Tend to agree but at least they aren't charging for it. It's a good step forward. Actually it's a leap forward in the world of Mac gaming. They have some work to do for it to be successful long term though.
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Steam for Mac Now Live, Portal is Free Until May 24th
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Tend to agree but at least they aren't charging for it. It's a good step forward. Actually it's a leap forward in the world of Mac gaming. They have some work to do for it to be successful long term though.
Its all a big mess. It downloads slow, crashes often, doesn't follow Apples guidelines for GUI and the really important games like the Command and Conquer series, Call of Duty series, Battlefield series are not available. BUT the important message is that they ARE doing it and over time I hope all these flaws will be ironed out.
Nothing but good experience here on 10.6.3 09 MacPro Octocore. Steam installed straight away, logged me in, I started portal off then stopped, whacked in the source fils from my W7 partition, started it off again and i've been playing Portal ever since. 60fps with 30 looking through portals on my weak little Nvidia Gt120, or half that if I run at full everything at native res for my 20" ACD. I think it's really elegant, and switching in & out of game to other apps seems way smoother than in W7. Lovely.
Generally a good start but a few things which annoy me!
1. WHY IN GODS NAME IS THE STEAM APPS FOLDER IN MY DOCUMENTS!
2. Performance of steam itself, laggy when scrolling. Why wasn't this picked up in the beta???
3. Performance in game. Worse than windows quite simply but thats apparently more apples drivers than anything else.
1. WHY IN GODS NAME IS THE STEAM APPS FOLDER IN MY DOCUMENTS!
2. Performance of steam itself, laggy when scrolling. Why wasn't this picked up in the beta???
3. Performance in game. Worse than windows quite simply but thats apparently more apples drivers than anything else.
Portal is "only" free to play until the 24th, then it will vanish from your account, unless you bought it.
LOL at people expecting Valve to give away Portal for free.
After seeing so many posts regarding this I decided to email The Man himself, Gabe Newell and asked him if it would expire after the 24th:
Code:
From: Gabe Newell <gaben@valvesoftware.com>
Date: May 12, 2010 19:04:39 CDT
To: Gilbert Palau <gilbertpalau@gmail.com>
Subject: RE: Portal on Steam for Mac
It wont expire.
Original message below:
[I]From: Gilbert Palau [mailto:gilbertpalau@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 3:16 PM
To: Gabe Newell <gaben@valvesoftware.com>
Subject: Portal on Steam for Mac
Gabe;
Much Kudos on releasing Steam on the Mac.
Is Portal going to be a free download available until the 24 of May or will it expire on the 24th of May and not work anymore after that date if we get it through Steam for Mac.
Cordially,
Gilbert Palau[/I]I guess we are all LOL at you now.
Portal is a great game. Truly the most original one to come along is some time. Being able to play it now on the Mac is just gravy...
To those complaining about Steam crashing....I've had trouble for the past 2 weeks or so getting Steam to connect on my PC.
Methinks the Mac rollout is stressing their servers.
Methinks the Mac rollout is stressing their servers.
Even though there is nothing currently on Steam that I want to play, tried out Portal, did not care for it, I think it is a step in the right direction and if they keep releasing new games each Wednesday, hopefully more IN DEMAND games and not these little Diner Dash games, then that will be great.
My Windows bootcamp days end the day COD MW2 becomes available, until then, I just wait for the the News Update that COD is now available.
My Windows bootcamp days end the day COD MW2 becomes available, until then, I just wait for the the News Update that COD is now available.
For me the short cut that I requested ended up in, user/applications! In finder.
Thanks. This is where Valve wanted it to be placed. No probs.
You disciples are such a fascist bunch. Please leave the discussion WHAT I want to play to me.
not sure if this was addressed earlier in the thread, but is Team Fortress 2 showing up for anyone? I have the Orange Box through Steam on Windows, and all of the Orange Box games except TF2 are showing up on Steam for Mac...
Blurry textures in Portal
The textures looks blurry for me in Portal (compared to how it looks in Windows). Even if I run at the displays native resolution things look blurry. I've tried different settings but it doesn't seem to do anything. Also I'm surprised that the performance is so bad compared to the Windows version on the same hardware, at least on the hardware. It don't think it's fair to blame Apple for lousy drivers, I mean Call of Duty 4 which is a game that was released several years after Portal is running just as smooth as in Windows for me. Same goes for World of Warcraft *it runs just as well in Mac OS X as Windows for me.
Also surprised about the laggy scrolling in the Steam client. There are some things to work on for Valve here, but I'm happy it all started!
The textures looks blurry for me in Portal (compared to how it looks in Windows). Even if I run at the displays native resolution things look blurry. I've tried different settings but it doesn't seem to do anything. Also I'm surprised that the performance is so bad compared to the Windows version on the same hardware, at least on the hardware. It don't think it's fair to blame Apple for lousy drivers, I mean Call of Duty 4 which is a game that was released several years after Portal is running just as smooth as in Windows for me. Same goes for World of Warcraft *it runs just as well in Mac OS X as Windows for me.
