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Simsplaya54

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 8, 2009
2
0
OK so, I badly want to play any of these games, L4d, rollercoaster tycoon, or the sims. Now, we are a mac family and dont have any PC computers. I have heard there is something called Bootcamp to switch from mac to pc but i dont have any windows cd's such as vista or xp, so i cant play the pc games i have. Also, i have the sims complete collection for my mac but everytime i try to install it it just ssays, like....error code -36 , sound.far cant be read or written or something like that and i tried going to the folder, userdata and draging that to the hard drive but when i do that, it says "userdata00004 cant be read or written, error -36, so i do not know what to do. So what im basically trying to say is here, i badly want to play some pc games on my mac without spending alot of money or possibly none at all. SO PLEASE ANY ADVICE OR HELP??? If you have any help to my problem that'd be great. Thanks!
 
I don't know of any way to play PC games on a Mac without spending any money. Your best bet is to fork out the money for a copy of Windows XP or Windows 7 to install using the Boot Camp assistant to create a partition alongside your OS X partition. What kind of Mac do you have?
 
You can ONLY play PC-only games on you Mac by making it a PC.

BootCamp allows you to partition an Intel Mac hard drive and install Windows XP/Vista/7 RC. You must purchase a valid copy of Windows to install. Once you've done this, you can boot into the Windows partition, and voila - you have a PC that can play PC games.

http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/
 
You can also try using a program called Crossover but it's not free and it's really hit or miss; it doesn't work perfectly (if at all) with many games.
 
I believe all of the aforementioned games all have CIDER ports. L4D is pretty temperamental. The other games are not terribly taxing and should run just fine on a CIDER port.
You can check out Crossover Games for a week (free trial) if you are contemplating spending a little bit of money in the future. Crossover is very hit or miss. L4D should work fine, but I have no idea about the other games you are trying to play.
The Game Porting Team has a database of Cider ports. They do great work. Stay away from story focused games with Cider. Movies hardly ever work.

Hope that helps

Just to clear things up. CIDER and Crossover are different things. Do a few internet searches on both and see what you like better.
 
^^Which are all pirate downloads which isn't encouraged here, plus ciderized performance is generally ****.
@simsplaya54, download the free Windows 7 RC and install that using bootcamp, then you're good to go.
 
Avoid Cider, if you want the best performance from these games buy a copy of XP (it's probably quite cheap now) and install Bootcamp. If you buy Vista now (here at least) you get a voucher for Windows 7 - so come launch you'll have paid one price for 2 operating systems. Which isn't too bad!

But yea if you want to play L4D as you're supposed to (online) then you're going to need Bootcamp. But watch out - it's incredibly addictive when playing with friends. At the peak of my addiction we went through each campaign everynight doing speedruns for months.
 
Rodus - thanks for the catch. I meant to mention to avoid pirated games. You can use CIDER to port games you already own (just using a CIDER wrapper). Crossover is presently perfectly legal, but not good for online gaming (not great for most gaming). As the other poster have said...use bootcamp. You can also use windows 7 for a year for free. I have seen unibody Macbook Pros use Windows 7 and it works pretty well. I would pay the $80 for xp, its the of price 2 games and well worth it.
 
You can also use windows 7 for a year for free.

I have not looked into it but don't you need a Vista serial number to download the Win7 beta? The OP has no Windows OS at all.

Also I think I found a bug on Macrumors. Your post has 1 space after a period but when quoted it added another.
 
Out of all the op mentioned L4D is the only game that seems to be Windows only. Macs have every Sim game and we also have Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. Also for your Sims Complete game look for patches. I am pretty sure that game had a bucketload.
 
One thing to watch out for with Windows 7 is that around March (I believe) it will start letting you know to purchase the retail version by shutting down every 2 hours
 
I have not looked into it but don't you need a Vista serial number to download the Win7 beta?

No, you can get a product key from the Windows 7 download page. It's only going to be available for a few more days (edit: actually the download is available till Aug 20 but you can still get keys after that) so if you want you, you should get it now (get several keys while you're at it - you only need to download once - I got two 64 bit keys and two 32 bit keys. I might grab a couple more.)

As a warning, the download page doesn't work in Safari, but it does in Firefox.
 
Alright, thanks everyone i will try each suggestion and post my results, and to my other question, how do i deal with the sims complete collection issue?
 
Alright, thanks everyone i will try each suggestion and post my results, and to my other question, how do i deal with the sims complete collection issue?
You might want to check out EA - they publish the game to see if that issue has been documented and if a fix is available.
 
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