Gave Up. Gone to Bootcamp

[apolloa]

Just wanted to say that I have given up on trying to get my games to work in Crossover Games, Wine, Parallels or VMWare.

NONE of them work well, they are either technical to use, have incomplete games support or have very poor performance.
So I gave up on them all and I have made a 109GB bootcamp partition, I've installed my copy of Windows XP Pro 32 bit, installed all the updates and have my Crysis among others working fine. I even brought Metro 2033 to play on it as I don't have an Xbox, got a PS3.

Anyway, the short and tails of my story is the ONLY way to truly game on a Mac is bootcamp. It is soooooo much less hassle to just reboot then spend ages installing a game and it's patches by copying files and folders, in Windows I can install all the patches effortlessly and use my no CD/ DVD cracks fine too (I OWN COPIES OF ALL MY GAMES).

So I shall use the games in Mac that are made to work in Mac including my Steam ones, everything else in Bootcamp. If you have a game that your struggling to make work, don't bother, why waste your time? Install Windows and have happy easy gaming day's

Not to mention regular driver updates from Nvidia.....

 

[flopticalcube]

You only figured this out now?

 

[apolloa]

You only figured this out now?

haha, no, I used it before on my last Mac to play Crysis, but I thought I would try my hardest to see what I could do in Mac OSX on my new Mac. I looked in depth into it all. Parallels 6 is even not good enough for Crysis. You can get Crysis to work with the latest Wine but reading up on it it's no easy task to install and setup. Crossover lacks support.

I really did try so thought I would just post to inform others that it's just not worth it.

 

[flopticalcube]

Yeah, 99% of games are ***** on anything but native, be it osx or bootcamp.

 

[PhelpsiPhan]

Yeah i play games through bootcamp using W7 Pro 64. It rocks! I tried VMware but installed Bootcamp straight away lol

 

[bluebomberman]

1up'ed you there, sadly - I actually unearthed my 10-year-old Dell laptop just to play some old games under Win ME.

It's pretty pathetic that I have to do that when I have a brand new iMac, but I don't own a copy of Windows that I can install onto my Mac. Someday I guess I'll bite the bullet and get Win7, but even then there's no guarantee my old games will work via Bootcamp.

Ugh. All I want to do is play Freedom Force...

 

[flopticalcube]

1up'ed you there, sadly - I actually unearthed my 10-year-old Dell laptop just to play some old games under Win ME.

It's pretty pathetic that I have to do that when I have a brand new iMac, but I don't own a copy of Windows that I can install onto my Mac. Someday I guess I'll bite the bullet and get Win7, but even then there's no guarantee my old games will work via Bootcamp.

Ugh. All I want to do is play Freedom Force...

If you use virtualbox you may get better performance than the Dell. It can run windows98, me, 2000 as long as you have a valid license.

 

[bluebomberman]

If you use virtualbox you may get better performance than the Dell. It can run windows98, me, 2000 as long as you have a valid license.

Presumably, yes, but I can't boot from my Win95 disc so I can't use that (not without solving the floppy boot disk dilemma), my WinME disc is Dell only, and apparently my Win XP disk is a SPzero bootleg that can't be slipstreamed into Boot Camp or imported by VMWare.

Trying to play games on my 10-year-old Dell, incidentally, reminds me why I switched to Mac 6 years ago when it was still somewhat contrarian. I should just forget about playing old games - spending several days trying to get Virtualbox, VMWare, Boot Camp, and Windows from not working to barely working has not been good for my psyche.

 

[Arminator]

Just wanted to say that I have given up on trying to get my games to work in Crossover Games, Wine, Parallels or VMWare.

NONE of them work well, they are either technical to use, have incomplete games support or have very poor performance.
So I gave up on them all and I have made a 109GB bootcamp partition, I've installed my copy of Windows XP Pro 32 bit, installed all the updates and have my Crysis among others working fine. I even brought Metro 2033 to play on it as I don't have an Xbox, got a PS3.

Anyway, the short and tails of my story is the ONLY way to truly game on a Mac is bootcamp. It is soooooo much less hassle to just reboot then spend ages installing a game and it's patches by copying files and folders, in Windows I can install all the patches effortlessly and use my no CD/ DVD cracks fine too (I OWN COPIES OF ALL MY GAMES).

So I shall use the games in Mac that are made to work in Mac including my Steam ones, everything else in Bootcamp. If you have a game that your struggling to make work, don't bother, why waste your time? Install Windows and have happy easy gaming day's

Not to mention regular driver updates from Nvidia.....

