40 replies to this topic

[tutdiesel]

hi Im new here but was wondering if anyone has been able to run these cames with OS 9 Classic?  thanks

[Matt Diamond]

tutdiesel, on March 12th 2005, 04:59 PM, said:

hi Im new here but was wondering if anyone has been able to run these cames with OS 9 Classic?  thanks

You can search these forums to see previous discussion.  Consensus is that Tie Fighter no longer runs under Classic. It may once have done so (OS X 10.1?) If your computer can boot to OS 9 then I'm pretty certain I've run it that way. But most of the new Macs can't boot to 9. If ever there was a reason for keeping an old Mac around, Tie Fighter is it.

If you can get hold of a copy of Freespace 2 for PC, then download the beta Mac patch for it, that's the closest you can get to the Tie Fighter experience under OS X these days. It's very good, except the opening movie doesn't work very well. I paid an arm and a leg for a copy of Freespace 2 on eBay but I think it was worth it!

[tutdiesel]

Matt Diamond, on March 12th 2005, 07:50 PM, said:

You can search these forums to see previous discussion.  Consensus is that Tie Fighter no longer runs under Classic. It may once have done so (OS X 10.1?) If your computer can boot to OS 9 then I'm pretty certain I've run it that way. But most of the new Macs can't boot to 9. If ever there was a reason for keeping an old Mac around, Tie Fighter is it.

If you can get hold of a copy of Freespace 2 for PC, then download the beta Mac patch for it, that's the closest you can get to the Tie Fighter experience under OS X these days. It's very good, except the opening movie doesn't work very well. I paid an arm and a leg for a copy of Freespace 2 on eBay but I think it was worth it!

thanks a ton for your help!  ill go ahead and try it out

[placy]

For a couple of freebies, try http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/  

Check out the 2 Fan mods  (Privateer and Vegatrek) on the rightside of the screen
since they both have Mac versions.

[xcman22]

I just purchased the X-Wing Collection, which includes Tie Fighter and X-Wing. I had a couple of questions, and I was hoping some experienced and cool people could help me out. I have a 733mhz G4, with OS 9 and X on it. This, of course, means I can boot into OS 9 as opposed to running it in Classic. I do not, however, have a joystick, though I can get one easily enough.

-Has anyone ACTUALLY tested either of these games in OS 9? Do they in fact work?

-Has anyone managed to install a joystick on a computer with the ability to run BOTH OS 9 and X?

-Could anyone recommend a good joystick for these games? Something midrange I imagine, but I'm not sure.

-Any opinions on these games?

I tried searching the forums on this topic, as suggested above, but was unable to find anything-maybe I'm just really bad at searching. Anyway, any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

[Matt Diamond]

xcman22, on March 21st 2005, 12:24 PM, said:

I just purchased the X-Wing Collection, which includes Tie Fighter and X-Wing. I had a couple of questions, and I was hoping some experienced and cool people could help me out. I have a 733mhz G4, with OS 9 and X on it. This, of course, means I can boot into OS 9 as opposed to running it in Classic. I do not, however, have a joystick, though I can get one easily enough.

-Has anyone ACTUALLY tested either of these games in OS 9? Do they in fact work?

-Has anyone managed to install a joystick on a computer with the ability to run BOTH OS 9 and X?

-Could anyone recommend a good joystick for these games? Something midrange I imagine, but I'm not sure.

-Any opinions on these games?

I tried searching the forums on this topic, as suggested above, but was unable to find anything-maybe I'm just really bad at searching. Anyway, any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

These are classic games, well worth taking some effort to install. The graphics are pretty basic, but the gameplay is great, even the training levels. The levels will load instantaneously on modern machines. X-Wing forced you to back up your pilot file manually because you could lose your pilot completely if you died during a mission.  These days noone would stand for a game that forced you to start over from scratch like that! Anyway, you get around it by backing up your pilot file before running the program. But Tie Fighter built that feature into the game. Pilot dies, you just have to try that one level again.

