Crazy About Corn Technical Support

This page covers late-breaking information about the Crazy about Corn CD-ROM which was not covered in the printed materials, including instructions on installing the game onto your hard drive and some troubleshooting tips.

Running Crazy about Corn

Crazy about Corn was designed to be run off of your CD-ROM drive. Thus, it does not need to be installed onto your hard drive. If any updates are made available later, though, you will need to install a few files onto your hard drive to take advantage of them.

Before you can play 'Crazy about Corn,' you must have Apple's QuickTime version 3.0 or better installed on your machine. An installer is provided on the CD-ROM, although it is a good idea to go to the Apple QuickTime web site to get the latest version for your machine (at http://www.apple.com/quicktime). If you try to play Crazy about Corn without QuickTime installed, the game should ask you to install QuickTime and halt.

Machines on the low end of the system requirements (see below) may run more slowly off of the CD-ROM than off of the hard drive, simply because CD-ROM drives are slower. Thus, if you experience sluggishness or long loading times, you may wish to install the game onto your hard drive for faster playback. Instructions for doing so are found below.

To run Crazy about Corn from the CD-ROM drive, insert the CD, and simply double-click the application icon on the CD that is appropriate for your Macintosh model. If you have a PowerPC machine (G3 machines are PowerPC), use the application called Crazy about Corn (PPC), and if you have a 68K machine (not a PowerPC), use Crazy about Corn (68K).

While playing the game, you can quit at any time by pressing command-Q, or you can press the space bar to will bring up a control panel that allows you to adjust the volume or quit the game.

Playing Crazy about Corn in your CD player

Crazy about Corn can also be played in your CD player like any other audio CD. The CD contains many songs, including alternate versions of the songs found in the game. Some audio CD players may have trouble playing the CD because it will misinterpret the game information as an audio track, in which case, you should be able to skip track one and play the CD normally.

Installing Crazy About Corn to Your Hard Drive

If you experience slowness or sluggishness, or if you wish to take advantage of any program updates, you may want to run the game off of your hard drive. This will give you much better performance, or allow you to use updated code, but it can take up to 78 MB on your drive. Instructions follow:

After inserting the Crazy about Corn CD into your drive, create a folder on your hard drive where you wish to place the game. Name it Crazy about Corn.

Open the Crazy about Corn CD and drag the appropriate application program (see above) and, optionally, the Support folder into that folder. The necessary files will be copied to your hard drive. The application program and the Support folder must be in the same folder!

Dragging only the application will speed up your launch time, but all the media will still be loaded off of the CD-ROM, so only copying the application will not significantly speed up the game during play. To get the best performance, copy both the application and the entire Support folder.

To play off of the hard drive, simply double-click the application program on your hard drive. The game will attempt to play any files off of the hard drive it finds, and load the rest from the CD-ROM. Because of this, it will request that you insert the Crazy about Corn CD into the drive to play, although you may bypass this requirement by holding down the SHIFT key and clicking OK on the dialog that is presented.

If you are installing a code update, install the program and (optionally) the Support folder as described above, and then install the patch files on top of that. Instructions should be provided with the update, but generally, you will install whatever files you download into the Support folder, unless it is replacing the application itself.

To get even more performance gains, once the game is on your hard drive, you can modify the amount of memory the game can take if you have more than the default amount. Simply 'get info' on the application, and increase the 'recommended size.' (See your computer manual for information on changing the preferred application size.) Note that you cannot do this if you play off of the CD-ROM (because it is read-only) - you must copy the game to your hard drive to get this performance boost.

Troubleshooting Crazy about Corn

As with most applications, Crazy about Corn will give you the best performance when run off of the hard drive (see above), and when your system is not bogged down with unnecessary extensions. Use the Extensions Manager to turn off all unnecessary extensions before playing if you experience slowness. Note that you cannot just restart without extensions, because you will need all the QuickTime extensions at least.

You should not have any other applications open when running the game to provide maximum performance. Similarly, you may want to turn off File Sharing if you are connected to a network.

Make sure that the machine you are running meets the minimum system requirements. If your machine is on the low end of the system requirements, the game should be playable, but will be slower than on today's faster machines. If your machine does not meet all the minimum system requirements, then, although the game may still work, you will probably experience problems or slowness. The system requirements are:

Minimum System Requirements

  • PowerPC or 68030/68040 Macintosh with 66 Mhz+ processor
  • Monitor capable of displaying 256 (8-bit) color, 640x480
  • Double-speed CD-ROM
  • System 7.5.3 or better
  • 8 MB of free RAM (although you may get by with less - see below)
  • Apple QuickTime 3.0 or better (installer provided)

Recommended System Requirements

  • PowerPC or Quadra-class Macintosh
  • Six-speed CD-ROM drive or better
  • 16 MB of free RAM
  • System 8.0 or better

You may be able to get away with less than 8 MB of free RAM on your system, possibly as low as 3.2, but we advise that you run it with more RAM than that, simply because your system will need the elbow room. If you are experiencing problems, make sure that you are using 'real RAM,' namely, make sure you have virtual memory turned off, you are not running any software like RAMdoubler, and that you still have the requisite RAM free. See the manual that came with your system for instructions on checking how much RAM you have and how to turn virtual memory on and off.

If you hear no sound, be sure you've got speakers hooked up correctly, and check the Monitors and Sound control panel (or the Sound control panel on earlier OS versions) to make sure you are not muted. You can bring up a volume control while playing 'Crazy about Corn' at any time by pressing the space bar.

On machines with multiple monitors, the game will attempt to run in the screen that is closest to its requirements. If you wish to specify which screen to run the game in, set the screen you wish to run it in to 256 colors, and the one which you don't to some other color depth before launching the application.

Any updates to the CD-ROM that are released, as well as troubleshooting info and other issues, will be posted on this web site.

Known issues:

When starting the game from Millions of Colors, the opening screen may, on some machines, be displayed in the wrong palette, even after the game changes your monitor's color depth. To avoid this problem, set your monitor to 256 colors before launching the game.

In very low memory situations (below the recommended 8MB), some animations may break up unexpectedly. To avoid this problem, make sure the game has plenty of memory (see above).

If you are experiencing problems with audio slowdown on a PC, especially in the opening scene and in the corncert hall, check to see whether your audio card is using a software wavetable or similar technology. For instance, the ES1879 sound card has a software wavetable which, when enabled, causes sluggish audio playback. To turn off the wavetable, open the System control panel, click the Device Manager tab, and open the Sound, Video, and Game Controllers device grouping. Your audio drivers should be listed there. In the case of the ES1879, open "ES1879 Plug + Play Audio Drive", click the Wavetable tab, and disable the software wavetable. Other audio cards should have a similar means of disabling software wavetables and similar technologies.
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