SheepShaver constantly freezes running 'Ares'

About SheepShaver, a PPC Mac emulator for Windows, MacOS X, and Linux that can run System 7.5.3 to MacOS 9.0.4.

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J. Gryphon
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SheepShaver constantly freezes running 'Ares'

Post by J. Gryphon »

I'm using the recommended build of SheepShaver on Mavericks. The emulated OS is 8.6.

I picked up SheepShaver to help me run old Mac games. For the most part, it's done an adequate job, but it seems to be stymied at Ambrosia Software's "Ares".

The game starts up okay, but SheepShaver freezes as soon as the game pulls up the scoreboard at the end of a level. Also, Ares 1.2.0 supports 'add-ons' which can change the game's ships, weapons and levels. SheepShaver freezes with a black screen as often as not when you try to load one of these.

I ran OS 8 and 9 for nearly ten years, and ran Ares under all kinds of conditions. I know the Classic Mac OS was unstable, but it was never anywhere close to being as bad as it is here -- I think Ares has crashed more under SS in the few days I've spent trying to get it to work than it did in all those ten years running it natively.

What's bizarre about this is that an acquaintance of mine has had success running it, under an old version of "Chubby Bunny". I'm not sure which version of SheepShaver it uses, but I should be able to find out within the next few days.

Any advice that y'all might have to get this running would be appreciated. I'll try to answer any questions you have to the best of my ability.
yksoft1
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Re: SheepShaver constantly freezes running 'Ares'

Post by yksoft1 »

Try removing all Quicktime-related files and install Quicktime 4.1.2.
J. Gryphon
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Re: SheepShaver constantly freezes running 'Ares'

Post by J. Gryphon »

Done, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to have much of an effect.

Basilisk II seems to be able to run it very well, for the most part. Unfortunately network play doesn't seem to work with Basi, at least not out of the box.
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: SheepShaver constantly freezes running 'Ares'

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

J. Gryphon wrote:"Chubby Bunny". I'm not sure which version of SheepShaver it uses,
As far as I can tell, COI "Chubby Bunny" uses the May 2006 2.3-Pre build by Gwenole Beauchesne. I cannot think of a reason why the game would run in that version and not in the latest version. The 2006 build is 32-bit only. Did you try to run the current build in 32-bit mode? (See Finder Info for the application.)
J. Gryphon
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Re: SheepShaver constantly freezes running 'Ares'

Post by J. Gryphon »

It seems that it was already set to 32-bit (unless I did it before and simply forgot).

I will say that I tried COI to see if I could get the same results that he apparently did. There are apparently three different versions of it, the original one (which he uses), and two updates, "4.0.1-2.1" and more recently "4.0.1+". Neither the original or the updates seemed to do any better for me than my normal SS installation (except for minor differences in how they died -- the middle version of COI crashed to the OS X desktop instead of freezing and having to be force-quit). I've never personally observed it running on his side, but he did say it didn't crash or freeze, so he's definitely had a different experience than I have.

He did say that he was unable to get modern SS to run it without problems, though. So to sum up our experiences:

Me: Ares crashes or freezes no matter what version of SS I'm using.
Him: Ares is broken on new SS, but is stable on COI (of which he's running the original version, not 4.0.1-2.1 or 4.0.1+).

He's said that he's been able to get it to work well on a Mavericks partition. As I mentioned, I run Mavericks myself, so it doesn't seem like there should be any differences there. All in all it's very confusing.

Like I said, I've never seen his setup in person, so I don't know everything about it. I can ask him more about his hardware/host software or whether he's changed any of COI's settings, if that will help.
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Cat_7
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Re: SheepShaver constantly freezes running 'Ares'

Post by Cat_7 »

I would also ask about the rom file, the amount of ram and other settings.

Best,
Cat_7
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: SheepShaver constantly freezes running 'Ares'

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

Cat_7 wrote:I would also ask about the rom file, the amount of ram and other settings.
Not easy for him to tell, because in Chubby Bunny everything is hidden to the user. The rom file is hidden inside the application package and made invisible to the Finder and the settings are not visible anywhere in the application's interface and cannot be set or changed by the user.

The path to the rom file inside the version 4.0.1 application is:

Code: Select all

COI (Classic-On-Intel) V4.0.1 "Chubby Bunny".app/COI.app/.old.rom
so it is probably an old world rom.

