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Starcraft 2 Mac Beta in April

I know the Windows beta client will run skirmishes against AI if you don't have a beta key...is the same true for OS X? If so, can someone point me to where I can download the installer? Thanks.
 
I hate to ask, but is it still possible to opt-in to beta? I'm at work right now, so I can't check the official site.

Been busy the past couple of week with big school projects and didn't get a chance to sign up earlier.

I was watching a guy play it yesterday at school and man oh man, I wanna play.
 
theARNSKI said:
I hate to ask, but is it still possible to opt-in to beta? I'm at work right now, so I can't check the official site.

Been busy the past couple of week with big school projects and didn't get a chance to sign up earlier.

I was watching a guy play it yesterday at school and man oh man, I wanna play.
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i dont believe so. you can pre-order it and play beta (but really no point since it ends on may 17th)
 
vong said:
i dont believe so. you can pre-order it and play beta (but really no point since it ends on may 17th)
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The beta doesn't end May 17. That's the date Amazon stops giving keys.

The Beta is likely to go up to a week before the game's release in July.
 
Cougarcat said:
The beta doesn't end May 17. That's the date Amazon stops giving keys.

The Beta is likely to go up to a week before the game's release in July.
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o wow, i am getting BETA for my acct then LOL. been using my friends :p
 
Beta is region locked! wtf. Has any RTS been region locked before? I didn't have lag with other regions with a 56K modem. Ok, MAYBE the top pros can tell a difference, but other people? At least give us the option! The whole point of this game for me was to play with friends back home. ***** lame.
 
Ja Di ksw said:
Beta is region locked! wtf. Has any RTS been region locked before? I didn't have lag with other regions with a 56K modem. Ok, MAYBE the top pros can tell a difference, but other people? At least give us the option! The whole point of this game for me was to play with friends back home. ***** lame.
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Yeah, it sucks. Us Australians are stuck with Koreans etc. That's really gonna help the lag, and won't it be fun playing with people who don't even speak our language :rolleyes:
 
Pythonxl said:
Did anyone else just receive an invite without the game in the manage games section?
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Yep. They must have sent out a wave, and had a glitch. Very frustrating, as I got the email the first day I would have had time to play, only to find out I couldn't use it. Blizzard is teasing me!

Sent them an email, nothing back so far.
 
I preordered the game from Amazon on Monday, they e-mailed me the key late Wednesday night. Downloading it took an hour, and the various patches took a while after that.

Using a replay (where I lost -- I failed to follow up my attack with a 2nd wave when I should have, and I didn't have enough Immortals even after I saw the switch to Roaches due to insufficient gas on the couter-offensive), I did some fps measurements. Using command-control-f to show the fps,

1) Low - 60s to 90s, average in the 80s.
2) Medium - 10s-30s, average in the 20s.
3) High - 0s - 20s, average high teens
4) Ultra - 2. No variation. Very pretty slide show.
5) Custom ( Medium to start with, Shaders overridden to Low) - 20s to 60s, average in the 40s. Very playable. Other single variables had little impact, but shaders were clearly the biggest sole contributor -- to be expected with a video card of this caliber. CPU dependent variables specifically had no casually noticeable impact on frame rate.

My April 2008 iMac has a 3.06GHz Merom and the nVidia GeForce 8800GS with 512MB of video RAM and 2 gigs of RAM. Measurements were taken in full screen mode, at 1920x1200x32 bits.

As an aside, at patchlevel 11, it seems pervasive that the application will not properly close from any screen other than the log-in screen (have to command-option-escape). If I log out, then command q, it will properly close after ~20 seconds.
 
Tried the mac client today. Had already tested windows beta in bootcamp.

Used same settings, 1920x1200, medium settings (imac 24", 2.8Ghz Core2Duo, 4Gb RAM, 256Mb ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro) on both OS's.
In Vista bootcamp, the game ran so much smoother when compared to OS X.5.8. So much for Apple's drivers...
 
Has anyone successfully taken a video of SC2 gameplay on the mac?

I tried using the quicktime screen/video capture but it crashed my entire computer when I fired up SC while recording.

That's not something that happens every day on OS X :eek:

Edit: If someone else could try this out to check if it also crashes for them it would be great, then it would mean the problem is not with my hardware!

1) Run up Quicktime X, start screen recording
2) Run up Starcraft 2, full screen
3) Fail!
 
MBHockey said:
It worked fine for me, but the movie capture quality was crap with Quicktime X.
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Hmm thanks for that, and also for the suggestion. I've been looking for decent free video capture software but it appears to be a rarity.

Now I'm concerned I might have an issue with my hardware. When I ran this test the screen would go black and the computer would be rendered utterly nonresponsive (including mouse, force quit, etc) until a hard reboot.

The saved movie quality was terrible and spotty/grainy (although judging from what you said that might be normal :p).

Might have to download me a diagnostic program.
 
MBHockey said:
I can tell you that it definitely does not. I've been on the Windows client for about a week now and it feels like a final product except for some more pending balance changes. The mac client feels like beta software. My mouse is jerky, the graphics look different (worse) and the performance is nowhere near as good as the Windows client. I hate to partition my drive for a game, so I'll just wait it out for them to fix up the Mac client a bit more.
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I think they will -- and word is over at the Blizzard forums that the ball is actually in Apple's court. Blizzard's Mac devs can't do much for the performance without some updated drivers and improved OpenGL functionality due to ship with OS X 10.6.4.
 
Sambo110 said:
Yeah, it sucks. Us Australians are stuck with Koreans etc. That's really gonna help the lag, and won't it be fun playing with people who don't even speak our language :rolleyes:
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Oh god, you're in the league with Koreans? Have fun being stuck in the lowest level forever :). Just messing with you, but yeah, that's a bad place to be stuck.
 
the beta download just showed up in my manage games list. i am downloading it now. i did send a email an got a response back saying they are working on it.

i guess we don't need keys any more?

pooky said:
Yep. They must have sent out a wave, and had a glitch. Very frustrating, as I got the email the first day I would have had time to play, only to find out I couldn't use it. Blizzard is teasing me!

Sent them an email, nothing back so far.
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