| Lunatic Fringe |
| VNCThing |
Lunatic Fringe was one of my favorites. It was a space arcade shooter that was part of the After Dark screensaver pack. The classic Mac OS 9 game Nanosaur can now.
Running Lunatic Fringe under Mac OS X
Lunatic Fringe has been described as the best game ever written for the Macintosh. In some ways I would agree -- addictive, simple, fast, satisfying. And also not a game. Peversely, this was released as an After Dark screensaver module. Tragically, Sierra (who bought After Dark from Berkeley Systems) terminated After Dark many years ago. For the enterprising web searcher this wouldn't be a problem, but the After Dark engine doesn't run either under OS X or under the Classic environment. This leaves us poor devotees with two potential solutions: replacement or emulation.
Obtaining Lunatic Fringe
Lunatic Fringe was developed by Ben Haller of Stick Software. Unfortunately, Ben doesn't have the source code (or if he does, he's not telling, and I don't blame him). Sierra owns the rights to the program, and to the source code. Although Sierra has ended support for After Dark, you can still pick up a copy from ebay. The version you want is After Dark Deluxe. Enterprising web searchers, you know the drill. This leaves the problem of actually installing and running the damn thing; if you've got an old Mac running OS 8 then you're set. And don't throw it away; it's almost worth having just to play this game.
Replacing the After Dark engine
If you can find a copy of the Lunatic Fringe module, then you're in business.
Thanks to Greg Parker of Sealie Software, there is now a definitive solution to After Dark replacement. It's called Fringe Player, and works like a charm. Although it still runs under the Classic environment, it's fast and emulates sound too. Only try one of the other methods mentioned below if you're a massochist.
There is an acceptable After Dark engine replacement that runs under the Classic environment, called DarkSide of the Macintosh. Install After Dark to get access to the modules. You'll probably have to disable the After Dark extensions as well as its associated modules; they didn't play well with Classic for me. Then install DarkSide, and point it to the After Dark modules.
DarkSide's engine seemed to load Lunatic Fringe without errors, although Satori (another good After Dark module, coincidently also by Ben Haller) failed to run properly. However, at least under my Classic environment, the module ran choppily. It's playable, but not perfect.
Running After Dark in Emulation
Your other option is to run an older version of Mac OS in emulation. Basilisk II is the way to go here. I should mention that I have a PowerBook running OS X; Basilisk II also runs under linux, where the emualtion may be more complete. Under Mac OS X, the sound is unfortunately not implemented. The other option is SheepShaver which runs under X Windows, although I couldn't get it to build under OS X where its support is shaky. Let me know if you have luck with this emulator.
After installing Basilisk II, get Mac OS System 7.5.3 from Apple. Apple has thoughtfully released this older version of Mac OS as freeware. You'll also need the System 7.5.5 Updater from Apple, as well as a System 7.0.3 boot disk image from my site. Mount the boot disk image, then mount the others via the Basilisk II option to see your local directories as another disk.
The Basilisk II emulation is slow-ish but functional. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to do JIT compiling under Mac OS X; the CPU usage is 100% for the application and I don't see whay that should be the case considering no CPU emulation should really be required. Again, the sound is non-functional, at least in the latest version I have installed. The key press handling also seems unreliable; keys can stick in Lunatic Fringe and leave you turning in circles.
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VNCThing
VNCThing is the fastest VNC client available for OS X. Since it's dropped off the web in the last year or so, I thought I'd put it up here. The only other place it's available for download has a corrupted disk image.
VNCThing is not without its problems. On my machine at least, it consumes 100% of the CPU cycles when idle. Unfortunately, I don't have the code, don't know how to contact the author and don't think it's likely to be fixed anytime soon. Nevertheless, here it is.
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Lunatic Fringe Weaving
This page designed and written by Dylan Muir using Notepad. Page last updated on the 16th August, 2005.Link to: http://www.ini.unizh.ch/~dylan/apple/