Edenwaith Blog

In preparation of the upcoming Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, I checked how much freespace was available on my Nintento Switch and its 128GB microSD card. After nearly six years of use, the system was finally starting to get somewhat full, especially when a number of games and demos had been downloaded (hence my preference to still get a physical version of games for a variety of reasons). This led me down the path to learn how to transfer the data on the old microSD card to a newer, larger microSD card, but while using a Mac.

The basic instructions to transfer the data between two microSD cards seemed fairly straightforward by just copying the contents of the first SD card to a computer, then copy the files to the new SD card. According to Nintendo's website, it recommends using Windows, which might have avoided some of the issues I would later encounter in my experiments, but I will detail on how to do this successfully on a Mac.

Upon my first attempt to transfer the files, I was getting some error on the Switch that said the new SD card couldn't be read. After mulling it over a bit, I assumed that macOS might have added some cruft to the files (dot files and the such) which might have confused the Switch. Time to start over by formatting the SD card, which can be done from the Switch (System Settings > System > Formatting Options > Format microSD Card) or via a 3rd party tool like SD Card Formatter.

SD Card Formatter

Despite what SDCard's site mentions, version 5.0.2 of the SD Card Formatter is a universal app for Intel, Apple Silicon, and (surprise!) PowerPC processors.

% file /Applications/SD\ Card\ Formatter.app/Contents/MacOS/SD\ Card\ Formatter 
/Applications/SD Card Formatter.app/Contents/MacOS/SD Card Formatter: Mach-O universal binary with 4 architectures: [i386:
- Mach-O executable i386] [ppc_7400:
- Mach-O executable ppc_7400] [x86_64:Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64] [arm64:Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64]
/Applications/SD Card Formatter.app/Contents/MacOS/SD Card Formatter (for architecture i386):	Mach-O executable i386
/Applications/SD Card Formatter.app/Contents/MacOS/SD Card Formatter (for architecture ppc7400):	Mach-O executable ppc_7400
/Applications/SD Card Formatter.app/Contents/MacOS/SD Card Formatter (for architecture x86_64):	Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
/Applications/SD Card Formatter.app/Contents/MacOS/SD Card Formatter (for architecture arm64):	Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64

It is definitely a surprise to see that this app is essentially a mega universal binary, which contains binaries for Apple Silicon (M1, M2, etc.), Intel (both 32 and 64 bit), and PowerPC. I checked the Info.plist and it does say that the minimum version is 10.5, so it does look like it might be able to run on a 20 year old laptop (like my PowerBook G4). A very welcome surprise, and well done Tuxera. My own erasing app Permanent Eraser was a Universal Binary for PowerPC and Intel until fairly recently, but this is the first case I've seen an app built for PowerPC, Intel, and Apple Silicon. I'm guessing that it requires multiple builds, and then a tool like lipo is used to combine the binaries together.

Seeing this program is interesting and stirs some interest in how it "properly" formats an SD card, which Nintendo says "Nintendo products strictly adhere to the SD card standard." The Switch can format the SD card, and creates a couple of folders inside the Nintendo folder (Album, Contents, save).

The Fix

After reformatting the 512GB SD card in the Switch again, I brought it back over to my Mac, but I was careful to not open up the SD card in Finder (which can decorate a filesystem with .DS_Store files). Instead, I just ran this command from the Terminal:

cp -rvf ~/Desktop/Nintendo/* /Volumes/Untitled/Nintendo

Where ~/Desktop/Nintendo/ is the folder where I copied the contents of the original microSD card. Then, for good measure, I also ran:

dot_clean -m /Volumes/Untitled/

I had never heard of dot_clean before, until I came across this Reddit post. According to a Lifehacker article, dot_clean came out in Mac OS X Leopard (10.5). The Leopard man page for dot_clean says it dates back to June 28, 2006. I've dealt with cleaning up odd cruft in apps and file systems before, so this definitely seems quite handy and I wish I had known about this a long time ago. Despite these unexpected headaches — learning!

If these steps don't work, then try this bevy of commands next:

sudo chflags -R arch /Volumes/Untitled/
sudo chflags -R noarch /Volumes/Untitled/Nintendo/
sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/Untitled/
sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/Untitled/
dot_clean -m /Volumes/Untitled/

Resources

• How to Transfer SD Card Data Using macOS
• How to Transfer Data Between Nintendo Switch microSD Cards with OS X
• Save you time: Copying SD card on Mac does NOT work
• microSD Card is Not Recognized
• How to Transfer Data Between microSD Cards for Use on Nintendo Switch
• How to Transfer Data Between microSD Cards for Use on Nintendo Switch
• How to Format an SD Card or microSD Card
• SD Memory Card Formatter
• SD Memory Card Formatter for Mac Download
• How to Transfer Nintendo Switch SD Card Data to a New SD Card

I was in the process of updating a new Mac port of a game developed with Adventure Game Studio (AGS), and after going through the standard steps, I encountered a confusing error when trying to launch the game.

