Further Annoyances w/GH III

The quest for saving in Guitar Hero III Mac OS X port goes on, forever?

I figured that the saving didn’t work because of GH III not working in a case sensitive file system and that I because of that moved the game to a image file with a non-case sensitive filesystem and the paths then fuckin’ up. I thought that that was an easily solvable problem. I would just do some aliasing related to the new posistion of the application so that even the saving files would end up in the disk image with the non-case sensitive file system. The biggest problem would be whether I should try Finder aliases or Unix links first.

Easy?

The first try gave no result what so ever.

The second try obviously meant something to game since the application now is crashing at the first save.

Earlier annoyances:
Part 1
Part 2

Apple Mail and iChat Annoyances

I recently migrated some mail and iChat users to a new Mac OS X server (10.6.3) with most users using Mac OS X (although some of them  are using alternative mail and jabber clients). I had some problems with the mail and chat clients when the configurations was to be changed. In some cases it was users not really reading the guide or running along with the configurations but I find a few irritating things with Apple Mail and iChat as applications.

For one thing, in Apple Mail, when you have changed your configurations and clicked ''OK'' you might think that your new configurations are saved. It's not. It's not until you change tab in or close the overview dialog box that Mail suddenly gives you the question if you want to save your settings. After this is done you probably still need to shut down Mail and start it again to make changes take effect in reality. A little annoying I think. I also had problems with clients where the changes were made and Apple Mail restarted. The only safe way to change configurations seemed to be to remove the old, shut down Mail, start it again and make a new account.

The same procedure with removing old account, shutting down and starting and adding a new account also goes for iChat. Don't modify your settings in either program. Remove them restart the applications and add new configurations (and maybe restart them after that too).

Annoyances in iTunes

If you’re in spending mode and manages to empty your bank account connected to your iTunes account and buy something from iTunes one might think that Apple would check the balance and then refuse to sell you the whatever it is. No they don’t, they sell you the stuff and then complain about the negative balance. That might be okay but since there’s something wrong with the balance on your account you’re not just stopped from buying anymore (which of course is okay) but you’re also stopped from downloading free applications and even stopped from upgrading applications since you need to download the new version.

Also you can’t start an account for downloading just free application, you actually have to register a valid bank account to be able to download anything. This also means that if you get a new card for your bank account you might need to update your iTunes account data to be able to download free apps or update the ones already bought.

iPad

Det blev alltså en iPad, en iPod Touch giganticus. Jag är tveksam. Den går knappast att hålla och skriva med båda händerna som en iPhone/iPod Touch och att hålla med en hand och dansa med en hand på tangentbordet känns som det sliter snett. Det finns en tangentbordsdocka som gör den typ till en uppfälld bärbar men med fast vinkel mellan tangentbord och skärm (själva iPad). På grund av den mojjen på tangentbordet som håller iPad:en så blir det knappast smidigt att ta med tangentbordet. Njäe, nog inte riktigt min grej.

Dock kommer den väl, för att citera slashatkanalen ‘’jailbreakas skiten ur’’.

Lite fakta (verkar inte gå köra flera applikationer samtidigt):
*Safari, webbläsare
*YouTube HD
*Film och musikprogram (iTunes åtminstone för musik)
*Kalenderprogram, modifierat iCal
*Kartprogram, ser ut att vara Google Maps än så länge.
*Fotoprogram i stil med på iPhone
*E-postprogram
*IPhone-/iPod Touch-app:ar i mindre fönster eller uppzoomade, till exempel Brushes
*PDF-läsarprogram
*iBooks, e-boksprogram (samarbete m bl a Penguin, Harper Collins, Simon & Shuster, macmillan och hachette book group), ePub som format
*iWork för iPad; Pages (text + layout), Keynote (presentationer) och Numbers (kalkylprogram)
*Adressboksprogram med stort dubbelsidigt uppslag
*Koppling till iTunes för köp av media
*SDK publiceras idag.
*Verkar inte ha flashstöd
*Virtuellt tangentbord i närmast full storlek

Typ 700 g
9,7 tum LED skärm
<1,5 cm tjock
10 h batteritid men osäkert vilken aktivitet den tål då
>1 mån stand bytid
1 GHz processor (Apple A4)
16 - 64 GB flash storage
GPS och Location Services
Accelerator
Kompass
WiFI 802.11n
Bluetooth 2.1
Mikrofon och högtalare
Kan kopplas till projektor
Samma synkroniseringssaldd som för iPhone och iPod Touch
Tangentbord med hållare och docka finns (fast vinkel)
Två modeller; WiFi och WiFi + olåst 3G

Priser:
WiFi 16GB $499
WiFi 32 GB $599
WiFi 64 GB $699

WiFI + 3G GB $629
WiFI + 3G GB $729
WiFI + 3G GB $829

Guitar Hero Annoyances

Guitar Hero (III) is a fun game but it’s also getting on my nerves. The first thing is that it doesn’t support case sensitive file systems. Well, no big deal I thought. I just make a disk image and mount it an install the game there or so I thought. The game installer doesn’t allow you to do that. No big deal I thougt. I’ll install it on the main disk in the Applications folder where it want to place it but where it won’t work since the file system is case sensitive - no warning during installation process.

When the installation was done I tried to start just to see how well or bad it would work, maybe just some minor function would not work, well the whole game crashed immediately. Back to the plan of moving the game to the non case sensitive disk image. This time it started up as supposed. Time for some imaginary rock. School’s Out here I come :-)

After a little playing I realise that the game doesn’t save my progress, not even after several restarts of the game, not even after completing a whole career and beaten the devil himself in guitar battle (maybe he’s pissed off and jinxed my game?), not even when I went to the menu and saved manually several times.

After some googleing  I found out that some Windows user had found out that if they didn’t install the game exactly where the game wanted on C: the saving was fucked up, not done in the wrong place or fucked up with a warning. Just fucked up but happily telling you ‘’saving’’ and then ‘’overwrite successful’’ (and that noone involved in the game seemed to care about this bug). I guess it’s a similar thing that has happened to me since I also have the game in another place (my game doesn’t give any warnings neither, according to in-game messages everything’s OK and the saving is successful).

Now I thought I came up with something smart, I ~/Library/ where many MOSX programs store data there was a Guitar Hero folder and I guess this corresponded to the folder in My Documents that the Windows users had problems with so I thought that maybe something with the case sensitive file system crashed the saving process so I made an alias (MOSX linking system) from this folder to a folder on the non case sensitive file system disk image. Didn’t work so now I will try with a Unix link instead since some programs need these instead of the links that Finder uses. If that doesn’t work I guess I have to figure out what realive path the program maybe use, that wouldn’t work when I move the game, and try to fake it for the game.

I also looked in the preference file for the game but no clues there. Also it seems like the online features doesn’t work for Windows and MOSX since you need a Guitar Hero account AND a console specific account and link these and there doesn’t seem to be any of these for neither operating system, just for the Playstation, Wii and Xbox.

:/