Satan Sam.co.uk

On Saturday I picked up a new computer.

Not much to say about it really! It’s a huge step up from my previous iMac.

Previous iMac Life Story

Bought in October 2006. For 2 years prior to that I was using a PowerBook G4 – so the only access I had to Windows was borrowing my dads laptop (which is what I made New Sam on). I needed something of my own to make Tormishire with and I was in my last year of uni so… Bam! Low end 17” iMac. The base model. But ah tell ya wart Apple are good at putting stuff together. Because 4.5 years later and the only thing to break is the DVD drive (that 2004 Powerbook has had no problems to this day!).

But it’s old. Super old.

Splurged a little bit on the new machine. It’s the (stock) top end iMac. The absolute best one you can get from a retail Apple Store  (build-to-order, which takes weeks to arrive).

3.1ghz Sandy Bridge i5
Radeon 6970 1gb
27” LED 2560×1440
4gb ram

FUNNY BIT: I asked the sales chap if we could swap out the Mighty Mouse for the Trackpad (which you can do online). But he just chucked in a Trackpad for free. Which was awfully nice.

Thing’s brilliant. Faultless.

Well it’s been just over a week since my last post!

Couple of days ago Caroline, her brother Ben and little ol’ me all went to Pule Hill for a bit of climbing. Course I didn’t go up with my vertigo and horrific hayfever but I managed to snap some shots of the action! And of course Caroline snapped a picture of me, she’s rather good at portrait shots!

   

I’ve added the first boss into Tormishire. It’s very basic, but with a very awesome outcome. I’m also finding it very hard coping with all the multiple routes in the game, having to balance them out and lead to player to the same area in the end. But that’s the challenge on my behalf! I’m really filling it out now.

And I’ve built myself a little riser for my desk, mostly so I can just tuck my graphics tablet underneath it to save space! I’m chuffed with it as my last play around with woodtech was in Saddleworth School all them years ago! I think it looks rather spiffing and (almost) matches my shelves. Not bad considering it was just scraps of wood stuck in an old bin. It’s been in use for about 16 hours so far and it hasn’t give way yet! 

 

 

Sorry if this is too “bloggish”, but today was the first time I sat back from my computer and thought about how much this has all changed.

5 years ago, 2002. I was in school taking GCSE’s, I remember having a Sony MZ-R91 Minidisc player (still got that somewhere) and walking to Coyney’s house in the snow. Back when computers were little. 60gb was plenty, resolutions were at 1024*768, widescreen? Only for tube TV’s. I was making… Probably the foundations for Satan Sam; Bloomer. A few months later I would start work on Paintwar 2, then 3 in the summer.

Our PC was a 500mhz Pentium 3, it ran Max Payne quite well. CD-RW, CRT monitor, wired keyboard and mouse. 256mb RAM. We still have this computer, it’s pretty much my sisters and the only upgrade has been to a 1024*768 15″ TFT monitor (yea, it’s that old).

Fast forward to 2007 – I’m sat infront of a dual screened iMac with resolutions I could only dream of back then. It uses a dual core 64bit CPU and is as thin as the laptops of 2002. I’m watching and recording the best quality terrestrial TV available, I burn an episode of Life on Mars onto a DVD in about 10 minutes. I can grab the remote and jog through my photo albums, use my computer as a HiFi, seeing that I ripped every album in the house to the 300gb HDD. The keyboard and mouse are free of wires. The funny thing is this is the bottom model iMac, the lowest sized Dell widescreen monitor, it’s far from the best. We’re using lasers in mice and can download feature length films in minutes.

Wireless internet. My Pocket PC, iMac, PowerBook, DS, even phone are all connecting to a hub that shoots out internet in all directions.

I can pop into my brothers room and connect my 12″ PowerBook to his 32″ HDTV LCD TV with no fuss at all.

We’re also playing 3D games on handheld consoles that connect wirelessly to the internet.

Though the biggest one -

I’m running Windows XP natively on a Mac. Didn’t see that coming in 2002!

What on earth will 2012 bring?

This is incredible. Somebody at Apple actually thought of this as a demonstration of the iPod laser inscription.

Well, sorta. Decided to make the most of my photography and the dual monitors (to which there is but a gap of an inch between both displays, both touching!).
Yea. God I love winter.

*click for bigger pic, but not full res! boom!
Picture taken last Winter… February actually. Total width is 3120 px. And yes! I will allow this graphic to mess with the sites width! Anyone else got lovely Wintery desktops?

Well there wont be a port unless I remade the game, and Clickteam aren’t mentioning their cloak and dagger OSX exporting options. Alas, there is a way so long as you have one of these spanking new Intel Macs. It’s relatively easy too

1. Download and unzip The New Satan Sam
2. Download and install Crossover
3. Open the Sam.exe, or launcher and play!

It will launch full screen, and if you are using a super fast Intel Mac (which they all are) you will be running a full speed Satan Sam in OSX. Not perfect, Crossover is the bridge for now. The game will have no problems with graphics, sound, controls just like the PC version.
I haven’t tried yet, but don’t use the DirectX options in the Launcher application. DirectX won’t run under OSX so in theory the game might crash sending you back into OSX.

Alternative options include using Parallels or Bootcamp as a bridge.

From the forum!

Inspired by a mate of mine, I bashed out this song today whilst everyone was out. It’s an acoustic only, with some effects on top. and a little Oasis style solo half way through. It somehow fell out of sync towards the end and there are some slight loop issues. Ah well! Loves Logic.

It arrived. The machine arrived and it’s very, very fast. The iMac is in my room. It trumps my Powerbook in every respect (though shamefully not in portability). As a little test I tried out the 2 latest PC games I care about – Doom 3 and HL2. Both games ran at their highest resolutions, everything maxed out and was as smooth as butter.
What else should I expect from a dual 64bit CPU? It’s just so damn good. The super high resolutions (1680*1050) actually make HL2 look terrible. Doom 3 is a beauty though. But we knew that 3 years ago!

I still can’t get over how fast this machine is. The iLife applications take a second to boot up, a huge triumph over my PowerBooks ridiculously long 20 second loading. Probably down to the Sata2 drive pushing all this data at a squillion times the speed of a laptop ATA drive.

I’ll be uploading pics and all that when I can be bothered. Right now I’m off to play HL2 Deathmatch on the fastest computer I’ve ever used.

Oh and before I forget – it’s a little daunting that this machine is near enough *silent*. even my fanless HDD enclosure makes more noise than this.

The order for my upcoming iMac has been placed. A Core 2 Duo, 2.16ghz, 1gb RAM, 250gb HDD, Bluetooth keyboard and mighty mouse, iSight totting, Media Centre loving, Dualbooting, dual layer, dual core beauty machine will be here in 7 days time. Though if previous Apple purchases have been anything to go off – it should be here in 2-3 days. Heck my iPod Mini arrived just 48 hours after putting the order on.

What does this mean? My own dual-boot Windows machine will enable me to permanently work on my games. Of course the super smooth benchmarks from Doom 3 and co. are just the icing on the cake.

Core 2 Duo are supposed to be blisteringly fast chips too. I’m curious to see how they stack up against my most commonly used machines, my 1.5ghz G4 and my 3ghz P4. THAT IS ALL.

My Mac just crashed for the very first time. It was quite beautiful in a way, like seeing the needle marks on a flawless model, or realising that Hollyoaks isn’t that bad. Scrolling down a page using my mouse’s scroll pad it just zonked out. Froze. Held in the power button and we were back on in 30 or so seconds.

I first used this PowerBook on the 1st of February 2004. If this is indeed a pattern that began on day #1 then my next crash will be in 2008. Wish me luck!