"MyGreatApp" can’t be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software. This software needs to be updated. Contact the developer for more information.

Odd, curious, and frustrating. Since this new build was using the more recent 3.5.1 version of AGS, I assumed that the Mac shell I've been using for 3.5 was causing this mysterious error. However, I did not have the appropriate shell app, so I would need to go and create it...and in the process finally tackle something I've been intending to do for the past year — make a universal binary which can support both Intel and Apple Silicon processors.

The following steps will create a Mac shell app for an AGS game, which I then use to populate using the AGS resources (cfg, vox, exe) from a Windows version of a game.

How to build an AGS Mac shell app:

1. Pull the code from https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags. Switch to another branch if you need to build for a particular version of AGS. For this particular example, I switched to the branch release-3.5.1.
2. Copy the build_ags.sh script into the ags folder. The script should be in the same folder which contains the CMakeLists.txt file. This will be important in a bit.
3. Next is the step to ensure that this will build a universal binary so it runs natively on both Intel and Apple Silicon. Open the CMakeLists.txt file. At line 6 (or before the project() function), add the line: set(CMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES "arm64;x86_64" CACHE STRING "" FORCE)
4. Ensure that the build_ags.sh script has proper permissions: chmod 755 build_ags.sh
5. Run the script: ./build_ags.sh
6. After a few minutes, this will create a new folder named build_release and will generate a shell Mac app named AGS.app.

Troubleshooting:

I encountered a couple of issues when trying to build the AGS shell on my newer Mac, which seemed to be missing some critical pieces which had been on my older Mac.

% ./build_ags.sh
./build_ags.sh: line 8: cmake: command not found
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found.  Stop.

Looks like I was missing cmake on my new machine. To verify, I ran which cmake and it returned cmake not found. When I checked my old Mac, these are the details I had about cmake:

% which cmake
/usr/local/bin

% cmake --version
cmake version 3.18.0

CMake suite maintained and supported by Kitware (kitware.com/cmake).

That version of cmake had likely been installed by Xcode or manually installed some time in the distant past. On my new machine, I just used Homebrew to install it via the command: brew install cmake

To verify, I checked the new location and version of cmake.

% which cmake
/opt/homebrew/bin/cmake

% cmake --version
cmake version 3.25.2

CMake suite maintained and supported by Kitware (kitware.com/cmake).

Much better. However, I also discovered that the xcode-select path was not pointing to the desired location of the current version of Xcode. Generally when running a utility like stapler, I will prefix the command with xcrun, which greatly helps in locating the associated utility. But in case of building the AGS project encountered a similar issue, it would be best to fix this by updating the xcode-select path.

% stapler
xcode-select: error: tool 'stapler' requires Xcode, but active developer directory 
'/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools' is a command line tools instance
% xcode-select -p
/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools
% sudo xcode-select -s /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer 
% xcode-select -p                                                 
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer

Despite some of the unexpected frustration I encountered creating this port, it did finally force my hand to build a new version of the Mac shell app, plus learn how to configure a Universal Binary for modern Macs, which surprisingly turned out to be quite simple.

When I was a junior in high school, I finally settled on a career: I wanted to become a computer programmer and make great adventure games for Sierra On-Line. That particular ship sailed away a long time ago, but a new ship (let's name it Cygnus) has come in.

If there is any silver lining to the pandemic, it has been the creation of new artistic endeavors, which may have never happened otherwise. Instead of spending their time sailing across the world, the original co-founders of Sierra On-Line, Ken and Roberta Williams, spent their time writing books (Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings and Farewell to Tara). But that was not all. The Williams announced that they were working on a new project, something that fans of their games would probably appreciate.

Enter Colossal Cave, the game which started it all for Roberta Williams and lead to the founding of Sierra On-Line and the development of many, many games over the 1980s and 1990s. Roberta and Ken Williams have reimagined this classic text-based adventure game, and it is now available for pretty much every modern platform...including the Mac.

So, I helped with a thing...

...as the Macintosh Consultant for the new Colossal Cave.

While I will never be able to work for the Sierra of old (not without the aid of an elusive time machine, that is), this is the closest I may ever come to it. It has been an amazing honor to be able to assist with this project and combine my love for both adventure games and the Mac.

Adventure on, intrepid explorer.

