Archive for November, 2003
I mentioned last week about a problem I was having with getting Age Of Mythology to load due to an “Initialization Failed” error during the loading of the “game database” screen.
I contacted MacSoft technical support and the reason was related to a partition I had on my system that was named “Data”. Apparently this causes problems with the game and a simple name change enabled me to play successfully.
I found the problem. Rename your hard drive partition named Data to a different name (MyData) and the game will work. I will file a bug report on that one and have it fixed in an update.
Thanks,
MacSoft Technical Support
I noticed a few people came here via a search looking for the “Initialization Failed” message so hopefully this will help answer the question.
November 30th, 2003
Nintendo recently released a compilation disc containing four previous Zelda games; The Legend of Zelda (NES), Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (NES), The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64), and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (N64). Noticeably missing is Link to the Past for the SNES. I’d guess the main reason for the lack of Link to the Past is that you can still buy the title for the Game Boy Advance. However, they’ve included a demo of the newest Link, The Wind Waker for GameCube and a couple of exclusive movies for collectors.
Unfortunately the easiest way to pick of the disc is by purchasing a GameCube that comes bundled with it. Thankfully, Nintendo realized that many people already own GameCube systems, so they’re also allowing you to obtain the disc through “two other methods”:https://www.nintendo.com/zeldaclassic/.
The first one involves “registering”:https://www.nintendo.com/register/index.jsp your currently owned GameCube and two select Nintendo GameCube titles. The other choice is to “subscribe or renew”:https://www.nintendo.com/zeldaclassic/store.jsp your Nintendo Power magazine subscription for $19.99 and receive the disc for free.
I opted for the renewal of my Nintendo Power magazine because it was scheduled to expire soon anyway and Nintendo is usually good about giving other exclusive content to subscribers like the “EON ticket”:http://www.snapturtle.com/archives/2003/10/09/ive_got_the_ticket.php for Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire.
November 29th, 2003
Thanksgiving is tomorrow here in the US, commonly celebrated by having a large 19 pound turkey and lots of other foods I don’t eat in order to give “thanks”.
Being that I’m vegan, I don’t eat birds, cows, or other creatures. I’m also not going to eat a Tofurky. Give me a break. If I really needed to eat turkey, I’d eat a damn turkey. Otherwise don’t bother me with some wannabe fake non-feathered soy toy. Instead, I’m grateful to have a caring wife that is making me a special vegan meal from scratch. Top that turkey lovers!
BTW, why do we need to single out one day each year to give thanks for something I had absolutely nothing to do with? I try my best to be grateful for what I have each day, on some days thats not as easy as others, but life is to short to just let it blow you by. Shit can happen on any given day and you’ll never know which day that is until it happens. So instead of stopping to smell the roses once a year, try a few more times to help keep your sanity.
This now concludes my obligatory Thanksgiving message so please continue on with your lives and eat your damn turkey. Oh… and Happy Thanksgiving if you celebrate these sort of things.
November 26th, 2003
Update: MacSoft has released the AoM 1.0.1 patch that should correct this problem.
So you want to play Age Of Mythology for Mac online eh? You tried playing through GameRanger and can’t get it to work? Well, you’ve come to the right place! The following guide will show you how to setup your Mac to play Age Of Mythology online if your computer is behind a router or firewall. All of the following information is included in the read me file that comes with the game but who reads that stuff anyway ;). If you do not use a router or firewall, this guide isn’t for you.
Note: This guide assumes you have a basic understanding of how to configure your router or firewall software. You will also need your ISP provided IP address in order to play online. The Mac OS X built-in firewall can not be used with AoM as Apple’s firewall does not support UDP ports (at least from what I can see).
The first thing to do is configure the router or firewall software so that AoM can communicate between other users when playing online. There are two sets of ports that need to be opened and more importantly, mapped to your local computer that will be used for playing the game online.
Open your router or firewall softwares configuration page. I happen to use a Linksys wireless router so I type in the address of the router into my favorite web browser, the default address for a Linksys router is 192.168.1.1. The following ports below will need to opened and routed to the local computer you’ll be playing AoM on your network.
With a Linksys router, click on the “Advanced” tab followed by the “Forwarding” tab to get to the above screen. Enter the information just as you see above, changing only the “IP Address” of the actual computer you’ll be using. Don’t forget to click the “Apply” button at the button of the page to save your settings.
The next big thing you’ll need to do is modify the user.cfg file that is located within the startup directory which in turn is located in the main Age Of Mythology folder.
Once you locate the user.cfg file, control-click or right-click (two button mouse users) on the file and select the “Open With…” command to bring up a Finder window. Browse to the TextEdit application and select it to open the file with.
After opening the file with TextEdit, add the following parameter to the user.cfg file being sure to keep the parameter on one line, OverrideAddress=”YOURIPADDRESSHERE”. Replace YOURIPADDRESSHERE with the actual IP address that is assigned from your ISP, making sure you maintain the quotes around the IP address. Save your changes and your done!
