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Macintosh Wolfenstein Work 2015-03-09 05:36:31
Some of you have already noticed that development versions of ECWolf contain support for Macintosh Wolfenstein missions. At least to a certain extent. I did seem to just hit one set back: My PowerPC Macintosh died. The "good" news is that it is a Performa 6220CD which is pretty much the worst Macintosh ever made according to some of the sources I've seen. The symptoms are the machine doesn't even attempt to power up, which given that I've been using with with a dead 4.5v PRAM battery for awhile now suggests that it could be the issue. However, replacing it with 3 AAA batteries didn't seem to work. I still need to get a volt meter and double check that the solder job is correct, but it doesn't look like there's much hope for the system right now. I'm not exactly in the position to be buying a replacement right now, so further work here may be on hold.
With all that said, for those interested to know exactly where the support is, the levels are basically playable. There remain some big issues including the game running at the wrong speed (70Hz vs 60Hz) and the lack of a menu interface. The released source code for the Mac version was for the second encounter, which is missing a tiny bit of information. Specifically I need to figure out how to translate the pac man ghost behavior, which it sounds like Rebecca Heineman may be able to help with, we'll see. Otherwise I need to get a working Mac so that I can do a visual comparison or something like that. Third party missions basically work as well, but they often seem to include some unknown data. I suspect it's just editor markers, but I need a working Mac to look at the missions in an editor.
On a more general note there is one issue I'm not entirely sure how to solve, and that is the recommended legal way for people to obtain the game. Specifically how does one extract the game from whatever disc they may own. Fortunately Intel based Macs still include support for the old discs and include a macbinary program out of the box. However, there are a lot of people that probably have an interest in playing the game and do not own a Mac. If anyone has a solution to how one would legally obtain a macbinary of their game data with only Windows or Linux, do send me an E-Mail or post on the forums. If you would like to know how to run the game with the latest development binaries so you can test your solution, it looks for the third encounter binary as wolf3d.bin and the second encounter level set as wolflvls.bin. (Throw those files in with your wl6 files and the "IWAD" picker should detect them. You will need to provide your own font set as a shim to get the engine to start though.)
Edit: Solder job seems to be correct, so it looks like the next suspect part is the power supply. Replacing said part appears to cost more than if I were to just pick up a OS 9 capable G4.