Midnight Mansion HD for Windows - Public beta

[VernJensen]

Hey all,

I've just posted a public beta of the Windows version of Midnight Mansion HD. If any of you have Windows machines, I'd love for you to fire it up and see if it runs and seems to behave properly:

www.actionsoft.com/files/mmhd/MidnightMansionHDWindowsBeta1.zip

If you do, please post here your results, and what version of Windows you are running (XP, 7, Vista, etc.)

Currently your existing Mac Midnight Mansion HD registration code will unlock the Windows version, so if you're a registered owner, you can test the entire game.

Other things that could use a lot of testing: anything involving the Windows dialog boxes, like opening a custom mansion, saving a game, opening a saved game, entering your registration code, etc.

Currently not supported: opening mansions still in ZIP format. You must expand them and open them as a folder.

[RobSeegel]

Guess what? I got it to work... on my Mac! I didn't have high expectations, but I got it to work very easily using Wine (Windows Emulator).  The hardest part was setting Wine up through MacPorts, but that wasn't really hard just a little time consuming.

I thought I'd give it a shot before trying something heavy duty like Parallels, which I may still do after I'm done mucking around with Wine. Not only does it appear to work, but it looks like it works well. It *might* even perform better than the native version. Anyway... I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm just excited that it worked.

So far, the only thing that's not working for me is the sound effects. I'm getting the music just fine, and it sounds good. Dialogs look good so far. Ok, I'm starting to run into a few things here and there, but so far - nothing that stops me from playing the game. Minor nuisances.

I'm not sure how seriously you should take bug reports from Wine since it doesn't really reflect your true intended environment. I was also considering trying out VMWare Fusion and/or Parallels. I don't have a Windows machine at home anymore, so I'm afraid testing in an emulator or a windows virtual machine is the best I can do. One thing to keep in mind, though... if it works on Wine in OS X, there's a good chance it will also work fine using Wine on Linux.

[RobSeegel]

Here were some of the things I noted:

Main Screen:
  - Graphics/fonts are identical, all on-screen buttons work as expected
  - Animation works as intended
  - Text/Image

Buttons

work as expected (All buttons)
    -- Control for Open Mansion works (New Dialog Box)
    -- Control for Load Save works (New Dialog Box)
  - Music toggles on/off as expected.
  - Screen resize (from bottom right corner) appears to work as expected

High Scores Screens:

- The screens were not pre-populated with data as has been the case
   in other versions of the game. (Nervous Skeleton, Grumpy Dwarf, Mighty Mike, etc.)d
- Font and graphics look exactly the same as in OS X version
- Arrow and Done buttons work as expected
- Music can be turned on/off with hotkeys as expected.

Help Screens:
  - Graphics, Music, and Animation work as expected; indistinguishable from OS X version

Options Screen:
  - Comes up fine; The Tabbed Pane works as intended.
  - Options:
    - Selecting

Softer Music

has no effect on the music
    - Full Screen does not work; also toggling the key
    - Stretch to fit doesn't seem to work as expected.

Regarding sound, I see the following on the terminal that I launch MM HD:

fixme:wave:wodDsCreate DirectSound not implemented
fixme:wave:wodDsCreate The (slower) DirectSound HEL mode will be used instead.
fixme:wave:AudioUnit_SetVolume independent left/right volume not implemented (1.000000, 1.000000)

Buy Now! Button: It and all dialog windows triggered by it appear to work. I'm going to need to look up my registration code on my old laptop.

Change Player Button: It and all windows triggered by it appear to work.

Hint House Mansion:
- No Text in Signs; Hints are displayed correctly
- No F/X Sounds; Music fine
- Save Game Pedestal work as expected, EXCEPT:
   -- when I saved the game, the default location was directly under the unzipped installation dir. Not the location, the game expected the saves to be when I tried to load one, so I had to locate the save files first.

- When I restored the file and saved the next location, the default name of the file was
   the following: Hint House Normal 2.save3 instead of: Hint House Normal 3.save

Minimizing and Bringing back a window leaves me stuck, controls don't seem to work.

Finished Mansion, but no text on mission complete screen. Entered High Score but it didn't appear on high scores screen.

Other notes: One of the first things you're supposed to install before installing Wine is XQuartz, an XWindows server. You're also supposed to restart before firing wine up. I didn't do this and plunged ahead using the default XServer that comes with OS X. All the results above were using the default. Then I restarted which caused XQuartz to replace the default. Full Screen mode worked somewhat better but was still a little quirky (looking into this more...), iconify (minimize) and deiconify appeared to work better, though.

All things considering, I'm pretty impressed with the amount of stuff that does work considering the fairly quick turnaround time, and the fact that I was running it through an emulator not natively through an actual licensed version of  Windows.

[VernJensen]

Based on the error messages you got, it sounds like the no-sound issue is due to your emulator, not to a Midnight Mansion bug. (Those console messages aren't anything Midnight Mansion would report.)

Likewise, I'm not sure what to make of the other reports. I haven't gotten similar reports from anyone else running on an actual copy of Windows, nor can I duplicate those issues on my own copy.

Also, a lot of the issues you're having with text not appearing is just a single issue: the FTGL text routines aren't working on your setup. (If this is true, you also won't see the game's version number or current player name on the title screen, nor will you see

Difficulty: Normal

on the map screen, nor the mansion's name on the in-game map screen.) Again, hard to know how much this relates to your emulator, but I'm tempted to write it off as emulator error.

If you run on Parallels or something like that, this would be a much better test I'm guessing, since it'd be actual Windows running. If you do that and still have *any* of these issues, definitely let me know.

The only thing right now that I think is a legit Midnight Mansion bug is the default save location. I'm looking into this right now.

[VernJensen]

Okay, so once I fixed the save directory location bug, I then saw the

Hint House Normal 2.save3

bug you reported Rob. So, I'll be fixing this as well!

[VernJensen]

Unable to duplicate the minimizing/restoring and fullscreen/widescreen issues. I'm going to chalk those up to Wine for now, unless you can duplicate on an action version of Windows.

[RobSeegel]

I'll compare my initial results with Parallels tonight.

[RobSeegel]

615245597D5259445259370 wrote: Based on the error messages you got, it sounds like the no-sound issue is due to your emulator, not to a Midnight Mansion bug. (Those console messages aren't anything Midnight Mansion would report.)

Keep in mind, I'm not necessarily looking for you to fix things that only show up in the emulator. I'm just reporting what I saw.

Also, a lot of the issues you're having with text not appearing is just a single issue: the FTGL text routines aren't working on your setup. (If this is true, you also won't see the game's version number or current player name on the title screen, nor will you see

Difficulty: Normal

on the map screen, nor the mansion's name on the in-game map screen.) Again, hard to know how much this relates to your emulator, but I'm tempted to write it off as emulator error.

The weird thing is I saw *all* the other text you said I wouldn't see in the case you mentioned. I just didn't see the sign text.

[RobSeegel]

OK, so I'm up and running with Parallels (extremely nice by the way - ideal for my uses, wish I'd gotten it a while ago).

MM HD behaves *much* better regarding full screen mode, screen resizes etc. All I have time for this evening is a cursory check. I'll try to a more comprehensive report later.

* I'm still not hearing the sound effects (even with music disabled)

* I notice that when Jack climbs through the ceiling, he climbs *above* the panel that tracks his score, lives, inventory, and it looks a little odd. (This doesn't happen in Wine, strangely enough)

* I am seeing the text in the High Scores screens and Signs (the only areas that I didn't see text when using Wine).