Also surprised about the laggy scrolling in the Steam client. There are some things to work on for Valve here, but I'm happy it all started!
Yeah, it's only been covered about 4,000 times.
What is it about games, and their ability to bring down a forum's average IQ by 50 points?
I can't believe there are so many people just posting the same question up over and over, it's so dumb.
1. No, TF2 is not shown because it was and is still in the Beta. It's a valve mechanism to prevent non-beta users downloading it.
2. Why isn't your i7 iMac running at max resolution at 80fps? Because nothing can run that resolution at that detail, espeially nothing that you can put in your mac.
Sheesh. Whatever happeed to searching forums?
Steam and Game Performance
I'm curious what other people are getting inside Portal, what do you guys think of a separate thread where people list mac version and mac hardware and settings for portal and future games with lists of min, max, average frame rate. I think it may be useful if the mac becomes a bigger player in the gaming arena when deciding on purchasing a new mac in the future.
Here is my specs:
* Early 2008 mac pro 8-core (2.8 Ghz Quad Core 45-nm Intel Xeon E5462 (Harpertown/Penryn) processors)
* 10 GB of 800 MHz DDR2 EEC "fully-buffered" FB-DIMM
* ATI Radeon 4870 512 MB GDD5 Graphics Card
Portal Settings:
All settings at MAX in windows and OS X
(All anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, field of depth jacked all the way up)
Resolution:
1920 x 1200 (16:10, Apple LED Cinema Display)
Portal Mac FPS:
Min: 19
Max: 30
Avg: 26.237
Portal Windows FPS:
Min: 59
Max: 61
Avg: 60
I'm also curious if anyone is using the EVGA GTX 285 mac edition and what they are getting.
I'm curious what other people are getting inside Portal, what do you guys think of a separate thread where people list mac version and mac hardware and settings for portal and future games with lists of min, max, average frame rate. I think it may be useful if the mac becomes a bigger player in the gaming arena when deciding on purchasing a new mac in the future.
Here is my specs:
* Early 2008 mac pro 8-core (2.8 Ghz Quad Core 45-nm Intel Xeon E5462 (Harpertown/Penryn) processors)
* 10 GB of 800 MHz DDR2 EEC "fully-buffered" FB-DIMM
* ATI Radeon 4870 512 MB GDD5 Graphics Card
Portal Settings:
All settings at MAX in windows and OS X
(All anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, field of depth jacked all the way up)
Resolution:
1920 x 1200 (16:10, Apple LED Cinema Display)
Portal Mac FPS:
Min: 19
Max: 30
Avg: 26.237
Portal Windows FPS:
Min: 59
Max: 61
Avg: 60
I'm also curious if anyone is using the EVGA GTX 285 mac edition and what they are getting.
Yes. I agree that this is a good idea. This kind of thread would also be helpful for those deciding whether to purchase particular games.
As a console gamer, my main hesitation about this "Steam" contraption is that one day I will spend 30+ USD on a game only to find that it won't run on my hardware. Being able to compare other users' experiences would be valuable.
That would be a good idea, but if you're looking to buy a Mac based off of what games you're wanting to play... Well, that just doesn't sound right to me.
If you're planning on gaming (AT ALL) on your Mac, install Windows. You'll get better frame rates and overall performance increases.
If you're planning on gaming (AT ALL) on your Mac, install Windows. You'll get better frame rates and overall performance increases.
1 for and 1 against so far
BeSweet, I do agree that gaming on the mac compared to windows is not as good. Hopefully this will all change now that Steam is on the Mac don't you think? I think it will take a while. Apple needs to let ATI and Nvidia code drivers for the mac side. Aren't the drivers for the EVGA GTX 285 written by nvidia but approved by apple and you have to install them from the disc that comes with the GPU? Anyone that uses windows knows updating your graphics drivers can fix bugs and increase performance in games. Ati and Nvidia ususally lists a percentage of performance increase on there website for certain games every time there is a new driver update. (Free FPS increase)
BeSweet, I do agree that gaming on the mac compared to windows is not as good. Hopefully this will all change now that Steam is on the Mac don't you think? I think it will take a while. Apple needs to let ATI and Nvidia code drivers for the mac side. Aren't the drivers for the EVGA GTX 285 written by nvidia but approved by apple and you have to install them from the disc that comes with the GPU? Anyone that uses windows knows updating your graphics drivers can fix bugs and increase performance in games. Ati and Nvidia ususally lists a percentage of performance increase on there website for certain games every time there is a new driver update. (Free FPS increase
)
Does it really matter where Steam keeps its files? Surely your documents folders and app/app support folders are on the same HDD.. Steam manages games like iTunes manages music, you never look at the data anyway.
It hasn't been that buggy for me.. Only weird thing is how it switches colour profiles when you're running Portal. Oddly Crossover used to do the same thing but they fixed it at some point.
It hasn't been that buggy for me.. Only weird thing is how it switches colour profiles when you're running Portal. Oddly Crossover used to do the same thing but they fixed it at some point.