The settings that version 4.0.1 writes to the preference file are (with the Chubby Bunny folder on my desktop):

Code: Select all

disk /Users/ronald/Desktop/COI (Classic-On-Intel) V4.0.1 "Chubby Bunny "/COI (Classic-On-Intel) V4.0.1 "Chubby Bunny".app/COI.app/.Classic.dmg
rom /Users/ronald/Desktop/COI (Classic-On-Intel) V4.0.1 "Chubby Bunny "/COI (Classic-On-Intel) V4.0.1 "Chubby Bunny".app/COI.app/.old.rom
keycodefile /Users/ronald/Desktop/COI (Classic-On-Intel) V4.0.1 "Chubby Bunny "/COI (Classic-On-Intel) V4.0.1 "Chubby Bunny".app/COI.app/.BasiliskII_keycodes
disk /Users/Shared/400Meg.dmg
disk /Users/Shared/800Meg.dmg
disk /Users/Shared/1200Meg.dmg
disk /Users/Shared/MyOldHD.dmg
disk /Users/Shared/COIHD.dmg
extfs /Users/Shared/
screen win/1024/855
windowmodes 0
screenmodes 0
seriala 
serialb 
bootdrive 0
bootdriver -62
ramsize 268435456
frameskip 0
gfxaccel true
nocdrom false
nonet false
nosound false
nogui true
noclipconversion false
ignoresegv false
jit true
jit68k false
keyboardtype 5
ether slirp
keycodes true
mousewheelmode 1
mousewheellines 3
dsp /dev/dsp
mixer /dev/mixer
ignoresegv false
idlewait false
Note that if one wants to run regular SheepShaver after running Chubby Bunny, one needs to do a full new setup.
J. Gryphon
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Re: SheepShaver constantly freezes running 'Ares'

Post by J. Gryphon »

Here's the reply I got from him:
I am using a mbp i7 2.3Ghz, 16GB RAM, SSD, running 10.6.6. I was running Chubby bunny out of the box unmodified from a RAM disk.
I have also run the same set up using 10.9.1 without issues.
For comparison, I have a iMac 8,1 with Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66, 2GB RAM, and a regular 1TB hard disk.
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: SheepShaver constantly freezes running 'Ares'

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

As I predicted, he is not aware of any SheepShaver settings in Chubby Bunny. Apart from using a very old SheepShaver version in Chubby Bunny, the main difference with your setup may be the rom file. Chubby Bunny uses an old world rom file. If you use a new world rom file, try replacing it with an old world rom file. (Both old world and new world rom files can be downloaded from the redundant robot site.)
J. Gryphon
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Re: SheepShaver constantly freezes running 'Ares'

Post by J. Gryphon »

Thought I would give an update.

I'm trying it with an Old World ROM. Probably 2/3rds of the time SheepShaver goes into a deep freeze upon loading the game (before the Ambrosia logo screen comes up). If it loads it, then the game will function as intended, except it will freeze about half of the time when the scoreboard comes up.

All in all a very crashy experience. The sad thing is that it does seem better than how I remember it running with the previous ROM. It's still quite suboptimal, though.

Before this I think I was using a New World ROM straight from one of my old Macs (probably the Bondi Blue iMac, but I don't remember for sure).
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Cat_7
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Re: SheepShaver constantly freezes running 'Ares'

Post by Cat_7 »

What version of ares are you running? I played the demo from ambrosia in Basilisk, it didn't crash a single time.

Did you try to "zap" the pram and nvram before starting with the new rom?

Best,
Cat_7
Last edited by Cat_7 on Wed Jun 25, 2014 5:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
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J. Gryphon
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Re: SheepShaver constantly freezes running 'Ares'

Post by J. Gryphon »

The standard 1.2.0. I have a copy of the later, unreleased 1.2.1, but since that only improved Classic compatibility (at the expense of native performance, if I remember right), I didn't think it would be useful.

I tried it on Basi as well, when I first saw how badly SheepShaver was doing. Basilisk II does seem to run Ares a little more reliably than SheepShaver does (although only a little). The biggest problem with Basi is that it can't run Hera (Ares' plugin editor), because Hera is PPC-only.

I didn't zap the PRAM to begin with, but I tried it after reading your reply -- unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have helped too much.

I've tested running it without a plugin, and the game starts up much more reliably in that case. However, it can still hang on end-game score or loss screens. If you have the time, I'd recommend that you try getting killed a few times and see if you can get SS to freeze.

Unfortunately, since you don't have a registered copy, you can't test running plugins on it, which is too bad, since that seems to be a major source of my trouble.
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