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Squizzles

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 7, 2011
14
0
So I'm planning to have a LAN party. There will be a couple newer macs and some PCs. What games are compatible? The older and more nostalgic the better. I was hoping for Doom or Quake. Command and conquer. Maybe Warcraft 3. Unreal Tournament and original Starcraft. Any of these work? I will not have Bootcamp.

Is there anything I should know? Everything updated and will difference in XP, 7 or 8 matter? I want this to be epic.
 

CJM

macrumors 68000
May 7, 2005
1,534
1,053
U.K.
So I'm planning to have a LAN party. There will be a couple newer macs and some PCs. What games are compatible? The older and more nostalgic the better. I was hoping for Doom or Quake. Command and conquer. Maybe Warcraft 3. Unreal Tournament and original Starcraft. Any of these work? I will not have Bootcamp.

Is there anything I should know? Everything updated and will difference in XP, 7 or 8 matter? I want this to be epic.

Yup, WC3, Starcraft/2 work for sure. Unreal Tournament: do you mean UT99? I think it's multiplayer compatible.
Just make sure everyone's patched up across the board otherwise you'll all be sitting there waiting to update on the day.
Borderlands 2 is great fun if there's up to four of you. Worth grabbing on Steam. You can play CS:Source/L4D2 now, too.
 

ScottishCaptain

macrumors 6502a
Oct 4, 2008
871
474
DOOM and Command and Conquer (1995) are DOS games.

Warcraft III and Unreal Tournament are Win32 games.

These aren't even from the same era, so it sounds like you have a lot of planning to do. If you want to play all the golden oldies (DOOM, C&C, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, etc)- then you can very easily do so through DOSBox and the Mac specific counterpart Boxer. DOSBox supports IPX over TCP emulation, so it's trivial to interlink a bunch of computers and enjoy all those old games together.

Games like Warcraft III and Unreal Tournament are considerably more tricky to coordinate between OS X and Windows (it's no longer a simple matter of installing it under DOSBox and everything "just works"). Warcraft III had a Mac version, but it's antiquated and won't install under 10.8. You could try to run it under WINE, but YMMV.

UT'99 is basically the same thing. You'll probably have to run it under WINE, or a virtual machine managed by VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop (and neither product is free, unfortunately).

Basically, Windows games are a pain in the ass in this regard. DOS games aren't because you've got DOSBox, and once they're installed somewhere you can just copy over the config file and the entire C:\ drive folder to someone else's computer and you're done.

Of course, there's also modern day games like Borderlands 2 that are simply flat out compatible with OS X via Steam, and offer cross-system play... But everyone needs to own their own license (via Steam) for that to work.

So I really think you need to decide what you want to play, then figure out how you're going to make that happen so you're not wasting time when people show up. DOS games are by far the easiest. Windows games are significantly more involved, especially if you have to run them under Mac OS X.

-SC
 

MichalM.Mac

macrumors regular
Mar 26, 2006
114
12
We had a lot of those..

Most Popular Games on my LANs
Call of Duty 4
FlatOut 2
Team Fortress 2 (requires Steam Account but it is free)

We played in past:
Quake 3 Arena
Prey
SW Jedi Academy
Doom 3
Call of Duty 2

Blizzard
Warcraft 3 (+DotA, requires ONE PowerPC Mac (or Intel Mac with Rosetta -> 10.6 or bellow ) because game installer is not intel compatible. After you apply latest patch, it works without CD and runs on Intel just fine)
StarCraft 2 (req. battle.net account and internet connetcion )
StarCraft 1 (Intel Mac with 10.4,10.5 or 10.6 or PowerPC Mac)
Diablo 2 (same as StarCraft 1)

Valve
All those Counter Strikes, L2Ds and more.. (req. Steam account)

Hotseat games
FIFA 2012 (4 players = 4 controllers)
Heroes V
Civilization V (req. tons of time)
Worms 3D (4 players)

C&C
C&C Generals has Mac only multiplayer
C&C 3 and C&C: Red Alert were cider ports. I did not test their multiplayer but it might work.

Free
Classic Nexuiz
OpenArena
hedgewars (something like Worms)
 
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MasConejos

macrumors regular
Jun 25, 2007
149
43
Houston, TX
Some stuff from my pc/mac lan parties:

Armagetron
Garrison Gang (via crossover)
Serious Sam
Babo: Madballs (steam)
Galcon Fusion (steam)
L4D2

Wc3: DOTA mod
Note on WC3: If you can get it installed on a system with rosetta, you can move the app bundle and it will play fine on lion/mountain lion

Note on steam: you might want to go to the steam store and do an advanced search and filter on pc/mac compatible games. There's lots of good stuff there.

