alas the interNIC has no mainframes listed. I have broken a few at this point in the game and those were never listed at internic either

Mainframs, as well as LANs, are private system and so are not listed on the Public directory at InterNIC. Links for both are found on the company's Internal Services Machine, in the "Links" section.

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(url="http://"http://uplink.stewsburntmonkey.com")The Uplink Directory(/url)

The font size is really small. Is it supposed to be that small?
If I remember well Windows display at 96 dpi which makes small fonts readable, but MacOS was (still is?) at 72 dpi... could that be the problem? could a bigger font size compensate for the resolution difference?

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First of all, this game runs slower than molasses, which I find interesting considering that WarCraft III runs just fine at near max. setting on my machine and I doubt Uplink really has higher system requirements than WarCraft (though they both do different types of rendering, but still, it is a tad ridiculous).

Also, the mouse seems very unresponsive. I usually have to hold down the button for almost a second before it does anything, either that or click many times. This gets to be very annoying when a trace is getting near.

Another thing is that when I had the Proxy bypasser running on the links page and I moused over the little red button the dialogue said that I should click there to toggle the visibility of the link.

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Rogue:
"The Unnamed Bar, where all chaos was born and nobody cared.”
Whatever they call him, what care I, Aristocrat, democrat, autocrat. --Tennyson.

Okay, here is the response email that Chris sent me back. The reported bugs are preceeded by > and his responses are plain. Any comments I added to them are in italics.

Quote

-When you register uplink, any users you had as a "demo user" won't be able
to open an account at the Stock Market. They are still treated as demo users

The problem here is that the stock market - it's entire interface and
behavior - is pregenerated when the user is created. There are two
options that I can see - 1. make stock market fully available to
unregistered users, or 2. somehow hide it's existence entirely. Either
way, there is no way that I have yet to find to backwards-fix it. Users
created while unregistered can never access it.

We are aiming to make the stock market open to unregistered users

-Also, when trying to connect to the ambrosia server with the irc thing in
uplink, it quits the application.

This seems to only be happening to some users (works fine for me and I
know others aren't having trouble).

This bug is intermittent, and we can't find any consistency to it, so it will be somewhat hard to track down unless anyone has any more concrete info on when/why it happens.

-If a user purchases the Trace Tracker v1 instead of v2 during the tutorial
they cannot complete the tutorial.

Design flaw.

-If a user declines the tutorial, their rank never increases enough to view
any missions.

The user must complete the Intro mission, which is actually a Test to see
if you qualify. The Tutorial itself is optional if they know how to
complete it. This isn't a bug, this is by design.

-You cannot type a slash "/" so you can not enter any commands in the IRC
Client

This is intentional. It's a very limited IRC client.

-If you are all the way to the left of the input field in the IRC Client
(ie: nothing entered) and you hit backspace then type something, the first
character you typed will not display, even though it shows in the input
field fine.

Will investigate.

-None of the tools, such as the File Coper. File Deliter, Password Hacker
work. they just say slect target, they worked fine in the Demo but not now.
This is on 10.2.5 Server (Not Client)

Nothing changed code wise there... can anyone else reproduce the issue?

-If the connections map is zoomed in, the dotted "have an account here"
lines aren't centred on the squares.

Design flaw - happens on the PC (the squares, and the outlines, are
calculated differently, at different times). Already spent 2 hours
trying to fix this once before...

-If I receive an email while on the connections map, the place names slowly
reshuffle.

Will investigate.

-Rank Status - once I reached the top 10 in rank, it showed me as "in jail"
once and "deceased" in another game. It looks like it was taking the status
that existed in that space, instead of showing "active". Minor thing, but
figured it needed to be mentioned

I'd need a save game to investigate.

If whoever reported this has a save game file that still does it, please email it to jericon@mac.com

-Multi-monitor Options - I have tried to used the in game multi-monitor
options, where you use two actual computers, with no luck at all. On one it
shows a weird IP (49837923.45.96.58 well, the last three groups are correct)
on the other computer, it doesn't pick up the IP at all. So I can't really
use the client - server multi-monitor here. The computer that doesn't
register is using airport, so that could be part of the issue on why it
doesn't register the IP at all.

Airport... yuck... it's always the source of networking woes.

-I had to blow up my beatiful trinity today cause the feds were close by.
I bought a new one and maxed it all out. Now when I activate the motion
sension the red light is always on.

