Eek A Bug!

By "Cajun" David Richard

Apeiron Bug Report

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am going to sit here and tell you that there are bugs in Apeiron. No, not green ones, or red ones, or ones that bounce; but programming bugs. Over the last few weeks, we have found several bugs that you may or may not have come across. We would like to itemize the known bugs here, so that if you are ever playing, and something strange happens, you can check here and rest assured. Apeiron 1.0.1 will be available soon, and will address these bugs. It will be a short download/ftp.

Bugs

• The bonus display freaks out when you get a bonus greater than 32,000 points. This is due to the variable used in the program. It cannot handle values over 32,000 points. This one will be fixed in the next version.
• System freezes when you quit the game. This is because there is some date specific code in Apeiron for the High Score Contest. It does not handle wrong dates very well. The reason that the crash is happening is probably due to your system date being incorrect. This will also be fixed in the next version.
• Apeiron has some trouble with third party ADB devices. Andrew is doing some fancy handling of mouse movements, and some third party mice, trackballs and other devices do not agree. A symptom is seen by the crystal "sticking" to the right side of the playing field when you start the game. Also, having extra devices on your ADB chain can confuse Apeiron. You will receive a message that states that no ADB device is available if you have too much attached to your machine. Hopefully we can correct these problems by the next upgrade, and have Apeiron agree with all third party devices and configurations.
• Sometimes you will finish a wave, and it will not end. If this happens, it is probably because there is a 'pede segment stuck at the top of the screen. Shoot it, and the wave will end. This will be fixed in the next version.
• The most reported bug has been a shield bug. When smashing and squishing with the sprinkly shield near the bottom or right edges of the screen, the game can flat out crash, lock up, or drop you into MacsBug. This is something that we found the day we were releasing Apeiron, and something that we *thought* we fixed. We are working on it, and it will be fixed in the latest version.

Conflicts:

• Those of you who have Click Change may experience a white square appearing during game play. We have spoken with the authors, and they suggest to set the color set to "Factory Std" from the color module.
• WallPaper can sometimes crash Apeiron when doing an automatic pattern change. Apeiron uses specific color tables to display the graphics. It appears that WallPaper is interfering with this. For the moment, if this is happening to you, disable WallPaper before playing. We will be working on a more suitable fix for this one.

• We have had some conflicts with PowerBooks. One problem was that when a PowerBook sleeps while Apeiron is paused, upon resuming the game, the shooter will not respond to movements of the trackball until the game is quit and launched again. Another report stated that some Duo's bottom mouse button does not shoot the shooter. Also something that we will be working on.

  This is the most mysterious one. When running Mode32, and having 32-bit addressing ON, the 'pede will plummet down to the bottom upon making a turn as if it has been poisoned. But, reports have also told me that this does not happen when Mode32 is loaded and 32-bit addressing is OFF. Apeiron should run fine in 24-bit addressing mode, so switch to this as a temporary fix if you are experiencing this problem.

These are the bugs that we know about in Apeiron. If you have any additional information about one of these, or come across a new one that we may not know about, please drop us a line a let us know. Until then, Happy Hunting!