Advances in Sheepshaver emulator delivers Ares at full speed

Hey everybody, I've just been playing Ares on an Intel Mac running 10.5.8 with no speed or graphics issues!

Amazing wouldn't you say

Here's how I did it:
There is a slightly new version of Sheepshaver out which allows full screen mode. There is also a new application called Chubby Bunny which allows one to easily run Sheepshaver. The latter is a package which wraps Sheepshaver in combination with an optimised working version of OS 9.0.4. It takes all the pain out of running Sheepshaver.
Download the Chubby Bunny (also not known as Fat Rabbit) here:
http://www.macwindows.com/OS9_on_Intel_Mac.html#010509c
Go down to where the link is under "New build of Chubby Bunny/SheepShaver package" to obtain a version without having to use torrents.

To get it to work full screen I needed to run both applications (Bunny and Sheep) in combination with each other as outlined here:
http://www.macwindows.com/OS9_on_Intel_Mac.html
Go down to where there is a tip "Easier full-screen configuring of Chubby Bunny"
For this tip you will need the original Sheepshaver installer to obtain the SheepShaverGUI application so as to set Full Screen mode.

When you start up the machine will start in greyscale, a bit like System 6 (!) might have been. Use the Monitors control panel to switch it to 256 colours (We all remember where the Monitors CP is, don't we!).

Issues:
None except that the music is crappy, but in game sounds are ok and most of all the game speed is normal as I assume are all of the other OS9 functions. I've just played my way right through the 20 missions without any hitches.

Anyone who had used Sheepshaver before will find this very easy to get going. Anyone who is new to sheepshaver just follow the instructions with Chubby Bunny.
It took me about 2 hours to get to the point of successfully playing Ares, including a reinstall of OS 9.0.4 - however the version supplied with Chubby Bunny should be adequate to run the game.

This is a really good interm solution to playing Ares until Xera and Antares are up and running.
It also means that a practical useful OS9 emulation is now possible for Intel OSX.

Comments etc please.

That's pretty cool. This is truly lightyears better than the older versions of Sheepshaver that I have used: it is fast, it feels polished and it appears to be reasonably stable. There are, however, four minor irritations: first, it won't work on a PowerPC-based Mac in its entirety. I found, however, that if I poked around inside the application, I could run Sheepshaver without the wrapper app following traditional setup procedures (if you look inside, it will make sense). It feels about as fast on a Core Duo MacBook as my 1 GHz Titanium PowerBook does natively in OS 9 for my brief testing. That is about right, actually. As I understand Rosetta and similar emulators, if two cores are available, it will use one each to translate and execute instructions, meaning two things: it runs at about 1:4 speed compared to native code (i.e. a dual 2 GHz processor is roughly equivalent to a single emulated 1 GHz processor) and uses about 140% of the CPU in the process, my second complaint. Portable owners beware.

Third, I couldn't get full screen to work. It would hang at a gray screen until I force quit it. By extension thereof, the default screen size is 1024x855. The MacBook this was tested on only has a 1280x800 display. For that matter, my Titanium has a 1280x854 display, one pixel shorter than the default. To change the setting, you need to find the prefs buried in the app and edit them by hand. I can't imagine how bad it will be for anybody with an 11" MacBook Air ("Why is the window twice the size of my screen?").

All this said, it seems to work very well. It thinks it has a video card equal to the amount of system RAM you have free (on my Titanium, this is typically about 650 MB). Assuming that there is a reasonable amount of hardware graphics acceleration, I don't see why it couldn't run OS 9 and Ares well. I didn't even have to tweak the extensions first. Very little setup required. A very nice find.

Oh, and for whatever it is worth, Chubby Bunny comes with a handful of productivity apps including MORE and WordPerfect to sweeten the deal.

Move along. Nothing to see here. Just a double post.

This post has been edited by gavin83209 : 18 November 2010 - 10:14 PM

that gives me a few gigs of Video Ram, all for Ares!

I'd be interested in knowing if anyone has the opportunity to test this on 10.6.

I plan to test it on 10.4.11, though I gather that there are some issues with Sheepshaver on Tiger.
I'll also try to improve the sound.

Very cool!

Side note, anyone try Ferazel on this?

Nope, just tested Ares.

Latest report: Getting some lag on heavier combat scenarios, reminds me of my old Performa. so I'd say that Sheepshaver currently delivers a machine equivalent of 200MHz Power PC chip or thereabouts (on a multi GHz intel hehe). Rock solid stability though.

RAMwise sheepshaver sees 1GB of which 256 MB goes to "processor" and the remainder to video.

Quite stable in "thousands of colours" setting.

Looking good. I always hoped that this app would get more development to address its performance issues.

Hm, would it be too much trouble to ask if someone could try Ferazel on this? I'd be forever grateful!

Sure, I'll give it a try and let you know if it runs.

Ferazel didn't work, just quits when I launch it. But it appears to be an issue to do with an OS9 extensions conflict as its input sprocket extensions killed Ares. when I removed the offending extensions Ares was fine again (wheww!).

Ah pleasant memories - troubleshooting OS9 extension conflicts