Good morning. I'm currently working on looking at some game files for a few early GameCube titles. A bunch of these games use GPL geometry files, ANM animations, and ACT actor files. Pretty much the only references I've seen to these files are in the Dolphin SDK documentation. It appears that the SDK includes a "previewer" meant to view such files, as well as associated TPL textures. When I try running the previewer program compiled for mac on OS9, it freezes, stating it couldn't find prevload.txt. I thought that "cp" was meant to be a folder on the OS9 desktop, but even creating a file in the specified directory (with cp being on the desktop) still gives the same error. Has anyone worked with the SDK apps (i.e. previewer) who could give any advice? I haven't really seen any guides for getting the software set up properly.
I would try posting a topic on the http://macintoshgarden.org/ forums or http://www.emaculation.com/forum/. Tons of people who still use Classic Mac OS. Are you using SheepSaver or a genuine Mac OS 9 setup?
I’m currently using SheepShaver on Windows. I’ll try giving those forums a shot. Thanks for the advice.
Update: I figured out how to format a DVD to be recognized by the program. It needs to have a volume label "cp" and contain a folder "cp:\cpdata\preview\". This folder needs to contain the files you want to preview (e.g. zebra.gpl and zebra.tpl), as well as a text file called "prevload.txt". This text file must contain the filename of the file you want to preview. Assuming your DVD has been set up correctly, previewer should recognize it. Unfortunately, it seems that there is no Classic Mac emulator that supports 3D hardware rendering (i.e. OpenGL) required by previewer, and will therefore just display a black screen. With that said, I was able to get the program up and running on a physical iBook running Mac OS 9.2.2 natively.
Also, I figured out how to port the HW2 version of previewer (i.e. previewerD.elf) to a GCM image that can be used on Dolphin-emu or retail Gamecube hardware (assuming you have a way to play burnt discs).
Reminds of Rhapsody OS for some reason, good times. You could dual purpose a Power Mac G5, using 1 HDD for Mac OSX 10.4 that would have the Classic Environment to play Marathon. Then you could use a different 160GB HDD and run the Xbox 360 Alpha 1529 build and play Halo. No idea if OpenGL is supported in the Classic Environment in OSX 10.4 or not.
I’m not sure if it’s supported in Classic Mode, which is why I went for a model that could run it natively. I can still install OSX 10.3 as a dual-boot setup if I want to. But the hard drive was pretty small, so that’s why I held off and am just sticking with one OS at a time for now.
