Big Fish Games Manager Forum

Big Fish Games released a new Game Manager this week. When attempting to install a PC game from the BFG stub into CrossOver, the stub first tries to install the new Game Manager. Obviously that did not work out well. Will there be a CrossTie installation of the new BFG Game Manager available soon?

How can we update old BFG GM Bottles?

Will we have to delete and reinstall games?

Thanks for your help!

Oh boy. I tried to download a PC game this afternoon and it started to download the new GM - disaster. An IE script error message pops up and the GM is just a white window with an unclickable hyperlink that says Game Manager. I tried downloading a whole new GM from here and tried downloading the game again, with the same results. I now cannot use the GM in crossover or access my games.

What to do?

Hi Roberta, Linda...

I've literally just walked in the door to see these posts, so after
I refuel (lunch, coffee...coffee....coffee ;) I'll have a look at the
'new' BFGM ...(I've been dreading the day this would happen tbh)....

...I'll post back to this thread once I'm a little wiser about it all

Cheers!

Update: "Oh, bother" said Pooh...

..unfortunately, the new Big Fish Games Manager doesn't work for us
anymore. I tried numerous things, none of them successful. I would
implore you both to submit a support ticket and/or email the Ninjas
about this ( info@codeweavers.com ) -- I will be doing likewise, but
the more voices the better =)

As for what to do about such... well ....if you're like myself and
routinely back-up (create a cxarchive) of your bottles, these will
all still work. The 'old' BigFishGames client still works, and it
won't try to update itself [u]unless you try to install another new
game into that bottle[/u]. So don't do that obviously....

..the state of play at present is that you can sill use your old BFG
bottles, but you cannot install new games and/or reinstall the ones
you already have, so it's a bit tragic. I'll have a look at it again
tomorrow with the latest devel-wine to see how things are there, Sorry
my news isn't so good, but basically when stuff like this happens it's
out of our control...

Cheers!

I was able to get the games running out of their bottles. Upon closing, the white window pops up again - but at least the games play! sigh

I'll be shooting off an email. Thanks for looking into this, Don!

Hi again,

...Oh!...thanks for looking at that angle (I didn't get around to it), but
such makes sense and is consistent behavior as it were -- the game manager is
just a wrapper/thin-client ; already -installed- game(s) software shouldn't be
affected... you just won't be able to get at them via the GUI shizzle..

..actually...I can't really call it a 'thin' client anymore - it was that when
it was < 300Kb thrift ; now it's blown out to 13Mb ... maybe the 'Big' part of
the name is starting to shine through =)..

...horrorshow result tho' ;-/

Cheers!

Don, thanks for checking things out and keeping us updated. I have sent off my e mail as well. Hoping for a positive outcome! Roberta

I've made a change to the CrossTie for BFG that makes this work again, at least well enough that I can play Pizza Chef 2. It'll require an install into a new bottle, and I was only able to install a game I own by running a game-specific installer from the BFG website.

As far as I can tell, the program only gives an opportunity to log in when installing via a game-specific installer, and I was not able to find any other way to install a specific game. Running a game installer in a bottle that already has BFG installed didn't work in my testing.

The important changes to the c4p were to use MSHTML 6 instead of 7 (making the install into a new bottle necessary) and to use native shlwapi instead of builtin.

Ah, it seems Game Manager has to already be running before I start a game-specific installer.

I found the file called Big Fish Installer Helper. It says to install it into a new bottle, but only let me choose a bottle that I already had. There is now no Big Fish Game Manager to install.

Hi Linda,

...what happened was, Vincent changed the tie to use mshtml6
instead of mshtml7, and, the crosstie for mshtml6 has been busted
for some time now. Ergo, when I went to recheck the current state
of play and hit the ie6 installation error, it was never going to
work. It seems the important bit is the shwlapi.dll override, but
of course when I edit a crosstie to fix something, it goes offline
and won't reappear until a Ninja rechecks it Monday or such...

..the 'Big Fish Games Install helper' tie, is a virtual target that
is used by other crossties, and has no immediate use otherwise. I
sometimes think that (and a few other) crosstie targets, shouldn't
be immediately visible to the end-user, based on the premise they
are of absolutely no use to you but give the appearance of being
otherwise useful ... which they're not. I think I've been listening
to too much Monty Python...

