There is finally a (mostly) fixed version!

[celestion1384]

Well, I've waited about 25 years for this.

I downloaded the latest version of M.A.X. Port, a fan-made rebuild of the game in an attempt to fix all the errors. (I learned about this from a couple of helpful people on this forum)

https://klei1984.github.io/max/about/

I have to say I am incredibly impressed with the work this person has done. I was able to complete a full game (right to the victory screen), on a large map in 232 turns with three computers on the hardest difficulty. I don't think I've ever been able to finish a full game of M.A.X. without game breaking bugs, despite playing it on and off for almost a quarter century.

At the largest point of the game, I estimate about 1,500 units active on the map and several hundred buildings, plus connectors, roads, bridges, all that. During this game, I experienced only five crashes/errors, none of which were game breaking. Two of the errors were simply debugging popups, and i was able to hit ignore and carry on.

What's more, there was little to no performance drop throughout the game. Playing with 1,500 units had roughly the same game performance as playing with 20 units at the beginning.

Finally, I am not sure but he must have made some tweaks to the enemy AI. The enemies not only fought each other (though this took about 50 turns to start happening), but they attacked me aggressively as well. While the AI is not exactly a genius when it comes to base design (though it was building these interesting hard-points of 8-10 turrets in pods around their base), it seemed to hold back on attacks to amass a large force, and then came at me in waves. The AI would still try to avoid the range of my weapons, but it actually went on the offensive and performed reasonably competent attacks (sometimes with dozens of units). Compared to the 1.04 patch, I was pretty impressed with the amount of action happening around the map on many turns. I particular enjoyed watching the AI's go at each other with dozens of fighter jets battling it out.

My hats off to this person. The project is still a work in progress, but I consider it quite playable even by normal standards, and *extremely* playable in comparison to the original patches.

I highly recommend checking it out! It's easy to install.

[ralf-adonis]

Great news! I wait 25 years for that too. I would love to play it with my son today! :-)

[ralf-adonis]

How do I install that? I dont see a guide anywhere?

[klei]

Just unpack the archive contents to the same place where maxrun.exe resides as the github repository front page suggests.


"Download M.A.X. Port or build the runtime using the source code.

Copy the runtime to your M.A.X. installation folder, e.g. C:\MAX.
"

[Solomon Kane]

It does not work on Windows 10. Game crashes during computer turn, as before.
The 64 download files are also not availabe.

[klei]

The 64 bit links got corrected.
Care to elaborate on the crash you experience? Is it consistently reoccurring?

[celestion1384]

Make sure you are using the correct executable. For me, I had to actually go into the M.A.X. folder and run the .exe that Maxport brought in. When I tried to run it through Steam it ran the standard 1.04 version.

On the main menu screen of the game, it should indicate at the bottom that you are using the MAX Port version (where it would normally say v 1.04). So double check that is present.

Also, I'm not sure if you are playing an existing save game file or started a new game. That might make a difference as well.

[ralf-adonis]

Cool, it seems to start and the language could be changed in the settings.ini
I will test it out in the next days and will report here if it runs. Maybe other users will bei interested in this. Thx for your help!

[Sarxis]

Give it more time. Klei has a list of errors he chips away at over time. Sometimes he introduces a crash while attempting to fix a specific issue, and then patches that problem too later. This has been a long time project for him.

[Solomon Kane]

Ok. I launched the Exe from tne port and game works, but after exiting, Windows Defender reported Trojan:Win32/Bearfoos.B!ml and I found a new file. Now I have to scan everything. I'm not happy with that.

[Solomon Kane]

Just to give you more info, I dowloaded the 7zip 64x Max port, unpacked, and copied the files into the game's max folder. Used the max's port exe instead of launching from Steam, and the game worked great from a close to 100 turns, which was not possible before.
After ending at 110 or something, and closing the game, the Windows Defender reported me
Trojan:Win32/Bearfoos.B!ml
and then also
Trojan:Win32/Bearfoos.A!ml
as serious threat.

It was found in the Max's port exe file in the game's folder, as well as where I had it unpacked. There appeared also a new file, side-by-side with the upacked exe, which wasn't there previously. It was infected too. It's name was kind-of-random, like a zip file: y_Yp9k8z.exe.part.

I deleted all the new files and uninstalled Max, then scaned the computer a few times. Can anyone confirm and double check yours max port files (exe), whehter it's a threat or a false alarm.

Other than that, it was awesome to play for these 10+ turns, so big thanks to klei for all the works.

I'm looking for double chceck of the safety concerns now, or I will have to play it on a secondary computer, only for this game.

[klei]

The game is open source, depends only on Microsoft Windows system DLLs at runtime. The game is built by Microsoft's build servers (GitHub). Nobody else reported such an issue, nor my computer detected any threat.

Step by step build instructions are present on the home page, you can also build the game on your own computer if you like using free and open source tools used by millions.

Hope this helps.

