seanmac Posted February 24, 2003 Share Posted February 24, 2003 I just picked up a G4 Powerbook and have been having real problems with CM in all its forms. I tried to install CM:BO- everything seemed to go smoothly, but when I tried to play a game, any game, the screen would freeze at the Loading 3-D graphics scene. I could hear game noises, artillery and whatnot, but I never got a picture. I then downloaded the CM:BtB demo and again, initially installation seemed to be successful, but when I tried to load a game I would get a black screen with a white block line in the middle. Any suggestions? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted February 24, 2003 Share Posted February 24, 2003 Does this G4 PowerBook happen to have an ATI Radeon 9000 for its graphic chip ? If so then this may be the culprit since a number of people are having problems with the drivers for this chip (the 9000 series) on the Mac. There are some other relevant threads on this forum regarding some of the problems with the latest cards and drivers on the Mac. Are you running this under OS 9.2.x or are you trying to run under Classic within OS X ? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmead Posted February 25, 2003 Share Posted February 25, 2003 Are you booting into OS9.22? or OSX? CM will not run under Classic under X. You need to boot into OS9 and run it with Classic Rave extension shut off in the extensions manager. On most Titanium powerbooks it should run, but on the latest ones with ATI 9000 graphics, there has been alot of trouble as Schrullenhaft has pointed out. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seanmac Posted February 28, 2003 Author Share Posted February 28, 2003 I've been trying to run it out of OSX, and that has been a no go. I'll have to try booting up in classic. Still, it's a pain, and judging from other posts on the board, it's no guarantee to work. I respect Battlefront for trying to make a game that will run on both PCs and Macs with their limited resources, but it seems like there are a lot of kinks to be worked out before CM is truly Mac-friendly. And seeing as I'm an East Front guy, it would be too bad if things were fixed only in time to hit the Pacific. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tar Posted February 28, 2003 Share Posted February 28, 2003 CMBB absolutely does not run under OS X in Classic mode. You really have to boot into OS 9 directly and (as mentioned) disable the Classic RAVE extension. Using Extension Manager this isn't all too difficult, but OS X will keep putting the Classic RAVE extension back in, so you might need to take care of this on each boot. You can get the Extensions Manager on OS 9 to open up at boot time by holding down the space bar during the boot up. In all fairness to Battlefront, they initially developed Combat Mission on the Macintosh but were left high and dry when Apple summarily decided to not support RAVE anymore. (The RAVE support in OS-X/Classic is not as advanced as what was available under OS 9). But by that time it was too late for BFC to recode their engine. BFC is a small shop and their software development times run about 2 years, so that gives a lot of opportunity for having the technologcial rug pulled out from under them. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aka_tom_w Posted March 1, 2003 Share Posted March 1, 2003 Originally posted by Schrullenhaft: Does this G4 PowerBook happen to have an ATI Radeon 9000 for its graphic chip ? If so then this may be the culprit since a number of people are having problems with the drivers for this chip (the 9000 series) on the Mac. There are some other relevant threads on this forum regarding some of the problems with the latest cards and drivers on the Mac. Are you running this under OS 9.2.x or are you trying to run under Classic within OS X ? try this thread: http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=003244;p=2 you can see pics posted there What version of the G4 Tibook do you have? how fast mHz? -tom w 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seanmac Posted March 3, 2003 Author Share Posted March 3, 2003 It's one of the new 12" G4s, with 867 Mhz, which should be plenty for CMBB. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmead Posted March 4, 2003 Share Posted March 4, 2003 Seanmac: Sadly, CMBO and CMBB will not run on your computer. All the new G4 Alumninum Powerbooks are OSX booting only and run OS9 in Classic Mode under X. CMBO and CMBB both need the computer booted into OS 9.2.2 or earlier, which your computer cannot do. This was a decision by Apple and has nothing to do with CM. This has been a sad wrinkle for all of us, including BFC, as we have all known that Apple was migrating away from OS9 for most of a year and the writing has been on the wall for several years. The CM series was written using RAVE as the 3D graphic description process. Apple abandoned Rave and moved to OpenGL (ultimately a better environment). At the time it was written, Apple had been touting Rave as the platform for Apple's future development for games along with Game Sprockets and several other technologies. BFC was caught flat footed when Apple moved away as they had already coded the graphics engine for CM using Rave. Under OS 9 (the booted version) the Rave extensions behave correctly, carrying out the needed instructions that allow CM to properly display the graphics that we all see on the Mac version. Unfortunately, due to changes in the version of Rave that Classic (OS 9.2.2 that runs under X in emulation) uses, the game will not display the graphics. So, you may rightly ask, who do I complain to? Well you might fault BFC for not rewriting a program that had already suffered from a very protracted development cycle. At the time they could not have known that Rave would be so poorly supported under Apple's new operating system (which was still supposed to be Copland as I recall). You could rightly fault Apple for a poorly executed transfer of Rave technology to the Classic interface. Either way we still have a problem that none of the affected parties are satisfied with, which is that some users are unable to run a desired piece of software. I personally have complained to Apple several times. If we could get the entire board's Mac population to email a complaint to Apple, maybe something might change. I don't see BFC as being at fault in this case as Apple has failed to implement Classic Rave correctly. Whats on the horizon? BFC is beginning work on the CM2 engine that will be the underlying basis of future versions of CM, and they have stated that it will be OSX compatible. Unfortunately, that particular horizon is pretty far away, as BFC has only one programmer (Charles, the brain in the glass bowl) working on it so it will be at least two years from now that we will get our next fix of CM. CM has so far been written on a Mac so we can (hopefully ) rest assured that the next iteration will be Mac friendly. [ March 03, 2003, 09:17 PM: Message edited by: kmead ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seanmac Posted March 4, 2003 Author Share Posted March 4, 2003 That is disappointing, to say the least. I guess the consolation is that I can still run CMBO on my old laptop, and the game is good enough to keep me satisfied through the wait. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aka_tom_w Posted April 9, 2003 Share Posted April 9, 2003 bump 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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