...I'll email you a copy of the BFGM tie that works here...

Cheers!

Thanks for sending the tie, Don. It did work! The new GM is now downloaded, installed and showing up as it should. I'm testing a game download now. :)

Hi again,

Great, good to hear. Thanks also to both yourself & Roberta for
always reporting issues with BFGM as they occur ; it really helps
keeps things running. I've got a few BigFish gift coupons spare ;
if either of you want a freebie, just let me know =)

Cheers!

ps: when the tie comes back online, it should all work again.

I tried downloading two new games, one opened on a black screen with only audio (Written Legends: Nightmare at Sea), the other opened and loaded incredibly slow, never got past the loading screens and it quit both times (Sacra Terra: Angelic Night CE). Finally downloaded a game I knew worked before and everything's running smoothly with it (Voodoo Whisperer). I hesitate to say this is a CrossOver issue or even a compatibility issue with the games themselves, as the new GM is known to have major bugs. I'll try them again once BFG provides a fix to the GM.

Artist Formally Known as Dot wrote:

Hi again,

Great, good to hear. Thanks also to both yourself & Roberta for
always reporting issues with BFGM as they occur ; it really helps
keeps things running. I've got a few BigFish gift coupons spare ;
if either of you want a freebie, just let me know =)

Cheers!

ps: when the tie comes back online, it should all work again.

Hi Don!

Thanks for appreciating my efforts! I seem to always have more questions for you than answers, I'm afraid! 😊

I got the file from Linda and duplicated the first two games she tried with the same results. I got Dreamland Extended to play perfectly (except, as with the old GM, it does not play in Widescreen.) It does play in widescreen in the Mac Version. This is true of other games as well -- (Reincarnations Awakenings is another). Perhaps it is just the nature of the PC beast.

I do have a question about virtual desktop. I tried setting up a bottle with it a while back, but was not successful. I got a black window about 1/3 the size of my 24" screen, in the upper left corner. The GM window was partially cut off. I tried changing the default resolution to match my screen -- no luck there. Am I missing something? Thanks!

I love freebies. How very nice of you! 😊

Cheers!
Roberta

Artist Formally Known as Dot wrote:

Hi again,

Great, good to hear. Thanks also to both yourself & Roberta for
always reporting issues with BFGM as they occur ; it really helps
keeps things running. I've got a few BigFish gift coupons spare ;
if either of you want a freebie, just let me know =)

Cheers!

ps: when the tie comes back online, it should all work again.

That's very kind of you to offer. Thanks Don.

I also downloaded Forgotten: The Timeless Town and got that working - except the inventory wouldn't pop up. It may be one for virtual desktop, but as with Roberta, when I tried to set that up, it didn't quite work out very well.

...back again...

Ahh ... well, the whole stanza of play regarding emulate a virtual desktop
has changed with this new BFG client. The previous game manager used to open
the GUI window we've all grown accustomed to, which I think I measured one
day at 900x700 or some such. That's why I was recommending a virtual desktop
size of 1024x768 -- any smaller than this, and you couldn't see all of the
game manager GUI...

...the new BFGM is different obviously -- on this machine it seems to defaultly
open a window that's approx. 1152x864 ... you can resize this window by dragging
a corner handle, however, it will only resize down to about 1024x768 ; if you
try to make it any smaller, you end up cutting off part of the game manager GUI.

If you firstly resize the game manager GUI so it's as small as it can go without
cutting parts of it off, then quit and enable emulated virtual desktop @ 1024x768
and restart the game manager. Once it does start, you may need to drag it to the
center of the 1024x768 emulated virtual desktop, but it does fit -- have a look
at the screenshot I just uploaded.

Games not going widescreen would be something else ; I would need an example game
that demonstrates this behavior...

...you both have mail =)

Cheers!

ps: games you mention here that you've tried but cannot get to work, I will look at
as time allows to see if they can be made to work.

Hi Don -- thank you for the mail! 😊

One game that is widescreen in the Mac version but not in the PC on Mac using CrossOver is Dreamland. However, I have no idea, played on a native PC machine, if the PC game is widescreen.

I will create a virtual desktop Bottle with the new GM, follow your directions, and try some games that have not worked as yet.

Will report back soon!

