Spartan Posted December 23, 2009 Report Share Posted December 23, 2009 Out of curiosity, are there other people who have coded Victory software. Beside the old DOS-programs, I'm only aware of VOEP by Hamish for entering orders. I have started coding Victory! several years ago. During testing I have played some very interesting fun games with a few friends. I have also used it to get new players into the game There are currently some small parts missing in my project... mainly the naval combat part. Norbert WOW, Now that would be cool if we (Russ and by extension the entire Victory! community) could take advantage of Norbert's hard work. Could that info be transfered to Russ and then he could use it to continue the existing games????? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slicer Posted December 23, 2009 Report Share Posted December 23, 2009 Hi Guys, I appreciate all the help - technical problems like this are definitely not my strong suite. The machine is a Quadra 800, circa 1993 as I recall, running System 7 and used an old SyQuest 135 EZDrive (SCSI connection I believe) for backup. The game data should still be good but right now I can't get a successful boot off the hard drive or an emergency disk and without that I don't have the hardware/experience to get at the backup data to see exactly what I have that's good. The system failure started with lockups, followed by very difficult reboots (multiple attempts before a limited success) then finally no successful boots at all. The progression was fairly quick so I only had time to try a few things, to no effect, before it got to the point where I was out of options. Any attempts at this point just fail completely so I don't know the exact problem or what else might work. The plan was always to come out with a Victory! II at some point whereupon we would move over to more current hardware and back into an environment and code that we were familiar with and the old Mac would be retired. But with one thing after another the development project just kept getting put off and put off until suddenly it was today and too late. The development of Victory! II isn't a bad thing and the project is probably long overdue - I just always hoped we would have the luxury of letting current games play out to their conclusion as we brought Victory! II games online. Appreciate all the help and input regardless, Russ maybe this will help (a APPLE QUADRA 800 SYSTEM BOARD) or do you think it is the drive? http://www.partstore.com/Part/Apple%20Comp....aspx?s=froogle Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RTGRuss Posted December 24, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 24, 2009 Hi Guys, Ok - a ray of hope. I found a local Mac outfit that handles used Macs as well as doing repair work, etc. The guy I talked to believes it's a logic board issue and if that's the case he has a used Mac there that he thinks will serve as a replacement and we can try to shift the hard drive and see if we can get a working Victory! machine that way. They have the machine now and I expect to hear from him once he has had a chance to look at it and determine the problem for sure. I'm paying the "rush" charge to move up the queue but it will probably still be a few days (particularly on Christmas week) before I know for sure if this is going to work - maybe next Monday, hopefully sooner. Keep your fingers crossed and I'll let you know as soon I know anything else. In the meantime, I'm still going to open up the Project Victory! forum here in a little while. The Victory! II project is still a good idea and it's probably wise to press on with it in the meantime just in case that game is needed sooner rather than later. Thanks for all the help, advice and support - greatly appreciated Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacFreek Posted December 24, 2009 Report Share Posted December 24, 2009 Hi Russ, Thanks for keeping us up to date (in the forum and in private mail). Hope you can get it to work. In the mean time, we'll enjoy the now truly peaceful Christmastime Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Limburgia Posted December 24, 2009 Report Share Posted December 24, 2009 Russ, Keep us posted. Some people in the game are in the computer business or know people......... The more information you post on the forum the more help you will get. Greets Edwin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gobo Posted December 24, 2009 Report Share Posted December 24, 2009 Ok - a ray of hope. I found a local Mac outfit that handles used Macs as well as doing repair work, etc. The guy I talked to believes it's a logic board issue and if that's the case he has a used Mac there that he thinks will serve as a replacement and we can try to shift the hard drive and see if we can get a working Victory! machine that way. They have the machine now and I expect to hear from him once he has had a chance to look at it and determine the problem for sure. I'm paying the "rush" charge to move up the queue but it will probably still be a few days (particularly on Christmas week) before I know for sure if this is going to work - maybe next Monday, hopefully sooner. Keep your fingers crossed and I'll let you know as soon I know anything else. Sounds good! I hope it works. But if it does, I still think that moving to a virtual machine is a better way to make sure that Victory! keeps running till the current games are finished. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacFreek Posted December 24, 2009 Report Share Posted December 24, 2009 From some off-forum communications with Russ, it seems that either the motherboard or memory is the issue (the machine gave two error chords after startup, and the recommended action in the engineers manual for this error is to check SIMMs). Russ got the machine to boot once yesterday, but before he could transfer data, the mouse and machine froze again. The good news of this is that this means that the data on the disk seems still intact. What I understood is that Russ is now trying to get the repair shop to fix the machine, and get the other machine that the shop have as a spare. I'm extremely happy that Russ found the right shop; doing this remotely without spare parts (or ordering them online) is near impossible. I would still urge Russ to get it (also) working on an emulator, so at least he is not dependent on (obsolete) hardware. If that is fixed, he can start working on Victory! 