ATI Radeon fix?

[Jammer Six]

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?

[Wicky]

A quick search turned up this thread, doesn't look good. Link (the only glimmer of hope was Don't Panic's partial fix)

32mb ATI Radeon cards work fine, anything after that seem screwed.

Originally posted by Jammer Six:

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?

[ November 15, 2003, 10:06 AM: Message edited by: Wicky ]

[Jammer Six]

32mb ATI Radeon cards work fine, anything after that seem screwed.

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?

[Wicky]

Originally posted by Jammer Six:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />32mb ATI Radeon cards work fine, anything after that seem screwed.

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? </font>

[Jammer Six]

And look for a little application 'Apple System Profiler' which with time and patience will reveal the inner workings of your mac.

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.

"Problem: I have a dual processor G4 with a Radeon Pro 9000 card installed and I am getting what looks like psychedelic graphics displayed when playing the game.

Cause/Solution: The problem lies with the current drivers for the Radeon Pro 9000 card and we are not able to fix it on our end. Both ATI and Apple have been contacted but there has to date been no progress on this issue."

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.

[Wicky]

Booted in OSX and checking in my system profiler gives me this:

"ATY,RADEON:

Type: display

Bus: AGP

Display Type: CRT

Slot: SLOT-A

VRAM (Total): 32 MB

Vendor: ATI (0x1002)

Device ID: 0x5144

Revision ID: 0x0000

ROM Revision: 113-74901-117

...."

what does yours say for VRAM? 32 or 64 but I think the fundamental issue is are you booted when running CM in OS9.2.2 or are you running in OSX Classic emulation.

The system requirements for CM on the website product info:

Mac OS 8.6 to 9.xx

CMBB does not run natively under Mac OS X.

If your tibook cannot boot into OS9 then that is another issue beyond identifying your video card. And your problem is more like to filling your brand new car's gas tank with diesel and wondering why it won't run properly.

Try a search for "mac rave" to find out more .

[Jammer Six]

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.

[Wicky]

Originally posted by Jammer Six:

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.

Apple 9.2.2 updater fom 9.2.1 this won't solve all your problems esp if you do have a 9000 card.

[Jammer Six]

Apple 9.2.2 updater fom 9.2.1 this won't solve all your problems esp if you do have a 9000 card.

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?

[Wicky]

Originally posted by Jammer Six:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Apple 9.2.2 updater fom 9.2.1 this won't solve all your problems esp if you do have a 9000 card.

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? </font>

[Jammer Six]

Don't blame BFC for you not reading system specs as you still haven't seemed to have worked out the simple task of telling anyone willing to help exactly what graphics card you've got and if it's a 9000 as you original stated you might best moan off at ATI about their drivers. (or install an ATI 32mb card and enjoy a bloody great game - incidently made on a Mac and ported to PC)

CMX2 is in development with OpenGL and will work in OSXIV/ M$ OS whatever and paid for by us mere mortals purchasing CMBO/CMBB/CMAK for Mac/PC.

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.

[Wicky]

There's maybe hope:

Originally posted in back in 2002:

Um... to get back on the topic a bit, I'm running a dual 867 G4 with the Radeon 9000, and both CMs run fine...

... but I hope knowing it is possible and happens somewhere gives you hope and to keep working on it. Good luck.

[Schrullenhaft]

If you're running an Apple G4 Titanium Powerbook, then this Apple manual indicates on pg. 80 that you have an ATI RAGE Mobility 128 with 8Mb of VRAM. However I don't really know if this is the actual laptop that you're running. If these specs are accurate I have no idea why the System Profiler for OS 9.2 is telling you that it is a Radeon (which is a different piece of hardware).

Laptops are also incapable of having their 'video cards' upgraded unless the whole motherboard is replaced/upgraded with a newer video chip (an option that is very rare).

OS 9.2.x should have the latest drivers available for the RAGE Mobility 128 series. ATI doesn't make them available to anyone else but Apple, so they're the only source (for Mac drivers of course). To my understanding I don't think you should have the same problem as the Radeon 9000 series (a completely different graphic chip and drivers).

What exactly are you seeing on the screen ? Is it just like the screenshots in the above posted thread (the 'psychadelic colors') or is it something else ? Have you removed the 'Classic RAVE' extension that may be sitting in your OS 9.2.x system folder (it will be there if this is the 'Classic' folder for OS X.x). I don't know if this could be the cause of anything that you're seeing.

You may want to attempt to run your screen at 800x600 (if this is possible) and see if this helps CM. Also increase (or maybe even decrease) the size of the memory partition for CM.