I'd need a save game to investigate.

If whoever reported this has a save game file that still does it, please email it to jericon@mac.com

-I experimentally clicked on Version 1.0 Tracing Software twice to see if it
bought it twice or not, and it did. This might not sound like a bug, but I
think that if you buy something, the game shouldn't allow you to buy it
again, so that you don't waste money. I mean, imagine if you spent an hour
or so getting enough credits for a few upgrades but accidentally clicked on
software you already owned a few times and lost all of your money, or if you
lost the money you needed to pay of the Government and your loan at the bank
was already 4000 Credits.

Not really a bug.

-I got every LAN I could and every time I try to connect to one, either
directly or indirectly, the game quits with no error messages. And last
time I hit the 'x' in the upper left corner to log out, then hit exit,
Uplink quit, but a window saying it quit unexpectedly popped up...I expected
it to quit

No comment.

-I just recieved the email from Arunmor telling me to send Revelation to
them, rather than complete the ARC mission. But when I send it to them, a
beep sounds that sounds like the email wasn't sent or something like that,
and I even fast forward a few days, but nothing happens. I still have the
email, and they didn't send me another email. I don't know what's wrong. I
didn't make a new email, I hit reply. I included Revelation as an
attachment, and I never sent it to ARC

Anyone know if the user is just having gameplay problems, not a bug?

-The description of Trace Tracker V4.0 appears to have a longer description
than the window would allow, but there is no way to scoll down (at least
that I can find).

Design flaw, I believe.

-It might be a good idea to let people know somewhere that the 3 grand you
start with is borrowed - a loan from the bank. I did not know that until I
got a fine and had to go to my account at the bank. Then I realized I had
to pay it off (with interest).

This is mentioned when the user "signs up".

-Not infrequently, when calling administrators to obtain their voiceprint,
they will sound as though they are talking in slow-motion on the phone (very
low voice, stretched out words, etc. -- as though the software were playing
back the recording at half speed). Later, when using the voice analyzer with
their recording, it will play them back sounding slow, again. Quitting and
re-launching Uplink seems to help sometimes, and, sometimes it doesn't.

Happens on the PC too; it seems to have 2 different voices, one slow-mo,
one normal.

-When in the HUD:Connection Analyzer, the background behind the
diamond-symbol for proxies, firewalls, and monitors is black instead of
transparent. I've seen some screenshots of the PC version, and they don't
have a black box around those symbols. Very minor, but it looks slightly
ugly.

Looked fine to me when playing... might be a video card/driver issue?

-On the world map, sometimes clicking "load" when you have a saved
connection will cause the server names to begin "jumping around." Logging
out of your gateway and back in seems to fix this.

IIRC this happens on the PC as well. Will investigate anyways.

-If you start a connection (tested with 1 jump) from your gateway to a
server, and then click the load button, the saved jumps will be loaded, and
the original single jump will persist.

Will investigate.

-On the world map, server outlines (either admin or user) will show up
overtop of the mouse-over-labels.

If Im understanding this correctly, it's normal.

-whenever trace_tracker v4 shows over 433 seconds remaining, it just shows
433 seconds and beeps repeatedly until it goes below 433.

Will investigate.

-I hacked into a real low-security server to just steal a file and get out.
I had something like 450 seconds before they caught me, so I was in no
hurry. My mom comes down and wants to talk to me, so I pause the game. Once
I restart the game, after about ten minutes, the trace tracker (v 4.0) tells
me I have 0 seconds left and beeps constantly. But I wasn't actually traced,
and I was able to finish up what I was doing and get out. It seems as if
trace timing doesn't stop when the rest of the game is paused

Will investigate; may be a design flaw.

-F12 still quits out of the program and some users find that annoying...

This was normal, but I can remove it if Ambrosia wants me to (since it's
not truly a bug).

-One little bit of insight, from a Mac developer: in my two-screen
configuration, I have things set up so that my startup monitor is actually
the #2 monitor; the auxiliary (right-hand) monitor is the #1 monitor device

Uplink displays its information on the #1 monitor, ignoring the
Monitors/Displays settings. It looks very much like they're just grabbing
the first video device present, but still using the system routines to tell
where the mouse is, which would offset the actual and visual coordinates by
a large amount.