2, which still is a good idea. However, removing dependencies on old hardware is in my view a more important priority. Just my 2 cents. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RTGRuss Posted December 29, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 29, 2009 Hi Guys, Ok - it looks like we've got some good news (I'd say 'great' but I'm being cautious for the time being...). I've got the replacement set of hardware from our local MAC shop and it seems to be running fine (hardware wise it's actually better than what I was running before). Just to make it exciting though I had some software issues that popped up after I plugged in the new hardware and ran some diagnostics... For a while it was looking grim but several nerve-racking hours later and I think I was able to solve the issues (there goes another year of my life and a significant increase in the percentage of grey hair I have... ). All my Victory! tests have gone ok and I've generated end of game results for every game as of the 18th (just in case). I'm now in the process of running and getting out the Victory! turns that were in and due to be run when all this started (i.e. Saturday the 19th and Sunday the 20th). I'm watching the runs closely and checking every single turn result by hand to watch for any trouble. So far everything has run ok and looked good. If that continues I'll be sending out turn results here in a while for the 19th/20th so those of you who had turns eligible for those days will be getting them soon. Check them over and let me know if I've missed anything (the game data is separated onto different drive partitions than the one I had a problem with and I'm fairly confident that all that data is ok but check them to be safe). Once you see game results in your mailbox (or see folks talking about their new results on the forums) it'll mean that everything seems to be going ok and, barring any problems in the next few days, we'll be back online with Victory! Get the word out to your friends, enemies, allies, etc. about Victory!...tell them the news and/or have them check in here on the forums to get the latest. Send me an email (either to my personal email acct or to the one for Victory! turn submissions) so I know that you are aware of the news. Tell your friends, enemies, allies, etc. to check in with me as well. I'm going to have to come up with a processing plan to catch us up on Victory! processing days and I need to know when everybody knows the situation. If you have already submitted turns for turn processing days after December 20th, please resubmit them. I should already have them but I'd prefer to take in new .trn files if possible as we get going again. At this time, I don't have a plan finished for our Victory! processing catchup phase. I'd like to get started with processing again by tomorrow (the 30th) but we'll see how things hold up and how fast the word spreads. Right now it looks like I'll be getting close to the 24 hour mark before I'm done for the day so once I'm finished with the 19th/20th I'm going to fall in bed and pass out for a while. I'll be back at it later today Thanks to everyone for their support, advice, assistance, etc. during this event. Hopefully we are past the worse of it now and will be able to play out the existing games of Victory! without any more unpleasant interruptions Once I'm caught up I'll be looking at some other options to reduce the risks and we'll continue with Project Victory! so that we'll have a new Victory! (a better one with more modern code/hardware) down the road. Game 88 was getting close to the initial start point (about 70% of the way or so) so we'll see how things go...if everything stays stable and we get caught up on the current games then we'll probably set that up as the last game of original Victory! then work on having Victory! II ready for games after that. Thanks again and best wishes to everyone for the coming new year! Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Falco Posted December 29, 2009 Report Share Posted December 29, 2009 Check your emails all, turns are coming in. All seems to be fine here! Good job Russ!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RTGRuss Posted December 29, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 29, 2009 Bump Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spartan Posted December 30, 2009 Report Share Posted December 30, 2009 AWESOME!!!! Great job Russ! My life once again has meaning! Just tell my wife I said that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RTGRuss Posted December 30, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 30, 2009 Hi Russ, The compressed turn schedule looks good to me. It will favor the more organized players, of which I humbly consider myself one. However, wouldn't it be easier on you if all turns were pushed back exactly 15 days (one tech period)? Ken Hi Ken, The processing days for Victory! are sort of hard wired into the code based on what day the game started, the minimum turn interval and when the last turn ran so the compressed schedule is the only way for me to catch things up to the current date without folks taking a loss of days (shifting into different tech periods, production multiple issues) on their positions. It'll be a little more hectic with less time to work with for a few turns but I think this schedule will be better overall and it's not a problem on my end. Thanks for the input, Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.