Fusion + Orange Box?

The Orange Box is £25 on Steam, so each game costs £5 which is a pretty savvy deal.

As for Fusion? Hmm. I've had terrible results playing with anything other than Bootcamp. Other methods require you to drop to DirectX7 or 8 to get the same performance as Bootcamp (which uses DirectX9). Load times seemed extended too. I found it would take 15 seconds to load a level in Portal with Bootcamp, the other methods pushed it to 1-2 minutes.

ArtOfWarfare said:

Oh?

What about Parallels then? Does anyone know if that has significantly worse performance than Boot Camp?

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Yes, it has significantly worse performance. I'm not sure that any of the orangebox games would run in parallels. Even if they would, they will perform much, much better with bootcamp.

For comparison.

In Bootcamp I run Team Fortress 2 with-
1440x900 fullscreen, 2xAA, 8xAF, DirectX9c, HDR+Bloom+Motion blur. Everything is set to middle (high quality models though).

To get the same performance on Parallels I have to run with-
800x600 windowed, 0xAA, 0xAF, DirectX8. Everything set to low.

It's not worth it. So much of the brilliant art direction is lost, plus I get an odd millisecond pause every 2-3 seconds with Parallels.

for gaming i would use boot camp not on fusion

crossover works with portal, but only in 800x600 resolution, just type
-dxlevel80 in the launch line.

Orange box doesn't work with Fusion anyway (not even the 2.0 beta). It gives some funky error about 1.1 shaders or something.

And steam is just a distribution system like iTunes or the xbox live arcade.

Pretty much, it's just a content delivery system but with a Friends list, groups etc. Every weekend or so they have offers on where you can buy games for cheap. Prey was £2.50 a few weeks back! They also sell games in bundles which work out quite well too. I paid £28 for Unreal, Unreal 2, Tournament, UT2004 and UT3 (brand new). Worth every penny!

You just need to download Steam and create an account once you get Bootcamp working.

I dunno! Give TF2 a try. It's the most addictive thing I've played I used to rack up 100 hours of gameplay every 2 weeks!

The new VMware beta supports DX9. Perhaps it runs better now.

ebel3003 said:

The new VMware beta supports DX9. Perhaps it runs better now.

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Unlikely. Your still running an entire OS within an OS. That drains huge amounts of the power of your machine.

U also have to split up your RAM between the two operating systems if your using virtualization.

I figured that I'd give Crossover Games a shot yesterday. It sucked with TF2 on my imac : \

Cromulent said:

Unlikely. Your still running an entire OS within an OS. That drains huge amounts of the power of your machine.

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I realize that and never had any expectations of it running like you would in boot camp, but maybe it would perform in a playable state.

Crossover Games!!!

Of course you have bootcamp, but if you want to play the game in Mac OS X, then Crossover Games is the way to go, without any doubt.

Plays all games in the Orange box, smoothly!

I got a 2.4ghz MacBook Pro, play all in 1200x700 resolution. I could probably play fullscreen as well, but I just chose this resolution + have the gaming window windowed so I can do other stuff while I play(1440x900 being the max resolution).

Crossover Games also supports other Steam games and just other games in general.

Here are all the games it supports:
http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/group/?app_parent=4100;

Oraichu said:

Crossover Games!!!

Of course you have bootcamp, but if you want to play the game in Mac OS X, then Crossover Games is the way to go, without any doubt.

Plays all games in the Orange box, smoothly!

I got a 2.4ghz MacBook Pro, play all in 1200x700 resolution. I could probably play fullscreen as well, but I just chose this resolution + have the gaming window windowed so I can do other stuff while I play(1440x900 being the max resolution).

Crossover Games also supports other Steam games and just other games in general.

Here are all the games it supports:
http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/group/?app_parent=4100;

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Yes, that's almost certainly the way to go if you don't want to use bootcamp.

You can download a free trial for 7 days.

Keep in mind though that it does NOT support DirectX9. It supports Direct X8. It's not the end of the world, but it's an example of why bootcamp is the way to go if you're looking for max performance/graphics.

just use boot camp it is the best option for gamers

ArtOfWarfare said:

Except the demo of Quake Wars which said my computer was inadequate in the graphics card department

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That's unpossible! I've got an older iMac to you yet I managed to run Quake Wars, granted it wasn't fantastic performance but certainly playable with everything on mid.

ebel3003 said:

The new VMware beta supports DX9. Perhaps it runs better now.

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Nope, as I said before it still errors out in Fusion with a complaint about shaders 1.1.

redsteven said:

Yes, that's almost certainly the way to go if you don't want to use bootcamp.

You can download a free trial for 7 days.

Keep in mind though that it does NOT support DirectX9. It supports Direct X8. It's not the end of the world, but it's an example of why bootcamp is the way to go if you're looking for max performance/graphics.

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I acctually got it for free(legally) from CodeWeavers.

You can apply to become an "Advocate" for CodeWeavers and advocate applications. Test the application in other words, and give feedback to CodeWeavers.

Then you need to test each new beta that is released and write a short report on the how application worked with the new software.

ArtOfWarfare said:

Hmmm... nope.

I hated crossover.

It failed all of my tests.

WarCraft II - Managed to install, failed to run.
StarCraft: Project Revolution* - Failed completely.
Steam - Failed completely.
Portal - Since Steam failed, I never even got a chance to test this. FAILED!

So maybe I'm just an idiot and incapable of properly using it, but if that's the case, I don't want to spend anything for something I can't use.

It's a mod for WarCraft III... perhaps I shouldn't mention it though seeing as I was trying to use the windows only installer on the Mac OS X version.

But for Boot Camp... everything has worked!

...

Except the demo of Quake Wars which said my computer was inadequate in the graphics card department

Click to expand...

Did you try the new Crossover Games 7.0? Or was this tested on normal "Crossover"?

I really think you should try it again, since it's really easy to use, and all the claimed supported software, have worked for me.

You just click "Install software" on the top bar, then you chose Steam, and it automaticly downloads it for you and starts the installer.
I was pretty sure this was idiot-proof.