Uplink currently defaults to the non-primary monitor in OS X. This will
be changed to default to the primary (startup) monitor.

Just thought I'd let you all know...

-J

------------------
Being a Mac user is like being a Navy Seal: a small, elite group of people with access to the most sophisticated technology in the world, who everyone calls on to get the really tough jobs done quickly and efficiently.
------------------
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Quote

Originally posted by Jericon:

-On the world map, sometimes clicking "load" when you have a saved
connection will cause the server names to begin "jumping around." Logging
out of your gateway and back in seems to fix this.

IIRC this happens on the PC as well. Will investigate anyways.
(/B)

To me, this happen when a server I have in my saved bounce route is not on the map anymore. That happens either when I complete me mission and the server is automatically removed or when I remove a server manually from the map by toggling it off with the widget in the sites bookmarks of my gateway. Readding the server to the map fix the problem for me.

------------------

Quote

Originally posted by Jericon:
**> -When in the HUD:Connection Analyzer, the background behind the

diamond-symbol for proxies, firewalls, and monitors is black instead of
transparent. I've seen some screenshots of the PC version, and they don't
have a black box around those symbols. Very minor, but it looks slightly
ugly.

Looked fine to me when playing... might be a video card/driver issue?**

I suppose it could be. I have an ATI Rage 128 16MB AGP2x video card, and I'm running whatever video driver comes pre-included with OS X 10.2.6.

------------------

Quote

Originally posted by Jericon:

-When in the HUD:Connection Analyzer, the background behind the
diamond-symbol for proxies, firewalls, and monitors is black instead of
transparent. I've seen some screenshots of the PC version, and they don't
have a black box around those symbols. Very minor, but it looks slightly
ugly.

Looked fine to me when playing... might be a video card/driver issue?

I don't think so. I have this problem, & the performance problem, and I have an eMac 700 with a geforce 2. There are only a couple of different video cards used on the mac, and in OS X the drivers are fixed with the OS version, so I don't think anyone developing current mac software can claim "video card/driver" issue.

I've registered Uplink, and it was a good game - although I seem to have already exhausted the plot and all the different kinds of missions, and I have nothing left to spend money on - but the density of bugs in the mac port is appalling.

I think, if nothing else, a patch is needed for the performance and drawing problems. The game should at least support current nVidia & ATI cards used in macs entirely, and should at least respond to mouse input in OS 9, which it doesn't with my StudioMouse. Here's my list of what I consider "almost but not quite showstopper" bugs, which I believe are exclusive to the mac port.

• Performance problems. Apparently, the game only runs smoothly on some systems, and this is not down to the speed of the machine itsself. G4 users are reporting slowness, and G3 users are reporting smoothness. Somthing has to be up with the game here, because it shouldn't need a dual-1.4 just to be decenly fast.

• Mouse issues and OS 9. The game will only open in a window for me in OS 9, and will not respond to mouse clicks (StudioMouse). People with Logitech mice have also reported this. If OS 9 is a supported platform, it needs fixing.

• Drawing errors. Lan Spoof progress bar extends for about twice the length of the actual box for the tool. Process list partially overlaps the LAN view - it should either be all over or all under I think. Previously mentioned black boxes on connection analyser. I can accept that the map drawing problems are Introversion's problem, but Ambrosia should then be jumping up and down to get introversion to fix it!

These are the big ones. Most of the other "bugs" being reported can be explained by people having gameplay problems with Uplink's interface, but these are real.

Cheers,
B!nej

Another bug I've noticed: Sometimes when I use the log deleter to delete logs, and I click-and drag the deleter down to the next log I want to delete, it comes "unglued", meaning that the progress bar and close button go off in one direction, and the "LOG" label and the background go in the right direction.

'glove

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Compilers - the ultimate god games.
(edit) I wish there was a preview feature on this board. (/edit)

Quote

Originally posted by athagon:
**I suppose it could be. I have an ATI Rage 128 16MB AGP2x video card, and I'm running whatever video driver comes pre-included with OS X 10.2.6.

**

Well, I have a RADEON 7000 32mb with the latest ATI software update... and I still see the boxes. If I can play Jedi Knight 2 with highest detail levels... I can play Uplink without the black boxes.

------------------
"If your armor is >70% after battle, you are not a true warrior" -Me
"God does not play dice" -Albert Einstein
"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity." -Albert Einstein
Et je dirai: "C'est la vie!"

