Terminate and Stay Resident for Charity.

Colstan

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Back during the olden days, we dealt with TSRs, for those of us who had to suffer through MS-DOS. It made classic Mac OS and cooperative multitasking look like a waltz in the park while gently tip-toeing on feather pillows. Even early Windows drivers were simple compared to dealing with TSRs, protected mode, real mode, expanded memory, extended memory, the 640KB limit of conventional memory, editing CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT, archaic implementations such as EMM386, HIMEM.SYS, and exotic fancy utilities like QEMM, but the most elite of us would use cutting edge Helix Netroom to manage our DOS delusions. It even featured advanced cloaking technology, which Microsoft felt the desire to license, and was partially integrated into MS-DOS 6, yet their attempts to cloak DOS failed, and its revenant persists within Windows 11 to this very day. Netroom 3.0 was an absolute marvel of software engineering, given the technical barbarity of that era, during an age in which such measures were allegedly needed to properly run DOS games, in all of their VGA 8-bit glorious color. It was necessary, because PC Magazine and John C. Dvorak said so.

Today, we no longer deal with Terminate-Stay-Resident, but do deal with evil, both fictional and all too real, and support the forces that oppose such tyranny. Normally, I only post about Mac gaming in this sub-forum of "Talked About", but decided to share the latest deal from Humble Bundle, because it is on sale for a very good price and supports a righteous cause. As of the time I am writing this, the the latest Humble Bundle is currently active for the next 10 days, and offers all of the major titles from the Resident Evil franchise, at an excellent price, with three different tiers.

• Tier 1 (3 Item Bundle) for $1
◦ Resident Evil
◦ Resident Evil Revelations
◦ Resident Evil Revelations 2 (Episode 1)

• Tier 2 (7 Item Bundle) for $10
◦ Resident Evil
◦ Resident Evil Revelations
◦ Resident Evil Revelations 2 (Episode 1)
◦ Resident Evil Revelations 2: Deluxe Edition
◦ Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition
◦ Resident Evil 6
◦ Resident Evil 0

• Tier 2 (12 Item Bundle) for $30
◦ Resident Evil
◦ Resident Evil Revelations
◦ Resident Evil Revelations 2 (Episode 1)
◦ Resident Evil Revelations 2: Deluxe Edition
◦ Resident Evil 2
◦ Resident Evil 3
◦ Resident Evil 4
◦ Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition
◦ Resident Evil 6
◦ Resident Evil 7 Biohazard
◦ Resident Evil 0
◦ 50% Off Coupon/Voucher for Resident Evil Village

Each game comes with a redeemable code for Steam, so it's easy to add them to your existing library.

The only title which is Mac native is the forthcoming "Resident Evil Village", however it is currently still in development, and requires Metal 3. The 50% off coupon is for Steam only. While I am unaware of the exact details for the Mac release, it has been speculated that the Mac version will be exclusive to the Mac App Store, as a way for Apple to promote Apple Silicon gaming. If anyone can clarify further, then please do so. I point this out because the 50% off coupon for Village is good through Sept. 7th and only redeemable through Steam, thus it may not be applicable to the Mac version.

Other than Resident Evil Village, none of these titles are Mac native, and so it requires Windows compatibility to play them. However, there have been some successes with running these games under Parallels virtual machines on the Mac as well as playing them with the CrossOver compatibility layer. The tutorials done by Andrew Tsai are invaluable for those looking to play Windows-only games on the Mac, using software from Parallels or CodeWeavers.

Normally, I wouldn't post here about a large number of PC-only titles on sale, because the vast majority of us are Mac users and the discussions here tend to revolve around the Mac platform. However, today I am making an exception because these excellent games are being sold for a worthy cause. For those who purchase the $30 tier, you receive software that retails for $275, before the 50% discount on Village.

As a result of this sale, Humble Bundle has thus far raised $139,835 with 61,847 bundles sold, with ten days remaining. Those funds will contribute to Direct Relief and their humanitarian crisis relief efforts to help the people of Ukraine. For more information, please see this link for Direct Relief's charitable work in Ukraine. Some of the first supporters of the Ukrainian people, even before many world governments began contributing, were from game developers, including 11 Bit Studios which raised over half a million pounds for the Ukrainian Red Cross. Doom 2 got a new level from John Romero, the first he has made since 1994, also in support of the Ukrainian Red Cross. These are just two of the examples of gaming and technology communities coming together in support of the Ukrainian people.

For me personally, this was an easy purchase. I use an RX 580 eGPU with my 2018 Mac mini, and Metal 3 is not supported by my graphics card, which uses the Polaris architecture. The only AMD GPUs that support Metal 3 are the Vega and 5000/6000 series, so my current system would not be able to run the Mac version of Resident Evil Village. However, thanks to the contributions from the folks at egpu.io, there are numerous build guides to help eGPU users setup and run Boot Camp with an external graphics card, despite that configuration not being officially supported by Apple or Microsoft. I haven't had Windows installed on my Mac mini for over a year, but now I have a good reason to get working on a new project.

I don't own any of the Resident Evil computer games, have never played them, and am only vaguely familiar with the handful of movies that I watched, because I was drunk and Milla Jovovich is hot. (Notably, she was born in Kiev.) Otherwise, I am looking forward to playing the 11 games which are now available for $30, plus the 50% off coupon for Village.

In an ideal world, this bundle would include the Mac App Store version of Resident Evil Village, but it does not. So, when I do finally purchase an Apple Silicon Mac, I will also likely buy the Metal 3 version of Village, partly because I want a native Mac version, but also as a way to encourage developers to release Apple Silicon versions of their games.

In that same ideal world, Russia and Czarist Dictator Vladimir Putin wouldn't have invaded their peaceful, industrious, well-defended cousins (and get humiliated in the process), but we don't live in that ideal world, either. So, I can support Ukraine by purchasing the Resident Evil: Decades of Horror game bundle. I would hope that others here find value in one of the available tiers, even if it's just the first for a single dollar. Even if you don't have an interest, please share the link with anyone who might. As individuals, there is little that we can do for our Ukrainian brothers and sisters, but working as a whole, we can slowly make a difference, one humble bundle at a time.
 
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