Reviews

There have been various version of Colossal Cave Adventure made over the years, and this variant is based off of the 350 point version (which is also playable on the game's website.). It's interesting to see the influence it had on a number of early computer games from the exploration, the mazes, treasure hunting, and then having those treasures stolen! Roberta Williams' games such as Mystery House, Wizard & the Princess, and the King's Quest series borrowed a number of these themes. This is essentially a game from the 70s, but given a modern coat of paint with graphics and sound. All of the other elements from the original (the good, the bad, and the moon logic) are still present. It helps if you are at least vaguely familiar with the text version so you can come in with a better appreciation of the 2023 version.

I have started CC a couple of times and explored around, but when I did finally sit down and play through the entire game, it took around 4.5 hours, but it probably would have taken longer if I hadn't had a copy of The Book of Adventure Games by Kim Schuette (1984) and its indispensable maps.

As Robotspacer has shown in his playthroughs of both versions of the game, the remake is very faithful to the original (much to the chagrin of many reviewers). However, the advantage of this is that one can rely on old maps and walkthroughs for this new version of the game. Even the pirate map (Maze Alike) from Schuette's book was very spot on in the remake.

• YakWaxLips Review
• Adventure Gamers Review
• Metal Jesus Rocks Review
• PC Gamer Review
• God Is A Geek Review
• Walkthrough by God Is A Geek
• Walkthrough by Sierra Help

Farewell to Twitter and hello to the IndieWeb

When I first took notice of Twitter around 2009, I did not have much interest in it. It was initially useful to follow a few accounts, but I did not actively participate much at first besides making a handful of product announcements each year. Years later it became more of a platform to connect and engage. As with any worldwide community, a lot of good things came of it, with many great connections with interesting people and topics. Especially in the past couple of years, it provided as an alternative to Facebook, with a wider variety of interactions with people, especially those you may not know as well as more personal connections on Facebook.

Once the internet escaped the walled domains of universities and governments and was let loose into the clumsy hands of the general populace, it has been used for both incredibly beneficial and nefarious purposes. To quote the hermit from The Bride of Frankenstein, "There is good. And there is bad." However, this is the internet, which provides a platform to display the worse impulses and tendencies of humanity with little to no repercussions for such vile behavior. (It took an insurrection for Twitter and Facebook to finally take action and censure certain individuals who should have had any "rights" revoked a long time ago.)

This now brings us up to the present moment where Twitter was purchased for an astounding $44 billion dollars in late 2022. If the platform wasn't already a shit show in its own right, it was about to become a burning circus show. It's simultaneously amazing and appalling to watch how a single person has managed to destroy a company in such a short period of time. Half of the employees unceremoniously dumped, the rest expected to pick up the remaining pieces, bills not getting paid, and now it looks like third-party Twitter clients have been cut off with absolutely no notice.

The IndieWeb and Fediverse

I recently read through the Indie Microblogging book, which has provided a new perception of social media, especially in regards to blogging and microblogging. There is renewed excitement, energy, and enthusiasm for creating again — owning your own content. It is the joy of rediscovering the Old, and learning the New.

Decades ago, around the 2001-2003 timeframe, I made a lot of short messages on my devlog, more as an artifact to the old UNIX .plan file, but a precursor to microblogging, years before it ever existed. I might have been on to something before it really took off.

Sites like Twitter and Facebook make it easy to post, but they control the content and the ways things are run. Consider how many years Twitter has gone without even an Edit functionality to easily fix typos. Much to my delight, such an obvious feature already exists for Mastodon.

There is a benefit of owning everything, with better ease to comb through your own content. If one of these social media silos crumbles, it will take everything with it. So many things have been posted over the years, but as Roy Batty so eloquently put it:

"All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in [the] rain"

There is definitely a sense of starting over. Things will inevitably be lost, and other areas, such as discovering new Playdate projects, will likely need to fall in the domain of YouTube, Reddit, and developer forums.

Leaving Twitter

In 2014, I wrote the short story Digital Suicide, a story about digital death, burnout, and starting over. Those three points exemplify what is happening now quite aptly. The death of digital properties. The burnout of so much frustration and related headaches. And the process of letting go and starting anew.

Twitter has become the source of so much "doomscrolling" where a single word or curt phrase could cause severe anxiety to manifest. I've seen numerous people take breaks from social media for their own mental well-being; some have even taken a permanent vacation. I'm currently in the process of archiving and deleting some Twitter accounts (e.g. @kq1redux) and winding down regular usage of my primary account. The biggest change I have noticed has been breaking the habit of continually checking my phone, getting that little hit of "what's new and interesting". But it has also helped distance me from much of the world-wide negativity. Not that the world isn't still delightfully mad at times, but it has helped calm the torrential storm. When I occasionally duck my head back in to the fetid waters of Twitter, it feels like returning to a place where you once lived. Seeing what's new, what's changed, and then getting out as quickly as possible as you are reminded why you left.