Depends on the game you intend to play, and on the virtual machine.
In the past i had a vmware xp virtual machine setup on my bootcamp partition, and it struggled even on old games. Now i have a parrallels 6 setup on my windows 7 bootcamp partition, and it can handle the old games very very well. The performance really increased a lot.
Newer first person shooter are still not playable (although call of duty 4 would run smoothly on the lowest resolution), but the other games are pretty fine.
Furthermore i dont get why no CD cracks shouldnt work in a virtual machine? They work fine.

Id say the perfect setup is to have both: Bootcamp partition which you can also start in a virtualmachine. You can play the newer games natively, and the older ones without to restart.

 

[apolloa]

Depends on the game you intend to play, and on the virtual machine.
In the past i had a vmware xp virtual machine setup on my bootcamp partition, and it struggled even on old games. Now i have a parrallels 6 setup on my windows 7 bootcamp partition, and it can handle the old games very very well. The performance really increased a lot.
Newer first person shooter are still not playable (although call of duty 4 would run smoothly on the lowest resolution), but the other games are pretty fine.
Furthermore i dont get why no CD cracks shouldnt work in a virtual machine? They work fine.

Id say the perfect setup is to have both: Bootcamp partition which you can also start in a virtualmachine. You can play the newer games natively, and the older ones without to restart.

But VM machines still can't handle games at my native res with all the settings on Max, bootcamp can. Why reduce the quality of the graphics just so you don't have to reboot? I'll play my Steam games and Starcraft 2 in Mac OSX because they run natively in it, everything else through bootcamp. And to have Parallels play my Crysis well would need a Mac Pro, Windows 7 and lots of Ram. I'll save the money and hassle and reboot.
As for the no CD cracks and updates I was thinking of crossover and wine, it's a major pain to install the patches etc using these systems.

 

[roadbloc]

Presumably, yes, but I can't boot from my Win95 disc so I can't use that (not without solving the floppy boot disk dilemma), my WinME disc is Dell only, and apparently my Win XP disk is a SPzero bootleg that can't be slipstreamed into Boot Camp or imported by VMWare.

Piratebay is thataway >..>..>

 

[bluebomberman]

Piratebay is thataway >..>..>

Heh. Two words: Don't. Trust. (Security was another big reason why I switched...)

 

[doh123]

yes... Wine is too difficult for some people to mess with... though for some of us its a piece of cake.

Thats why we try to make it easier at portingteam.com ... wrappers that the experts make for games... you just download them, put your copy of the game inside, then its a Mac app you double click to run. (and some even torrent links to full read to go Mac versions so you don't even have to install your own copy, its ready to go.)

And I try to make it even easier to make wrappers with my Wineskin project.

Of course it depends what you want out of a game... but me, I'd rather run most games at half resolution and low settings... or even not play them at all... over having to run Windows. But if you don't mind using Windows, and you want to max everything out, then go for it!

 

[apolloa]

Of course it depends what you want out of a game... but me, I'd rather run most games at half resolution and low settings... or even not play them at all... over having to run Windows. But if you don't mind using Windows, and you want to max everything out, then go for it!

Thats what I want to do, I like Crysis and it's bad enough in Windows haha. But Metro is pretty punishing too so I think it's best run in Windows natively. Plus my copy of Windows was just kicking around doing nothing, it's a relic from my PC day's!! Glad I didn't bin it or my key.

 

[Rithem]

bootcamp = sweet

 

[Huntn]

I'm willing to give any Mac native game a shot, even if performance takes a hit, but so far, Bootcamp/Windows has been the best overall option for those games not Mac native.

 

[Shivetya]

I use boot camp for playing games, I do installs and updates while in a VM because I prefer to be doing work on my Mac instead of just sitting there watching an update meter.

While many games played well for me using Parallels 6 I found some inconsistencies that made playing bothersome. LOTRO was mouse look issues, CIV5 is graphical glitches from being stuck with DX9.

Still I find a lot of value with Parallels and games, its good to try some games out that way as if it goes to wonky or worse, blue screens, I can simply punt that window without having to reboot.

 

[doh123]

The only games you should try to play in Parallels or VMware are the ones the wont work in Wine. Wine is actually an implementation of the Windows APIs, not an emulator. Games that run like a slideshow in a VM can be smooth as silk in Wine.