Game CHANGED (1 Viewer)

[Sam Posten]

Bummer. Have you tried World of Goo? 2d games should be just fine on it...

 

[mattCR]

Problem is, unfortunately, that many of the PC games are built around DirectX (Windows) or OpenGL, which unfortunately isn't a great performer on the Mac platform.

That having been said, it can all change as time goes on.. and I expect OpenGL performance will improve considerably.

On the really good news front is this announcement from Firaxis:


PREVIOUS PC OWNERS OF CIVILIZATION GAMES ON STEAM GET MAC VERSION
The title of this announcement pretty much sums up the news: If you previously purchased a Civilization title on Steam for your PC, when you log in to Steam on Mac today, you will be able to play Civ there, too!
CIV EVERYWHERE - ALL THE TIME!

 

[DaveF]

"In Layman's terms: Speedy thing goes in, speedy thing goes out."
Portal is playing. And so far is running well enough at 1680x1050.

Looking forward to seeing HL2 on Mac and maybe replaying.

It occurs to me that I should try this on my wife's 24" iMac I didn't get her the "gaming" video card option, but it may be better than what I've got. Hrrmm...

 

[Sam Posten]

Put it on ALL your machines =)

 

[DaveF]

Those are all my machines

Well, unless Steam comes out for the iPhone this summer!

 

[KeithAP]

As promised, I installed Steam and Portal on my MacBook's Vista install (bootcamp). It wasn't really playable under Vista either. When it was running (1024x768) the frame rate was definitely better than under OS X. However, it had a rather nasty audio stuttering problem. Relatively frequently, the audio would start skipping like a broken record. While this happened, the game locked up. The stuttering only lasted a couple of seconds but made the game unplayable.

Plants vs Zombies worked great under Vista but apparently Pop Cap isn't doing the free cross-grade thing because it isn't showing up under Mac Games in Steam.

Another thing I found very odd. I mentioned before that Steam doesn't do a system requirement check before you buy/download a game. Apparently, this even extends to not doing a platform check.

I just downloaded the demo for World of Goo, it downloaded fine. When I tried to launch it Steam gave me an error that the program wouldn't run on my computer. Apparently the demo is Windows only. This is especially bad when considering how I got to the demo with the Steam client. I clicked Mac menu option, then clicked on World of Goo, the resulting page has a button to download the demo.

Is it just me, or do others also think that is ridiculous? I understand that Steam was just released for OS X and will change over time, but the idea that the software will let someone download, and presumably buy, a software title that won't run on their machine doesn't make any sense.

-Keith

 

[mike caronia]

Portal runs perfectly on my iMac at 2560x1440.
I've played this game on the 360, PS3 and now my Mac....still loving it.
Can't wait for the sequel.

I haven't had any issues with Steam as of yet.
Haven't purchased anything either though...
Any word when Team Fortress 2 will be MAC ready?

 

[Sam Posten]

Originally Posted by Keith Plucker

Plants vs Zombies worked great under Vista but apparently Pop Cap isn't doing the free cross-grade thing because it isn't showing up under Mac Games in Steam.


Another thing I found very odd. I mentioned before that Steam doesn't do a system requirement check before you buy/download a game. Apparently, this even extends to not doing a platform check.

I just downloaded the demo for World of Goo, it downloaded fine. When I tried to launch it Steam gave me an error that the program wouldn't run on my computer. Apparently the demo is Windows only. This is especially bad when considering how I got to the demo with the Steam client. I clicked Mac menu option, then clicked on World of Goo, the resulting page has a button to download the demo.

Is it just me, or do others also think that is ridiculous? I understand that Steam was just released for OS X and will change over time, but the idea that the software will let someone download, and presumably buy, a software title that won't run on their machine doesn't make any sense.

-Keith

How the hell do I break up quotes to put multiple responses in with this godawful forum software??? Grrrrr. It used to work.

-PvZ is not on Steam for Mac yet. When it is your PC copy WILL come over. Be patient. There are 55+ games on day one, this is not one of them. Zuma and Bejewelled are tho, so you know it's coming.

-The games are now correctly giving at least moderate warnings when your system will not run a particular game due to at least OS requirements. I confirmed this last night myself and it changed appropriately when I updated my OS to meet the minimum revision that a few games wanted.

-The Goo demo is a known bug and has been noted in the beta forums.

-It's not ridiculous. This is a system with a LOT of moving parts and which adds something that has never been tried before. If these are the worst bugs we face we are doing good.

A couple other things to note:
-Torchlight is Steam Cloud enabled, but if, like me, you have a save on the PC it will not go to the Mac nor vice versa. This is caused by a limitation on the developers side, not a limitation of Steam. However, you CAN copy over your save file from the PC to the Mac and it will then Cloud Save you for a new 'baseline' of your characters that are on the Mac side. Doing this will not magically Cloud you multiplatform.

-The REAL big problem with Steam right now is where it is saving your game binaries. Currently they are being saved in each user's Documents files. This has several implications, some of which will be corrected and some which will not. First, it means that most Time Machine backups will be grinding out backups each time these are updated, which generally is bad. Since these games are web downloaded it doesn't make sense to waste space backing them up repeatedly when they can be gotten for free from Valve so easily. Secondly, the binaries are not sharable between multiple users on a system. This is as designed and will not be fixed, and is related to the DRM Scheme which mirrors what happens on the PC. Each user on your system will have to have their own copy of each game binary, even if you share a Steam account between them. It sucks but unlikely to change. The good news is that Valve now rightly understands that these shouldnt go in the documents directory and is probably going to move them to ~user/library instead, and will give people the option to change that or put symlinks to other drives there. More on that as it develops.

