Best way to play steam games?

[soeGG]

Hi all,

I'm new on mac gaming. I want to play CS CS:S.

What to use?

What do you think? :-)

[JLatte]

I'm no expert but I believe Crossover is the way to allow you to run Steam on OS X, which also allows you to play CS: S.

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/

[soeGG]

I'm no expert but I believe Crossover is the way to allow you to run Steam on OS X, which also allows you to play CS: S.

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/

I've tried it but I don't think it's that great. A bit slow?

[Durendul]

depending on how tech savvy you are you can use cinder to play it on any intel based mac but getting cinder legally is less then easy

othere then that there is an underground group that has been able to CSS to stable port running on 10.5.x but this is most certainly an illegal jsut saying it is posable to run it withought having to run vista/xp

[JLatte]

I've tried it but I don't think it's that great. A bit slow?

Yeah, I've heard people mention it's a bit slow. Other than that, either turn the settings down a bit or do gaming in boot camp.

[Zortrium]

Crossover's performance for HL2 has been quite good for me - the only thing is that it doesn't currently support DirectX 9, so the graphics don't look quite as good as they do in Boot Camp. That said, on my 3 Ghz iMac, I can run (in DirectX 8 mode) with all settings maxed and 1920x1200 in Crossover without any slowdowns.

[Durendul]

Crossover's performance for HL2 has been quite good for me - the only thing is that it doesn't currently support DirectX 9, so the graphics don't look quite as good as they do in Boot Camp. That said, on my 3 Ghz iMac, I can run (in DirectX 8 mode) with all settings maxed and 1920x1200 in Crossover without any slowdowns.

hey one question exactly what cant you run on max i have been trying to get my version of HL2 running every thing it can on max but have been using cider and doing some stuff from scrach and i want to know what it should be running in direct 8 at the moment HL2 can run every thing max but shadows dont work past basic and water effects are on minimum

[Zephirus]

you could always setup bootcamp, games run like a charm on that

[soeGG]

Thanks all. I think I'll be the in the boot camp ;-)

[Huntn]

Boot Camp/Windows XP is the way to play any PC game on your Mac.

[Dagless]

Yea, Bootcamp is the way to go. No performance cuts, no emulation. Everything as it should be. I like to get the best bang for buck out of my iMac, wouldn't feel happy buying such a beasty mid-range PC and then cutting the graphics back to DirectX8.

[palebluedot]

Yea, Bootcamp is the way to go. No performance cuts, no emulation. Everything as it should be. I like to get the best bang for buck out of my iMac, wouldn't feel happy buying such a beasty mid-range PC and then cutting the graphics back to DirectX8.

Mac and bang for the buck dont go in the same sentence :P You shoulda got a gaming rig if you wanted that! haha!

[Dagless]

Mac and bang for the buck dont go in the same sentence :P You shoulda got a gaming rig if you wanted that! haha!

Pardon? My 2 year old, £700 iMac runs all the source games at native res, full quality and doesn't drop below 30fps (though it is overclocked).
£700 for a machine that is more than adequate for my work and also plays the games I want perfectly isn't bang for buck? Hmm.

[palebluedot]

Pardon? My 2 year old, £700 iMac runs all the source games at native res, full quality and doesn't drop below 30fps (though it is overclocked).
£700 for a machine that is more than adequate for my work and also plays the games I want perfectly isn't bang for buck? Hmm.

Sorry I wasn't trying to be a jerk or accusing - I (as many ont his forum know) am really anti-bootcamp so i was just pointing out that buying a mac to play games in bootcamp is not necessarily bang for the buck. ALTHOUGH being able to run os x and windows does increase the inherent value of the product - its still way more expensive when you could build the same hardware for 300 if your gonna game in windows.

im just messing with ya though :P

[Huntn]

Mac and bang for the buck dont go in the same sentence :P You shoulda got a gaming rig if you wanted that! haha!

But if you only want or can afford 1 computer the Mac is an good way to go for gaming especially cause you stay in the OS that most of us prefer, most of the time.

[palebluedot]

The main thing I have against Windows (and this is just a personal reason for me) is that dual booting is more of a pain then people make it out to be. If I'm sitting doing work and have an urge to play a round or two of TF2 or L4D I am much less likely to close all my aps, shut down, restart, load windows, load steam, get in the game, play, shut down, restart, reopen apps, and then keep working or whatever.

When I play Quake Wars nativley on mac its great, i leave word open, safari open, ichat open, i have all my itunes music and can use the hot keys to change songs. It's like it was when I was a gamer on my main windows rig - easy and natural. So I hate dual booting mainly because its a huge hassle for me and it keeps me from gaming as much as I like. But I know most people on this forum love it/dont mind so I am alone on this haha.

[Tallest Skil]

What about... if he has a legal copy of the game, can he not use (or make on his own) a Cider port? I've seen Cider ports of The Orange Box and Counter Strike.

