Big Fish Games Manager Forum

Has anyone here used these games? I'm having a problem getting them up on my computer. I have a Mac OS 10.6.4. I'm really inexperienced with all of this, so I'll probably need someone to walk me through it. Cake Mania Main Street will load but you can't see the text for the buttons to get started, and then it seems to stay on the main screen the time or two I got it to run by pushing random buttons. I hope someone can offer some advice. I'm very happy with Crossover so far, and I would love to get these games.

Hi,

I've checked a number of BFG titles, but not these two ... I'll have
a look at them and see if anything can be done. In the interim, can you
provide a bit more information on your setup there...ie; which model
Mac you have, what video card/chipset it has, and which version of
Crossover you are using?

...I'll post back here after I've had a peekboo at the games themselves...

Cheers!

Update:

...bummer ;( In all fact, both these Cake Mania titles are running 'properly', however
the 'fonts' that aren't being seen, aren't fonts I don't think - rather, they're small
bitmaps that get overlayed onto the rendered button surface (at least, that's the plan ;),
and it seems like the games are using a directx7 interface to do this, which, would appear
at this stage to be incomplete. This, is probably something that has to be fixed in wine,
before such changes would show up in crossover...

....I spent a few minutes 'learning' my way into the various game functions (and the game
itself), and just occasionally one would see the missing text objects, before one of either
two things happened 1>they mysteriously fade away as the menu/GUI graphics fade in..or..2>
the text is visible for a brief period, but another overlay is applied (which draws a twinkly
rainbow effect around the text caption), and the moment that happens the text disappears...

In any event, the problem persisted through all the various hacks and tweaks I know of that
might help, and both games are rendered pretty much unplayable as a result. Seeing as there
is a 'fixme' in the wine code about the problem, one can surmise the issue is known ; maybe
some day one of the wine devs will get to fixing it, but as often is the case, there can be
several other parts of wine that need to be fixed -first-, before that can happen, and so it
becomes a bit of a waiting game more or less....ummm....

....have a look here -> http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/company/?company_id=1316

..those couple of pages contain most all of the BigFishGames titles other advocates & myself
have checked out thus far. Most all of them have crossties, so they're dead simple to install,
and you can try out the demo versions of the games (which are usually the full version, just
time limited) to see if they work on your hardware or not... and try the game itself of course =)

...I've got a few BigFishGames gift vouchers up my sleeve - if you find a BigFishGame you like/want,
then post back here and I'll email you one -- I don't like disappointments B^)

Cheers!

Thanks for looking into this for me, Don. I really appreciate it. It's a bit disappointing that Cake Mania doesn't work, but I waited over two years for a Mac version of Cake Mania 3 to come out. I'm sure I can handle the wait for a version of the next to games to either come out in Mac, or for a Wine update to fix the problem. <G> With most of the games where there are issues, is something similar the problem? I ran into something a bit similar with Ghost Town Mysteries Bodie, and the Mystery of the Mary Celeste was a bit jerky when I played the demo, but overall, I've been thrilled with how well Crosstie has worked with Big Fish. You don't have to give me a gift voucher, but I certainly wouldn't turn it down. There are a ton of games on there that I'm dying to get. Thank you so much for the help. Having support like this was one of the things that made me get Crosstie.

Hi again,

The various BigFishGames titles (and lets face it, that's a lot) typically use
one or another (both) of the Microsoft directdraw & directx graphics APIs and this
could be anywhere from directx6 time to the current day. Some of the directx6/7
interfaces in wine don't work properly - and they don't get much love, because the
software world has moved on - most games are directx9 or better these days.

Both these titles suffer from the same problem here - I know of a couple of other
BFG titles that do the same thing. It all boils down to how the game was coded and
which directx interfaces are involved. Sometimes these games have dependencies on
other things...directx9, fonts, visual c++ runtimes, flashplayer, visual basic runtimes
and etc et al and blablabla...there's no one specific example or case ; it's all
app dependent...some games from the -same- software publisher can both work or not,
just depending on how they were coded. I think the funniest example is there's a number
of Mac ports of various games which won't run natively on my Mac, but the win32 version
with crossover games works fine 8)

The jerky mouse business can be a couple of things, not least of which being OSX itself
(or something spooky in the Mac build of crossover games itself) -- I usually check against
my linux systems to find out whether it's the case or not. If you don't have a linux
system, then I guess you'd never find out, but, sometimes the jerky mouse thing is only
evident on the Mac - in linux things work fine. Other times it's the app's coding again,
and it hits both platforms equally....YMMV...

As for the gift voucher, that's up to you ... I always have a number of the things to
give away and I like to see them go to 'good homes' B) On the other hand, not all folks
are comfortable with receiving gifts (I'm a bit like this myself), so there's no obligation
here ... you either want a freebie or not ; I just don't like disappointments ...<grin>..

Cheers!

I would absolutely love a gift voucher for Big Fish, There are a ton of games there that I'm dying to get now that Crossover's opened up the PC section to me. I really appreciate your taking the time to explain things. My computer expertise tends to run more to research online instead of things like code, so I really appreciate having someone to explain that part. Oh, and how can you add a game to the list of games that work with the games manager? Dark Parables the Curse of Briar Rose works great, and has lead more than a few people to Crosstie so we Mac gamers can play it.

Hi again,

To add a game to that list I linked to, means adding the game title into
the C4 database itself -- you can do that on the following page..;

http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/submit/

Once the page is accepted into C4, you can become advocate for it (if you wish),
give it a medal ranking, upload screenshots etc etc. You can also create a crosstie
installer for it if you like (there's plenty of examples/docs around), but if that
bit's beyond you just let me know - happy to help out....

Cheers!

ps: you have mail

Okay, I submitted it. I just hope I did it right. Like I said, I'm really a researcher with computers, not so much the other stuff, so who knows if I made any mistakes. Briar Rose is a great game, and based on my favorite fairy tale, so I hope I did the submission right. Thank you for the gift certificate for the game, too. I really appreciate it. I've just got to decide which game to get now.