[deathvole]

So after many months of eagerly waiting, AoM for MacOS finally arrives. Upon opening the gift I discover that only Mac-to-Mac network play is supported. Extremely disappointing.

That doesn't even come close to the following bug, however. Not only are Mac-Win games not supported but if any Mac is already hosting a game on a LAN, *ALL* Win AoM games will *CRASH* when opening the LAN dialog.

Likewise if any WinBox is already hosting an AoM game on the LAN, *ALL* Mac AoM games will *CRASH* when opening the LAN dialog.

So not only can they not play against each other, but you CANNOT have Macs and WinBoxen AoM even ACCESSING the same LAN at the same time.



Worthless. I emailed MacSoft with details, crash dumps, etc. Hope this gets fixed soon.

Disappointed,

-DV

PS- Pardon the yelling, we were pretty stoked about finally playing a 3v3-bot team game here. Guess not.... :-/

[warnergt]

For what it's worth, my 6 year-old boy loves
Age of Mythology. He would play it all day
long if I didn't make him get off the computer.

I bought Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds
and AoM at the same time. Ironically, they
seem like the exact same game only set in
different ages. You make workers to gather
wood (carbon), gold (ore) and food. Then,
you build armies and go fight.

Both games seem cool but a little tedious to me.
I think I will like them more as I know them
better.

Both remind me of the old classic, Strategic
Conquest -- but taken to a much higher level.
You can't see land you haven't
explored yet and you have to build your
armies.

[entrox]

I guess the game uses DirectPlay for its network ability, which is of course a proprietary Microsoft technology and only available on Windows. This means the porting house needs to either change the whole networking code to use something more standard like sockets or try to somehow emulate the API (incidentally, this has to be done for Direct3D-using games also). Either way, the ability of this ported client to talk to a Windows one goes down the drain.

Don't blame the porting house, blame the original developers (I'll bet you 10€ they don't care).

[deathvole]

Originally posted by entrox:
I guess the game uses DirectPlay for its network ability, which is of course a proprietary Microsoft technology and only available on Windows. [ ... ] Don't blame the porting house, blame the original developers (I'll bet you 10€ they don't care).

Good point. The port may definitely have precluded cross-platform communication. I sure do wish there was time/budget to implement a translation layer though. The game mechanics and messaging needs seem simple enough (from a networking perspective) that it really wouldn't be rocket science.

Now if the Win/MacOS game engines don't replicate each other's results, THEN you're seriously screwed. And judging from some of the things I've seen in MacOS AoM v1.0 that may well be the case. Last night when my platoon of Matriach Medusas was making quick work of a Bot's 16 Colussi (sp?), one Colossus turned to stone, fell on its side, then continued "walking" around the map on its side doing the "Curly from The Three Stooges" thing. Quite humorous actually. *8-)

I got a note back from tech support re: the "One OS hosting causes other OS to crash when accessing LAN" bug. He said it's now on their buglist and a fix is hopefully in the works.

Thanks for the reply!

-DV

[deathvole]

Originally posted by warnergt:
For what it's worth, my 6 year-old boy loves
Age of Mythology. He would play it all day
long if I didn't make him get off the computer.

It's very popular in this household too. :-) Good game balance, lots of fun to watch unfold.

Both remind me of the old classic, Strategic
Conquest -- but taken to a much higher level.

Man, I *loved* Strategic Conquest! My favorite tactic was to load up a few carriers with as many jets as they could hold, park them offshore and set up a careful network of ocean patrol paths from the carrier "islands". Add in a few friendly subs for enemy battleship duty and it was nearly unstoppable.

20 enemy Armored units aren't so tough when they're on the bottom of the ocean. *8-)

-DV