Then he can play natively in OS X, or is there something against that?

[Jeas]

I wonder why Gears of War run so slow on my mac....

I use a Macbook Pro 13'', here the specs :

Operating System : Mac OS X 10.6
Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo 2.26 GHz
Memory (RAM) : 2 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Video Card : NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, (VRAM) 256MB

so...here's the story.....

I installed Parallels Desktop 5 on my Mac, and I installed Windows XP on it.....then I installed Gears of War using Cross Over Games (this is because the setup.exe can't be opened on Parallels desktop)....well so far so good.....The installation was succesfull with no problem.
Then I start to play the game (on parallels Desktop), fortunatelly the games run, but unfortunatelly it run so slow, even with a lowest graphic setting.

did someone know how to solve this ?

Thanks.

[DoFoT9]

I wonder why Gears of War run so slow on my mac....

I use a Macbook Pro 13'', here the specs :

Operating System : Mac OS X 10.6
Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo 2.26 GHz
Memory (RAM) : 2 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Video Card : NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, (VRAM) 256MB

so...here's the story.....

I installed Parallels Desktop 5 on my Mac, and I installed Windows XP on it.....then I installed Gears of War using Cross Over Games (this is because the setup.exe can't be opened on Parallels desktop)....well so far so good.....The installation was succesfull with no problem.
Then I start to play the game (on parallels Desktop), fortunatelly the games run, but unfortunatelly it run so slow, even with a lowest graphic setting.

did someone know how to solve this ?

Thanks.

parallels IS NOT designed for you to play games with. there is no way to make it any faster. use bootcamp or crossover (if possible). sorry :(

[Jeas]

parallels IS NOT designed for you to play games with. there is no way to make it any faster. use bootcamp or crossover (if possible). sorry :(

so u mean that the problem is not on my Graphic Card ?

I have CrossOver Games Installed but it cannot run the startup.exe (which is the way to start Gears of War).

and about bootcamp....I always failed to make partition, with a message :

''The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved.

Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using BootCamp Assistant again''

I'm new on mac world, so I dont understand such a think like that...

any idea ?

thx.

[DoFoT9]

so u mean that the problem is not on my Graphic Card ?
definitely not.

I have CrossOver Games Installed but it cannot run the startup.exe (which is the way to start Gears of War).
thats annoying. crossover musnt support GOW then :(

and about bootcamp....I always failed to make partition, with a message :

''The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved.

Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using BootCamp Assistant again''

I'm new on mac world, so I dont understand such a think like that...

any idea ?

thx.

this normally means that you do not have sufficient disk space on your drive. how much free space do you have? even if you have 50GB free and want to allocate 30GB, there still mightnt be enough room to move certain files around.

try repair disk permissions in "disk utility" and see if that helps get rid of the error.

[Jeas]

this normally means that you do not have sufficient disk space on your drive. how much free space do you have? even if you have 50GB free and want to allocate 30GB, there still mightnt be enough room to move certain files around.



is that realy the problem ? because I still have 117 GB free ( from total 159 GB)


try repair disk permissions in "disk utility" and see if that helps get rid of the error.



and how I suppose to do that ? did I have to use my OS cd to do that ?

[wildcardd]

is that realy the problem ? because I still have 117 GB free ( from total 159 GB)



and how I suppose to do that ? did I have to use my OS cd to do that ?

Wrong thread, wrong forum to be posting for help in. Take it over here:
http://forums.macrumors.com/forumdisplay.php?f=86

;)

[Ljw1976]

so by the looks of it, as i didnt know there was a gaming section within this forum ..it seems by running windows via bootcamp is the only sollution!!

one thing i would like to add..

by using bootcamp ..how good do the games run..my spec is

macbook alu unibody...(2ghz duo and 4gb ram)

and by using windows is it as straight forward as i remember it being when i was using windows..or are there more downloading patches bla bla bla??

much appreciated..

[chill.]

so by the looks of it, as i didnt know there was a gaming section within this forum ..it seems by running windows via bootcamp is the only sollution!!

one thing i would like to add..

by using bootcamp ..how good do the games run..my spec is

macbook alu unibody...(2ghz duo and 4gb ram)

and by using windows is it as straight forward as i remember it being when i was using windows..or are there more downloading patches bla bla bla??

much appreciated..

depends on the game... you can probably run any modern game on medium settings

[DoFoT9]

is that realy the problem ? because I still have 117 GB free ( from total 159 GB)
it might be. not really sure.

and how I suppose to do that ? did I have to use my OS cd to do that ?
applications->utilitues->disk utility. it is a program thats is on your mac, run "repair disk persmissions" on your entire hard drive and then retry installing again.

[nick1516]

Since the thread was bumped, whats a way to play audiosurf under os x, I could run it under bootcamp but all my music files are under os x.