Even as I was in the process of writing this post, more bad news kept rolling in from a massive security breach of 235 million e-mail addresses to the inexplicable blocking of popular third party Twitter clients. If this is true that third party Twitter clients have been so unceremoniously cut off without any warning (much like how half of Twitter's employees were let go last November), it's just more reason to get away from Twitter and not support it. As Manton Reece detailed in his book's chapter Leaving Twitter, the company has been restricting API access for years, and this might be the final death knell. As of this writing, Twitter has not officially responded to what is happening and if this is an accident or truly extremely hostile behavior towards other developers who have helped support and build upon the Twitter platform for years. Twitter has been crumbling for years, perhaps it just took the new ownership to topple things even further instead of trying to repair the faults.

My current Twitter alternatives:

• News: NetNewsWire
• Communities: Discord
• Microblogging: Mastodon

I will see how everything shakes out, especially with Mastodon if it proves to be a happier alternative to Twitter, or if it will devolve into a similar cesspool of vitriol. Ultimately, this is a way of starting over again. Fortunately, I had not amassed a huge collection of connections on Twitter, and there will inevitably be connections which will be missed and lost, but for now, it involves finding active accounts which have made the move to Mastodon. Over the years I've invoked my minimalistic tendencies and culled through lists on social media, and this might be the most efficient method of trimming the branches.

How to get an archive of your Twitter data (via the website): More > Settings and Support > Settings and privacy > Your account > Download an archive of your data

Note, this is not an instantaneous process and will see a message that says: "We received your request. To protect your account, it can take 24 hours or longer for your data to be ready." From my tests, it took about a day before I got a notification that my data was ready to download.

How to deactivate your Twitter account: More > Settings and Support > Settings and privacy > Your account > Deactivate your account

See you around the chronostream...

An Ode to Twitter

I'll end this by paraphrasing the Scorpions' song "Humanity"

Twitter, auf wiedersehen
It's time to say goodbye, the party's over
As the laughter dies, an angel cries

Twitter, it's au revoir to your insanity
You sold your soul to feed your vanity
Your fantasies and lies

Be on your way, adiós amigo
There's a price to pay
For all the egotistic games you played
The world you made is gone

You're a drop in the rain
Just a number not a name
And you don't see it
You don't believe it

At the end of the day
You're a needle in the hay
You signed and sealed it
And now you gotta deal with it

Twitter, Twitter
Goodbye, goodbye

Another circuit completed around the sun, and well... life is chaos, but it's good to be still around. This past year has been fairly quiet on the software front as I spent most of the time working on the second draft of my current novel. One chapter, in particular, took quite a bit of time since it required a massive rewrite (and is much better because of it!). I also posted an old short story "Digital Suicide" as a bit of a nod to the burning circus show which has become Twitter over the past two months. Since the focus of this site has become a lot more gaming-oriented over the past several years, I also wrote up a couple of articles about Quest for Glory V.

Last Year's Plans

A quick look back at how last year's tentative plans shook out:

• Mac AGS ports: I made an update for KQ4 Retold. There is another AGS game I also made a Mac port for, but it hasn't been released yet, so more about that once it is available.
• Updated the Agifier graphics plug-in for Acorn. Ended up doing a ton of research into dithering techniques and color theory.
• Tested a number of games with the Logitech CyberMan, which became tons easier once I obtained a Packard Bell computer. This sidelines my initial plans to write a Mac driver to work with the CyberMan.
• No updates to AGI Studio this year. Potential improvements would involve updating the Qt libraries and making an Apple Silicon build.
• I did create my own custom font using Glyphs Mini, FontStruct, and Caps for the Playdate.
• Completed the second draft of my novel, working on wrapping up some smaller projects and blog posts, next on to the Playdate!
• No real work on Permanent Eraser 3.0.

Plans for 2023

• This will be the Year of the Playdate! This curious handheld gaming device shipped last year, which has generated a lot of interesting ideas across the Playdate developer community. I have a couple of small, Sierra-themed ideas I want to experiment with. I might even bring my old game Psychomancer to Playdate via Pulp!
• There is another very special project I've been assisting with this year that I'll reveal later.
• EdenList 2.3.2 has already been released this year, which follows up on last year's releases for Edenlist 2.3.0 and 2.3.1.
• Start on the 3rd draft of my novel. Considering how much time the 2nd draft took up last year, I don't plan on focusing on this quite as much, but I will do some clean up and find more beta readers.
• Perhaps make an update to King's Quest 1 - Redux. I've already made one small experimental update, so I might add a few more if the fancy strikes me.
• More AGS ports, maybe look into an Apple Silicon build. Fortunately, any of the existing AGS Mac ports I've created seem to work fine on Apple Silicon Macs up to this point (currently macOS Ventura), but eventually Apple will drop support of Intel, just like they did with PowerPC and the Motorola 68K chips in the past (it's inevitable).
I'm planning on making a Mac port of the full version of The Crimson Diamond when it is ready.
• If the time and energy is there, perhaps more work on Permanent Eraser 3.0.