And the reason that 'Amish Software's' CM doesn't work under OS X is that Apple dropped full support for RAVE - a core 3D technology that CM uses. OS X's requirement for OpenGL means that a very large part of CM needs to be programmed from scratch - something that took almost 3 years the first time around.

[Wicky]

A nightmare series to ID correctly -

Titanium PowerBook G4 range:

1GHz PowerPC G4

ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 with 64MB

867MHz PowerPC G4

ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 with 32MB

667MHz PowerPC G4,

ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 with 32Mb

667MHz PowerPC G4

ATI Mobility Radeon with 16Mb

Now which one is it?

Is your OS9 system profiler something like this:

What does your VRAM say?

If it is a 9000 which I certainly think it is then you seemed to have unfortunately missed the warning when ordering CMBB Link - June 17 '03

Originally posted by Schrullenhaft:

If you're running an Apple G4 Titanium Powerbook, then this Apple manual indicates on pg. 80 that you have an ATI RAGE Mobility 128 with 8Mb of VRAM. However I don't really know if this is the actual laptop that you're running. If these specs are accurate I have no idea why the System Profiler for OS 9.2 is telling you that it is a Radeon (which is a different piece of hardware).

[ November 17, 2003, 09:52 PM: Message edited by: Wicky ]

[Jammer Six]

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.

Sorry, this is all the information I have.

It's a 867 mhz. G4.

What exactly are you seeing on the screen ? Is it just like the screenshots in the above posted thread (the 'psychadelic colors') or is it something else ?

It is exactly like those screenshots.

Have you removed the 'Classic RAVE' extension that may be sitting in your OS 9.2.x system folder (it will be there if this is the 'Classic' folder for OS X.x).

Yes, I've tried it with the Classic RAVE extension removed.

Thanks for your help, I appreciate it.

[Lucky_Strike]

Neither the 867MHz and 1GHz TiBooks will run CMBO, CMBB and (probably) CMAK properly.

AFAIK the last PowerBook which could run these successfully was the 667MHz TiBook.

None of the AluBooks will run CM for now as they cannot boot to OS9.

The only way that the 867MHz and 1GHz TiBooks will run CMBO/BB/AK is with revised OS9 drivers from Apple and/or ATI. Any updates to the OSX drivers does not affect the OS9 drivers, unless explicitly stated, and so won't fix the problem.

I have a 1GHz TiBook so I get the Psychedelic colours, I gave up trying to fix this minths ago. 'Tis a shame, and unlikely to get fixed

LS

[Schrullenhaft]

It looks like we're out of luck at this point. You appear to have the G4 Titanium Powerbook with the Radeon Mobility 9000 and 32Mb VRAM. Unfortunately there won't be a solution until ATI takes a closer look at their RAVE 16-bit color support in their current drivers. There are some minor workarounds mentioned in the threads regarding this problem, but they will probably still be frustrating for most players. To my knowledge this problem exists for the entire Radeon 9x00 family on the Mac (& 8500).

This isn't a case of BTS/BFC dropping the ball and blaming someone else. If there was a way to code around this problem, I believe that BTS/BFC would attempt it. However there is no way to code around such a problem. It is at such a level with the drivers that no RAVE call could be re-written to avoid it. The drivers simply do not support the RAVE API properly and really need to be updated to fix this problem. Unfortunately this probably won't happen.

In my view this problem stems from Apple's push on OS X. 'Classic' support (OS 9.2.x) seems to only be aimed at 2D applications. Reviewing RAVE 3D calls has probably been dropped from ATI's (and probably NVidia's) QA procedures in favor of closely examining OpenGL calls - the current standard for 3D on the Mac.

A lot of games don't have problems with Classic or OS X because they were written in OpenGL in the first place. This is quite true of 3D first person shooters (which were often multi-platform to begin with). I'm not sure, but I'd guess that RAVE probably had some better driver support for OS 8.x & 9.x among all of the available video cards (and maybe some lower 'overhead') when CM was initially programmed - that's probably why they chose that API (and Apple also endorsed it as the primary 3D API for the Mac). Now things have changes with Apple endorsing and supporting OpenGL, with RAVE support having almost completely disappeared from Apple's OS. The video card manufacturers and their driver development staff have followed suit and minimized work/QA (or ignored it altogether) on RAVE.

