Shanghai: Dynasty

Shanghai: Dynasty
Developer: Quicksilver Software Publisher: Activision Platforms: Windows, Mac OS Classic Released in US: December 1997 This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused text. This game has revisional differences.

This licensed edition is your chance to play mah-jongg with the Carringtons and Colbys! (Matches may be temporarily interrupted by hair-pulling catfights, terrorist massacres, or emergency plastic surgery.)

Menu Bar

The Mac version doesn't store its menus as resources, but a set of stub resources does exist:

 

 

 

 

Developer Remarks

This message precedes one block of context-sensitive help strings in ucontext.txt.

ADDED THESE (NOT SURE ABOUT THE PLACE OR FILE NAMES):

Another warning accompanies the list of every tile in the game.

(This is a really LARGE number of strings which Activision will have to supply)

Platform Differences

The Dynasty games did not support online multiplayer under Mac OS. According to their producer, Tom Sloper, "Activision never approved the budget or time to support Mac online play."

Revision Differences

The v1.2 patch (6 August 1998) was announced with this list of changes. (Not mentioned: it increases the Mac version's minimum/preferred RAM allocations by 4640 KB and 9640 KB, respectively.)

Major Improvements

• Added Japanese Mah-Jongg. (^_^)
• Added ability to chat during online gameplay. (Woo-hoo!)
• Added "Autopass" feature. (Now you can speed up online play or take your time offline!)
• Added AOL support for online play.
• Fixed scoring problem in Western Mah-Jongg.

Shanghai Tile-Matching Modes

• Improved handling of tie games in Dynasty.
• Fixed a problem with saving and loading games.
• Fixed a problem involving custom tile sets and Rules & Strategies.
• Fixed right-clicking of certain tiles in Prehistoric and Fantasy sets.
• Fixed a problem when changing tile sets in Dynasty.
• Fixed handling of tile removals during shuffles in Dynasty.
• Fixed miscellaneous bugs.

Mah-Jongg Games

• Added Japanese Mah-Jongg.
• Added Autopass feature.
• Made improvements to the A.I.
• Made scoring box hideable so user can see table at end of game.
• Fixed scoring problem in Western and Chinese games.
• Fixed problems with Ruby Crack and Five Odd Honors hands.
• Fixed a problem with Jokers.
• Fixed and improved the Rules & Strategies files.

Multi-Player (Online) Modes (Windows 95 Only)

• Added ability to chat during gameplay.
• Added support for America Online.
• Improved how the computer takes over for a player who drops out.
• Generally improved the stability.