Today, EdenList 2.3.2 for iOS has been released and is freely available for download from the Apple App Store.

What's new in this release:

• Updated UI for iPhone 14 Pro
• UI improvement
• Fix for returning to a new, empty list
• Verified and tested with iOS 16

This release focused on a number of smaller quality improvements, the type of things which often would be pushed aside for more "important" features in larger app development. I first noticed that the search bar was far too close to the Dynamic Island on the iPhone 14 Pro, which was corrected by connecting the search bar controller to the navigation item, instead of the table view. I also saw an odd darkened tint appear in the menu bar when transitioning screens on iOS 13 and later, and this issue has also been corrected. It has been a pleasure to be able to continually add polish to this long standing iOS app over the years. Share and Enjoy.

Welcome back for another post about the Quest for Glory computer game series. This one will revisit Quest for Glory V: Dragon Fire, covering various releases, tidbits, and other interesting details (and less about fighting technical issues like last time I wrote about this game).

Related QFG articles:

• Quest For Glory V and Mac OS 9: Rite of Passage
• Hunting For Easter Eggs (and Rabbits) in Quest For Glory 1
• Quest for Glory III
• Quest for Glory 4 Wraith Freezing Bug
• Differences Between the Floppy Disk and CD Versions of Quest for Glory 4

QFGV Box Variants

As evidenced in Stephen Emond's Sierra Collector's Quest volumes, there were many variants of Sierra products over the years. This collection is just a subset of what was released for Quest for Glory V:

Back: (L to R)

• German version (Drachenfeuer)
• Original US version I bought back in late 1998
• UK version

• Spanish version
• Italian version : Despite the many variants recorded in the Quest for Glory volume of the Sierra Collector's Quest collection, this yellow version was not shown in this book, which is likely a sign of how many versions can be made, and how incredibly difficult it can be to catalogue every version.
• Benelux version (descriptions in Dutch and French on the back)

Side note: I purchased the Polish QFG collection which has the "Hero's Blade" cover, but the CD only contains the first four QFG games, despite the cover being from the fifth game of the series. I initially thought that this was another variant of QFG5. When I looked at the system requirements (486 processor, 8MB of RAM, x2 CD-ROM), it tipped me off that this wasn't what I had originally expected. Stephen Emond's book about the Quest for Glory variants confirms that this is just the Polish version of the traditional QFG collection. I am not aware of any boxed collection which contained all five QFG games, since most of these collections were released in the mid-1990s, a few years before QFG5 was released in late 1998.

PowerMac G4 Setup

This is a game which takes a little more setup since it came out during that odd era of the late 90s (Windows 9x/Classic Mac OS), so it isn't as easy to play this game as those games which were developed with the SCI engine (thank you DOSBox and ScummVM). In my previous QFG5 post, I contemplated investigating Sheepshaver further, but instead I upgraded my PowerMac with new RAM, a better set of speakers, a new mouse, and an SSD drive.

PowerMac G4

My main workhorse for many years, which is able to run every version of Mac OS from version 9 through 10.4. When I initially purchased this computer in 2001, I was deciding between this and a G4 Cube. As stylish as the Cube is, I'm glad I ended up going with the PowerMac, which has had numerous upgrades, including a Zip drive and two larger hard drives. The expandability is a key reason it has survived so long.

512 MB PC100 SDR SDRAM

After the multitude of problems I experienced five years ago, I needed to replace the bad RAM stick. It had been awhile since I'd purchased new RAM, and it looked like my old sources (RIP Ramseeker and 1-800-4-MEMORY) are no longer around. Fortunately, OWC had me covered for some new RAM. I certainly didn't need the extra RAM, but there is something satisfying about bumping the computer up from its original 64MB of RAM to 1.75GB of RAM.

Fortunately, replacing the RAM resolved the issues I experienced previously. There were only one or two crashes experienced throughout the game. I had a few cases where it initially looked like the game crashed, only to find that Mac OS 9 decided at that point to start indexing the hard drive. Ah, the joys before proper preemptive multitasking.

