[Guy Incognito]

Seven Seas Deluxe
Mummy Maze Deluxe

http://www.popcap.com/

Wow...even redirected to the Mac page...talk about service. I feel so loved.

[dws]

I downloaded both demos...

Mummy Maze might be called 'Deluxe', but it is a really simple puzzle game; good for children, but adults might find it too simplistic. Unfortunately, there is a major sound bug present in this first version that can be quite annoying. I honestly don't think this game is worth the shareware price, but other opinions may vary.

Seven Seas is a delightful little game! It's fairly simple, but can be a nice 10 minute diversion. The graphics and game-play work perfectly. A truly excellent port. I've played the demo several times now and am seriously considering purchasing it.

[Adam Betts]

I totally love Seven Seas! I'm addicted to it right now

[Camelot]

Are they as badly ported as Alchemy deluxe?

For a simple puzzle game, there is no reason, excuse or argument that should let it consume ALL the CPU power on my machine EVEN WHEN IDLE.

Just opening the game and leaving it on the splash screen with no game running consumes all CPU (running a top in a terminal window shows 80%+ CPU assigned to Alchemy (the rest is taken by top and system processes).

Sure, I could expect Quake or other full-screen 3D interactive game to do that, but not Alchemy sitting idle.

In addition to that, the game takes an age to load, has poor mouse tracking (partly due to excessive CPU hogging, I'm sure) and has some interface quirks (e.g., if sound is disabled, ALL sounds should be disabled - INCLUDING the startup sound and voiceovers, and it needs a keyboard equivalent for 'discard' to save you having to drag the tokens off to the side).

Overall, I've been very impressed with Omni's work (I'm a nearly-full time OnmiWeb user and licenses for most of their applications), but their game porting has a little way to go yet (are you listening, Omni? )

[Guy Incognito]

Originally posted by dws:
I downloaded both demos...

Mummy Maze might be called 'Deluxe', but it is a really simple puzzle game; good for children, but adults might find it too simplistic. Unfortunately, there is a major sound bug present in this first version that can be quite annoying. I honestly don't think this game is worth the shareware price, but other opinions may vary.

It does get harder and harder...I've finished the demo 'Adventure' game but the 'Classic' gets really, really hard.

I found a few problems with the games, as mentionned by Camelot.

Sometimes the games start using 100% of the CPU...very annoying...I hope Omni fixes this.

[Weezer]

pardon my retardedness, but how the heck do you beat level 5 in mummy???

[Guy Incognito]

Originally posted by Weezer:
pardon my retardedness, but how the heck do you beat level 5 in mummy???

As in the 5th room in the 1st pyramid? 'Abandon Hope' solves the level...but you have to start over. But if you're only on the 5th room in the 1st pyramid then you might as well abandon hope...

It also gets much, much harder later on so if you're stuck in the 5th room of the 1st pyramid then I can't help but laugh.

[Weezer]

Nope, Im playing in classic mode. Is classic random, and therefore you cant help?

[Weezer]

wow, I just played some of adventure, and yes, the 5th level of the first pyramid is rediculously easy.

[Rickster]

Mummy Maze might be called 'Deluxe', but it is a really simple puzzle game; good for children, but adults might find it too simplistic.

PopCap uses the "Deluxe" moniker for desktop (PC/Mac) versions as opposed to the Java/web versions of the games... it's not supposed to say anything about the design or depth of the game.

Unfortunately, there is a major sound bug present in this first version that can be quite annoying.

Care to elaborate?

For a simple puzzle game, there is no reason, excuse or argument that should let it consume ALL the CPU power on my machine EVEN WHEN IDLE. ... In addition to that, the game takes an age to load, has poor mouse tracking ... and has some interface quirks

Many of these issues also exist in the Windows versions. Unfortunately, time and budget constraints mean we have to prioritize implementing platform-specific code over rewriting cross-platform code for better performance. And in some cases, code that runs efficiently on some hardware architectures doesn't on others.

The main goal of our PopCap contracts is to port all of them in a timely manner instead of concentrating on one or two. So while we could spend nine months rewriting and optimizing the heck out of Bejeweled, that doesn't help us much with Alchemy or Mummy Maze or Seven Seas, etc. Instead, we've been concentrating on the framework code that all of PopCap's games share -- once we got it ported, doing another individual game takes only a couple of days' engineering time. (QA takes much longer.)

Now comes the harder part -- figuring out how much we can change the low-level framework code to provide more optimized performance on Macs without breaking compatibility with the game code. This takes a while, but since we're working at the framework level, all the PopCap games will inherit the benefits once we're done.

[Alchemy] needs a keyboard equivalent for 'discard' to save you having to drag the tokens off to the side)

If you have a multi-button mouse, you can right-click to discard. A keyboard shortcut isn't a bad idea -- it might even exist in the PC code already and be undocumented -- we'll look into it.

[Camelot]

Originally posted by Rickster:
If you have a multi-button mouse, you can right-click to discard. A keyboard shortcut isn't a bad idea -- it might even exist in the PC code already and be undocumented -- we'll look into it.

Thanks Rick,

Unfortunately, though, right-click isn't an option on my PowerBook's TrackPad

I did wonder if Command/Option/Control clicks would do it but, alas, no.

For my $0.02, the spacebar would be a suitable discard key.

Thanks for listening, though. I'll be looking forward to the 1.5 update