Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!jarthur!usc!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!rpi!uupsi!camb.com!lmrc!hassinger
From: hassinger@lmrc.uucp (Bob Hassinger)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games
Subject: Re: POWERMONGER: Are we buying release 0.90 ?READ
Message-ID: <9522@lmrc.uucp>
Date: 9 Jan 91 10:33:08 GMT
References: <9DocV1w164w@halcyon.uucp>
Organization: Liberty Mutual Research Center, Hopkinton, MA
Lines: 46

In article <9DocV1w164w@halcyon.uucp>, halcyon!elf@sumax.seattleu.edu (Elf Sternberg) writes:
...
>         Either I am incredibly unlucky, or I've got a major complaint 
> about PowerMonger.  I am now on my third (yes, Third) copy of 
> PowerMonger, having returned the other two to the point of purchase.
>         I have a base Amiga 2000 with one external drive and NOTHING 
> ELSE; my diagnostic routines report full-power on all the chips, memoryis 
> fine, and I just had the drives cleaned.
>         It takes four or five re-boots to get PowerMonger to get past the 
> Scenario selection screen.  I have had the program freeze up on me 
> several times.  Sometimes, the program freezes up for up to thirty 
> seconds before recovering.
...

I was beginning to wonder if I was the only one!

I found that the ONLY way to use the game is to actually _unplug_ my second
drive.  I can understand not using a second drive perhaps, but to have its
presence on the machine make the program hang is poor.

My real problem though is that I too see the game just hang, or go-to-sleep
from time to time.  You see the water still rippling and so on, but there is
no response to mouse clicks and things do not progress.  Generally after a
while it wakes up again and goes on.  A couple of days ago though I had a case
where it actually went to a Guru!

I have been suspecting my hardware (A500, A501 & 1 Mb) but now with this post I
am beginning to think there might really be a problem in the software.  Anyone
else seeing symptoms like this?

BTW - I have noted what looks like other bugs.  I was doing a cycle of try
something then go to replay map.  I found that it seemed some of the state of
the game was not being reset.  It seemed to be remembering alliances from the
previous invocation, and I found that somehow my captain had become unable to
pick up a boat.  Everyone else could get one when I did equip invention on
them, but he never got one.  Very symptomatic of a programming bug.  Now I just
do retire, lose the game, and then go to select map and select the same one
again.  That seems to initialize things better.

I really do think they short circuited the last part of the development and
short changed OS compatibility work.  Very frustrating considering how good the
concept and basic game are.

Bob Hassinger
508-435-9061
hassinger@lmrc.UUCP   or   ...ccavax!lmrc!hassinger