Thanks again,
Roberta

Okay -- Written Legends Nightmare at Sea plays perfectly with virtual desktop at 1280 x 768, where without it there was only a black screen and sound. I did get the message that "your screen resolution will not support windowed mode; windowed mode has been disabled." Being quite used to playing on a 24" screen, playing at that virtual size would take some getting used to!

Hi Don. Thank you for the mail! That is very generous of you. :)

I'll try the virtual desktop tomorrow after work and will report back with my results.

I am typing this from my ancient Mac. My other Mac literally blew up quitting out of CrossOver. Maybe this was a coincidental fluke, but had to make you all aware. I had set up a virtual desk top bottle and tested a game that did not open in another bottle without virtual desktop. It was Written Legends: Nightmare at Sea. It played flawlessly. I followed Don's instructions -- all went well. Then I tried installing Timeless. That actually played and the inventory did pop up. I quit the game, quit CrossOver, but my Mac screen totally broke up and froze. Did a hard shut down, restarted -- same broken screen, no finder response. And it got worse. I know 99% of the time it is software related, so I restarted with the system start up disk to restore my HD from Time Machine. The message I got was Time Machine was damaged. Swell. So, I changed my start up disk to my external bootable clone made with Super Duper. I didn't do anything but tell Super Duper to restore my HD from the back up. It seemed to be going okay, kept checking -- it was 1/3 done. Left the room, came back 5 minutes later and Super Duper was no longer running. I could not access much from the finder, then nothing, then that screen broke up as well. This has to be a hardware issue or the Mac would have run without issue from the external which was last backed up on Friday.

I have AppleCare so it will get repaired. My real concern is with my back ups -- please say a little prayer that both are not toast. Thanks!

Ouch! I actually understand these machines down to component level,
and what you describe is certainly in the catastrophic hardware
failure group, and would demonstrate the hallmarks of a heat related
problem...but it could easily be a number of things, but unlikely
software .. at all. It's a bit worrisome that Time Machine called
foul (unless of course it was responding to a fault it detected on
the target machine .. is it that clever? ;) ...

... after too many years around these machines, I know they can fail
at any time ... catastrophically. There's a well traveled line, that
says something like this ... "It's amazing how many computer systems
and people are out there, who -think- they have a solid backup/recovery
strategy, but who never actually check ...physically ... if the restore
from backup process actually works -- if it doesn't, it's inevitable
they find this out when they actually need the backup" ...<grin>...

Obviously that won't help in the case of hardware failure, and if Time
Machine is smart enough to detect a hardware error, how about letting the
user know about that?...(haha).. but, let's say everything was 'routine'
here, and you were just doing a restore from backup onto known working
hardware -- was Time Machine going to fail on you anyhow? That, would
worry me ... not that I'm trying to spook you or anything, it's merely
an observation -- was your Time Machine backup good or bad, and if bad,
how long has it been like that? ... so as I'm a staunch member of the
Justifiably Paranoid Brigade, it is my duty to warn you that your Time
Machine doesn't appear to be operating as the Tardis it should be =)

I hope you get your machine & data back in short order and without any
disappointment -- fingers crossed.

Cheers!

Roberta Shore wrote:

One game that is widescreen in the Mac version but not in the PC on
Mac using CrossOver is Dreamland. However, I have no idea, played on
a native PC machine, if the PC game is widescreen.

snip<

Okay -- Written Legends Nightmare at Sea plays perfectly with
virtual desktop at 1280 x 768, where without it there was only a
black screen and sound. I did get the message that "your screen
resolution will not support windowed mode; windowed mode has been
disabled." Being quite used to playing on a 24" screen, playing at
that virtual size would take some getting used to!

Okay ... Ill just explain a few things for you (both) so you've a
better understanding of these nuances. I'd need do a bit of research
to find the exact circa, but, suffice it to say that widescreen type
displays are 'recent' technology compared to the old 'CRT' (cathode
ray tube) monitors we all used once upon a time and got thyroid cancer
from if you were unlucky. As you may know, these older monitors all
offered 4:3 aspect display modes, whereas widescreen displays are 16:9
or 16:10 aspect ratio...

...now, there's a coincidence in time, where widescreen monitors started
appearing, and CRT monitors started to disappear, that correlate with
the version of directx being employed...ie; when you look at the BFG
site catalog, each game has a requirements section -- if it says the game
requires directx 6/7/8 it's almost a sure bet these games were coded for
4:3 aspect CRT monitors ; end of story - widescreen didn't exist...

