but a bit faster).

[Michael Emrys]

Boy, I sure am hearing a lot of the Mac user inferiority complex ringing out loud and clear in this. Hey guys, whatever happens is still months in the future. What's all the hand-wringing about? Is this a tempest in a teapot or what?

BFC has already stated that it is their intent to make CM X-compliant with the engine rewrite of CM3. If you upgrade your machine in the next six months, or simply stick with whatever you are presently running, you will be able to play existing versions of the game until then.

So what's the big deal? Even if the worst possible outcome happens and BFC abandons the Mac entirely (something they have repeatedly denied), life goes on. You can be sure that I don't plan to throw myself out a window (no pun intended) over it. Hey buddy, I've got enough real problems to motivate me to do that if I were so inclined.

Michael