Well, it seems there are some serious issues with this game that need to be addressed. I played the PC version, and it seems that this was almost a rush job.

1. Game Performance. I'm runnign an flat panel iMac 15" with 512 MB of RAM. the game slows to a CRAWL at times. After about 2 hours of play, it's almost unplayable. ESPECIALLY when tryign to bounce 15 - 20 connections. This was NEVER an issue on my old PC, which is DRAMATICLY less powerfull than my mac. One of the things I liked about the PC version was the fact you didn't have to have the latest and greatest hardware to play it. this is NOT the case with the Mac Verison though.

2. Game options: You can either turn off ALL the sound or nothing. Game sounds are important, the music however is not. Why not seperate the audio?

and before you all get up in an roar and say it's my machine, it isn't. this is a finely tuned chunk of hardware. I'm AASP.

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The major problem with the port to the Mac is that the original (and now the Mac) are OpenGL based. This was nice for most PC gamers, but most Mac graphics cards are horrible at OpenGL (or have poorly written/outdated OpenGL drivers). Even PCs with ATI cards are pretty sluggish with Uplink (even though they can murder Doom). The sound is a bit of a problem, but I think there is a fix comming. A zip made of empty proxies of the music files works to kill the music, but keep the sound on PCs, but I have yet to test it on a Mac. If it works I can upload a copy of the zip to this site.

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

Quote

Originally posted by El Smack:
**Well, it seems there are some serious issues with this game that need to be addressed. I played the PC version, and it seems that this was almost a rush job.

1. Game Performance. I'm runnign an flat panel iMac 15" with 512 MB of RAM. the game slows to a CRAWL at times. After about 2 hours of play, it's almost unplayable. ESPECIALLY when tryign to bounce 15 - 20 connections. This was NEVER an issue on my old PC, which is DRAMATICLY less powerfull than my mac. One of the things I liked about the PC version was the fact you didn't have to have the latest and greatest hardware to play it. this is NOT the case with the Mac Verison though.

2. Game options: You can either turn off ALL the sound or nothing. Game sounds are important, the music however is not. Why not seperate the audio?

and before you all get up in an roar and say it's my machine, it isn't. this is a finely tuned chunk of hardware. I'm AASP.

**

Hmm... I am honestly puzzled by your problem. I have a 600mhz iBook (g3) with 640 mb ram and have NEVER experienced a slow down, even though I have an aforementioned ATI graphics card. This seems very odd to me and I have no idea where the problem lies. Why is it that my less powerful system runs it better then yours?

The only thing I can say is to reccomend you play it in no more than 1024x768 resolution. That should cut down on the work your machine has to do (assuming you are running it larger than that). If you are already there or smaller... sorry, I can't help.

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"Always listen to the experts. They will tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it."
- The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
There are things more annoying than using MS Windows... but I can never remember what they are.
Obligatory (url="http://"http://www.evula.com")"E"(/url) Link.

I would check and make sure you are running the latest drivers and specifically OpenGL drivers.

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

I had a thought: what OS are you running?

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"Always listen to the experts. They will tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it."
- The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
There are things more annoying than using MS Windows... but I can never remember what they are.
Obligatory (url="http://"http://www.evula.com")"E"(/url) Link.

I'm trying to run it at 1024 and 800. I'm not the only one encountering this issue either. A few of my friends are having the same thing on all kinds of different systems.

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I have a PowerBook G4 with 1 gig of RAM, running OS 10.2.6 w/ no other programs running, and the screen flickers very, very badly when I play this.

Quote

Originally posted by Stewsburntmonkey:
**The major problem with the port to the Mac is that the original (and now the Mac) are OpenGL based. This was nice for most PC gamers, but most Mac graphics cards are horrible at OpenGL (or have poorly written/outdated OpenGL drivers). Even PCs with ATI cards are pretty sluggish with Uplink (even though they can murder Doom). The sound is a bit of a problem, but I think there is a fix comming. A zip made of empty proxies of the music files works to kill the music, but keep the sound on PCs, but I have yet to test it on a Mac. If it works I can upload a copy of the zip to this site.:)
**

Not at all. Most Mac graphics cards run very well with OpenGL, and Apple's GL implementation is quite solid.

