What to do with updated plugins?

[fredskronk 4]

Hello,

 

Me and my sister has been playing this game since 2007 (or something) and share a region by syncing our files. For the last four years I've been playing on my mac via Windows XP in a VirtualBox (the best and most stable way even on win 10 imho, at leas if you own an old cd-rom version). However. My sister is now getting an arm-based mac so thought we'd both switch to the App Store version. 

Naturally I've got quite a few ctd issues but have started to patch the plugins from within win xp. My only question now is; what do I do with them? It feels rather bad to spend all this time tracking down and fixing plugins and then just keeping them to myself. However, I'm in no way owning the rights to these plugins so they are not mine to share, I guess. Can I upload them anyway? Only upload the fixed file and ask people to download the original (if still available) and switch them out? 

What's your thought?

[rsc204 21,808]

We already have a dedicated place for hosting such Mac-specific features, the more contributors the better really. I have not yet found time to create a second thread for reporting and/or discussing such problem content. I just think it's much neater to have one managed list of fixes kept separate.

Generally speaking, we'd probably prefer that any patches are limited to including only those files that needed directly editing. So for most content, the original download will still be necessary. Where content is hosted on the STEX directly, we'll look to get any updates patched into the actual download for simplicity. But if that's not possible, then we'll stick everything in the previously linked thread.

In the meantime, if you've got a bunch of fixes ready to go, send me a PM and I'll add them to the current patches.

We don't consider re-distribution of files in this context to be counter to the rights of creators over their works. More trying to help ensure they stay functional for the largest number of users.

One word of (slightly unrelated) caution, we've had reports that once a region (save files) are saved with the latest Mac Version, they can no longer be used with the Windows one. Not a problem provided neither of you need to return to the Windows game, but thought it might be a useful heads up.

[fredskronk 4]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. 

 

Ya. did find the post about x64 and witnessed it first hand. So sadly we'll go the route of running a VM with win10 for arm and than SC4 inside that one. 

[Propfam 2,288]

16 hours ago, fredskronk said:

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. 

 

Ya. did find the post about x64 and witnessed it first hand. So sadly we'll go the route of running a VM with win10 for arm and than SC4 inside that one. 

Go for Parallels since Boot Camp isn't supported in Arm Macs for some reasons. Hope it's running well in it!

[fredskronk 4]

11 hours ago, chfzdn said:

Go for Parallels since Boot Camp isn't supported in Arm Macs for some reasons. Hope it's running well in it!

Thanks. Yea. Bootcamp can't work due to processor architecture. Nothing stopping the arm preview to boot natively on mac though but we're not there yet. Ideally I'd stick with virtualbox but no word from them on arm support yet though so Parallels for now. Been running SC4 on Winxp in Virtualbox for years now and it works like a charm on intell

[rsc204 21,808]

On 16/01/2021 at 1:20 AM, fredskronk said:

Been running SC4 on Winxp in Virtualbox for years now and it works like a charm on intel

After reading this, I figured I’d give it a try on Catalina with an Intel-based Mac. I’m now kicking myself I didn’t do this earlier, I can’t believe how easy it was. I’m not playing SC4 with it (my main rig is after all a Windows system), but it does allow me to more easily access modding tools like Reader. 

I even created a DOS/Win 3.11 VM, to play with some of my old Pascal coding too.