Joystick: I don't think USB joysticks will be detected by either game. first get the game running with your mouse. Once that works, try USB Overdrive or its competitor, whose name I can't remember. Use it to make the joystick look like a mouse, and make the joystick buttons issue keyboard commands as desired.

IMG probably has some old joystick reviews lying around. Just about any joystick that fits well in your hand and has a lot of buttons would suffice. Throttle is useful but slightly tricky to get it to work with these games (depends how smart your software is that maps the joystick controls to mouse/keyboard.) PC USB joysticks should be fine. Go to a store if you can, see what's on sale, they are often getting rid of some old stock to make way for some fancy new optical model.

[xcman22]

Thanks for the heads-up on the USB joystick-I hadn't even thought of that. Wal-Mart is selling a $25 joystick that CLAIMS to be Mac compatible. Seeing as Wal-Mart almost never sells anything really Mac-compatible, I'll believe it when I see it. Do you know if I need the registered version of USB Overdrive to make it work? I must confess my experience with USB Overdrive has been, shall we say...nothing<sad face>. Anyway, I can't wait to try these games out. I played them once about six years ago...and was really bad(not the game-my skill). I hope to be a lot better...if I can get it to work<grin>.

[tutdiesel]

let me know how/if you got the game to work and on what system.  id love to try to get it to work on my os9 classic but im not sure if it will

[Eric5h5]

xcman22, on March 21st 2005, 12:24 PM, said:

-Has anyone ACTUALLY tested either of these games in OS 9? Do they in fact work?

I have both, and TIE Fighter definitely runs on an OS 9 machine.  The last OS I tried X-Wing on was 7.6 I think.

Just now, I was even able to run TIE Fighter on my dual 2.5 G5, thanks to SheepShaver, which recently got a new version:

http://gwenole.beauc...fr/sheepshaver/

Unfortunately, while it runs, and seems to play OK, something is a bit wonky with the way the graphics are drawn, so the screen updates are damn slow.  So close....  (This doesn't happen with other games I tried...for example, under SheepShaver, Tempest 2000 still suffers from the same timing bug that happens under Classic mode, so it runs at about 100 times normal speed, at like 50,000 frames per second or something.  So it's not that SheepShaver is inherently slow.  Other games, like Marathon, run perfectly smooth.)  

--Eric

[tutdiesel]

Eric5h5, on March 21st 2005, 10:31 PM, said:

I have both, and TIE Fighter definitely runs on an OS 9 machine.  The last OS I tried X-Wing on was 7.6 I think.

Just now, I was even able to run TIE Fighter on my dual 2.5 G5, thanks to SheepShaver, which recently got a new version:

http://gwenole.beauc...fr/sheepshaver/

Unfortunately, while it runs, and seems to play OK, something is a bit wonky with the way the graphics are drawn, so the screen updates are damn slow.  So close....  (This doesn't happen with other games I tried...for example, under SheepShaver, Tempest 2000 still suffers from the same timing bug that happens under Classic mode, so it runs at about 100 times normal speed, at like 50,000 frames per second or something.  So it's not that SheepShaver is inherently slow.  Other games, like Marathon, run perfectly smooth.) 

--Eric

are you playing tie fighter off your G5 on osx by simply using sheepshaver??

[Eric5h5]

tutdiesel, on March 22nd 2005, 12:08 AM, said:

are you playing tie fighter off your G5 on osx by simply using sheepshaver??

Yes...For those who may not know, SheepShaver is a Mac emulator.  It emulates PPC Macs running up to OS 9.0.4.  On machines using PPC CPUs, there is no CPU emulator so it runs at native speed...it seems to benchmark as running slightly faster than Classic, actually.  (On x86 machines, it runs at about 1/8 native speed with JIT enabled.)  Since it's running MacOS in a window (i.e., it's a total sandbox), it's somewhat more compatible than Classic in some cases.  Although it has no access to graphics hardware, so it won't run any games that need 3D hardware.

I've now tried X-Wing, which also runs fine on SheepShaver (doesn't work under Classic at all), and while the interface screens aren't slow like TIE Fighter, the game itself seems to be running slow for some reason.  Grr.  This is under OS 8.6, BTW, so it should run fine on a real OS 9 machine.

