be patient....

Yes, yes....
We know, it is slow to download a new copy of RONIN.
We do it a dozen times a day and we hate it more than you do.



At Big Fun and around the world
folks are working on a variety of ways to make this faster,
so take it easy.
Relax.



Do what we do..

surf around while it's loading
(will slow down both surfing & download, but not too much)
or check your mail.
When was the last time you emailed your Mom, fella?
We'll be loaded before you can press SEND.
Race ya -- GO!



Next time you play RONIN,
it'll be much faster
-because it will be cached on your disk.

Unless you flush your caches
(We have to flush our caches every single time!)
Or the code changes
Or you wait too long and your cache dumps us.


And eventually it will be faster
because we will modularize the code
Hard to do that right now..
We are in Get-It-Working mode..
Optimization comes later


Yeah, and you could do your part
and get a faster Modem
Or ISDN
Or wait for your friendly cable-company
to snake its chubby silver wire past your driveway.

Pretty soon we all be laughing about this-
you and me
on two-way tv
how we used to have to wait FIVE MINUTES
to play those early games of Ronin.

ha ha ha ha

Welcome, to the cutting edge..


Oh yeah...
Help.

You wanted help.

Well, first let's make sure she's running okay.

1: I assume that if you got to this message,
you're looking at the frames-based "playpage"
with a yellow RONIN Loading message on top
a yellow menu on the side
a yellow feedback link or two on the bottom
and this message scrolling in the middle.


If this ain't true, go away. I can't help you.
I don't know where you are.

go here: *

2: You're still here

Look at the top frame of your screen
if it says Ronin Loading skip to step#3.


If you have been waiting for less than four (clocked) minutes, go to step #2

Make sure that you have JAVA available.
This page is a go-no-further tank-trap for the Java-challenged.
[What's Java? A frisky engine for running web-software like Ronin.]
Your Java problem could be:


(a)Old browser.
Like Netscape 2.0 or something.
Goodbye.
Come back when you're serious.

Special message to Andy Voda:
For Pete's sake, man, get Windows 95 already!


(b) Java Firewall
Your network administrator set up a barrier to keep us out.
Wake up!
Your boss doesn't want you playing games at work, dude.
Get it?
Wonder what other kind of bad work habits you have..

But if playing games is your worst habit,
when you get fired
-(and you WILL, dude)-
check out a job here at Big Fun
as Quality Control Zombie.
Crummy pay and all but you do get to play games at work.
Broken games, sure, but games..

$4.75/hour
must speak some English
drink Mountain Dew
and smell not much worse than the rest of the crew.


(c) You turned it off
That would be stupid, wouldn't it.
So I won't watch now, but you can check to see whether you
(or your friend)
monkeyed with the settings on your browser
and disabled Java.


(d) None of these? I'm stumped. Tell me about it.

3: Your screen says Ronin Loading on top
It should also say multiplayer
if you have Netscape 4.0x

and single player otherwise

if you have single player and want multiplayer
you know what to do
Get Netscape Communicator 4.0 or 4.01
do not use 4.02- it has a bad bug
Internet Explorer should be okay too
if 4.0 or better
but untested at time of this writing>