Older ATI video cards (such as the Radeon 7x00 series) still work well with CM since they probably haven't seen much in terms of actual code updates like the 9x00 series has. In the PC world the Radeon family has an 'unified' driver that supports the entire family. However the driver does support each video card uniquely and there is specific code for each particular chip and its capabilities. In the Mac world the drivers for each chip family are separated, though a lot of the 'core' functionality is based on some shared code. The 7x00 series probably hasn't seen much development work lately other than some minor bug fixes. While the 9x00 series on the other hand is the current product and hence has developers working on it to improve performance, add features, fix bugs, etc. When it comes to 3D APIs those developers are concentrating on OpenGL since that is Apple's de facto standard now for 3D.

Anyway, the situation is out of BTS/BFC's hands to solve, despite their best intentions. The 3D API they work with has been abandoned by both Apple and the video hardware developers and that leaves them with few or no solutions for users who are using newer Macs. Until CM is rewritten in OpenGL (a task that they are working on now for CMx2) there will be no permanent solution to this problem and newer hardware will likely have more and more problems with CM and its RAVE-based 3D engine.

While the Mac may have some advantages, it isn't immune to the same problems that plague the PC world.

And Lucky_Strike is correct... CMAK will have the same problem too since it is based on the same graphic engine as CMBB.

[ November 18, 2003, 12:50 PM: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]

[Jammer Six]

Now things have changes with Apple endorsing and supporting OpenGL, with RAVE support having almost completely disappeared from Apple's OS. The video card manufacturers and their driver development staff have followed suit and minimized work/QA (or ignored it altogether) on RAVE.

Anyway, the situation is out of BTS/BFC's hands to solve, despite their best intentions. The 3D API they work with has been abandoned by both Apple and the video hardware developers and that leaves them with few or no solutions for users who are using newer Macs.

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.

[aka_tom_w]

bump

[yunfat]

Originally posted by Jammer Six:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> Now things have changes with Apple endorsing and supporting OpenGL, with RAVE support having almost completely disappeared from Apple's OS. The video card manufacturers and their driver development staff have followed suit and minimized work/QA (or ignored it altogether) on RAVE.

Anyway, the situation is out of BTS/BFC's hands to solve, despite their best intentions. The 3D API they work with has been abandoned by both Apple and the video hardware developers and that leaves them with few or no solutions for users who are using newer Macs.

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. </font>

[yunfat]

One more thing BTS, if you are listening. When you send out a press release you should say that the game is OS9 ONLY. I have had to correct a number of Mac news sites regarding the CMAK press release. These sites are under the assumption the game runs in X. The press release mentions Mac compatibility, but we all know thats a croc. No new macs run the freakin game, who the hell are you kidding?

[Madmatt]

Yunfat, I have asked Martin to make special note of the OS specs in the followup press releases. Obviously we can not control what sites decide to post as they often truncate the full release and just copy the highlights.

The original press release does state that the game is a 9.x app, actually says it in the first sentence!

Now, I have gone round and round about the Mac issue before and I don't really have the time to do so again but I feel this is important to once more state our position on this.

The simple truth is that recoding the existing games to support OS-X was simply not in our means before. You don't have to deal with the loss of income and sales from not having your flagship game support OS-X, we do, so don't try and lecture me about us being driven solely by money, you simply have no clue to what a massive pain in the ass this situation has been for us.

CMX2 will be a native OS-X product, but CMX2 was only possible because of the sales of the games that preceeded it.

It was simply impossible from not only from a financial but resource standpoint to stop all development of CMBB or CMAK to instead recode the core game engine to natively support OS-X.

What other small companies have done with regards to OS-X is meaningless to me. Every situation is unique and in the genre of wargames, and gaming in general, the Mac installed gaming userbase is a fraction of the PC's and this is a legitimate concern for a gaming publisher, which is what we are. And how can you have less programing resources than us?!? We got one guy that codes all of CM!

We looked at the situation when OS-X was released without the native Rave3d support we were originally told it would contain and we did the only thing that would guarantee we would still be around years later. That move was to continue with our orginal product schedule which called for the creation and developement of at least 2 additional CM titles (released on both platforms) beyond CMBO using incremental code improvements and changes. After that point, we figured we would be in a place to overhaul the entire game engine, from the ground up, and apply all that we learned about making 3D wargames into a new 3D gaming engine, supporting all the current technologies and OS's that would be out at that time, and thats what we are doing with the development of CMX2.

So, you got a major chip on your shoulder about us and OS-X, hey fine, thats your choice, but you simply do not know all the facts, nor do you need to know them. All you need to know is, as it stands today, OS-X will not be natively supported until CMX2.