From time to time your IP address may change so you will need to edit this file after that occurs. Quite a pain yes but do you want to play online or not? 
This is what worked for me and a few other people I’ve gotten the chance to play online with. Obviously, if you have a direct connection to the internet you won’t need to follow these instructions. However, please bear in mind that some people won’t have a clue that they need to follow these steps in order to play online so be nice and point them here so they can play too.
I have no idea why MacSoft/Westlake Interactive implemented this scheme for online play but I can tell you that this is by far the worst configuration I’ve ever seen. What in the hell were they thinking? I understand that they had to remove the main online component, ESO (Ensemble Studios Online), but have some compassion for us Mac users. Most people won’t have a clue that they’ll need to do this or how to even do it.
If you have any comments about the instructions or want to add something that is different for your router/firewall, post a comment below.
Hosting Update: I found this out the hard way last night, but if you are attempting to host a game on GameRanger you’ll need to add a few more ports.
Reopen your router/firewall configuration panels and modify the existing AOM_UDP rule to support a range from 2300 to 2310. If you need to host more than 9 other players, you may need to change the 2310 to something higher.
I discovered this last night when attempting to host a game and the other player wasn’t connecting to the in-game chat. Looking through the router access logs I noticed that an attempt was being made on port 2301 instead of 2300 like it states in the read me. Once I opened port 2301 I was able to successfully host.
November 25th, 2003
Aiden is ten, count them, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10 months old today. Boy… he’s moving fast. Not only growing but he can walk and he’s not afraid to run either. He was walking really well a couple weeks ago but now he’s really moving.
In honor of his tenth month birthday, I’ve posted “Aiden’s November album”:http://www.snapturtle.com/gallery/album35. Yeah, yeah, there is only 6 pictures so far. What can I say… we’ve cut down on our picture taking I suppose. Shame on us!
November 24th, 2003
Nearly a year after Age Of Mythology shipped for the PC to “critical acclaim”:http://avault.com/reviews/review_temp.asp?game=aomyth, the Macintosh version is now available. Being the huge RTS (Real Time Strategy) fan that I am, I picked up the “Mac version”:http://www.apple.com/games/articles/2003/09/ageofmythology/ the day it showed up at my local Mac retailer.
Gleefully opening the game box, careful of course not rip or tear anything (I collect these things), I proceed to install the game onto my recently upgraded G4 tower in order to experience the game in all it’s 3D glory. Instead what I got was an ugly reminder that all Mac ports are not created equal. “Initialization Failed” in the rude message I receive as the game drops me back into the desktop. Hrmf.
Swinging my chair around, I install it on my iBook. Not a single problem there. The game even appears to run rather well on the old 700mhz G3 machine. Looks like a good choice for some portable gaming.
I attempted to re-install the game on the G4 with no luck. I called MacSoft last Friday and explained my problem. Apparently I wasn’t the first person to report this problem, nor am I the only one experiencing this problem according to what is reflected on “VersionTracker”:http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21611. Tech support walked me through yet another re-install to no avail. Attempted to reset permissions to everyone on the games folder with no luck.
Being the dedicated gamer that I am, I re-installed the game just one more time over the weekend just to be sure. Before I did I was sure to remove any reference to the game ever existing on my system, including the two AoM preference files located in the /Library (perform a search in the Finder for “aom” to find them). Don’t forget to empty the trash! I proceeded to install the game on a non-system partition that was marked as “Ignore permissions on this volume” via the Get Info (command-I) option. This appeared to do the trick as the game now loads correctly and plays beautifully.
I must say that the AoM port is a good one, the engine is silky smooth, even on the iBook. I’m very impressed with the overall graphic quality of the game and I’m sure I’ll get sucked into playing this game way too much a la “Warcraft III”:http://www.blizzard.com/wc3/. Like all other RTS games there are “cheats available”:http://www.apple.com/games/articles/2003/09/ageofmythology/index2.html#cheats for those that feel the need.
One other problem that I’ve found with this game is the internet play is very finicky. If you have any sort of firewall or router be sure to read the included “Read Me” file as it explains what you’ll need to do if you plan on playing via “GameRanger”:http://www.gameranger.com/. If you don’t do all the steps, it’s not going to work, trust me. I spent more than two hours getting it work and I don’t think I can even host my own games yet. What makes this even more frustrating is that a lot of people aren’t aware of this little “issue” and think they can just jump on to GameRanger and play a quick game. Nope. To make matters worse, they don’t even know how to configure said firewall or router causing me to have to kick them from the game… ah… I like playing the bad guy 
November 24th, 2003
The one thing that has always bugged me about my iPod is that I’m screwed if something happened to it. Being a $400 device, that’s not cool. There is a warranty but it only provided 90 day tech support and a one year hardware warranty. Apple recently rolled out AppleCare support for the iPod which boosts the tech support and warranty coverage to a full two years. For a measly $59 (much cheaper than a new iPod) you too can have “iPod AppleCare”:http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?productLearnMore=M9404LL/A. The only real requirement is your iPod must still be under the existing one year warranty period. So those of you using first generation and most second generation iPods are screwed.