ADC Display 15”

I splurged and bought a refurbished one of these monitors (from the now defunct PowerMax) when I was a poor university student, and it is still an amazing monitor. I even used it as a daily supplementary monitor until recently (had to convert from ADC to DVI to USB-C, but it worked). Prior to USB-C, ADC might have been the only single-cable option which could provide video, power, and USB through a single connection on a Mac. The power button on the monitor is also very handy, especially since I don't have a keyboard with a power button on it any longer.

ATI Radeon 9000 Pro Mac Edition

An upgrade from the default ATI Rage 128 Pro (16MB VRAM) video card to 128MB DDR VRAM. Includes both ADC and DVI ports.

Logitech Wheel Mouse

This is the type of mouse I would have been using 20 years ago. I used the Logitech MouseWare driver software to switch the middle and right mouse buttons, so right-clicking would correspond to right-clicking in the game.

Harman/Kardon SoundSticks III

I saw the Harman Kardon SoundSticks IV at a Micro Center and initially thought this was some retro-style callback product from twenty years ago, only to discover that this was the fourth model of a continuing line of speakers. These were more modern and included Bluetooth, which did not interest me for my retro computer setup, but a standard 3.5mm line in would work just fine.

Years ago, I had some JBL Creature speakers, which sounded great until the satellite speakers died. I purchased a used set of these speakers, but the satellite speakers didn’t work. After a bit of research, I discovered that there's a known issue with the magnets coming loose. I even tried to find a fix, but it would be tricky in finding proper replacement speakers. I then looked at some Apple Pro Speakers. I fortunately did not find any, because my PowerMac is one year too old to power and run them effectively.

Since the other options weren't panning out, I took at look at the SoundSticks again, and discovered that the model III was still available for sale on Amazon, and at a much more reasonable price versus the IV's $299 price tag. The SoundSticks III look great, sound great, and made the magnificent QFG5 soundtrack soar.

Matias Tactile Pro 4 Keyboard

I started using the model 1 about fourteen years ago, which also had the power button on it. This time around, I'm using the fourth generation, which also contains a keypad, very useful for combat in this game.

120GB OWC Mercury Pro Legacy

I purchased one of these to help future-proof this machine by being able to equip the PowerMac with an SSD drive in case any of the existing hard drives die. Mac OS 9 doesn't handle partitions larger than 80GB (or perhaps a little larger), but most new 3.5" hard drives tend to be in the 1TB+ range. I haven't installed it yet, I'll need to copy over the data from one of the other drives, but it will be interesting to see what type of speed increases I might see.

Batch Renaming PICT Files

In preparation for this post, I took a number of screenshots from the PowerMac G4, and then copied the files over via a USB thumb drive to a modern Mac so I could convert the images to a more modern format.

While many things have changed over the last several decades, some things have remained the same. As it was with Mac OS 9 and even up to today, the keyboard shortcut to take a full screenshot is Shift-Command-3. The primary difference is that Mac OS 9 saved the image in the PICT format, whereas the modern macOS saves as a PNG. However, when moving the Mac OS 9 screenshots over to a modern version of macOS, there is no file extension and macOS Ventura doesn't recognize the file and assumes it to be a UNIX Executable File. Mac OS 9 identifies them as SimpleText files (since the program SimpleText is used to open those screenshots), but they are the older image PICT format. By just adding a .PICT extension, macOS can properly identify the files.

The next step was to convert the PICTs to a more web-friendly PNG format. Since there were a decent number of files to convert, I used a short script from the command line in macOS Ventura 13.0.1, which uses the zsh shell.

for i in *; do sips -s format png $i --out $i.png;done

Running this command iterated over the directory of PICT files and created a PNG version of each image.

Other Oddities and Things of Note

After multiple playthroughs of a game, one finds little oddities and inconsistencies, as documented with the following screenshots:

Three-Way Tie

When I completed the first Rite, I freed all five of the fishing villages. The primary goal is to be the first person to free their village and return with the town's sigil. If one is not fast enough, then Gort can win this Rite. An extremely odd thing happened this time around when I spent several days freeing all of the villages, the game claims that Magnum Opus also freed his village, which resulted in a three-way tie.

Difficult To Find Monsters

There are around twenty types of enemies to fight in the game, and some of them are a little more difficult to find, whether they are found only in certain locations or at night. The Weirdings I only found near the island of Delos, and they came with some great loot of Magical Chain Armor. The Salamander I don't ever recall finding before because I hadn't done too much swimming in the ocean besides near Silmaria.