You might also consider something like minecraft (java) or terraria (via crossover, but server must be hosted on a pc) for a open, sandbox-y experience.

There are also some turn based games like Civilization, but they will take a long time to play.
 

Plutonius

macrumors G3
Feb 22, 2003
9,018
8,379
New Hampshire, USA
Look through Steam to see what you want to play.
Verify the games support your computers and are playable over a LAN.
Everyone purchase the games for their computer (very cheap on Steam).
And enjoy.
 

Solomani

macrumors 601
Sep 25, 2012
4,785
10,477
Slapfish, North Carolina
Unreal Tournament: do you mean UT99? I think it's multiplayer compatible.

UT99 and UT 2001 (or was it 2003 edition?) were Unreal multiplayers that came out for both Windows and Mac, and cross platform compatible, at least during those early 2000s era.

The sad thing is that Unreal 3 never materialized for MacOSX. Both the OSX and Linux versions were under development at some point, if I recall. But the project was cancelled. And so UT3 only released for Windows. :(

----------

Note on steam: you might want to go to the steam store and do an advanced search and filter on pc/mac compatible games. There's lots of good stuff there.

Yes, but let's all remember that 'Steam' usually means online multi-player. That's not the same as LAN multiplayer. Remember the thread topic is about LAN party. The OP has to make sure to search Steam games which also support cross-platform LAN.
 

Jethryn Freyman

macrumors 68020
Aug 9, 2007
2,329
2
Australia
So I'm planning to have a LAN party. There will be a couple newer macs and some PCs. What games are compatible? The older and more nostalgic the better. I was hoping for Doom or Quake. Command and conquer. Maybe Warcraft 3. Unreal Tournament and original Starcraft. Any of these work? I will not have Bootcamp.

Is there anything I should know? Everything updated and will difference in XP, 7 or 8 matter? I want this to be epic.
UT99 and UT2004 were never a problem for me,

Quake,1/2/3 are all good, as is Warcraft 3.
 

stuckwithme247

macrumors regular
Jan 14, 2003
112
9
DOOM and Command and Conquer (1995) are DOS games.

Warcraft III and Unreal Tournament are Win32 games.

These aren't even from the same era, so it sounds like you have a lot of planning to do. If you want to play all the golden oldies (DOOM, C&C, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, etc)- then you can very easily do so through DOSBox and the Mac specific counterpart Boxer. DOSBox supports IPX over TCP emulation, so it's trivial to interlink a bunch of computers and enjoy all those old games together.

Games like Warcraft III and Unreal Tournament are considerably more tricky to coordinate between OS X and Windows (it's no longer a simple matter of installing it under DOSBox and everything "just works"). Warcraft III had a Mac version, but it's antiquated and won't install under 10.8. You could try to run it under WINE, but YMMV.

UT'99 is basically the same thing. You'll probably have to run it under WINE, or a virtual machine managed by VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop (and neither product is free, unfortunately).

Basically, Windows games are a pain in the ass in this regard. DOS games aren't because you've got DOSBox, and once they're installed somewhere you can just copy over the config file and the entire C:\ drive folder to someone else's computer and you're done.

Of course, there's also modern day games like Borderlands 2 that are simply flat out compatible with OS X via Steam, and offer cross-system play... But everyone needs to own their own license (via Steam) for that to work.

So I really think you need to decide what you want to play, then figure out how you're going to make that happen so you're not wasting time when people show up. DOS games are by far the easiest. Windows games are significantly more involved, especially if you have to run them under Mac OS X.

-SC

You have to run the WC3 installer on Snow Leopard or older, but once you install and update it you can copy the game folder and it will play on Mountain Lion. Unfortunately there is no obvious way to remove your serial number from the game folder, so you are stuck with whatever serial number you used to install it on Snow Leopard...

EDIT: Sorry if it's been posted before in this thread.
 

star-affinity

macrumors 68000
Nov 14, 2007
1,923
1,216
Is there LAN support in the Mac App Store version of FlatOut 2?

What about playing vs the Windows version on a LAN with the Mac App Store version? Anyone has the Mac App Store version and knows this?
 

Suture

macrumors 65816
Feb 22, 2007
1,002
212
We have a few Mac-only (non-Bootcamp) attendees at the LAN parties my friends' host. The Mac-friendly games that we were running included:

- Left 4 Dead 2
- Team Fortress 2
- League of Legends
- Civilization V
- Starcraft 2
- Diablo 3

I think there were more, but I can't recall.
 
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