I am currently involved in a few SMAC/X pbem games, one of which is an SMAC pbem game with two other PC players.

I know that there is some diffculty with playing SMAX with PC players, and that there is a possible fix for it 'out there'.

Unfortunately, not only is it sad that the various bugs will never be fixed, but there's also the disappointing fact the Mac SMAX will probably never play smoothly with the PC version—thereby limiting scope of players with which we Mac players can have a go at.

quote: Originally posted by Killjoy on 12-21-2000 03:02 PM Unfortunately, not only is it sad that the various bugs will never be fixed, but there's also the disappointing fact the Mac SMAX will probably never play smoothly with the PC version—thereby limiting scope of players with which we Mac players can have a go at

What problems are you referring to with SMAX?

[1] There should be a way to do the "timed move" in email play. This obviously would require a very different way of structuring the email play. Two of the three games I got into through this website ground to a halt because one player did not take it seriously to send along the turn as a courtesy to the other players. Finally he was brow beaten into resigning in one of the games which enabled us to get it going again. If the game would just skip a persons turn who didn't bother to move within the previously determined time allowance (e.g. 24 hours), then the game would keep moving. I don't see this happening without changing to some sort of a server mechanism, but I think it would make multiplayer PBeM much more successful.

[2] The Diplomacy screen between players doesn't have the same capabilities as Diplomacy with AI factions. Example, there is no way to turn over a city to another player.

[3] Speaking of Diplomacy, I wish there was a way to formally declare war without breaking a treaty or whatever.

But if you are looking for things to do...

There are some odd graphic glitches when you run SMACX under Classic in OSX, the cursor blacks out portions of the screen, the cursor shows itself in a white box, and occasionally you get a black screen upon launching the app for the first time (this is fixed by quitting out, apparently the game still works, you just can't see what you are doing, so I just hit escape, and relaunch). Finally if the screen saver comes on you can get all sorts of fun things happening (including the screen saver and the game competing to redraw on the screen, and the screen ending up completely white after you dismiss the screensaver -- if this happens to anyone I've found that you can hit F2 or something and it forces the game to redraw to the screen).

Oh yeah, there is one other problem, rare, but it happens at times. You load your turn and it immediately says your turn is "complete", but if you reload you in fact have a real turn, sorry, I can't say why this happens.

Best,

quote: Originally posted by bradman on 12-22-2000 11:36 AM What problems are you referring to with SMAX? Brad

Hi Brad. I was refering to the potential problem with Mac-to-PC pbem games with SMAX. I e-mailed you awhile back about this, and your explaination was;

"...It's my understanding that the problem is that while the PC user can load and use the save-game files you send, you might have trouble reading the ones he sends to you, although I'm not sure of the exact conditions involved."