--Eric

[xcman22]

Thanks for the comments Eric! As soon as the game gets delivered and I get my joystick, I will try out both games in OS 9 and Classic and I'll post my results. I cannot wait for the games to come-mwa ha ha ha.

[tutdiesel]

Thanks a ton guys for all the comments.....im gonna try to get these games running as well and ill let you know how they work asap!

[Matt Diamond]

xcman22, on March 21st 2005, 04:06 PM, said:

Do you know if I need the registered version of USB Overdrive to make it work? I must confess my experience with USB Overdrive has been, shall we say...nothing<sad face>.

It's shareware, so you are free to "try before you buy." Don't forget the "buy" part if it works for you.    Keep us posted!

[xcman22]

Ok, I got me a joystick-Extreme 3d Pro. I tried testing it on privateer remake before i got tie fighter or x-wing, but i cant figure out how to configure usb overdrive to work with the game-or any game for that matter. Does ANYONE know how to use it? I feel dumb, but I just.don't.get.it.

[Matt Diamond]

Just wanted to mention that another program to try is Gamepad Companion. I bought it a while back to get a gamepad working with Tony Hawk 2 under OS X.

Both USB Overdrive & Gamepad Companion seem to be supported products; both released updates to make them Panther compatible, for instance.

[Ben]

I don't know how SheepShaver handles InputSprockets, but HappyGear might help. I think that helped get USB joysticks to work with those games in OS 9.

They apparently do some goofy screen drawing trick, which is why they don't work in Classic. They both work fine for me when I boot the same system folder to OS 9.

Ben

[xcman22]

Ben, are you saying you got both to work when booting in OS 9? Sweet! This program seems pretty cool-I will be sure to try it out as soon as the games come-maybe there is hope after all! I got my joystick to work with F/18 Hornet 1.1.0(old game), so I think this will work-we shall see soon enough.

[tutdiesel]

ok im a little confused by sheepshaver.....i downloaded it but am unsure what to do next....any help or advice?  i feel dumb but im unfamiliar with the program.....im running off osx on a G5

[Eric5h5]

tutdiesel, on March 23rd 2005, 07:09 PM, said:

ok im a little confused by sheepshaver.....i downloaded it but am unsure what to do next....any help or advice?  i feel dumb but im unfamiliar with the program.....im running off osx on a G5

Well, it's not really done nor is there much documentation yet.  The main thing is, you need an old MacOS install CD, and it probably needs to be a generic one, not tied to a specific model (like an iMac).  Trying to use the files from Classic won't work, because that's too new...SheepShaver only supports up to 9.0.4 so far, and Classic is 9.2.2 I think.  You also need a blank disk image of whatever size you think you need; a couple of gigs would be fine.  SheepShaver for the Mac doesn't have the graphical user interface ported, so you have to edit the config file by hand.  

However, Basilisk II does have the UI, so you could download that and play around with it, to get a good idea how SheepShaver works, since they are very similar.  (Basilisk II is a 68K Mac emulator; you can download System 7.5 free from Apple.  You can run it full-screen, and I must say it's quite amusing to have a dual 2.5GHz G5 apparently running System 7.  Boy do I NOT miss those days.    Although it's not all that fast, emulating a 68K CPU with no JIT, with a refresh rate of 60fps, I get maybe twice the speed or so of a 68040 Mac.  Although that ought to be just about enough to run X-Wing OK, except Basilisk II doesn't have sound yet on OS X.)  

When running SheepShaver, you should be able to put the install CD in the drive, have SheepShaver boot from it, then install the OS to your disk image.  Then you'd have SheepShaver boot off the disk image from then on.  However, I just copied over an already installed OS 8.6 partition from my other computer, so I don't know how picky SheepShaver is about this process.

Yeah, it's more complicated than Classic.  More compatible though.  Now if only the graphics for X-Wing and TIE Fighter worked at full speed like they do in other games....

--Eric