I’ve already got a problem with my current iPod too. The included remote is broken but now I’ll go get a new one for free.
November 21st, 2003
“Question Of The Day: Do you care?”:http://nslog.com/archives/2003/11/21/qotd_halo.php
Of course I care. I bought an XBox just to play Halo and I swore I wouldn’t. You can complain all you want about Bungie selling the farm to the borg, you can tell me about how great Halo looked at Macworld 1999 running on a Yosemite G3, but nothing is going to convince me that I shouldn’t buy “Halo for Mac”:http://www.apple.com/games/articles/2003/11/halo/ the day it comes out.
Not buying it would be an injustice due to the blood, sweat, and tears that have gone into porting this game back over to the Mac platform.
If you must know, I’m a huge Bungie fan boy. I’ve been playing their games since Pathways of Darkness, while both Marathon and Myth took over my life for many years. So far there hasn’t been anything that Bungie could do wrong, except of course get bought by little Bill but that’s another story.
November 20th, 2003
Got the new “Mario Kart:Double Dash!! for GameCube”:http://www.mariokart.com/launch/index.html today and my initial impressions are positive. Krista and I played for a few hours tonight unlocking some of the various extra karts. I know there is plenty more to unlock including racers, courses, cups, and more karts.
The gameplay reminds me a lot of Mario Kart 64 but that’s a good thing. I was afraid that they may have mixed up the game too much in an attempt to gain new fans but I’m glad Nintendo stuck with the tried and true gameplay that is Mario Kart. I’m also very happy that they included multiplayer Grand Prix support. I just hate it when racing games implement versus only for multiplayer a la F-Zero GX. The inclusion of multiplayer Grand Prix will guarantee that MK:DD is played more than other games.
November 19th, 2003
“Erik’s”:http://nslog.com “Question Of The Day (QOTD)”:http://nslog.com/archives/2003/11/18/qotd_theming.php yesterday was “Do you like and use theming?“. In a nutshell, yes.
Way back in the OS 8/9 days I used a program called “Kaleidoscope”:http://www.kaleidoscope.net/ to perform theme changing duties. I’d even go so far to changing my system appearance by using ResEdit to hack the Finder and change various resource graphics and the menu shortcuts (don’t tell Erik). I’m pretty computer saavy and being a programmer I don’t have much trouble finding my way out of trouble with anything I may break along the way. I’d also like to point out that back then Apple built in the ability to change the interface of the OS through the Appearance control panel. For some reason or another this feature wasn’t removed, but the actual themes that they were to provide where removed. One was sort of a “kid” OS theme and another was a paper type theme, pretty cool looking.
With the advent of OS X, theming seemed to be a thing of the past as the OS became very foreign by changing everything known about the Mac. Sure enough though, the art of theming would not die at the hands of OS X and several developers created new tools to hack themes into the Aqua UI. These tools were very primative to start, providing huge warnings that irreplacable damage to the OS could occur if you didn’t follow their explicit instructions. The biggest downside of these themers were that they replaced the actual core OS UI files with those of the theme and if something went wrong you wouldn’t have a functional computer except from the command line (no big deal for me) :). Most of these tools were free and the themes themselves were also free.
Yesterday, well known “haxie” (feature enhancements) developer “Unsanity”:http://www.unsanity.com released the next evolution of theming for OS X. Dubbed “ShapeShifter”:http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/shapeshifter/, their $20 shareware application will now perform theming duties without having to modify any core OS files making theming almost completely harmless.
To some the “advent of paid theming is a bad thing”:http://www.maniacalrage.net/archives/2003/11/people_sure_to_buy_charge_a_lot.php. I disagree. Kaleidoscope wasn’t free and it thrived during the hay day of OS 8/9. There is no reason why Unsanity should have made this application freeware nor do I feel their $20 asking price is too high either. Maybe I’m just a snob and don’t might forking over money for useful shareware (I buy a lot), but writing a viable theming application that doesn’t harm the OS isn’t an easy thing to do so I’ll respect that and pay up. Numerous developers helped create ShapeShifter including some of the leading theme designers, how do we know whether or not those people are also getting of cut of the $20 fee?
Others feel that Unsanity shouldn’t be charging for a theming application because the theme designers themselves aren’t getting paid. If the theme designers want to get paid for their work they should charge for it. Themes take a lot of effort to create and good ones are hard to come by, I wouldn’t mind paying $5 for a good theme that I’d actually use daily.
November 19th, 2003
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