[Fonzz]

Donwloaded en installed it. No threats detected. Works great.
No crashes or errors. Just 2 times the cpu turn did not end.
I resolved this to quit the game and then loaded the save file.
Today victory in turn 194 against 1 cpu. Almost on hardest difficulty.

Big thx to klei. 👍

[klei]

On the download page I publish so called release builds that disable most if not all diagnostic capabilities of the game.
Maybe it would make sense to provide so called debug builds too as for example in such builds there is a diagnostic feature to record the computer activities into a log file and there is another diagnostic feature to get feedback about which unit blocks the turn end logic from progressing the game to the new turn. If such data would be available, these rare sporadic end turn issues could be diagnosed. E.g. defect 207 on the defect list was fixed this way.

Its a different topic how would someone actually share the log file which could easily become several gigabytes in size... and what would I do if end users started to trow at me dozens of confusing reports.

By the way, I observed in a few select corner cases that the game could continue even after reaching 00:00 on the timer if we wait a minute or two more. The reason it's worth waiting a bit is that whenever the game is reloaded from a saved game, the computer players lose all their "consciousness" and restart their task lists and plans from scratch. In some way, we could say that reloading M.A.X. after each turn effectively makes even the highest difficulty enemies dumb as a wooden stick.

[SpookySunday]

Originally posted by celestion1384:

My hats off to this person. The project is still a work in progress, but I consider it quite playable even by normal standards, and *extremely* playable in comparison to the original patches.
I highly recommend checking it out! It's easy to install.

I found this project just recently myself and checked the Steam M.A.X. discussions to share this great project. So here we are.

I am so impressed and happy. M.A.X. is one of the few games I come back to since it's release and my nostalgia trip always ended with the infamous memory leak crash.

The passion and dedication to this project is beyond words. Thank you so much, klei. Although I do not understand everything, reading through https://klei1984.github.io/max/defects/ is just jaw-dropping.

Is it right that defect 154 was the reason that under some circumstances AI players did not attack each other in a skirmish battle? That frustrated me as well.
I am deeply grateful.

[klei]

Originally posted by SpookyNooky:

Is it right that defect 154 was the reason that under some circumstances AI players did not attack each other in a skirmish battle? That frustrated me as well.
I am deeply grateful.

Yes, that defect surely contributed to that behavior too, but the root cause for computers not to attack each other in most scenarios is a set of post release design changes that the original authors introduced in patch v1.04.

Back in early 1997 M.A.X. 2 was in production already and instead of improving the computer logic or the game design of M.A.X. 1 further, the original authors effectively introduced quick, cheap and dirty hacks to create the impression that the computers are cleverer pleasing the loudest M.A.X. players that whined about computer players not being aggressive enough towards the actual player for their tastes.

(When it comes to late game design changes, personally I think that it is a very bad idea to listen to the players that are shouting the loudest as usually they represent a very small minority of players' opinions. Anyways, the hack are in the game now, we cannot change that. And what are these hacks?)

E.g. computer difficulty levels at and above Expert level automatically “learn” where all mining stations and eco-spheres are on the map whenever the game is started or reloaded from a saved state. This means computers do not have to search for their enemies on the map before they are allowed to establish an attack squad from eligible military units. This is why the rush tactics of the scout horde computer strategy combined with huge amounts of initial team gold is so deadly against human players now.

Even worse, whenever Master and above difficulty levels plan any attack step, they automatically learn every single unit’s position on the map. This does not only make computer players basically all seeing cheats, but also ruins the algorithm that plans ahead the size of defense forces. In general the defenses of a computer player are sized to match or surpass the arch enemy team’s visible attack force. As Master and above difficulty levels always see everything on the map, this induces an endless production of mobile military units that are not allowed to leave their base perimeters as they are reserved for defenses usually against a bunkering human player. Now how broken is that.

But the most broken hack is this one. Computer players before patch v1.04 would normally attack anyone that is a threat to their base of operations. But due to a hack now computer players only attack a team if the targetable unit belongs to the so-called arch enemy team. The arch enemy is selected by an algorithm that determines who is the strongest opponent, the most probable winner team, and if there is any human player among the teams, that player’s weight is now orders of magnitude bigger than any other criteria effectively defeating the sole purpose of the selection algorithm. There are several computer behaviors that are ruined by this hack. For example computer engineers and constructors stop ongoing build operations if they are in the attack range of any enemy unit that could damage them while the same computer players are not allowed to attack the offending military units unless they belong to the arch enemy team. This effectively leads to situations where computer players lose all of their initial raw materials due to repeteadly canceled build operations and getting totally crippled for the first 50-100 turns due to enemy units just hanging around their base without the ability to defend against them.

If we know about these “game rules”, we could bend them to our favor. If we want computers to fight each other, select Score as victory condition in the game options and do not build any eco-spheres before at least one of the computer players builds and starts one as the team with the highest eco-sphere points will eventually become the target of all other computers. If the human player can survive the first 60-70 turns defending, computers of any difficulty level will start massacring each other to level the eco-spheres of their superior computer player. From that point onwards it’s just divide and conquer till all of them leave the planet.