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"The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem."
-Theodore Rubin

The Mac OS X OpenGL implementation is a quite standards compliant one and quite sped up from the OS9 implementation. There is a clear connection between # of items on the screen and the app's slowdown; at 1024x768 having a list of servers + memory banks open creates a dramatic slowdown. Running the world map on top of that and I'm toast (G4/500 w Radeon 8500).

Looking at the number of items on screen and comparing to any 3D game released this year, I have trouble beleiving that OpenGL is at fault here, unless there's something very sour about the OpenGL usage of Uplink (it could be using some feature of new-gen graphics cards, but I doubt it, considering above claims about low-end PCs).

As a side note to El Smack, a slowdown issue has been reported with OS9, however I have not experienced anything of the kind in OSX (and I don't do OS9 anymore).

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Disclaimer: In cases of
major discrepancy, it's
always Reality that's got it
wrong

A lot of people are apparently having this slowdown. To me it seems to have something to do with the text drawing: the more text there is on the screen at the same time, the slower the game gets.

I'd love to get my hands on a patch that fixes this. Either by making the text drawing faster, or by allowing the player to remove a lot of the text on the screen (the world map, the main link list... maybe this could be a good use of the empty "game options"?).

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the game is fun, but this slowdown is something that needs to be fixed really fast. It's almost making the game unplayable.

'glove

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

You remove the amount of clutter on the World Map using the visibility buttons. No point in keeping them PublicAccess servers or voice systems.

For your "home" view, THERE I'd love a "favourites" tab instead. I never ever access any of the servers I have the addresses to directly; I always bounce via the world map, so the screen listing all the servers being the default "no active screen" is just clutter and slowdown.

As for OpenGL; A piece of OpenGL text is an object nevertheless. So, it doesn't matter whether it's text or 2D graphics (textures) - it makes the same effect more or less. It could be Uplink pushing a new texture for each item on screen and that could be killing the bus although anything we do on that topic is speculation. Maybe with the planned "Dev" CD, but I wonder if Ambrosia would do anything like that...

------------------
Disclaimer: In cases of
major discrepancy, it's
always Reality that's got it
wrong

I don't think it's text, because I could be reading the warning on the gov sites, have an email open, and pass cracker opened up, and it will run fine. Then when it's just pass cracker open, it'll slow down so badly that I have to hold the mouse button for about five seconds before it registers the click. grrrrrr

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"Do you know who the best starfighter in the fleet is? Your's truly" CF/A-17 Wraith
Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily. -Napolean

OS9 or OSX?

Again, I stress the difference between the size of graphics and the number of OBJECTS.

If you have one really BIG apple, you would have an easy task of keeping track of it. Now, if you had a hundred small apples instead that would take up the same volume as the big apple. Which one is more of a headache to keep track of?

------------------
Disclaimer: In cases of
major discrepancy, it's
always Reality that's got it
wrong

Nice...analogy...

But moose said that with all of his hacking apps open, it worked fine, but with just the password breaker open it didnt.

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Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordian.
"You're dumb." -Rawzer to whitedevil and whitedevil2

Actually, NOOSE, emphasis on N, meant that the text wasn't the problem.
I said nothing about apps. I said I COULD have many apps open, and there would be no problems, but Uplink could also go slow with just one. I used pass cracker as an example because it's a small program.
Remember, Noose said this.

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"Do you know who the best starfighter in the fleet is? Your's truly" CF/A-17 Wraith
Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily. -Napolean

Again I ask. OS9 or OSX?

OS9 this seems a reported speed issue with the application slowing down as a function of time (Memory leak?) although I have seen none of the kind in OSX.

Edit: I don't actually think the "bigger" applications are that much bigger than Password Cracker A Log Deleter for example has even less graphics to handle. It's the amount of graphics (loosely used to reference all OpenGL objects) that is ONE of the slowdowns in Uplink.

------------------
Disclaimer: In cases of
major discrepancy, it's
always Reality that's got it
wrong

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