Poisoned Tea

In the game, the (SPOILER) scientists poison several wizards with a tainted box of chocolates. However, there is a line where Shakra mentions that Erasmus was poisoned via his tea, which is inconsistent with the rest of the story. I'll assume that this was a change in the story, and that one line slipped through. Also notice how in this game, the rat's name is spelled as "Fenris", but in the previous QFG games, it was spelled as "Fenrus".

Spelling Inconsistency

Speaking of spelling inconsistencies, another one appears in how to properly spell the name of the island Lymnos/Limnos. On the map, it is spelled "Lymnos", but the in-game dialogue and description spell it as "Limnos".

Poe Poetry

Quest for Glory 4 had numerous Edgar Allan Poe references, and while QFG5 does not contain the gothic atmosphere of the prior game, at least one more nod to Poe made it in. When looking at one of the underwater statues, there is a line which comes from the poem To Helen — To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome.

Unlucky In Love

Neither Erana nor Katrina seem to appreciate it if the hero has been a little too friendly with Nawar. (Odd how they know, considering they don't leave their respective islands.) Elsa doesn't seem to care, though.

Extra Quirky Messages

Quest for Glory games contain a lot of silly jokes and descriptions, and QFG5 does not have a shortage of those, whether it be an Alfred Hitchcock reference or some in-joke that might only make sense to the game developers.

Thoughts About QFG5

• The QFG series introduced an interesting Adventure-RPG hybrid, yet the original QFG5 game box classifies this as an Action-RPG (however, the UK box says Adventure-RPG). So, is this still a QFG game? Absolutely. It ties in and ends a series which had originally been planned as a four-part series, but was stretched out to five games (pentology?) with the inclusion of QFG3. The same cannot be said of King's Quest: Mask of Eternity, which barely had any ties to the previous KQ games. It is the logical conclusion of the series, representing West and winter. A number of previous characters and references to the other games are also present (Erasmus, Fenrus, Erana, Katrina, Rakeesh, Salim, Julanar, Elsa, Bruno).
• It is different from the other games in that it is more of an Action-RPG hybrid than an Adventure-RPG hybrid. It is definitely much stronger with the fighting and typical RPG elements, especially with a larger variety of weapons and armor (whereas the previous games kept these fairly limited), and a large variety of monsters. Perhaps they focused a little too heavily on some of these aspects of the game, and not as much on others. But considering how there have been monsters axed from final games (such as the Hyenamen from QFG3), perhaps it was a bonus to have a variety of monsters, or perhaps creating a variety of monsters (Boarmen vs. Goremen) were similar, more variants than truly unique monsters. In QFG5, there were at least twenty different opponents (not including the arena combatants). For a comparison, QFG1 had ~10 types of monsters: Saurus, Saurus Rex, Troll, Ogre, Minotaur, Bear, Goblin, Brigand, Mantray, Cheetaur (7 of these being common monsters, three are one-time encounters).
• Makes it up to the Thief for shorting that class in QFG3, with plenty of things to do in this game, and it ties up the whole Blackbird mystery.
• Once again, the Fighter is somewhat ignored and doesn't even get the bank robbery side quest. However, this game is action and fighting oriented (so not possible for a 100% pacifist run). The arena combat and plenty of rites involve fighting, plus a plethora of monsters.

Tidbits

• The original title was going to be King's Crown.
• If QFG5 had come out right after QFG4, they would have kept with the QFG4 style of graphics and combat system.
• A wizard mini-game was planned to earn the Whirlwind spell by playing some Wizard's Whirl, but it was scrapped. It might have been something similar to how the Magic User can learn the Dazzle spell from Erasmus after winning a game of Mage's Maze in QFG1/HQ.
• When I first learned about QFG5 being in development, it was originally slated for release in Summer 1997. Even at this time, that release date seemed far too ambitious, since game development often gets delayed for a myriad of reasons. Reading the designer diaries from the QFG5 website confirmed my suspicions that they were no where near to release the game in mid-1997.
  
  Back in mid-October 1997 the 3D Max artist John Lindemuth was still contemplating how to animate a water-breathing amulet (so much for a summer 1997 game release). A designer diary from lead systems designer Eric Lengyel mentioned adding lighting effects and how great it would be to see 16-bit color would look in a future Sierra game. Good news, that "future Sierra game" ended up being QFG5. Interesting to look back at various snapshots of a project's progress and see how things shook out. Adding the dynamic lighting and 16-bit graphics added another 6 months of development to the game, but it was well worth the end result. Considering that the early 3D games of the 90s often did not age well, QFG5 fared far better with many rendered objects and dynamic lighting.

