I tried to see if emulating a mac from 1995 would allow me to actually open the files from the Crusader design collection... it didn't

[MaddoScientisto]

I've been very fascinated with the Crusader design collection ever since I found out about it from this very site some years ago, but unfortunately many of the files weren't viewable on windows and I never saw any effort online to try to run them on a mac.

So yesterday I learned that mac emulators exist and I tried to fire up a Mac System 7.0 emulator to see if I could get anything out of it.

It took me a while to figure out how to even get the file on it because these isos are in windows format and weren't compatible, eventually I managed to track down a program called "macimage" that allowed creating compatible isos and I managed to get some files on the emulated system.

Unfortunately that led nowhere, I tried to open files in photoshop 3.0 but I was met only with errors or corrupted images, the only files I could open were the TIF ones that also worked on windows and also some psd files that worked on current system too.
The weird part is that these .eps files have a line in the header specifically mentioning "Adobe Photoshop 3.0" but the program just wouldn't recognize them.

At a certain point I realized that the machine I was emulating was a bit too old (system 7 was from 1991) and not even in color, I tried again with a System 7.5 machine from 1995 instead, which had color, but the results weren't much more encouraging.
That machine came even with QuarkXPress (mentioned in the description of the collection as one of the softwares used) but even that couldn't load the files, I think that burning them to a CD compatible with windows messed up the files in some way that makes them unreadable by the original software.

Sadly my exploration ends here, I'll post a screenshot of my first attempt.
I think these files would require some kind of manual hex hacking to make them recognizable by the mac software but that's way beyond me




Bonus:
Many of you guys probably already know about this but in one of the disks there were some GIF screenshots of either mockups or very old builds and they're really fascinating to me because they contain a lot of material that didn't make it in the final game:

Acid was orange, how crazy is that? I recognize the layout as a very early version of the first level walkway, that robot on the top left looks suspiciously different than the final Roaming Betty


I've seen these threaded robots on the left with the machine guns a few times in old screenshots and I'm always fascinated by them


Early version of the first level, it's really interesting to see how much it has changed in layout and yet most of the elements are still there


Is that a flying robot on the middle right? We never got these didn't we?


I've seen this classic screenshot a lot, it probably was in magazines, again the threaded machine gun robots show up


FORCATHY.PSD can be opened in modern photoshop, so cool


Too cool textures are too cool for our 2025 (almost 2026) eyes

From my earlier exploration of other cds I remember a bunch of no regret isometric maps for the guide in full color, these were really neat

And finally some other stuff I salvaged: the crusader 2 mech designs from the end of the no regret guide, in color. Many of you probably already saw these but I'm still posting them because they are really cool

 

[MaddoScientisto]

Little update: I tried to use AI to analyze the file data since I'm unable to do it myself.
I know AI is prone to hallucinations and all but I think it still gave me some interesting information:

The EPS files likely had the important data in a metadata structure that was lost when the files were moved to windows at a certain point, there doesn't seem to be anything of the original file left in there other than some path data.
I tried reconstructing the Mac identification headers but still no luck.
Then I tried to recover the embedded previews, some have previews in Pict format and some files have previews in JPEG format, however extracting the raw data resulted into a white JPG, there's a chance it's a color profile issue but I couldn't find further avenues.

It does seem that many of these files are irremediably corrupted and even their previews don't work correctly, the actual EPS data is missing because it was stored in a part of the file that was lost when moving the files out of a MAC system.

 

[Keenan]

When we extracted the files initially, we had to use an actual System 7 machine with the exact correct version of QuarkXPress. I seemingly recall any major or minor version difference led to data corruption or files that just couldn't open. I've lost contact with the individual who helped me out with this, but any knowledgeable old-school Macintosh person should be able to help out.

 

[MaddoScientisto]

It makes sense, I examined the files in a hex editor and the AI assistant mentioned multiple times that important data was completely missing.
I could find headers for the file types but these "postscript" files completely lacked the postscript part.

I also managed to reconstruct the DSC headers (I'm not sure that's what they are called, I'm no expert) with ResEdit so that the OS could actually recognize the files but it seems like the actual "content" of the files was in these headers too and was completely lost in the conversion.

Do you happen to know what the quarkXpress version was? The infinitemac machines have a bunch of versions preinstalled and various versions can be obtained from macintoshrepository, I could give it another go by reconstructing the DSC header and trying to open something in the specific version, but I don't think anything could be done about the missing postscript information.

All these files DO come with low quality embedded JPG, PICT or TIF previews that can be extracted but rendering them without the specific color space settings that were originally used is a challenge

This is an example of such a preview I tried to extract from an EPS file, since it was in JPG format

 

[Keenan]

I don't remember which one. It would be a version from early 1994-mid 1995.