Christmas'97 is the latest, much improved version of my freeware jigsaw christmas card game that was first released in 1993. It should work on any Mac, though 640x480 pixels in thousands of colors are recommended.
The game is highly customizable, and you are encouraged to paste in your own pictures and sounds and pass it on to friends. See the built-in docs for more details. You find it in the About box. I recommend that you read the section about editing before trying to edit for the first time.
POSSIBLE PROBLEMS:
Low memory
Don't try pasting huge pictures into Christmas'97 without increasing its memory partition. If the game won't run due to low memory, try giving it more memory (Get Info in the Finder) and/or running in fewer colors (e.g. switch to 256 instead of thousands).
On the other hand, if you don't have much free memory (if you have 8 megs or less in your Mac), the game may refuse to start. If that is the problem, you may need to reduce the memory assignment. On my SE, the game runs just fine in 800 kilobytes (400k without a the long "done" sound)!
As delivered, the game has enough memory (8 megs) to run on an 832x624 screen in millions of colors. With lower resolution or fewer colors, you can reduce it accordingly, and with larger screens, you may need to give it more.
The recommended configuration for running Christmas'97 is thousands of colors and at least 640x480 pixels. With fewer colors, the provided puzzle image will get dithered, which will not look as nice.
Color optimization
Christmas'97 can (optionally) set a 256-color screen to the colors that match the pictures used best. However, I have had problems with some pictures. If you try color optimization method 1 or 2 on these troublesome pictures, Christmas'97 may unexpectedly quit. (Color-It has the same problem, so it isn't any trivial bug of mine.)
Getting back to useable options
Sometimes, in particular when you have pasted in a picture for which the color optimization fails, you need to change the options on startup. Hold down any modifier key (e.g. shift) and you will get the options before the game is initialized.
Ugly picture
If you don't have QuickTime installed, pictures compressed by QuickTime will look bad. Actually, all you get is a B/W picture that informs you of the problem. The solution is, of course, to paste in a picture that is not compressed. If a picture looks good in SimpleText on your Mac, it should look good in Christmas'97.
Ugly graphics in B/W
The program runs in B/W, even on my old SE, but the graphics that are pre-installed are not ment for it. Apart from the problem with not having QuickTime installed, the new "animation icon" is totally meaningless. Try pasting in the good old snowflakes.
Speed
Some operations take a lot of time. Some suggestions:
- Music takes a lot of power. Turn it off to get more speed.
- Saving takes some time if you have many pieces (e.g. if you use the 48-piece or 140-piece shapes). There isn't much you can do about it, except using fewer pieces.
- Initializing takes more time for an image compressed with QuickTime than one that i not. Use non-compressed images for speeding up initialization (if you have enough memory and disk space for it).
- Fewer pieces are faster. Extreme low-end Macs (SE, LC) should probably avoid using the most complex shape files.
Corrupted preference file
If the game should crash in some unlucky moment, the preference file, "Christmas Jigsaw Save", may get corrupted. If that happens, the game may thereafter crash on startup. Try removing "Christmas Jigsaw Save" from the Preferences folder.