 

[DaveF]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sam Posten
How the hell do I break up quotes to put multiple responses in with this godawful forum software??? Grrrrr. It used to work.

Well, you don't. It doesn't work anymore. Report it; it needs to be fixed.

But, you need to spend some time with a vBulletin site to remind yourself just how bad that really is /img/vbsmilies/htf/biggrin.gif I go over to AVS or MacRumors and it's like pounding rocks to find my subscriptions and wondering where I left off in a thread compare to the Huddler system.

"This experiment is not designed to assess the effects of prolonged exposure to the Button."

 

[Sam Posten]

Sigh, will do.

Edit:
Done.
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/forum/thread/300618/breaking-up-quotes-is-now-broken#post_3690994

Please add your voice of support to getting this fixed.

Regarding the rest of your post I'll just say: You're wrong. =p If you value subscriptions you might be a little right. I don't. And only nutters do. =) But you get bonus points for the excellent quote so your post is full of win.

"Maybe you think you're helping yourself, but you're not. This isn't helping anyone. Someone is going to get badly hurt."
"You're not a good person, you know that, right? Good people don't end up here."
"The difference between us is that I can feel pain. You don't even care, do you? Did you hear me? I said you don't care. Are you listening?"

 

[KeithAP]

Originally Posted by Sam Posten
-The games are now correctly giving at least moderate warnings when your system will not run a particular game due to at least OS requirements. I confirmed this last night myself and it changed appropriately when I updated my OS to meet the minimum revision that a few games wanted.

-The Goo demo is a known bug and has been noted in the beta forums.

-It's not ridiculous. This is a system with a LOT of moving parts and which adds something that has never been tried before. If these are the worst bugs we face we are doing good.

When are you seeing the warnings? I just randomly picked a PC game demo and it downloaded without any warnings. Which probably means I could have purchased the game without any warnings. If you click on it in the game list while (or after) it is downloading, it tells you the game won't run on your platform but it still lets you download it without a peep. Doesn't that waste bandwidth for Valve?

Personally, I am not worried about it too much. I just wanted to mention it for others. From my experience with Steam on Windows, I learned before you buy anything you have to take a close look at system requirements. On more than one occasion Valve has started selling old games, not designed for modern Windows 7/Vista systems, that simply don't run properly on a new OS.

Of course, Valve is just selling what the publishers give them in the same way Best Buy just puts a box on a shelf. I am guessing, but don't know for sure, if someone accidentally purchased software for the wrong platform Valve would refund the purchase.

-Keith

 

[Sam Posten]

Also, keep in mind that many of us knowingly buy games that our machines are not optimized for, especially during things like the Christmas sale periods. If you are planning on upgrading to a new machine in the future with better specs is best to get stuff while it's on the huge sales and let em sit on the shelf. I've got at least 30 cheap games I have bought and never downloaded, just waiting for the urge to go hit right some time and go play. Just this week I finally broke down and started playing Batman, which is excellent.

 

[KeithAP]

In regards to that Anandtech Portal performance article, they have published an update. Valve has updated Portal to fix the fuzziness issue that they saw in the original version. So it should be looking a bit better now.

On Thursday after we published our article Valve pushed out an update for Portal that focused on fixes for the Mac version. The big fix was the following:

Fixed screen "fuzziness" caused by color correction operation









This fixed the blurriness issue we saw with the initial version of Portal. Texture and geometry quality is now as sharp as it is under Windows. Performance remains unchanged, while there is still an image quality difference between the two due to lighting differences and a general degree of fogginess that still appears on the Mac OS X version.

-Keith

 

[DaveF]

They also fixed Portal see-through. Portals were opaque yesterday. Now I've got the proper visibility and hall-of-mirrors effects.

 

[KeithAP]

Torchlight is on sale so I decided to pick it up. I do most of my gaming on a home built Windows 7 box connected to my Kuro but I tried it on my MacBook first (2008 model with GMA X3100 video).

I was surprised to discover that Torchlight runs ok with this hardware. I have the resolution set to 1280x800 with Shadows and Particle Detail set to medium. Didn't seem choppy at all.

So anyone looking for a game to run on a not so powerful system, Torchlight might be just the ticket.

-Keith

 

[Sam Posten]

Giz/Tom confirms what we already know: Apple's graphic drivers blow goats.
http://gizmodo.com/5540716/steam-for-mac-benchmarks-windows-is-much-faster

 

[Sam Posten]

Pretty weak this week:
Altitude Madballs in Babo:Invasion (+DLC)
Killing Floor
Hearts of Iron III
Chains
Caster
Eschalon: Book I
Windosill
Simplz Zoo
Europa Universalis III Complete

 

[Sam Posten]

God I hate huddler sometimes....

 

[DaveF]

Posting from your iPhone again?

I was told by a coworker that Portal has a "commentary" mode! I didn't know that! Going to quit my current game and restart with commentary on. I don't recall using to that in my Orange Box version. I did some of the HL2 commentary and really liked it. Hoping Portal's is equally good.

 

[Sam Posten]

iPad actually. Which makes it all the more infuriating to be treated like a second class citizen here at HTF... =) I went back and added the breaks that the dumb ass huddler stripped out...

All of the games have a commentary mode I think. And they are a hoot. You may not know it but Chet Falizak & Eric Wolpaw were the writers from Old Man Murray and are key writers at Valve, and many of the commentaries.
http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Chet_Faliszek
http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Erik_Wolpaw

Mark Laidlaw also does a lot of writing for them too:
http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Marc_Laidlaw

You might enjoy these articles:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4151/valves_writers_and_the_creative_.php?page=1
http://gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2010/03/12/feature-writers-block-valve-writers-talk-portal-2.aspx