Madmatt

p.s. I have just uploaded an updated Radeon text file which should work with CMBO,CMBB and CMAK, see the troubleshooting guides for details and download link.

p.s.s By the way, you might want to back off on your vitriolic wording on what you perceive of the truth. I will not continue to overlook it and its not appreciated. We do not give out "bogus" info and the games DO work on Mac's that run OS 9.X. So regardless of what you feel about our OS compatability, that is the truth.

[ November 20, 2003, 07:09 PM: Message edited by: Madmatt ]

[Jammer Six]

CMX2 will be a native OS-X product

I'm glad to hear it. I imagine that I'll buy a copy.

We do not give out "bogus" info and the games DO work on Mac's that run OS 9.X.

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.

What other small companies have done with regards to OS-X is meaningless to me

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 ]

[Madmatt]

I understand what your saying about the decissions of other companies, but what they did is pointless to me, because our situation could not be changed. Irregardless of what company XYZ did with regards to OS-X support, we had to do what we did. What a customer feels is never pointless however, and thats not what I was referring to. But their personal feelings about how we conduct business is not something I can get to worked up over as we do the very best we can and the majority of our customer base understands and appreciates it. I am not one to sugar coat ANYTHING, to ANYONE. I tell you how things are. I wish more construction contractors would do the same.

Also, Its not that we didn't try to change, we spent considerable time and resources looking to see if we could support OS-X and without recoding the game from the ground up, it just couldn't be done.

You own a construction business, correct, what sort of position would you be in for example if one of your two primary customers suddenly, and unexpectedly changed their specs and left you with not only a current project but several future projects in jeopardy of no longer being completed without massive and costly retooling of your internal procedures, which would undoubtably throw your entire work schedule out of whack for years while you other customer (and a bigger one to boot) asked for no such spec change?

Had we thrown ourselves into recoding the entire game it would have delayed CMBB and CMAK by at LEAST a year and that was something we simply could not afford to do.

A messy analogy to be sure, but the point is that is very similar to the spot Apple put us in.

Guys, we HATE the position we are in with regards to this whole mess, and no one seems to understand the monumental bending over Apple threw on us, and so unexpecetedly. We were and still are a Licensed Apple Software Developer. Combat Mission Beyond Overlord was FEATURED, not just displayed but FEATURED in a Apple/Mac developers conference just a few months before OS-X was unveiled and Apple never breathed a word that Rave3D was getting totally cut out and that their support of it in Classic Mode would be so shoddy.

We were not the only software developer caught unawares of this move either. Look how long it took Photoshop to come out with a OS-X version, to see the difficulty in revamping an entire product line. We are now one of just a handfull of game companies that still tries, as best we can, to support the Mac gaming community.

I know how it must look to you guys, that we don't care, that we don't listen, but this whole topic as been gone over and over and over and over. CMBO, CMBB, and CMAK were WRITTEN on a G3 Mac, hell Charles will probably code CMX2 on a Mac as well. To say we turned our backs on the Mac is ludicrious. I would say its about as insane as Apple deciding to drop support for a perfectly stable and entrenched gaming API...Oh wait a sec...they did.

Now then, as to the color issue on your Mac, that is a glitch in the video extensions for that card. The problem is well known by Apple (god knows we have reported it enough times) and it seems to be a problem with how the extensions are reporting their available texture memory. The extensions are not freeing up the texture memory as effeciently as they should and the results are those multi-colored textures you see because the card doesn't think its frame buffer can hold the actual graphics it should display. We tried to code around this, but its a core level driver issue and one that only Apple or ATI can resolve. I am sure that's not the answer you want to hear, and its not the answer I wish I had to give,but thats simply how it is.

The order page for all CM products state specifically that Mac's with Radeon 9000 cards will have problems and advises people to test the demo first to see if they are going to have issues. I can't really do more than that.

Madmatt

[ November 20, 2003, 09:59 PM: Message edited by: Madmatt ]

[Jammer Six]

You own a construction business, correct, what sort of position would you be in for example if one of your two primary customers suddenly, and unexpectedly changed their specs and left you with not only a current project but several future projects in jeopardy of no longer being completed without massive and costly retooling of your internal procedures, which would undoubtably throw your entire work schedule out of whack for years while you other customer (and a bigger one to boot) asked for no such spec change?

Had we thrown ourselves into recoding the entire game it would have delayed CMBB and CMAK by at LEAST a year and that was something we simply could not afford to do.

A messy analogy to be sure, but the point is that is very similar to the spot Apple put us in.

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.