The game allows you to select a screen size that your monitor dosen't support. Which gives the odd effect that the game still starts up, simply with a window larger than the screen. Which would be fine, except one can't move this window above the menu bar so one can reach the game option buttons at the bottom and fix it.

I just downloaded the game, started it up, and everything was seemingly fine until I reached the "Uplink Main Server" menu (with the "about us" and "register as an Uplink Agent" buttons), and then found that my mouse would highlight the buttons, but refused to click on either of them. Can anyone help?
Here are my specs:

Mouse: Logitech USB "MouseMan Optical dual sensor" (three buttons and a scroll wheel)
Computer: iMac G3 400 Mhz Graphite running Mac OS 9.2.2

------------------
"All your base are belong to us!" - Cats
"There is no idea so good it can't be ruined by a few well-placed idiots."
- Scott Adams
"Black holes are God's way of dividing by zero."

Quote

Originally posted by Roogna:
**
The game allows you to select a screen size that your monitor dosen't support. Which gives the odd effect that the game still starts up, simply with a window larger than the screen. Which would be fine, except one can't move this window above the menu bar so one can reach the game option buttons at the bottom and fix it.

**

Trying going into your Uplink > Users folder, and deleting the "options" file. I believe this is where Uplink stores its preferences. (Don't empty the trash before you re-open Uplink, though, just in case it's not the prefs file, and you need to put it back).

------------------

Quote

Originally posted by phoenix9000:
**Well, I have a RADEON 7000 32mb with the latest ATI software update... and I still see the boxes. If I can play Jedi Knight 2 with highest detail levels... I can play Uplink without the black boxes.

**

Agreed. Thankfully it's not a major enough bug to keep me from playing the game, but it looks like crap to have a gradient background with solid black boxes sitting there.

------------------

Found a bug yesterday:

When I have either a monitor bypasser or a firewall bypasser on the screen (the box-shaped thing), the little text at the bottom that appears when you mouse-over things always refers to it as a proxy bypasser. So, if I put my mouse over the close box, it says "close this proxy bypasser" no matter what kind of bypasser it is.

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Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?
-Edgar Bergen

I don't know if these have been reported already:

1. Sometimes when you reply a message (for mission accomplishment payment), the email goes out but doesn't return, even if you change to fast time. You have to try several times before you receive a reply.
2. Sometimes you have to click several times to a terminal (in map) for it to be used (let's say, you are making server bouncing). So it's click-click-click-click and finally work (for just one terminal).

HUGE troublesome bug! When in 3X mode, traces and file copying does not got sped up, however active traces do! Too many times have I forgotten to put the speed back to normal, and tried hacking a server, only to get busted 1/10th of a second later. There should definately be a warning, when connecting to a server in one of the sped up game modes.

Um... yeah hear is a bug: I have both the second AND third ARC missions. I can't even get to the second one because i'm trying to get enough money for a gateway with a lot of space and the LAN tools...

Also... the third mission doesn't make sense... perhaps it should be reworded to make the goal more apparent.

(edit) I just got ARC mission #4... still trying to get money for mission #2... (/edit)

------------------
"If your armor is >70% after battle, you are not a true warrior" -Me
"God does not play dice" -Albert Einstein
"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity." -Albert Einstein
Et je dirai: "C'est la vie!"

(This message has been edited by phoenix9000 (edited 05-31-2003).)

Further note on the music: The music file is not an s3m file, rather it is a combination of several. Their original titles are: a94final, bluevalley, myst2, mystique, serenity, and symphonic. (At least, as far as I can determine. Note that these are not song titles or file names but the original short name for the song...) It looks like they may just be placed end-to-end, with a little wrapper data. I'll see if I can figure out how to break them apart and put them back together. If I can (or even if I can just figure out how to put them together, I can probably find the originals) I should be able to feed it into PlayerPro and reduce the volume.

I've now spent more time tearing this game apart than actually playing it. I wonder if I'm in the target audience?

I've found a reliable way to totally screw up the storyline missions. When you get the dead agents message, dont connect to the ARC Mainframe. Now get all the retrieve file missions you can until you get one from ARC. When you try to complete it, it'll give you another mission but you can't complete it. And you can't do the counter-offer from auranmoor (I know, bad spelling) either.

On the other hand, hacking LAN's are so much fun. difficult too

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