... where there exists Mac version of a BFG title, that means the option
was there (during the porting work) to change things in these regards,
but it's not as simple as merely resizing the image - you have to retarget
the pixels to correct aspect ratio. Some (fullscreen) display modes 'cheat'
wherein the game image appears center screen, with black vertical borders
to the left and right .. a sort of letterboxed widescreen mode, but the
game itself is still running at it's hardcoded 4:3 screenmode...

..directx9 games could be anything, like 5:4 or anything else weird I can't
recall now, but they usually can support the widescreen modes ... if they've
been coded to do so -- YMMV depending on the game/year of release. A lot of
BFG games aren't this, of course more recent/new games are the exception,
both in the win32 & Mac camps...

...the error about your desktop resolution not being large enough to allow
windowed mode blabla, you can usually work around that one ... but it's a
misnomer -- you're already in windowed mode by virtue of the fact you have
emulated virtual desktop enabled ; you don't need the game to run in it's
own windowed mode ;) To quelch the error message however, usually setting
the 'desktop size' of the emulated virtual desktop to 1152x864 (or 1280x960)
typically works - you could even dial-in widescreen resolutions for this setting,
and see what the game thinks about it .. ie; perhaps the nature of the universe
is such, that you need emulated virtual desktop for the game to run -at-all-,
and you have to also tell it the emulated virtual desktop is at a widescreen
resolution ... worth a shot ; that approach works with...mmmm... deus ex ..
..and the game you mention above ... you're definitely on the right track..

Hope that helps..

Cheers!

I took the plunge and tried virtual desktop - I got Timeless running, but it showed even less of the screen than it did before. It did run though on 1024 x 768 resolution. When I tried different resolutions, it refused to even open. Turned off virtual desktop and tried Timeless again - I found a way to get the inventory to open and was playing along fine, some slowness in scene transitions but nothing major until I got to the tunnel outside the train, when the screen completely froze and went black. Tried to force quit - nothing. Closed laptop, waited a few seconds, reopened - same thing. Closed for longer, reopened, and game and CrossOver both had quit on their own. So, I guess that's it for that game.

Thanks again for all the info and help Don. I understand computers enough to use them without issues and do some fiddling with the software, but when it comes to the hardware and components and all that techy stuff, I'm lost, especially with Macs as I'm still something of a newbie (I've been a Mac for a year and a half now).

Hi Don! Thanks for all your feedback and empathy. I should have replied oh so much sooner, but I was pretty sparse with what I did on my ancient Mac, and I was sure posting "the Mac Geniuses want to blame it on software" day after day was of no value. Finally, they managed to recreate the issue (didn't seem all that difficult to me 😊) and replaced the graphics card. My Mac is back up and running thanks to my external Super Duper Firewire Clone. Things look quite fine right now, although the last back up on that drive did not include the updated BFG GM3 crosstie -- a project for this week end.

The geniuses had 2 versions for reasons the Time Machine files were toasted. 1) -- the crash and a TM back up occurred at exactly the same time. 2)coincidental unexplainable failure. Yup -- a real confidence builder there!

I have a question -- there are 2 listings in my system preferences/accounts/loginitem -- CrossOver CD Helper (Unknown) and CrossOver CD Helper (Application). Can you tell me what they are, what they do, must they be launched at start up. I installed both CrossOver And CrossOver Games, but frankly, my interest is CrossOver Games -- and running games I download, if that helps to answer my question. Thanks so much!

Hi again!

Good to see you're back up and running... well .. your computer that is =)
It's a rather jolly sight, to myself, to see you recount the "it's the software,
not the hardware" excuse -- as a technician myself, just your description of
the problem had me sure it was either video chipset and/or MMU related..ie;
software really cannot reliably reproduce that kind of fault...oh well...

...as for the Time Machine failure, 1) I doubt it, 2) pfffft! 8)

.... the cd helper app is that piece of software which identifies a Windows
install disc inserted into the drive, and which prompts/links to Crossover
to deal with it, and I suppose it should manage change of disc events in the
case of multidisc installations as well. They are startup launch items, yes.

..the current crosstie here is all fixed btw..

Cheers!