Hacks and Updates

QFG3 and QFG4 have received new fan-made patches in the past few years (in addition to the indispensable NewRisingSun patch), and QFG5 has also received its own new patch for Windows. According to the notes, it fixes a number of bugs (especially for non-English versions of the game), plus it fixes some issues when playing through the game as either Elsa or Magnum Opus, who were playable characters in the demo, but were only NPCs in the final game.

Speaking of Elsa and Magnum Opus, when I was digging through my Mac to look at all of my QFG5 saves and determine how many times I've completed this game (at least 8), I found some Elsa and Magnum saves dated November 28, 1999. These are likely hacked saved games to play as either Elsa or Magnum as each of the four classes. There were plans to allow for multi-player capabilities, and between the patch and these save games, it should be possible to play through the game as one of these others characters.

With the release of the Playdate this year, it has further rekindled my interest in graphics styles of an older era. Or are they just older graphics implementations for the modern age? Even though modern electronics have been able to push 16.7 million colors on high gamut displays for a long time, there is always a market for small, simple, and inexpensive displays. While the 1-bit display on the Playdate delivers a hefty dose of nostalgia (along with a ton of fun), it has been exciting to see what developers have been able to do with limited graphical constraints. This led me back down a deep rabbit hole of to research ancient dithering algorithms and color spaces to create the second version of the Agifier plug-in for Acorn.

What's new with Agifier 2.0

• Implemented Floyd-Steinberg dithering. This was a critical missing piece in trying to simulate a more complete image while using a limited color palette. There are many different dithering algorithms available, but I settled with one of the most famous ones.
• Experimented with the CIE Lab color space. As Tanner Helland mentions in a blog post, using the CIE Lab color space might work better than just comparing against RGB, but I did not get any better results than using either RGB or my own custom selection method.

Screenshots

Download + Installation

• Download: Download the files directly from GitHub or install via git with the command git clone https://github.com/edenwaith/Agifier.git
• Installation: Copy the Agifier.acplugin plug-in bundle (found inside the Agifier folder) into ~/Library/Application Support/Acorn/Plug-Ins folder on your computer. Create the Plug-Ins folder if it does not exist yet.
• Usage: Restart Acorn after copying over the plug-in, then open a file and select the Filter > Stylize > Agifier menu. This will reduce the size of the image and reduce the color palette down to the standard 16 EGA colors that were used in Sierra games.

Future Work

• Continue exploring better selection for colors, especially in regards to green, perhaps experiment with additional color models. Unfortunately, the human's perception of color does not always align with the math of finding the "closest" color, so a lot of the greens get washed out and turn to more muted greys and browns. This is partially due to the human eye being more sensitive to greens, but not as much with blues. I did add another example for trying to select colors (modified Euclidian method), but it didn't seem to help much.
• Use different dithering methods to see if the results come out any better or worse.
• [Far Off Future] Implement Machine Learning (ML) methods to determine the best way to make a proper EGA representation of an image. Perhaps implement checkerboard dithering patterns to simulate certain color areas (in the style of SCI0-era Sierra games of the late 80s).

References

• Agifier - GitHub project
• Agifier: EGA De-make Plug-in for Acorn
• Agifier: Technical Details
• Dithering Resources
• Playdate
• Image Dithering: Eleven Algorithms and Source Code
• Reducing Colors In An Image ⇢ Dithering
• CIELAB Color Space

In my research for developing for the Playdate and for improving my Agifier plug-in for the Acorn image editor, I've been delving deep into the academic and artistic aspects of dithering. This article lists a number of the resources I've used so far in my research in regards to dithering and digital halftoning.

Links

• Ditherpunk — The article I wish I had about monochrome image dithering
• Image Dithering: Eleven Algorithms and Source Code
• Reducing Colors In An Image → Dithering
• Dithering For Pixel Artists
• A look at various simple dithering algorithms in C++
• Dither: Ordered and Floyd-Steinberg, Monochrome & Colored
• Return of the Obra Dinn [GDC 2016 Demo Build] - Fullscreen, Round 3
• What is digital halftoning?
• The Utah Raster Kit - rledither.c
• ImageManipulator.cpp
• Joel Yliluoma's arbitrary-palette positional dithering algorithm
• Dithering by Ronja's tutorials

White Papers

• Dithered Color Quantization
• Color Dithering With n-Best Algorithm
• A Simple Method for Color Quantization: Octree Quantization
• Digital Halftoning Using Fibonacci-like Sequence Pertubation and Using Vision Models in Different Color Spaces
• On Spatial Quantization of Color Images
• Digital Color Imaging Handbook
• ordered-dither-maker

Books

• Computer Graphics, C Version by Donald Hearn
• Computer Imaging: Digital Image Analysis and Processing by Scott E. Umbaugh
• Digital Halftoning by Robert Ulichney
• Graphics Gems II