Borderlands

[G0D5P33D]

I bought Borderlands on Steam on Tuesday night, but didn't get it actually running until Thursday afternoon. That's the exciting part, IT RAN!


My set-up: Mac Pro running the latest version of Snow Leopard, Twin 2.8 Intel Xeons, 6 gigs of RAM, ATI Radeon 2600, Libra, enjoy long walks on the beach.

Software I have available: Parallels 4.0, VMWare Fusion 3.0, Windows XP Professional, Borderlands (w00t!)

The game flatout won't run using Parallels 4.0 with Windows XP, it needs Model Shader 3.0, which my native graphics card can support up to Model Shader 10.0 (or so I've read). I believe the problem is that the graphics card is also virtual, so it doesn't really have any specs or drivers that it can be updated with. Trust me, I tried downloading the drivers multiple times while in Parallels and VMWare Fusion, nada, it has nothing to mount to/hardware not found.

I downloaded the free trial of VMWare Fusion 3.0 and I was really impressed with the software AND it ran Borderlands. To start I set all graphics on low. I was not too impressed with the results. I can play for about 20 minutes max, but at that point the screen tearing becomes unbearable and I'm getting chomped on by Skaggs (when you play, you'll know what I mean).

I AM NT A CMPUTER SCIENCE MAJR, so if you are, share the wisdom.
What seems to be the major drawback on some of these virtual machines is that they try to use a virtual graphics card instead of your native hardware. The CPU seemingly becomes overwhelmed within a short time of rendering a few textures. It can only handle so much, so when you first start playing everything seems fine, but walk around the planet Pandora a little bit and you're going to have screen tearing. If you quit out of your game and get to your homescreen you are able to seemingly reset the virtual memory within your virtual graphics card, then resume play and you will have a smooth-ish running game for a while.

I have not run BootCamp yet, so far this seems to be the obvious choice, but I have some back-ups I have to do before I attempt this feat (although simple). I highly encourage anyone who does have their Mac of any type running Bootcamp to attempt running Borderlands and report the results.

The look, feel, UI, sounds, ideas, everything about Borderlands is awesome and I loved every bit of the 6 levels I was able to get to, but in the name of Mac gaming, I've got to get a handle on this.

Next course of action: purchase an external hard drive or install a secondary hard-drive just for Windows so I can successfully install BootCamp with no issues.

 

[Erethism]

I installed Borderlands last night via Steam running Windows 7 through Bootcamp.

My setup is: 2.66 Quad Core Xeon, GeForce GTX 985, 6 GB RAM, 24" monitor

I played this with a friend of mine for about 8 hours, and so far I'm very impressed. Running at 1920x1200 with all the settings at maximum I've encountered no issues with framerate and only the occasional tear here and there, but it is barely noticeable. I really enjoy the visual style and the gameplay and it is obviously designed with co-op in mind. I doubt I'd have as much fun if I played it solo. Also the game is very challenging, but we found it refreshing and increasing the fun factor, especially after clearing particularly hard areas. I definitely recommend this game for those who have Macs able to run it. If not, then there is consoles.

Games typically perform a little better on the same hardware when running under Windows (I used to get some extra FPS on my old MBP when playing WoW in Windows compared to Mac OS X). In my case, the GTX 985 is a beast under Windows, but the Mac drivers are still sub-par.

A game such as Borderlands will require nothing less than Bootcamp if you want to play it on a Mac.

 

[chill.]

i've been playing borderlands on bootcamp vista 64. i have a 2008 unibody macbook with 2.4 ghz, 2gig ram, 9400m video card. i'm running with all settings on low and 800x600 resolution without any problems. i haven't tried increasing my settings yet, but suspect i would run into performance issues if i did.

i bought the boxed pc version and i was amazed that the game did not come with a cd key. it uses a securom disc check to launch the game. with the gamespy id for online play, it is only a matter of time before this game gets pirated to hell and back since the security seems minimal

there's already a wide plethora of hacks available for the game which turned me off a bit. apparently there is no protection against memory editing, and when i was playing the other day i saw a 50 foot tall brick who could shoot 30 bullets at once and had super speed. i've seen screenshots of level 1000+ players and stuff

even though the security is abysmal, the game is incredibly fun with friends. i had a blast playing