Oni and Mac OS 9.1: a follow-up

We received numerous replies to yesterday's report on a potential problems with Oni when running Mac OS 9.1. At least one of the problems (the white patches) is not restricted to Mac OS 9.1. However, not all users have this problem, so something else must also be involved. Turning on virtual memory may help (if you Mac does not have sufficient physical RAM). OpenGL may also be involved. Here are the highlights:

White blocks

I am experiencing the same problem as Robin Mayoff is with a very similar system. I have a 266 MHz beige G3 with a 466 MHz G3 ZIF upgrade and an ATI PCI graphics card. However, I am getting the white patches both in 9.1 and 9.0.4. [Rubens da Silva]

I have the same white-block problems running Oni but I'm only running OS 8.6. [iZealot]

The graphics problems users have reported with 9.1 and Oni (e.g., white-areas) have also appeared in the game Alpha Centauri. Firaxis software released an update to fix the problem. [Justin Mack]

I am currently running 9.1 and had no problems with the demo until turning off virtual memory. I then began noticing the symptoms described previously (white patches on screen, text boxes not displaying properly, etc.). It is not necessary for me to restart the computer to eliminate this problem; quitting and restarting the game takes care of it. Additionally, this only happens after several trips back and forth from the startup menu screen (I am playing with the TCTF training level replacement scripts). If I start the demo, play through to the end, and quit, I do not have any problems with it. [Shane Massey]

I've found that I get the white blocks regularly if OpenGL runs low on memory, hence the texture display problems. By turning on virtual memory to about 200MB as suggested in the ReadMe file, these problems went away immediately. [David Reynolds]

It appears to be that the 'white blocks'< various readers has been reporting happens when Mac OS has not enough memory available for OpenGL. Increasing Oni's memory partition size will not fix it. [Slava Karpenko]

Mac OS 9.1 installs OpenGL 1.2, and the Oni CD install OpenGL 1.2.1. Perhaps these issues are related to the older OpenGL extensions? I'd be curious to know what these users that have issues are using for video as well. [Joe Wilson]

I had the same problems but fixed them when I loaded the Bink Shared Library 1.0s from the Star Trek Elite Force demo (replacing Oni's 1.0k version). [William Refsland]

Resolution issues

I've noticed that upgrading from Mac OS 9.0.4 to Mac OS 9.1 has created some resolution issues with my Power Macintosh G3/350 with the accompanying 17" b/w Apple monitor. The picture is smaller and tends to shake as if the monitor or the video card cannot sustain that refresh rate. What is happening is that Oni is kicking the refresh rate of my monitor to 120 Hz, way above the 85 Hz it is usually set to. By going to the monitor control panel or the monitor resolution control strip and changing the refresh rating back to 85 Hz fixes my problem when I get back to the Mac OS desktop. However, I cannot get Oni to switch over during the game. [Mike Hancharenko]

I have had no real problems with it other than my monitor not switching back to my preferred resolution when I quit the game (does not happen every time though.) [David Grayson]

I have noticed that when Oni changes the resolution of my screen, and then changes it back after quitting the game, my desktop icon placement is trashed. Badly. Manually switching my monitor to 800 x 600 before launching Oni fixes this. A friend of mine at other problems with Oni, but a clean install of Mac OS 9.1 fixed them all. [Marc Opperman]

Freezes/crashes

I have been running Oni under 9.1 pretty much without difficulty on a Power Mac G4. Once every few days, when I am loading from a saved position (after I have been playing a while, never the first time), it will freeze on the list of saved game points and lock up, but otherwise, it is running fine. [David Jones]

I've run both the Oni Demo and the release version of Oni with Mac OS 9.1, without the problems described on your site. It has crashed on occasion, usually if I've run and quit Oni a few times without a restart. The crash will occur as soon as the start screen would normally appear, but I get dumped back into the Finder, and a restart solves the problem. [Sean Li]

Also see this MacFixIt Forums thread for a problem where the game does not launch at all.

Level 2 add-on and sound

I'm having none of the sync issues on my G4. But what I am having is a weird issue with the Level 2 add-on that was available for download. The sound and graphics are just fine on any other level, but as soon as I load up level 2, the sound just gets intensely loud and full of static. [Dan Saperstein; also reported by Brian Landau and others]

No problems Several readers report no problems at all with Oni (thanks, Tyler Amick, Joshua Boger, Jerry Telfer, Russ Harlan and others). Looks like there is still more to learn about the precise cause(s) of the reported problems.